SHOTGUN SINHA: HIS OWN FAN
Shatrughan Sinha’s biographer allows her subject to talk, and in the process, reveal a great deal
Jab kaam chalega to naam bhi chalega.’ (‘When your work is recognised, your name will also be accepted’). This was Mani Kaul’s advice to Shatrughan Sinha, when the latter wondered if he should keep his given name or shorten it to S Sinha – in fact, his name is listed as S Sinha in the credits of Saajan, his first film.
Bharti Pradhan’s biography of the man is richly detailed and well researched. At the start, she quotes Walter Isaacson, author of ‘Jobs’, before stating that India is not the US and that her subject is no Jobs. Her subject, Shatrughan Sinha, clearly had some control over what went into the book. Still, those looking for gossip and trivia will not be disappointed. Pradhan smartly lets him do the talking, and Sinha does not disappoint. He brags a great deal and in the process, spills enough juicy bits to keep the reader interested. Sample this: ‘My problem was not whom to marry but whom not to marry’ (about his thinking a few days before he actually married his wife, Poonam). ‘I was going steady with a tall, very well educated corporate executive, who was a south Indian brahmin, and another short little girl, who is now married. And a well-known actress.’ SS continues with his bravado: ‘To this day some of them remain unmarried.’
Born into a family of academics in Patna, Shatrughan was the youngest of four brothers. He figured out early that movies and acting interested him more than anything else. Raj Kapoor was his idol and he even picked up smoking after watching Kapoor smoking stylishly. The young SS discovered he was good at mimicry – a trait that made him popular with his peers – and eventually got into FTII. With a little help from his mother and brothers, he boarded the train for Pune. As he entered the compartment he ‘saw the most beautiful woman I had set my eyes on’. The woman was Poonam Chandiramani, whom he married 14 years later. After the course, Sinha went to Bombay in search of work. Luckily for him, his booming voice, unusual looks, and dominating demeanour got him into the Dev Anand-directed Prem Pujari and he quickly became a sought-after villain. But SS wanted to be a hero and so he pushed his friend and senior from FTII, Subhash Ghai, to direct Kalicharan, a blockbuster that established him as a hero. SS is unusually candid about his romances. Two days before he married Poonam in 1980, he says he was in London for a show with girlfriend Reena Roy, who drove him to the airport. ‘After my marriage, I could see her battling confusion... She wouldn’t talk to me for days’. This sort of honesty is rare among Bollywood stars and the reader is pleasantly surprised. The love triangle sorted itself out when Reena Roy married Mohsin Khan.
Sinha, who joined politics under the spell of Indira Gandhi, likes to point out that he was the first cabinet minister from the film industry. Now a long-time member of the BJP, he would do well to heed Sushma Swaraj’s words: ‘If I had to pick on aflawIwouldgivehim sanyam ki salaah (advice on patience)’.
A balanced biography that allows the subject to speak (and often shoot himself in the foot), Anything but Khamosh provides a peek into the life of a man, who has influenced public life for over three decades. And yes, Shatrughan Sinha does like himself a lot! Satya Prakash is Founder Partner, The Beach, an advertising agency in Delhi