<img style="float: left;" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2026/apr/Mayank-Shekhar-new_e.jpg" alt="Mayank Shekhar" width="150" height="76" />Back in the early &rsquo;90s, actor <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/bollywood-news/article/gulshan-grover-reveals-girls-would-keep-distance-from-him-due-to-his-badman-image-23588299" rel="nofollow">Gulshan Grover</a> told me during a podcast once, that he was shooting an action scene with stunt-director Veeru Devgan at Filmistan Studio. In walked Shah Rukh Khan (SRK), charging towards Grover.
They instantly got into an argument. A crowd gathered around both &mdash; assuming a fight would break out. It stopped at a &lsquo;tu-tu-main-main&rsquo; kinda t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te.&nbsp;
The backstory goes thus. Grover, in a TV interview, had blasted SRK for taking on the villain&rsquo;s part in Baazigar (1993) &mdash; as a &ldquo;short-cut to grab attention/popularity&rdquo;.&nbsp;
SRK had simply come down to tell Grover, he was in the game as a Bollywood hero, for the long run. And that the antagonist&rsquo;s role was merely a &ldquo;personal challenge&rdquo;. Grover accepted the point.&nbsp;
His own insecurity may have arisen from leading men potentially taking over the sizzling stock-villain parts that Grover had championed, mid-80s onwards &mdash; as Mahesh Bhatt told him, &ldquo;Gulshan Grover, never over!&rdquo;&nbsp; Some of that did happen, eventually.
<img src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2026/apr/Kesariya-Vilayati_e.jpg" alt="&lsquo;Bad Man&rsquo; Kesariya Vilayati in Subhash Ghai&rsquo;s Ram Lakhan" width="1280" height="720" /> &lsquo;Bad Man&rsquo; Kesariya Vilayati in Subhash Ghai&rsquo;s Ram Lakhan
For instance, Grover recalled, &ldquo;An out-of-work hero, still with a fan-base among older members of a family, would pick up the villain&rsquo;s role.&rdquo;
He&rsquo;d do all the cool things, but then refuse to get badly bashed up, or intensely humiliated, at the film&rsquo;s finale &mdash; something that Grover was only too happy to. &ldquo;We want to see the villain beaten and dragged, but this guy&rsquo;s already shot himself!&rdquo; Which defies mythological convention &mdash; of stringent punishment to counter pure evil, in simple, moral tales, where truth alone triumphs; no? &ldquo;You&rsquo;d have the film&rsquo;s ending compromised,&rdquo; Grover sighed.
Shortly before this chat, he&rsquo;d presented me bottled perfumes, with his face on it. The label read: <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/bollywood-news/article/as-a-punishment-i-was-told-to-become-a-murga-says-gulshan-grover-23244396" rel="nofollow">Bad Man</a>. I never tried it on &mdash; wondering what must a bad man smell like! There&rsquo;s also a full-fledged mockumentary film, with Grover, called Badman (2016).&nbsp;
At an older age, when you might seek respect from a memoir, publisher Penguin was clear, they wanted Grover&rsquo;s to be &ldquo;titled Bad Man, with a &lsquo;gundey ka photo&rsquo; for the cover!&rdquo;&nbsp;
All of this might be a global first. For, Bad Man is merely a &lsquo;takia kalaam&rsquo; (recurring refrain), not even a character&rsquo;s name.&nbsp;
And the only two words that director Subhash Ghai narrated to Grover, onboarding him as villain Kesariya Vilayati in Ram Lakhan (1989) &mdash; itself the Avenger of villains &amp; henchmen, starring Amrish Puri (Bishambhar Nath), Paresh Rawal (Bhanu Nath), Raza Murad (Sir John), Anand Balraj (Debu), besides Anupam Kher, Satish Kaushik for comic relief.&nbsp;
Grover appears for max five-six short scenes. Overenthusiastic Anil Kapoor (Lakhan), in that customary moment to teach &lsquo;Bad Man&rsquo; Kesariya a lesson, also got so carried away, pounding him with &ldquo;new shoes he&rsquo;d bought from abroad&rdquo; that Grover had to be hospitalised.&nbsp;
Later, Kapoor sent Grover a bouquet, with a note: &ldquo;What are friends for, if not to be kicked around?&rdquo;&nbsp;
Kapoor and Grover were classmates at the popular coach Roshan Taneja&rsquo;s acting school.&nbsp;
Which is also where Grover, an MCom grad from Delhi&rsquo;s prestigious SRCC, found a job as an acting instructor, thereafter. Grover&rsquo;s former students include Sunny Deol, Tina Munim (nee Ambani), Kumar Gaurav, Sanjay Dutt&hellip;&nbsp;
&ldquo;For the first [proper] role,&rdquo; Grover starred as Dutt&rsquo;s friend in Rocky (1981). He remembers Shabana Azmi got him the part of the &ldquo;badmaash son&rdquo; in Avtaar (1983). His breakthrough as &ldquo;main villain (Noor),&rdquo; however, came with Sohni Mahiwal (1984), opposite Deol. Audiences witnessed him in a negative role in Sadma (1983) too.&nbsp;
Right from acting school, Grover had his eyes on the villain, bearing shelf-life in mind: &ldquo;[Bollywood] heroes become brands. What if you get bald, podgy, with age?&rdquo;
Once securely established as the archetypal antagonist, Grover started to painstakingly design the look for his parts, leafing through international magazines, passing them on to a team of experts &mdash; Suresh Dada (make-up), Malik &lsquo;Wig&rsquo;, Mukesh &lsquo;Tailor&rsquo;, Nath Gupta (photographer).
Slipping into his &lsquo;get-up&rsquo; could take forever. Several heroes patiently waited. Some, such as Mithun Chakraborty, jokingly complained, &ldquo;I could finish two shoots in the two hours it takes for your make-up!&rdquo;&nbsp;
What emerged, with hundreds of movies, over a decade-plus, is a series of uniquely fashioned characters, that could fill up a hall of fame, or infamy, as it were: Chhappan Tikli (Sir), Kali Baba (Shola Aur Shabnam), Tyson (Mohra), Kabeera (Hera Pheri), Thakral (International Khiladi)&hellip;&nbsp;
To misquote poet Jigar Moradabadi, &ldquo;Kaante [as against phool] khile hain gulshan gulshan, lekin apna apna daaman (Thorns blooming in every garden, each with their own cardigan).&rdquo;&nbsp;
Steadily, the idea of Bollywood villains itself started to change. Grover argues, &ldquo;Writing reflects life. People became clever. You couldn&rsquo;t walk out, [dressed] like me [&lsquo;Bad Man&rsquo;]. The police will arrest you! The bad hid behind the good, merging with [the larger] society.&rdquo;
As with Grover&rsquo;s full-time rogue, Laljibhai, in Nagraj Manjule&rsquo;s series Matka King (Prime Video), where the hero (Vijay Varma) himself is an illicit gambling kingpin.&nbsp;
The show sorta felt slow and predictable to me. Isn&rsquo;t there such cuddly comfort in catching Grover as the &lsquo;Bad Man&rsquo; still, I thought!
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com The views expressed in this column are the individual&rsquo;s and don&rsquo;t represent those of the paper.

Fully peeking into the OG villain, ‘Bad Man’, who provides such comfort in the predictability of the series, Matka King; no?

Kaante khile hain, Gulshan Gulshan!

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Home / News / Opinion / Article / Kaante khile hain, Gulshan Gulshan!

Kaante khile hain, Gulshan Gulshan!

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