TOI: Interview of Rohitash Gaud!!

Actor Rohitash Gaud, who plays Manmohan Tiwari on 'Bhabhi Ji Ghar Par Hain', started his professional career in Delhi. He was a student of National School of Drama and his life was pretty much based around Mandi House at the time. "I had come from a very small town called Kalka in Shimla and had a limited exposure to professional theatre. My professional life started in Delhi in 1986 when I joined National School of Drama. Among my seniors at NSD were Irrfan, Alok Chatterjee, Mita Vashisht and among my batchmates were Tigmanshu Dhulia, Navneet Nishan and Nirmal Pandey. All of them were brilliant artists, saare zabardast thay. Tigmanshu came from Allahabad, Mita from Chandigarh and Irrfan from Delhi and their exposure to theatre was much more than mine. I learnt a lot from each one of them. Bahut mature aur trained logon ka mahaul tha NSD mein, school ke bachchon jaisa nahin tha. There used to be lot of discussion about plays, we used to sit and read them together. I haven't been to NSD in many years, but there was a time when no place in Delhi was more important than NSD and Mandi House for us," says Rohitash, who has also played Mukundilal in Lapataganj.

Dostana with Chaiwallah
Among other things, he particularly remembers at chaiwallah near NSD. He says, "There was a chaiwallah near NSD who was very famous among students. I don't know what is the scene now, but when I was a student there we all used to go there just to rehearse our speeches or dialogues from the play, and we used to ask him, 'Yaar zara ek minute sun tujhe kaisi lagti hai,' kyunki hamare yahan kehte hain ki agar aam aadmi ko tumhari baat samajh aa rahi hai toh uska matlab hai ki tum achcha bol rahe ho. So we used to just go and start rehearsing there, aur phir usko bolte thay ki ek cutting chai pila de, woh bechara pila bhi deta tha aur paise bhi nahin maangta tha. Uss samay, iss tarah ki khurafat main aur Nirmal Pandey bahut karte thay. We also used to go trade fair, watch a lot of films at single screen theatres like Odeon and Delite. We watched 'Tridev' with Naseer (Naseeruddin Shah) bhai, who took a month-long acting class for us. We went to Karim's dhaba once, and he (Naseeruddin) was mobbed by fans as he became very popular after the song 'Oye Oye', and we, became his bodyguard. Later, we partied with his money."

Life of TV actor
While most of his peers moved to films to make it big, Rohitash did only a few films and worked in television. "When I went from NSD to Mumbai, satellite channels had just started and I got good offers for shows which lasted for years and I started enjoying those roles, so my struggle for films reduced considerably. If I would have stopped doing TV, like Irrfan, who decided that he won't do TV after a point and concentrated more on films, I would have done more films. For TV actors it is very difficult as even if you are a part of one show, you do not have any personal life. It is even more difficult now, with channels coming up with exclusive contract for actors. It basically blocks your time for that one show and I think that is important. I have done films, but they were more offbeat ones and at present I am enjoying doing good work on TV," he says.