IN PURSUIT OF ‘OTHERNESS'

Decoding Manav Kaul — an actor, a playwright, a published author, a poet, a traveller, a charmer, and the sapiosexual dreamboat for the millennials

- Ananya Ghosh

Main bahot pehle thokar khaa kar gir chuka tha...Jo baad mein uthkar bhaaga woh main nahi tha (I had stumbled and fallen down long back, The one who got up and ran after, wasn’t me) — Reads Manav Kaul’s instagram bio. His ‘other’ instagram bio. In fact, it seems the actor is more interesting in his otherness. He thrives on discovering his other selves in the characters he plays on screen, and it is the ‘other’ folder on his computer that has turned him into a published author, Yes, for the uninitiated, Manav Kaul has so far gotten seven books to his credit, has judiciously used the lockdowns to write two novels, and has just published his first book of poetry Karta Na Karm Se.

“I was doing a lot of theatre at that point, and it was the only medium I understood then. So, I started writing plays.

But while I was writing those, I would have brief periods when I would get stuck as a writer. And that would happen a lot as I was also experimenting with the form. During those phases, to divert my mind a bit, I would write something else. I would have a folder on my laptop, which was (very innovatively) called the ‘Other Folder’, where I would dump these ‘something else’,” he laughs.