Rajat Kapoor and Vinay Pathak know each other so well, they can probably hold a conversation in pure gibberish. Or at least that’s what they have done since they started working together in 1999.
It’s a rainy evening in Aram Nagar. Kapoor and Pathak are rehearsing their new play, Karamjale Brothers, an adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov, that transplants Dostoevsky’s work from Staraya Russa to New Delhi. The drama revolves around the Karamjots, and is filled with debauchery, debt, murder, among other obvious suspects. “Russia of the 1880s isn’t very far from 2024 Delhi,” says Kapoor of his new production, “I am doing a Hindi play after 30 years. This time, the language is real too; the actors are not speaking gibberish for a change,” he adds, reminding us of an oeuvre built around clowning in plays such as C for Clown, Nothing Like Lear, Hamlet the Clown Prince, and Macbeth: What is done is done, all inspired by Shakespearean works.
Serial collaborators, the theatre duo return to stage, once again with Kapoor in the director’s chair and Pathak, his acting lead. “I wanted to do something without clowns, instead with people one could identify with,” he says. “It was on a plane ride to Moscow last year, where we were to perform Macbeth, that I read The Brothers Karamazov, and knew that was it,” shares Kapoor, about his decision to turn the classic tome into a 100-minute play.
Working with his long-time theatre partner was almost a given. When the two are not completing each other’s sentences, they’re corroborating stories, rusted in memory, through scraps of detail the other has missed—displaying all the true markers of a great friendship. I ask Pathak of his first reaction to The Brothers Karamazov? But Kapoor cuts in, “It was shit. It was 900 pages long,” he laughs. To which Pathak chimes, “Rajat never chooses anything easy; a novel in Russian with as many as 17 different translations. If that wasn’t enough, it had to be adapted to Hindi.”
Like a well-aged friendship that has endured its share of ups and down, their relationship balances banter with rebuke and warmth that takes you in its fold. The duo first crossed paths in 1994. “Vinay had just come back from the US as a trained actor. I was doing a writing job with director Ketan Mehta, and he came to the office. We all went out for a coffee, or perhaps beer. That was the first time we met and became friends quickly,” recalls Kapoor. “I remember Café Mondegar, Thumbs Up, and sandwiches,” says Pathak about these early days. “Rajat introduced me to world cinema. The International Film Festival of India took place in January, and he told me where I could get passes. We watched nearly 40 films in 10 days.”
We are seated on a balcony overlooking the bustle of a casting director’s office, a microcosm of the struggler’s life. Actors walk in to take their places. Black coffee is doing the rounds. The resident kitten is vying for attention. It’s the perfect spot for such musings. Looking back, the two recall a time when there was little to go around in terms of work. “We had lots of time. We would meet every evening and hang out. It was the struggler’s life,” says Kapoor.
In 1999, when they decided to first work together, it was a bit of happenstance. Back then, Kapoor had a theatre group in Delhi named Chingari with other actors like Atul Kumar and Sheeba Chaddha. Pathak believed he wasn’t looking to cast actors outside it. Then came an ambitious project, Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, with Naseeruddin Shah. Pathak and a few other actors, tasked with parts, were excited to work with Shah. But Shah, as it happens, got a call for a role in Hollywood, and couldn’t do the play. “When we went there, Rajat said, there’s good news and bad. The bad news was that Naseer wasn’t available for the play. The good news was that we still had the dates. So shall we try to create something new without a script?” Pathak says.
Months of experiments led to C for Clown, the first in a series of clowning plays that Kapoor and Pathak would do together. No one was trained in the form of clowning and Pathak recalls spending a week, perfecting the clown walk with his co-actors. “And, we’ve been clowning ever since,” laughs Kapoor, alluding to both his craft and collaborator.
The two share that their relationship, both in and outside the rehearsal room, has remained unchanged over the years. “All of my experience in theatre in the last 30 years has been with Vinay. He’s been the constant,” Kapoor says. “This is to say that I am the chaiwala of the group,” Vinay quips.
Beyond the banter, there is mutual respect that makes their dynamics shine. Kapoor says, “Vinay is one of the most generous people I know. Now, we are working with seven new actors, and he’s the one who keeps it all together. If someone is feeling down, he talks to them,” he says. “Earlier, he was the troublemaker. Now, he’s the troubleshooter”.
Pathak too is a touch sentimental when he recalls, “I was new to Mumbai. I had no family here. Rajat and Meenal (his now wife) became family to me. We’d share happiness and misery. It graduated to the working relationship we later had”. And now they reveal, their children and friends too.
It is a rosy picture of a creative friendship, the kind that grows with the talent and is known to last. But what happens when they disagree? “We talk it out, of course. It could be at the end of the road on the way back from rehearsals or an email late at night,” says Pathak. “But mostly, he’s kind enough to let me have the last word as the director,” adds Kapoor.
Catch Karamjale Brothers on August 2 and 3 at St Andrews Auditorium, Bandra, Mumbai, and on August 6 to 11 at Prithvi Theatre, Juhu, Mumbai. For tickets, see here
