What if you immerse yourself so resolutely into characters that people forget the performer? I ask Avinash Tiwary!

Avinash Tiwary in stills from Laila Majnu, Khakee: The Bihar Chapter, Bambai Meri Jaan, and O’Romeo

If you’re Bihari, 40 — as actor Avinash Tiwary is — lemme hazard a guess. You’ll have an uncle called ‘Pappu Mama’! As does Avinash. Pappu Mama is also actor Manoj Bajpayee’s old friend. 

Except that while Avinash had dropped out of engineering college to take up acting, he’d hear stories about fellow-Bihari, Manoj, from Pappu Mama — “somewhere that seeded the thought of pursuing the profession” — they only first met a couple of years ago. 

Manoj insisted to Pappu Mama that Avinash attend one of his movie previews, where he told ‘Pappu’s bhanja’: “Listen, I know all about actor-arrogance. Come over sometime. I cook great mutton (common Bihari-male speciality)!” That mutton meal, I’m told, hasn’t happened yet.

The reason this came up in my conversation with Avinash is he’s born in Gopalganj. Tiwari-Tripathi like, say, Dubey-Dwivedi, is the same surname. Hence, I wished to know if Avinash was related to actor Pankaj Tripathi, instead. He’s not.

The other thing that Manoj, Avinash have in common is — at some point, they trained under theatre instructor, Barry John. Avinash was 19 then. He moved to Delhi for Barry to live in a semi-shanty in........

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