Becoming Through the Lens: Manik Anand’s Unfolding Narrative on Stage and Screen
New Delhi : Every journey has a first frame. For Manik Anand, that frame was Khwaabon Ki Zamin Par—his first foray into the world he had always dreamt of. Cast as music composer Mohit Mishra, he stepped into the set wide-eyed, nerves buzzing, adrenaline coursing through unfamiliar beats. “Those first few takes felt like learning how to breathe underwater,” he says. “But once I found the rhythm, I didn’t want to come up for air.”
The atmosphere on set was electric—sharp calls of action, the hush of silence just before a take, the scent of makeup, the hum of lights. It was a kind of chaos that made sense to him. “I remember thinking, ‘This is it. This is where I belong.’” The early jitters melted into instinct, and instinct became fuel. “There was a hunger in me,” he admits. “To be seen, yes—but more than that, to discover what I was capable of.”
But it wasn’t until Who Killed Taniya? that the artist in him truly cracked open. A haunting short based on true events, the film asked him to embody Taniya—a Bangladeshi Muslim drag performer negotiating the tender, often perilous intersections of faith, gender, and selfhood. Two hours of makeup were just the surface. The real transformation demanded vulnerability, excavation, surrender.
“Taniya didn’t just live in me while we filmed. Taniya stayed,” Manik Anand says quietly. “the truth, the pain, the defiance—it lingered. I was altered.”
This was no ordinary role. This was Rasel Ahmed’s thesis project, later picked up and funded by the Okayama Art Summit in Japan. The stills are already in circulation, and the film is currently navigating the festival circuit with the support of a strategist. “We made this piece with everything we had,” Manik Anand says. “It was art as offering. I hope it finds its way to the people who need it most.”
The shoot left him bruised, awakened. “It expanded me. Not just as an actor—but as a person navigating a world full of complexities and contradictions. It made me softer. Sharper. More awake.”
Then, the stage called.
Monsoon Wedding: The Musical wasn’t just a production—it was an experience. Directed by the iconic Mira Nair and staged at Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Warehouse, it was a three-month-long explosion of color, rhythm, and familial chaos. Manik Anand played Vikram—a charismatic news anchor entangled in a secret romance with the bride-to-be. “It was basically a Punjabi wedding that never ended,” he grins. “With all the emotions, melodrama, and dhol beats you can imagine.”
And yet, midway through previews, a knee injury threatened to sideline him. “I limped through the rest of the run,” he laughs. “But there was no version of this story where I wasn’t on that stage. Mira’s vision, the cast, the music—it was magic. I couldn’t miss that.”
The show, scored by the incomparable Vishal Bhardwaj, ended with literal rainfall onstage—a symbol of release, of cleansing. “That final moment, soaked to the bone, performing under a downpour—it was worth every bruise, every limp, every ache. The theatre has that power.”
From tentative first scenes to emotionally brutal transformations, from cinematic realism to live-wire theatricality, Manik continues to walk the edge where art meets truth. He doesn’t chase roles—he inhabits stories. Stories that demand empathy, confrontation, courage.
“For me, this work isn’t about performance,” he says. “It’s about presence. About giving voice to what often goes unspoken. And doing it with honesty, even when it’s hard.”
