Manish Tiwari

Manish Tiwari was born in the narrow galis of Varanasi, where the sounds of tabla and sitar drift from every other doorway. His father, a tabla player who accompanied classical musicians at the Sankat Mochan Sangeet Samaroh, began teaching Manish the instrument at age four. By his teens, Manish was performing at national-level classical music festivals and had been accepted as a disciple by tabla maestro Pandit Anindo Chatterjee. But alongside his musical training, Manish was also deeply drawn to acting, performing in Ramlila productions every Dussehra season. After completing his M.A. in Music from Banaras Hindu University, Manish made the bold decision to pursue acting alongside his musical career. He enrolled at the National School of Drama in Delhi, where his musical training gave him unique advantages in rhythm, timing, and emotional expression. His NSD peers were amazed by his ability to use tabla rhythms to structure dramatic monologues, creating performances of extraordinary rhythmic precision. His film debut in Banaras Unplugged (2023), a Hindi musical drama directed by Vishal Bhardwaj, cast him as a young tabla player torn between preserving his family's musical lineage and pursuing a career in cinema. Manish performed all his own tabla sequences, and the film's climactic jugalbandi scene, where music and dramatic action interweave, was hailed as a masterpiece of musical cinema. He followed this with a powerful dramatic turn in Ganga Ghat, playing a Banarasi boatman who witnesses the city's transformation over decades.