Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; October 11, 2018)

I met him for the first time as a wide-eyed 22-year-old trainee journalist. And even as I was stuttering over the “Sir”, he cut in to say gently, “Call me Dadamoni.” With that one word he steadied my skittish nerves and I made a friend for life. Since our birthdays were a day apart, Ashok Kumar who’d have turned 107 on October 13, would always insist that he was younger than me which, going by the twinkle in his eyes and his Puckish humour, he was.

Rati Agnihotri, the giggly PYT of Basu Chatterjee’s Shaukeen whom the three old men — Ashok Kumar, Utpal Dutt and AK Hangal — compete with each other to impress, agrees with me, saying his chuckle was the most delightful sound she’d heard. “And the hilarious anecdotes Kishore da (Kishore Kumar) and Dadamoni would narrate had us clutching our sides with uncontrollable laughter. He was tailor-made for that role, except he wasn’t lecherous, he was one of the nicest persons I’ve met,” asserts the actress.

Another co-star, Kamini Kaushal, flashbacks to one of her earlier films, Poonam, which had Dadamoni as the much older hero, mesmerised by her singing. She narrates how she’d met him for the first time when he’d come to her college, Kinnaird in Lahore, to attend a cultural programme organised for the war relief fund as the chief guest. “I was a final year honours student in English literature, spirited, fun-loving and uninhibited. After my solo dance performance, I was standing in the row right behind him, and to catch his attention, I stealthily pulled his hair from behind,” the nonagenarian actress shares.

Kamini ji adds that when they started working together in Poonam, she asked him if he remembered her from that incident, and he nodded with a laugh, “Of course I do, you naughty girl.” That set the tone of their relationship. “I was a kid and he was years older, but we were buddies,” she smiles fondly at the memory.

For Rati, Dadamoni was someone she could talk to about anything and everything. “He was learned and honest. Given how young and inexperienced I was then, his anecdotes from his life’s journey were like Aesop’s Fables for me,” she asserts.

Rati goes on to recall how during the shooting of a song for Tawaif, she had admitted to him that the 18-hour workdays, 24x7, for months on end, were taking their toll, leaving her drained and susceptible to infections. Dadamoni who had studied homeopathy, immediately prescribed some little white pills which her parents got from a pharmacy in Princess Street. “They worked miracles,” the actress marvels years later.

That wasn’t the end of his lessons. During the shooting of B R Chopra’s social drama, there were times when Rati would get a little anxious because this character with her body language and colourful vocabulary, was very out of character for the young girl. “I would nervously ask Dadamoni how to do a particular scene Chopra uncle had briefed me on. He would tell me reassuringly, ‘Beta, tum jaise kar rahi ho, sahi hai.’ This gave me the confidence to play the role naturally, without trying to force myself to become someone I wasn’t,” she says.

Today, when I look back to our conversations, I realise I got my share of Aesop’s Fables too, between chuckles, which still echo in my ears.