‘Loss of Bollywood’s yaaron ka yaar is irreplaceable’

MUMBAI: In his career spanning over three-and-a-half decades, film and theatre actor Satish Kaushik played many characters that became part of the Bollywood folklore. Pappu Pager in Deewana Mastana, Kashiram in Ram Lakhan, Chanu Ahmed in the film adaptation of Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, and more recently, Manu Mundra in the web series Scam ‘92. But, the actor who died from a heart attack on Thursday, aged 66, is most remembered for his Sancho Panzaesque character, Calendar, in the 1987 blockbuster Mr India.

Kaushik who studied at the National School of Drama under Ebrahim Alkazi, was not just an actor on the fantasy adventure but also Shekhar Kapur’s associate director whose job it was to coral the many children on shoot days. Choreographer Ahmed Khan, who was one of the child stars in the film, recalls Kaushik’s character came to be called Calendar.

“Kaushik uncle’s father was a travelling salesman and one of the distributors he dealt with would often begin and end his sentences with the word calendar. When he narrated this to the scriptwriter Javed Akhtar, he decided to name his character Calendar.” Satish Kaushik’s other memorable contributions to Hindi cinema include the dialogues he wrote for the cult classic Jaane Bhi Do Yaron. He also directed one of the biggest hits of Salman Khan’s career, Tere Naam which spawned a certain unfortunate hair trend among men in Indian small towns.

Satish Kaushik’s father had a big impact on his life—one of his big successes on stage was Salesman Ramlal, an adaptation of Arthur Miller’s Death of A Salesman, which he modelled on his father’s life. “My father’s monthly income used to be ₹300 a month. How can a family of 8 survive in that? Right from my childhood I began to think how I could extricate my family from their circumstances,” he told Hindustan

Times in an interview last month.

A few years ago, Kaushik tweeted a photograph of himself having just alighted from the Paschim Express on August 9, 1979. “Mumbai gave work, friends, wife, kids, home, love, warmth, struggle, success, failure and the courage to live happily,” he tweeted. In the city, he became the Jack of all trades and mastered a few along the way: acting, scripting, writing dialogues and directing. When Shekhar Kapur’s ambitious follow up to Mr India, Roop Ki Rani, Choron Ka Raja got mired in budgetary delays, Kapur opted out leaving Kaushik, his associate director, to bail out producer Boney Kapoor. The extravaganza, considered to be one of the most expensive films of its time, bombed. 25 years on Kaushik apologised to Boney

Kapoor who went broke after the film’s debacle.

As direction took a backseat for some time, Kaushik returned to his first love, acting. Sarah Gavron, the director of his critically acclaimed 2007 British film, Brick Lane, had confided how she had been searching for the character of Chanu Ahmed for eight months when she flew down to Delhi to meet Satish. He had got a suit specially stitched for the audition and had the part down to a T. As a director, Gulshan Grover, who collaborated with him in the 2008 film Karzzzz, describes him as “dedicated, precise about what he wanted and always exuding happiness”. Grover recalls how emotional Satish Kaushik would get if anyone from his crew fell sick.

“The most remarkable thing about him was that I never saw him get angry. All of us occasionally lose our temper, except for this friend of mine,” says Grover who had known Kaushik from their college days in Delhi. “I was from Shri Ram

College of Commerce and he was from Kirori Mal College. We would often bump into each other at inter-collegiate fests where we would both be competing for the Best Actor’s award.”

In the last few years, Kaushik had ignored his health and suffered from obesity-related problems, confessing at one point that he could not walk for “even 5 minutes.” Last year, as a promise to his family, the actordirector decided to turn around his health. He went on a diet, began weight training—his gym videos earned him a big following on Instagram. Last month he told HT, “My 2023 resolution is to love myself, to believe in myself and to look after my health for my daughter’s sake.”

A close friend to many in the film industry, his loss is described as “irreplaceable”. “Satish was a yaaron ka yaar,” recalls director Subhash Ghai. “If anyone was down and out people would say, ‘Call Satish, he will make you feel better with his banter and wisdom.’ Who can we turn to now?”

HT PHOTO In the last few years, Kaushik had ignored his health, confessing at one point that he could not walk for “even 5 minutes.”