'Choona' Actor Gyanendra Tripathi Funded His FTII Education With Money From BPO Job

The actor shared that FTII Pune was a place which he ?desperately wanted to get in and learn the craft of acting after his graduation in Bhopal.

The actor said, "When I researched about the FTII acting course there, I found out one has to fill out an application form of Rs 1,500 and the annual fees would be 1.25 lakh. I couldn't afford the form fees, and there was no way my family could afford that amount.

He shared that as a young boy he cried so much knowing his other classmates were going to study further as he felt that this was the end of his formal education.

The situation demanded him to start earning as soon as possible and support the family financially.

He further mentioned, "I applied for several BPO jobs since people were earning salaries in double figures there, which was a huge thing at that time. I happened to get a job in Infosys BPO which was based in Pune. I grabbed that opportunity because I wanted to be in Pune where FTII was. I thought I would earn and save money from my job, then take admission to FTII and pay my fees with that savings. I started working on this plan and I got selected in FTII in my second attempt."

The plan seemed to be working for him for a while. However, he couldn't save the required amount of money to pay his fees. He had savings of Rs 50,000 which wasn't enough.

The actor shared with IANS, "I requested the director of the institute to allow me to continue my night shift for another 6 months during the integrated course and let me pay my fees in instalments. He was kind enough to consider that. I left my job as soon as the acting specialisation started but managing the entire two-year fees was a constant struggle. Seeing your name appear frequently in the list of fee defaulters is embarrassing, I often used to wonder what jobs I could do to support myself financially, ATM's security guard, and tea vendor at the campus at night were some ideas that I was very close to trying."

"Subsequently, with the help of some scholarships from Shatrughan Sinha ji, Shabana Azmi ji and Jaya Bachchan ji, I could complete my acting course. FTII not only gave me the opportunity to learn the craft of film acting and gain confidence as an actor but it also gave me the atmosphere, exposure and space to grow as an individual. That place is a second home to me, it embraced and nurtured me at the time when I needed it the most," he added.