Actor Manoj Bajpayee opens up on Sunil Dutt in Waqt to Manoj to his Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai, the evolution of lawyers as protagonists
Actor Manoj Bajpayee opens up on Sunil Dutt in Waqt to Manoj to his Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai, the evolution of lawyers as protagonists
Manoj Bajpayee portrayal in
“Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai” is
eccentric but refreshing portrait of a lawyer going up amidst a Godman that adds to the rich history of lawyers as protagonists.
In a scene from Zee5’s “Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai” a senior counsel for the accused tells an irate client: “It happens sometimes. I’m not god.” It’s a statement that de-romanticizes the image of the lawyer as a person capable of shaping destiny. Lawyers are nothing but interpreters, people who make sense of a map, as opposed to imposing upon us a new geography of life.
For in the context of a judicial case, the letter of the law exists already and exacts a kind of literature to follow and uphold. Lawyers merely make sense of it, by poeticizing what can be and what can’t.
However, in a country perpetually pained by the crawling pace of its judicial systems and traumatizing
historic baggage, the lawyer is everything from hero to prophet and cunning manipulator of fate.
Manoj Bajpayee who says that job as actors is to find life’s complexities and portray them adds that early portrayals of lawyers show deep-seeker individuals carving for the country a moral centre. It’s the kind of naivety that a young independent India expectedly emerged from.
From Sunil Dutt in Waqt, to a young Nargis in Awaara, lawyers fought battles to do right by people in the shadow of infantile, yet-to-be-corrupted systems.
The judiciary’s unerring isn’t even a consideration here because courtrooms are temples. No prayer or provocation goes unanswered and it’s a streak that continued until the emergency, that historic deathblow to the very idea of institutional autonomy.
News input KV Raman
