Satish Shah recalls Ramsay Brothers’ makeup man blowing ‘beedi smoke’ in his face, says he played a burned cripple as Sadashiv Amrapurkar said no

He said, “I enjoyed them, it was not a compulsion. I have always said that I loved working with Shyam Ramsay. He himself was a wonderful actor… I thoroughly enjoyed working with the Ramsays. I could do what I want, and I took out all my pent-up humour. They would not object to anything. There were a few things which they wanted me to do which I did reluctantly… They used to cross the line sometimes, which I had to do as well.”

He continued, “Sadashiv Amrapurkar had become very popular in those days. They’d signed him as well… I’ll tell you a fun story. They told him, ‘Sadashiv ji, we’ll give your face a half-burned look’. And he flat-out refused. Then they told him, ‘We’ll make you a cripple and give you a crutch’. Again, he refused. In the end, I got that part, but they made me a cripple and put burn make-up on my face both. It was torturous. The makeup man they had used to have a ‘beedi’ in his mouth while doing my makeup. I had to inhale his ‘beedi’ smoke as well. But I couldn’t choose, I was a nobody.”

After starting out in the 1970s, Satish Shah took a sabbatical from acting after 2014. He is best known for his comic roles in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, Main Hoon Na and Sarabhai vs Sarabhai.