Among his many achievements as an actor and filmmaker, one thing that Amol Palekar will always be proud of is how he came close to every common man through the characters he played on screen. From Gharonda, Gol Maal to Chhoti Si Baat, the actor says that he always tried to be the “boy-next-door who comes across as vulnerable as any common man is.” The veteran actor, who was in the city recently, spoke to us about Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Chatterjee’s era of filmmaking, when simple stories ruled the celluloid.

“I feel nice that I was a part of the era when parallel cinema evolved,” says the actor as he talks about the audience relating to his characters.

He adds, “In Rajnigandha, Chhoti Si Baat, Chitchor, Baton Baton Mein, Gol Maal, Naram Garam – the hero that I played never utters a simple line ‘I love you’ and that was the continuing point in all those portrayals. I think every young boy related to it. I think I managed to bring out that aspect of the boy-next-door quite nicely. And the vulnerability of the man... I have consciously tried to retain that vulnerability. I found this vulnerability in every character that I portrayed, and I think I haven’t done badly.”

Talking about what made him stand out, Palekar says, “The time when I was portraying the boy-next-door, it was not just the era of angry young man, it was the era of lover boy Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra the He-Man, Jeetendra who could dance so beautifully and charm a girl – I think I had none of those qualities and that’s what people liked. What I also liked was that I was none of those ‘heroes’, I was just a common man trying to survive, trying to convey his love without uttering those words. It made me stand out among all those larger-than-life portrayals on screen back then.”

Palekar credits Basu Chatterjee for his acting career. “Basu da approached me for Piya Ka Ghar, which I refused. I didn’t think he’d ever come back to me – I was a nobody from theater. But he did and that’s how Rajnigandha happened. Basu da, had a great command on his craft and celluloid narration, but in real life, he was a terrible narrator. Woh kahani bata hi nahi paate thay. Our conversation was like, ‘Amol main ek film banane ja raha hoon. Ek ladka hai, maano tum ho, aur ek nayi ladki hai Vidya Sinha naam ki, aur phir… yaar tum yeh padh lo!’ This was his narration!”

He adds, “Hrishi da (Hrishikesh Mukherjee), Basu da, Shyam Benegal, all the people that I have worked with – it used to be like a family picnic. It was like fun and hansi mazak karte karte film ban jaati thi. And that’s what reflected on screen. The kind of fun we used to have in Gol Maal, oh my god! We were like a family on the sets, it worked beautifully.”

The veteran actor has relived many of his memories in his book, View finder: A Memoir. “The end result of writing this book was a catharsis, but to reach that catharsis it was like excavating and peeling off oneself. So many memories came out, I thought I had forgotten them. I relived so many memories. I felt nice, relieved and quite overwhelmed... The dilemma was what to keep and what not keep from all those memories. That was a major step. I belong to the dinosaur era, I still write on a paper. They were about 450 hand written pages in Marathi and I handed over to Sandhya (his wife). Sandhya and I have associated in so many roles. So this final product is our collaboration in the true sense as we have been doing for the last 25 years of our marriage. This proudly can be termed as the lovely climax to that journey.”

In contrast to the vulnerable, common man, Palekar also played characters with a grey or dark side. “I played a villain in Benegal’s Bhumika, which was unheard of at that time. The industry resisted that, they said you are a successful hero with three silver jubilees in your belt why do you want to play a villain, have you gone bonkers? But I chose to because it was a huge challenge for me as an actor. From there to Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Khamosh, where I play a murderer, I was very happy to choose such roles. In Gharonda, too, the character is so grey, he is actually a villain. All these grey shades are attributed to a villain, and I enjoyed that.”

"We always want our greats to live on forever,” says Manoj Bajpayee, moments into our call with him. On Monday evening, that wish was shattered as Shyam Benegal, one of the finest filmmakers of Hindi cinema, passed away at 90. 

For Bajpayee, Benegal, who cast him as the male lead in Zubeidaa (2001), represented someone who made him confident about his looks. “When nobody could understand why he cast me as a prince in Zubeidaa, he had his own idea. For him, I was a better-looking guy than all the real princes at that time. He gave me a lot of confidence when I didn’t have confidence in my own looks. Every day, I would rush to be on the sets with him, to listen to him and be directed by him. It was a time that I will never be able to forget,” recounts the actor.

Bajpayee echoes the sentiments of many in the film industry when he describes Benegal as “a pioneer, a pathbreaker, and a guiding light for so many filmmakers of this generation”. “It was all started by that great man. It’s a sad day for all of us, who define cinema not as a commercial medium, but as one of art. He never compromised with the art of cinema. He kept changing the grammar of cinema. I admire him because he was existing in the extreme times when mainstream cinema was ruling the roost, where Mr Amitabh Bachchan came like a tsunami. Here was a man quietly carving a niche for himself, carving a new path for all the new generations to come.”

Amol Palekar fondly remembered the filmmaker with whom he collaborated on Bhumika (1977), which was fronted by the late Smita Patil. Saddened by the loss, Palekar said, “The film industry should bow to the last Trojan! I do.”

I remember the first time I saw Nehru. It was soon after the police action that liberated Hyderabad from Nizam's rule. I must have been about 12 at the time. A friend of mine and I were walking towards a disused golf course close to my home where we often played cricket. It was early in the morning. Two horsemen came cantering along on their horses. One was General J N Chaudhuri who was the Military Governor of Hyderabad at the time and the second was Jawaharlal Nehru. He looked like a bronze god. The second time I saw him was several years later at an Inter University Youth Festival in New Delhi. He gave an extraordinarily inspirational speech which in fact changed the course of my life.

The early years of Independent India were times of great optimism. Nehru was the great hero, with his film star good looks and his charming manner. Also, he was an extremely inspiring leader, particularly for young people. Nehru in his youth was greatly inspired by the Russian Revolution. He travelled to the Soviet Union with his father in the late 1920s and was most impressed with the idea of the social engineering that he saw being attempted there. He was all for creating a new society but not necessarily by altogether dismantling the earlier economic and social structures. He substituted the ideal of socialist society with the term socialist pattern of the society which was described as a mixed economy with space for both private and public sector. He wanted a self-reliant India rather than attempting to make it self sufficient.

Many mainstream filmmakers were impacted by the optimism of the early Nehruvian years. The films of Khwaja Ahmed Abbas ('Jagte Raho', 'Awara') and others such as B R Chopra ('Naya Daur') were critical of the present but were extremely optimistic of the future. Their films were essentially Nehruvian in concept.

Another important development in the Nehruvian era were the creation of the three cultural academies - Sangeet Natak Akademi, Lalit Kala Akademi and the Sahitya Akademi. The Film and Television Institute was founded during Nehru's tenure. The FTII was designed to train filmmakers who would create films that would reflect changes taking place in Indian society rather than turn out escapist fantasies which were the staple of mainstream cinema.

The impact of Nehruvian thinking was felt most significantly in Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada and Oriya cinema before it was felt in Hindi films. These films were clubbed together by the press and described as parallel cinema.

Most of the early graduates of the FTII, began to make films that were far more original and reflected social and aesthetic attitudes and views very much their own rather than being influenced by popular mainstream cinema of the time. Among the notable filmmakers, who made their mark were Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Aravindan in Kerala, Girish Karnad in Karanataka, Nirad Mahapatra in Orissa among others. As far as Hindi Cinema was concerned, there were filmmakers like M S Sathyu and myself.

Hindsight criticism of Nehru has become fairly fashionable today. Nehru's contribution according to me was a foundational one and contributed hugely in making India an independent minded democratic country. What Nehru did was help open up minds to different kinds of thinking and to possibilities whose significance can never be underestimated.

My film 'Ankur' was essentially about social change. So was 'Manthan' while 'Bhumika' was about the liberation of women from the oppression they suffered in the traditional patriarchal society of our country. 'Kondura' was about breaking free of traditional superstitions that held society in thrall.

These were all influenced either directly or obliquely by Nehruvian views on social change - the idea that one cannot develop society and move forward without actively helping to make far reaching social changes.
These views are as relevant today as they were yesterday.