The actor delivers a performance as if he was born to play Sardar Khan.
GANGS OF WASSEYPUR 2012 FREE
Manoj Bajpai has finally got his due after twiddling thumbs for years and being ignored despite his fabulous performance in 1971, Pinjar, and Shool (Can we please free the actor from his Bhikhu Mhatre tag?). Furthermore, the decision to cast Jaideep Ahlawat as Shahid Khan, father of Sardar Khan (Manoj Bajpai) is indeed commendable simply because of the striking resemblance between the two actors. The casting by Mukesh Chhabra deserves applause, especially for giving us Manoj Bajpai back. The history puts things into perspective and introduction coupled with an excellently written screenplay where characters seep in seamlessly sans the ‘dhan te nan’ kind of entry scenes we’re accustomed to. The almost half an hour narration is thankfully far from the yawn-inducing history lectures at schools and colleges. Piyush Mishra narrates the blood-drenched history of Wasseypur in his inimitable style. There is no Arjun facing dilemma and there is no Krishna justifying war, and no Draupadi demanding revenge, but a Bheeshma-like Piyush Mishra essaying the role of sutradhar (narrator) to perfection. Taking the analogy further, in Gangs of Wasseypur, battle lines are drawn perhaps between Duryodhan and Dushasan or maybe Karan and Duryodhan. The analogy between Mahabharata and Gangs of Wasseypur is quite befitting purely because it’s a revenge saga worth sharing with generation to come, albeit Gangs of Wasseypur isn’t about a battle between the right and the wrong and preaching is the last thing it seeks to do. “I am making this film, what do you want to do?” was his response – a line which changed his world and perhaps the way we’ll look at Indian cinema after the release of ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’. Zeishan happened to share the story with auteur Anurag Kashyap. A further probe into the newspaper headlines eventually inspired him to write the story of ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’. Having spent his formative years in Wasseypur, Jharkhand, he heard stories about the rivalry between gangster Faheem Khan and businessman Sabir Alam over scrap business. Circa 2012, a student called Zeishan Quadri wrote a story based at Wasseypur. Ages ago, in 200 BC, Vyasa wrote 10,00,000 shlokas on animosity between Kauravas and Pandavas, which went on to become part of Indian history as Mahabharata.