Dibyendu Bhattacharya remembers it like it was yesterday. National School of Drama (NSD) was the reason he moved out of Kolkata for the first time in 1991. He’d just won the Best Actor award from the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) three years ago. Having moved to the centrally-located theatre hub of Delhi, Mandi House, he soon realised that he was surrounded by embassies screening acclaimed films. “My days would end with watching Kurosawa” recounts Bhattacharya, “and sometimes even plays in Mandi House. Also, I had the fantastic library in NSD at my disposal. It was a different kind of experience. I’d never lived such a regimented life.”

Bhattacharya is among a rarified group of actors (such as Manoj Bajpayee, Ashutosh Rana, Manoj Pahwa, Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri and Neena Gupta, among others) who sharpened their skills in theatre in Delhi first, before making the move to Mumbai for films. He was largely unfazed by the new city, instead, he took a liking to it immediately. It’s safe to say that Bhattacharya is among the exceptions, considering the contrasting cultures of the two cities. While Mandi House witnesses more art-based, social-justice driven works, the hubs of Mumbai—Juhu, Versova, etc., have a more factory quality to them. The objective is to ensure the steady churning out of films, shows, plays. It’s a starkly different approach that most actors have to grapple with when they make the switch. Even Shah Rukh Khan, who had worked with Delhi’s theatre veteran Barry John, had to reinvent his approach after tasting success at the beginning stages of his career in the early ‘90s, moving from Mani Kaul and Ketan Mehta to Aditya Chopra, Rakesh Roshan and Karan Johar.

Comparing an actor’s struggles in Mandi House and Versova maps out the differing cultures of two fundamentally disparate cities. But it also tells a fascinating story of how these two cultures have gone on to influence and contaminate each other.

Unlike his contemporaries, Mohd Zeeshan Ayyub didn’t undergo much of a Mumbai struggle, when he moved to the city in 2009. “I shifted to Mumbai in December, 2009. By February 2, 2010, I was shooting for No One Killed Jessica (2011). While shooting this, I got Mere Brother Ki Dulhan (2011). A little later, I was offered Shahid (2013) and Jannat 2 (2012).” Often telling people how lucky he got with his start in Mumbai, Ayyub mentions how his friends have asked him to rephrase his answer by blaming his talent for the persistent breakthroughs.

The 40-year-old actor, who broke into mainstream consciousness with Raanjhanaa (2013), went to NSD in the mid-2000s. Even though he didn’t work at Mandi House (he did do the odd play at Kamani Auditorium, Shri Ram Centre), he spent a lot of time in that environment. “The culture, I would say, was overall good. You would find the frustrated ones here too. Sometimes, their frustration was justified.” During his time, Ayyub recounts how there was still some purity intact in the pursuit of craft, something he notes has been diminishing in the last few years. “When film stars like Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri would come to NSD, we would be eager to learn from them, but we wouldn’t be starstruck.” Ayyub says he hasn’t been able to go to Mandi House in the last five years because it draws unnecessary attention, selfies and autographs. “Now, Bollywood has reached the deeper recesses of such places. The whole point of theatre is only to enter films.”

Ashish Vidyarthi, who graduated from NSD in 1990 and worked in N.K. Sharma’s Act One (one of Delhi’s more famous theatre groups), says theatre as a stepping-stone for films was a thing even in his time. “In our time, there was no such process of screen-testing,” says Vidyarthi, “we would wonder what’s the best way to reach Bombay. It was a mysterious thing, landing a film.” So much so that Vidyarthi remembers colleagues who would spend years doing theatre, only so someone would spot them.

But that also didn’t mean short-cuts. “In Delhi, we used to do rehearsals; we worked on character, voice. In Mumbai, it was about completing one job and finding the next one,” notes the Drohkaal actor. “The former one was in pursuit of art; the goal was to improve. In Mumbai, your ability to find more work is put to test.”

Ayyub says he’s concerned about recent NSD graduates. “Between an ordinary aspiring actor and an NSD graduate—there used to be an edge that the NSD actor had with their knowledge. That edge has depleted.” The Zero actor thinks it’s the most unfortunate thing that, these days, he can’t tell the difference between an NSD graduate and an Aram Nagar aspirant. “It’s been flattened out.”

As much as Ayyub would like to blame success stories—like Bajpayee, Vidyarthi, Deepak Dobriyal, Gajraj Rao and Rana—he would also like to place the blame on journalists who have turned their stories of struggle into myths.

After his move to Mumbai in 1992, Vidyarthi remembers the pace of life picking up. “With the monthly rent to be paid, there wasn’t a single day we couldn’t be working or not looking for work. The off-time disappeared.” Ayyub recollects the two most valuable lessons he got in his early days in Mumbai from actors Vineet Kumar and Manoj Pahwa. “Vineet bhai disabused me of my notions of wanting to do ‘good work’. He said what I was doing in Delhi was good work. The Mumbai industry was a marketplace, and my primary job was to sell myself and make money.”

It’s Pahwa’s lesson that is probably a bit more polished. He told Ayyub about this tea stall in front of Infiniti Mall (in Andheri), called mini-Mandi House because of the sheer number of actors hanging there. Ayyub would meet actors there who would claim to have been in over 80 films and own three houses in Mumbai. But he wouldn’t be able to place them in a single film. “The struggle, he told me, is not to get work,” says Ayyub, “It’s to get the work of your choice.”

Bhattacharya notes how the pockets of struggling actors are slowly evaporating, considering you could be picked from anywhere. “It’s become a lot cheaper to struggle now. In our time, you had to print out photographs costing Rs 15-30 per photograph and leave four-five of them in places you might never even hear from. The goal was to distribute it as far and wide as possible.”

When asked about the one skill they learned from Mandi House and Versova, Vidyarthi responds with how Delhi helped hone his absorption skills. In Mumbai, there’s an urgency to the work. It has to be finished then and there. Ayyub says Delhi taught him to pour everything into his work, no half measures. While Versova taught him to detach himself from work, and move on to the next thing.

Once the ground zero for idealism (and even virtuousness), Mandi House has slowly ceded ground to casting directors casting for the umpteen talking parts in OTT shows. It means that the period for striving has reduced significantly, without the promise of a long, successful career. Similarly, Mumbai has witnessed a parallel line-up of ‘‘stars’’ like Manoj Bajpayee, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Pankaj Tripathi—almost unthinkable two decades ago. It’s cut both ways.

Ayyub sums up the aspect that pains him the most, “Success has been diminished to amassing wealth, wearing a suit, and going to award functions jahaan aap gandi Angrezi bolne ki koshish karenge (where you’ll attempt to speak in broken English).”

(This appeared in the print as 'Dramatis Personae')