Mayank Shekhar: Jeene bhi do yaaro! RIP Kundan

It was a rather curious moment have to say Id stepped out for a smoke during the interval of a terribly loud trashy comedy produced by a major corporation evidently inspired by the Mahabharat scene in Kundan Shahs Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro JBDY 1983 And the man shaking his head in absolute disgust standing right next to me was Shah You know the cashforvotes scandal that just happened he asked me The said 2008 scam involving cash being physically produced inside the Indian Parliament as proof that MPs votes had indeed been bought out was the news of the day The guys who funded that scam I tell you are the same ones whove produced this movie Shah said shaking his head still elaborating on a long conspiracy theory he had on how India and the worlds top income percentile saw merit in screwing society overKundan Shah passed away on October 7 after he suffered a heart attackShahs extreme cynicism bordering on paranoia smelled of an idealism bestowed upon the young By 60plshyus pretty much all of us reconcile to the fact that the world is what it is there is no point furiously raging agshyashyinst it any more than wrestling a wshyild pig We met several times on similar occasions heading out to a corner for a smoke and hed inevishytashybly rant about the state of the world and the news media in particularBeing a reporter Im quite used to this especially while hanging out with showbiz folk Which is gently ironic given that some of the same guys who complain about severe decline in Indian journalism rarely have issues with paying for advertisements to be passed off as editorial content themselves But Shahs cynicism was more along the lines of a defeated common mans rather than a highfalutin artistes This reflected in his demeanour sartorial and otherwise Which is what shoshyckshyed me first when he called out to me once a scrawny old man standing in a gully unshaven in his bushshirt faux leather chappals holding a green thaila polythene bag of vegetables walking back to his Shirley Rajan apartment in BandraHe could easily be mistaken for a lowermiddleclass society secretary which by the way he used to be while he was writing JBDY the whole gutter track in the film arose from him learning secrets of the quality of water supply in his own building Oh my god thats Kundan Shah I automatically exulted in my head looking back at himTo give millennials a perspective Shah Rukh Khan once told me in an interview that the only thing his Delhi theatre friends ever wanted him to do as he was moving to Mumbai to work in movies was to touch Kundan Shahs feet on their behalf Khan of course did much more than that He starred in Shahs first film a whole decade after JBDY Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa 1993 a piece exuding such innate charm and innocence that superstar Khan himself would find impossible to replicate in his superstarcareer thereafter The same was true for Shah by the wayWas Shah the only artiste who couldnt quite live down the curse of his initial masterpiece The late actor Ravi Baswani who played the photojournalist Sudhir Mishra in the tragshyicomedy was another Baswani onshyce told me that he wished hed died after JBDY and Sai Paranjpes Chashyshme Buddoor 1981 He wouldve become the James Dean of India I sort of agreed Its hard to find roles so endearingly iconic yet timelessly realYou only have to watch some of Shshyahs TV shows Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi Circus Nukkad Wagle Ki Duniya to sense how uniquely gifted he was at developing commonman characters He had a closet full of film scripts he had written with no takers whatsoever Perhaps no one could easily tell how those films would pan out commerciallyTo be fair producer Gul Anand who at one point used to heavily back middleoftheroad cinema in the 80s told Shah that he was open to picking up JBDY for commercial release now that it was already made it was produced by the staterun NFDC But if the director had come to him with the same script he woushyldnt have touched it with a barge pole Actordirector Aparna Sen approached for the newspaper editors part had slept off while being narrated JBDYs scriptConsciously I never brought up JBDY with Shah whenever we met Not because Im any less of a fan But there was really far more to the man than being a filmmaker let alone of the cult classic But of course in an hourlong interview I did with him on 30 years of JBDY at the ComicCon in Mumbai I had to bring this up without coming across as rudeI told him Joseph Heller was once asked why he couldnt write a book that came close to Catch 22 No one else could either Heller had said What was his response over JBDY Shah quoted Jiddu Krishnamurthy Well its no sign of health to be welladjusted to a sick society eitherMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom