No complaints about late fame: Gajraj Rao

The Bollywood actor, who grew popular with the 2018 comedy blockbuster ‘Badhaai Ho’, talks about his long road to success

Gajraj Rao in 'Maja Ma'. The actor plays Madhuri Dixit's husband in the family drama that deals with homosexuality.

It has taken him an incredible 22 years to make a real mark. But for Gajraj Rao, it was always about contentment in life. Since he made his debut in 1996 with Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen, Gajraj has done more than 25 television serials, web series and movies. He has even been the producer of the documentary The Tribal Scoop, co-produced the offbeat Budhia Singh: Born to Run and directed the legendary Sachin Tendulkar, in his ad film, Rorita: Write The New.

However, it took the 2018 super-hit Badhaai Ho for him to get public recognition on a big scale. As the middle-aged, to-be-father, much to the consternation of his son of marriageable age, Gajraj made a mammoth impact and even won a couple of awards.

Since then, it has been a dream run for him, playing a ruthless politician in Lootcase, the wrestler who is forced to turn sports reporter in one of the four stories of the anthology Ray, and recently, as the rather confused husband of a homosexual wife in Maja Ma, opposite none other than Madhuri Dixit Nene.

Enormously witty and self-deprecating too, the humble Gajraj explains, “I have no complaints with my late fame. I was earning enough to take care of my family, my EMIs, all along. You cannot fight destiny. It’s like this: as a reporter for a newspaper in a small town, if you get a sudden opportunity to have your story featured in Time magazine, or even The Times of India, you will find it groundbreaking. Badhaai Ho was like that. I was left wondering whether I should even rock the boat but I did, and people’s perception of me changed completely. The warmth and respect I got after Badhaai Ho is no less than a tectonic shift.”

Gajraj attributes this paradigm shift in fortunes to Badhaai Ho director Amit Sharma. “We were both assistants to ad filmmaker Pradeep Sarkar,” he says. “When Amit signed up as director, his wife Alia also thought I would be the perfect choice for that role. The leading man happened to be Ayushmann Khurrana. He and I had done a skit for TVF (The Viral Fever) in 2015 and his opinion was also the same.”

When Gajraj came to know that in Maja Ma, his co-star was to be the Madhuri Dixit-Nene, he could not believe his good fortune. He laughs, “I think my heartbeat stopped for a second or two. It’s not every day that you can work with a Sachin Tendulkar, when you have known of him and his work for years. It was the same kind of feeling. I was not only getting a chance to watch her at work at first-hand but also have an important part in the film with her—I was going to be her husband.”

With a broad smile, he confesses, “I was afraid of working during the pandemic, for I was almost 50. But because it was Madhuri, I decided to care two hoots for Covid. To be in the same frame as her, and exchanging lines was a dream come true.”

Gajraj does take some credit for the fact that he began to do shows on the web when OTT and its future were unknown entities. “I surrendered to the youngsters, though they were half my age. I abandoned the concept that they could not possibly tell a senior like me what was right or wrong. I decided that they could be right about how things should be done now rather than what I had learnt in my time.”

Among his assignments to come include a telefilm for ZEE5 called Gunehgaar, and an antagonistic role in Maidaan, again directed by Amit Sharma.

As someone said, wonderful things have a wonderful way of happening to wonderful people. It's indeed been a memorable ride for Gajraj and he hopes good things will continue to come his way.