Kavita Awaasthi (HINDUSTAN TIMES; April 3, 2020)

Shekhar Suman’s social media feed is inundated with posts from his followers about the return of the iconic comedy Dekh Bhai Dekh (DBD) — a comedy show that captures the lives of the three generations of Mumbai-based Dewan family who live together under one roof — on Doordarshan. In a move to keep audiences entertained during the lockdown, the channel has been airing old TV shows which were popular and are still remembered by viewers.

Thrilled that his superhit sitcom DBD is airing again, Suman says, “I am happy that a family entertainer will be watched by youngsters. They will realise the joy of living together in a joint family. We need the spirit of being together with our loved ones in tough times like these.”

He reminisces that the show was a huge hit from day one. “Doing TV wasn’t the plan but DBD resurrected my career. I debuted with Utsav (1984) and had a few hit films but then my career dipped badly. I got B-grade film offers so I didn’t take them on and waited at home for two years. I was at my all-time career low. So, when I was approached for DBD in 1993, I was skeptical,” he shares.

During this lockdown, Suman is catching up with life and “being reintroduced” to himself. He feels in the fast pace of life, one forgets who we are. “It’s ironic that most people dream of owning a big house but how many of us stay at home to enjoy it? Circumstances have now forced us to stay at home. This is the time to catch up with life, learn more about yourself and appreciate what you have. This virus is nature’s way of teaching us a lesson. It has taught us to slow down. The pandemic has ambushed us and we have to fight it out,” he says.

Writer, actor, humanist, Girish Karnad never minced words while championing the idea of inclusive India
Khalid Mohamed (MUMBAI MIRROR; June 11, 2019)

In creased camel-colour corduroy trousers, a baggy maroon shirt, dangling a cigarette Humphrey Bogart-style from his lips, and propped against a wall of the Shanmukhananda Hall – the Filmfare Awards ceremony used to be conducted there – he could have been construed as a misfit in the star-freckled crowd.

That was his USP though, prompting a senior female colleague to gasp, “He’s so dishy among all the suits here.”

Girish Karnad, who passed away at the age of 81, wore his ruddy-complexioned, movie star good looks, lightly. If he acted in a stockpile of Bollywood films – the offbeat as well as the onbeat, he would declaim, “It’s only for the money,” and trill an aria of the Abba chartbuster, “Money, money, money…must be funny...in the rich man’s world.”

Self-deprecating and yet fiercely individualistic, he was the flexible savant who understood that popular cinema was a route to audiences of varied tastes. In fact, his contribution towards the aesthetic and commercial cinema would come up equal on any given scale of justice.

Of course, cinema was just one medium which the actor-playwright-scriptwriter-director-novelist-translator-documentarist gravitated towards inexorably. Gravitas at one end of the spectrum, and the hyper-fantasticated on the other, were the realms he pursued presciently.

Unarguably though, Karnad will be revered far more, and correctly so, for his pioneering theatre work, and for being a frontrunner during the 1960s in the renaissance of Kannada literary movement.

His instincts were eclectic, accounting for his collaborations most notably with Shyam Benegal and theatre stalwart B V Karanth. In the course of a conversation, he was at pains to emphasise that he had no issues with the avant-garde cinema of Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani, adding that the films of the so-called ‘medium-wavewallas’ would also go on to become milestones. He was spot-on.

Seeing no divide between the extremist cerebral and the accessibly humane, indeed here was a beautiful mind who defined intellectualism. Intellectual, did I say? Unfortunately, it’s a gratuitously-reviled and lost quality, what with ‘libtards’, ‘fetishists’ and ‘elitists’ being the en vogue argot today. For Karnad, intellectual is the perfect fit.

Honoured with the Padma Bhushan and the Sangeet Natak Akademi and Jnanpith Awards, his childhood years were his formative phase. Because of social taboos, his widowed mother Krishnabai Mankikar had to wait five years before her marriage to Dr Raghunath Karnad. Born in Matheran, his growing up years were spent in Sirsi and Dharwad. Subsequently he graduated from the Karnatak Arts College, was selected as a Rhodes scholar and mastered in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University.

Back home, initially he worked at the Oxford University Press. At the age of 23, he wrote his first play Yayati followed over time by other pathbreakers such as Tughlaq, Hayavadana, Naga-Mandala and Taledanda . Influenced by the traditional Yakshagana theatre form, his plays are regarded as allegories drawn from mythology, history and the epics. For instance, Tughlaq, while focusing on the 14th century’s controversial Delhi Sultan Muhammad Bin Tughlaq, was clearly a take on the lost ideals of the Nehruvian era.

Girish Karand was a rationalist; his every word was modulated, rooted in personal experience and study. Still he wasn’t entirely satisfied, frequently dismissing some of his works as not quite up to mark. Neither would he mince his words while expressing his concern against religious fundamentalism and bigotry. A staunch secularist and feminist till the last, even while his health deteriorated, he wouldn’t lose an opportunity to critique the ruling government. Death threats couldn’t arrest his verbal bullets.

Political correctness was not his forte. Breaking protocol at a literary festival in Mumbai, circa 2012, he downsized V S Naipaul “who has no idea of how Muslims contributed to Indian history”, besides lambasting the Nobel laureate for his reported visit to the BJP office on the heels of the Babri mosque demolition. Not the sort to buckle under the backlash, he stated that the Bengaluru International Airport should be named after Tipu Sultan and not after Kempe Gowda, the 16th century ruler of the Vijayanagar empire. Agree with him or not, he could go on record to say that Rabindranath Tagore’s plays were “unbearable”.

Catalysed by the rising incidence of intolerance, Karnad’s activism had intensified towards his end years, soldiering on even while wearing a nose cannula to facilitate breathing, both at rallies and for his on-screen appearances.

On another note, for a video interview for a documentary on Shyam Benegal he had made it clear that his statements should not be censored. They weren’t. He clarified that the script of Manthan was extensively rewritten by him although the National Award for the Best Screenplay was presented to Vijay Tendulkar. Amrish Puri, he felt was grossly miscast as the abductor of Smita Patil in Bhumika, and the script of Kalyug had to be refashioned to be in sync with the approaching corporate ethos of “all’s fair in deceit and business”.

Benegal, on his part, had pointed out that it was Karnad, who during his brief tenure as the director of the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune (1974-75), had first noticed the potential of Naseeruddin Shah. “Girish had recommended Naseer for Manthan,” the filmmaker had recalled. “He had warned me that he was a pain in the neck on the campus but that he was a brilliant actor.”

As an actor, Karnad had no delusions of grandeur although he excelled as a guilt-ridden Brahmin in Samskara. As a timid schoolteacher in Nishant, however, he appeared to be ill-at-ease. A demanding scene requiring an outburst had to be abbreviated. As the male lead, he was gallant and honest enough to play second fiddle to the heroines, be it Smita Patil Nutan (Meri Jung), Hema Malini (Ratnadeep), Shabana Azmi (Swami) or Smita Patil (Umbartha). The transition to character roles – as a kindly father, cricket coach, inspector, or the RAW officer in Ek Tha Tiger and Tiger Zinda Hai – was so much water off a duck’s back, his fluency in Hindi and understated dialogue delivery pitch aiding him consistently.

While Vamsa Vriksha and Godhuli helmed by him have stayed in the memory files, his attempt to direct the period pageant Utsav, hasn’t. “I think Girish feels so guilty that it didn’t do well,” the film’s actor-producer Shashi Kapoor would laugh, “that he has never met me again or sent me a Christmas card! I’d love to hear from him and his wife some time.”

Karnad and his wife Saraswathy moved from their Bandra seafront apartment to Bengalaru, where they were cut off from the Bollywood bustle. His was a late marriage at the age of 42. ‘Saras’ as he called her is as gregarious and socially-concerned as him. Of their children Radha and Raghu, the latter is a journalist.

To return to the evening at the Filmfare Awards, Karnad was soon joined by Dev Anand and Tina Munim. To their Professor Higgins and Eliza Doolittle he was playing Colonel Hugh Pickering in Man Pasand, an adaptation of My Fair Lady. Crushing his cigarette under his sandal’s sole, he had said, “I hope Dev saab doesn’t scold me for not wearing a suit.”

He didn’t need to. After all, Girish Karnad was a suitable mind for all seasons.



His was a late marriage at the age of 42. ‘Saras’ as he called her is as gregarious and socially-concerned as him; Catalysed by the rising incidence of intolerance, Karnad’s activism had intensified towards his end years; Shyam Benegal had pointed out that it was Karnad who had first noticed the potential of Naseeruddin Shah

Fanboy Khalid Mohamed reminisces about his encounters with Shashi Kapoor who was presented with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award by I& B Minister Arun Jaitley at Prithvi Theatre on Sunday, surrounded by his adoring leading ladies, doting family and other fanboys
MUMBAI MIRROR (May 11, 2015)

Priya Gupta (BOMBAY TIMES; January 5, 2013)

Shekhar Suman, 52, is a firm believer in destiny. He has faced many a challenge in his life, but his upcoming film Heartless (inspired by the Hollywood film Awake) is his biggest challenge till date. Not only does he debut as a director, but his biggest challenge is to bring back the smile on his son Adhyayan’s face. Shekhar is temperamental and arrogant with people who are not nice to him and can be rude at times, but one thing is for sure, he is honest, conscientious and a complete family man, whose biggest weakness is Adhyayan. In a conversation with Bombay Times, he talks about losing his son Ayush, Adhyayan’s affair with Kangana Ranaut and why Shashi Kapoor will always have a special place in his life. Excerpts:
 
How did you become an actor? I am a Kayastha born in Patna. My nana was the first Advocate-General of Bihar, who, at any point, housed 50 financially-weak but brilliant students, in his outhouse. My dad was one such student. My nana not only sent him to Edinburgh to study, but also married his daughter (my mom) to him, as he was a gold medalist who had never come second in his life. My father was extremely respected as a heart surgeon all over the world, but was a strict disciplinarian for me. He wanted me to excel in academics though I only dreamt of being a star and coming to Mumbai. There was no discussion of films and no TV in our house. I became a rebel and would flout all rules from the age of 10. I would sneak out to watch films and had friends who were 10 years older to me, who were goons of the area and I wanted to be like them. I was very shy as a kid and would hide behind curtains if we had visitors in the house. I once heard my dad tell his friends how I was the only black sheep in the house. I was obsessed with films and Mumbai. If someone came from Mumbai, I would pester my parents to make me meet him. Once my maidservant got married to a labourer on the ship and I did my best to befriend him as he was from Mumbai. I dreamt of how Amitabh Bachchan would be staying in paradise and there would be clouds on the roads. I was a big Mukesh fan and came to know that he was coming to Danapur, close to Patna. I would pray everyday to God so that I could meet him. I sneaked out from the ventilator with my friends and went to the stadium. We had bought the cheapest tickets and so were standing at the top, leaning against the wall, when there was lathi charge due to the large crowd and I fell from a height of 100 feet, but somehow did not die, though some people actually died. There was a complete commotion, but I somehow got backstage, where Mukesh was sitting and I just went and touched him from behind. God had fulfilled my dream. I had gone out of control and was moved to Ranchi into a public school with a hostel — Vikas Vidyalaya — in Class IX. It was there that I blossomed and suddenly from being a reticent boy became the prefect and a public speaker. I then went to Ramjas College, Delhi, after which I started doing theatre at the Sri Ram Centre for Art and Culture and became a professional stage actor. As luck would have it, Shammi aunty was shooting for a film Pighalta Aasman in Delhi that had Shashi Kapoor and Raakhee and they needed a theatre artiste for a small role. I obviously jumped and volunteered and was selected. I would have been fine even if I died after this as I had given a shot in front of the camera. I told Shammi aunty about me wanting to become an actor and took her permission to meet her in Mumbai. Even though I was just 22, I was married to Alka and we moved in with my oldest sister in Mumbai. Coincidentally, when I met Shammi aunty in Mumbai she was still shooting for the same film, but this time Shashi Kapoor was on the set. She introduced me to him and I could not believe that I was sitting on a chair next to him. He was such a gentleman, he said to me, ‘Young man, what do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I want to become an actor,’ and he said, ‘Good. You're a good-looking boy. I am planning a big film called Utsav and I’m looking for a young boy. Would you be interested?’ I almost fell from the chair. Next day, he sent me to meet Girish Karnad, who was directing the film at his house. Can you believe it, his wife opened the door and said, ‘Girish, your Charudutt is here.’ I auditioned at RK Studio, only to realise that there were hundreds of such Charudutts, who had been called for the audition. But it was destined and within 15 days of coming to Mumbai, I had landed myself a role as a lead actor with Rekha in Utsav. Both his sons, Karan and Kunal, wanted to be cast but Shashi Kapoor was very democratic. I will always remain indebted to him and Girish Karnad and will do anything for them and their families in my life. While shooting Utsav, my first son Ayush was born. It was also at that time that Jennifer died and the release of Utsav was delayed by three years.
 
You lost Ayush almost 20 years back and yet he is so alive in your life? I was overwhelmed when Ayush was born. But Utsav got delayed and despite working with top actresses, my films were still not working. My career was shaken up and we got to know that Ayush was terminally ill, due to a heart illness, for a disease that was truly rare. Adhyayan was a year old then and was four years younger to him. Ayush was given eight months, but survived for three more years. I would stay up at nights just looking at him. We went to godmen, did alternative therapy, went to the best doctors, but it was destined and we lost him. With that, I also lost complete faith in God. That’s the moment in life where you think of taking your life and all the stardom and fame seem worthless. My wife was the biggest strength, given the resilience she showed, though it affected her later when things stabilised. She had suppressed her pain for too long. Adhyayan became my reason for living and I felt blessed for having him. Till Adhyayan was four, we had neglected him completely as our entire focus was on Ayush. I still remember when we got Ayush from the hospital, Adhyayan had a weird look on his face and he would tell us six months after we lost Ayush, ‘Bhaiya comes to the window and talks to me.’ Alka and I were told that he would visit us. We had an eerie experience in 2009. I was campaigning in Patna and Alka had visited the Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi. She called me and I don’t know why I took her call during giving a speech and asked, ‘Did you meet Ayush?’ She was shocked but told me how she was in the car, when a small boy came and asked her for money. She gave him 10, but he said, ‘Isse mera kya hoga?’ That was what Ayush would say to us when there were restrictions on his food and we could not give him what he wanted. When Alka looked up to see the boy, she saw Ayush after which she blacked out for a few seconds and dug into her purse to take out all the money she had, but he was nowhere to be seen. We have frankly not been able to get over his demise till date. We all take his blessings, including Adhyayan, as he was the angel in our lives who took away all our problems with him. Life has been good, but I have lost the dearest person in my life.
 
Talk about your wife Alka? I am the most difficult person to live with on this earth. But I’m madly in love with my wife due to what she has done. She is simple and unaffected by glamour. She is a giver for whom the only thing that matters is Adhyayan and my success and happiness. Unlike me, she forgives and forgets easily and has no personal desires.
 
Talk about Adhyayan? He is the most loving and caring boy I have seen. He is loyal, dedicated and sensitive. I keep telling him that boys like him are not made anymore as not only does he not drink or smoke or party, but he is a giver who just wants to do things for Alka, me and his dadi. As an actor, he is brilliant. Otherwise, I would not have risked directing my first film with him. Bhatt sahab had seen Jashn and Raaz 2 and called me at 6 in the morning to say, ‘You have a gem in the house. This guy is brilliant.’ Jashn came in 2009 and did not work. Adhyayan was heartbroken. My biggest challenge is to bring back the smile on his face.
 
Were you against Adhyayan dating Kangana? Yes, he did have a relationship with her. That was 2009-10, when he was going through a troubled time. I was concerned as a father as he was going astray and had started changing for the worse. He would back-answer Alka, would stay out all night partying and that bothered me. He was far too young and did not know what he was doing. It was obviously an infatuation and not love. I did not want him to lose focus in his career. He would not listen to us. Alka is more emotional and was very possessive about him and would make my life miserable versus him. One of the directors he had worked with, called me and said, ‘Shekhar, save your son.’ But later after breaking up, he realised that he was wrong. He would shut his room, look at the ceiling and just cry for months like a kid. I know that he was crying not just for what he had done but for the fact that he did not listen to us. He realised that we meant well for him and said sorry and he accepted how he was completely wrong. I am a firm believer in God. Careers can be built but once your life is spoilt, you may not be able to return.