Opinion Naseeruddin Shah writes on Satish Shah: D’Mello, tu to gaya!

Student actors at the FTII were, for the most part, there to become stars, not to learn, so their cluelessness about what they were doing was not surprising, and the student directors’ reluctance and inability to help actors into a comfort zone made matters worse. For most of the directors, the actors were the last priority — they didn’t have the intellectual capacity to personify the arcane points these films were trying to make (and, in any case, failing to do). The acting in almost all these films is insufferable and the films themselves were, and are, brain-damage to watch. An actor can’t be better than the film he’s in, but Satish, in the two diploma films of his that I saw, proved this to be untrue.

As students, he and I weren’t particularly close but I often watched him spreading laughter and marvelled at his bodily skill. I often imagined that he and I could make a Bud Spencer-Terence Hill kind of duo; much later, I wanted to cast him as an introverted poet!

“… but of all sad words of tongue

or pen, the saddest are these… it might have been.”

As it happened, he and Ratna formed a memorable partnership onscreen and forged an unbreakable bond of friendship off it, and she credits him for initiating her into comic acting. I’d always consult him if I had a dialect to do. He had them all on the tip of his tongue — Gujarati, Marathi, Parsee, Anglo-Indian, etc. Or I’d drop in on him if I felt like laughing. His joie de vivre and relentless joke-telling would lighten up the most morose gathering.

The love received by Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro is due, in no small measure, to Satish. Any time that film is mentioned, Satish Shah is always the first name to crop up. His performance as the crooked D’Mello ranks up there with the finest comic timing in an Indian film, and the dead D’Mello scenes defy description. What does one say about them? Contrary to popular belief, there was very little ad-libbing in the film; everything said was written. The only one to add his own witticisms was old Satish, and they are some of the funniest bits in that whole enterprise, which none of us had entertained any hope at all for.

Of course, his passing is a loss and he’ll be sorely missed. But I consider a bigger loss to be the fact that despite, or because of, his dazzling performance gifts, his acute perception of people, his understanding of the acting process and his impeccable timing, he let himself get categorised as a comedian and stayed stuck there, seemingly content with it. I often wonder if it serves some dark purpose of Follywood to never let actors escape typecasting. But I’ve also always wondered why some people who are hugely entertaining in real life seldom make actors of depth. Several cases seem to testify to that. I always felt he was doing an injustice to his enormous talent by playing safe. But that is what he chose to do. He savoured the good life and he lived it to the full.

While driving to his cremation through one of Mumbai’s unseasonal drizzles, the heavens didn’t seem to be mourning with us but weeping with joy on welcoming him. They know they are in for a rollicking time with him there.

Alvida, dear friend, we’ll perform together in the big studio in the sky someday.

Shah is an actor and author