“He is the Satya of this generation,” Manoj Bajpayee, who played the role, recalls the experience of Gangs Of Wasseypur.

As Gangs Of Wasseypur Part 1 and 2 began 12 years ago this month, Manoj Bajpayee spoke about the film as it was originally planned. “It was supposed to be a five-hour film. But no theatre would show such a long film. Gangs of Wasseypur happened to me suddenly, after I had finished Prakash Jha’s Rajneeti and a couple of other films. Rajneeti was a kind of resurrection for me, I would say, because for five, six years I was completely down and out when Rajneeti happened. The role I gave my all to. And then the choices increased, as it happens in this industry. When you’re doing well, you know, suddenly there are too many choices and you get spoiled with them.”

Manoj also recalled how Anurag Kashyap offered him the role. “One night I was, you know, going to bed and at 10 o’clock I got a call from Anurag Kashyap. He said, do you want to work with me? I said, are you crazy or what? So I want to do a film with you. Where can I send the script? I said, where are you? He said, I’m in my office. I said, I’ll come and narrate it now. I walked up to him and we narrated it. And that’s how this film came into being. And it was, it was completely out of the box. The one thing he said that stuck with me is that I want to pay homage to commercial films. This is my, this is my ultimate Hindi mainstream commercial film. But at the same time I want to turn everything upside down, all the templates. And that’s where, you know, from that moment on, that was my, my kickstart. When it came to characterisation, when it came to actually working with him on the look. The shooting, the preparation for it. I’m proud to say that I literally I dragged him to Hansal Mehta, Bhat Saab (Mahesh) and Ramu (Varma), because I always thought that, you know, this guy is, yes, he’s a rebel, but he’s a person with all kinds of ideas. And that suited me, you know, that kind of revolutionary spirit, that kind of rebellious spirit. And the creativity that came out of it was something else. And that was also visible in all the films that he did with me and without me. So it was, we were not in touch and I wanted to give him that respect back. So he was the one who took the initiative to call me.”

A lot of the scenes were improvised. “Durga (Reema Sen) is washing the clothes. And that has become such a historical scene for the audience. There are so many memes being made every day. Most of it was improvised when we did the workshop. And it stayed in the film because that’s the kind of director Anurag is. If he sees something, he’s ready to change the script. He’s ready to rewrite if the actor is giving him an experience that he’s never thought of. He’ll go ahead and, you know, encourage the actor or the technicians to do their best. And he’s ready to embrace it completely. The director Anurag, I was working with for the first time. The writer Anurag, I had worked with him in three films, Satya, Shool and Kaun. But it was amazing to see him so confident and so thoughtful before, you know, setting up a shot. So for me, that was, it was like knowing Anurag all over again.”

Manoj made a lot of friends during the shoot of Gangs Of Wasseypur. “I made so many friends, from Richa Chadha to Huma to Reema to Pankaj, Jaydeep, Rajkumar. So many great actors got to work with so many great assistant directors on Wasseypur who went on to become so big. Vicky Kaushal, I saw him running around and he was introduced to me as the son of Mr. Sham Kaushal. Because Vicky’s father is someone who is very, very close to me. Shamji and I worked in a few of the films and those were the memorable films for us. Especially the experience of the 1971 Bangladesh war film that we both shared was amazing.”

Manoj feels that Gangs of Wasseypur is the Satya for this generation. “Because this generation was just born when Satya came. So what Satya did to the whole mafia, gangster world, that’s what Gangs of Wasseypur did. To the whole Bahubali and coal mafia world completely. And it really ignited the momentum of independent films. It gave, inspired so many independent film directors. It inspired a whole generation who came into films to become actors or to become directors, editors, cinematographers. So yes, the contribution of Gangs of Wasseypur is really, really huge. And I got to work with Nawaz. He played my son. We spent quite a bit of time together. I admire him. He’s someone with an incomparable talent, absolutely.”