He is many things to many people. To those in their late 40s, he is Mungerilal of haseen dreams. To those in their third decade, he is Chacha Chaudhury. And these days, he is Pradhanji to all and sundry, the endearing character he plays in the popular OTT series Panchayat. Yet for all of that, there is every chance you would miss Raghubir Yadav in a crowd.

Yadav was recently in Calcutta to attend Dekh Rahe Hain Nayan that was organised by the Kolkata Centre of Creativity (KCC) to celebrate the centennial of theatre great Habib Tanvir.

In blue jeans and a white cotton shirt, he looked at home in the crowd liberally sprinkled with theatre people, city-based and otherwise. He fitted in so well that journalists tracking the versatile actor were often unable to find him without help.

If there is an opposite of star presence, Yadav has that. Perhaps that is why he can inhabit his characters so completely, why Yadav is completely eclipsed by Pradhanji. It is his characters people remember, not Yadav.

But Pradhanji has a bit of Yadav after all. Yadav has the same earnestness. When a person interrupts the interview to say he has watched Yadav’s latest play Maare Gaye Gulfam, he is suitably pleased but then returns his whole focus to the interview.

Yadav says he is addicted to theatre, “Mujhe theatre ki nasha lag gayi.” Yet when he left home right after the higher secondary exams — “those days they called Class XI higher secondary,” he explains — it was to do something different. “I wanted to learn music. So I joined Parsi theatre,” says Yadav. And that was where he remained for the next six years, earning ₹2.50 a day.

“I knew nautanki, Ramleela, Rasleela. But I didn’t know what theatre was,” says Yadav, who was born in a village in Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur district.

As he travelled from town to village to city with the Parsi Theatre Company, he learnt what theatre was. “I got to know what theatre is for life. What theatre gives you in life. And how you can spend your life in a better way,” he says, giving away the fact that he is also a wordsmith.

Theatre ignites in you the greed to learn. You should know everything, otherwise you can’t do theatre,” says Yadav. When Ebrahim Elkazi, then head of the National School of Drama (NSD), asked Yadav what he wanted to specialise in, he is supposed to have said “everything”. Therefore, he ended up learning stagecraft.

After the Parsi Theatre Company shut shop, Yadav went to Lucknow where he did puppet theatre and also joined an orchestra. “That is where I heard for the first time that there was actually a place where you could learn theatre,” says Yadav, who promptly applied to NSD.

He spent the next 13 years there, first as a student and then as part of the NSD repertory.

That was also when he met Habib Tanvir. “I was in my first year. I saw his (Tanvir’s) play. I worked with him in Agra Bazaar. I took leave from the institute for 1-1.5 months,” says Yadav, who regrets not actively seeking a chance to work with Tanvir again. But he made it a point to watch all his plays.

What of his first love, music? “I can’t live without music. It’s my biggest support,” says the man who has composed and sung the jingle for the Madhya Pradesh tourism ad “MP ajab hai. Sabse gajab hain”. “Through all my problems, music has always saved me. It stopped me from becoming frustrated and depressed.”

Apart from jingles, Yadav has also composed for plays and films. “I did it in Delhi 6. The Ramleela part was all my composition. I’ve sung in a couple of films.” One of his best known songs is Mehngai Dayain from Peepli Live.

But Yadav isn’t very happy with where music in theatre is heading. “Technology has advanced so much that the soul of music is slowly disappearing. We have always had live music in theatre. But now people have started recording and lip-syncing. The soul is missing,” says the man whose music performance at KCC was all soul.

Yadav also took a masterclass at KCC. “I really like doing workshops like this,” says the thespian, who seems keen to pass on his learnings in theatre. “My principle in life is to do what I like, what satisfies me,” he adds.

Staging plays satisfies him apparently. And films? “In films, if you get a good shot, then whatever you did, you can’t do it better. Because you’re done. In theatre, you can improve in every show. You can correct your mistakes. When you go in front of an audience, it makes a difference. You can calibrate your performance according to their reactions. After 15-20 shows, you start enjoying a play more,” says Yadav who has adopted the nautanki style for his recent plays.

Talking of the audience, does he have any favourites? “I have done theatre in Delhi. Bhopal. In Bombay. But I like it here the most,” says Yadav. “You have to be very careful with the audience here. You can’t fool them. They won’t say a play is good just because of who directed it or acted in it.” Yadav treasures praise from a Calcutta audience because he knows its not fake. That is possibly why it takes him so long to bring plays to the city. “I’ll definitely bring Gulfam here. It just needs a little more work,” signs off the man who still dreams haseen.