The last laugh: Remembering Asrani

Is it significant or simply ironic that Govardhan Asrani’s career began by working with names like Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Mani Kaul and Ritwik Ghatak? Mani Kaul was a friend at a Rajasthan college in the early 1960s when they both applied for the newly opened Film Institute at Poona (now FTII, Pune). But even then, they were both being tutored in their respective disciplines: while Kaul was learning direction and screenwriting, Asrani was being coached in acting.

Asrani wasn’t a stranger to the performing arts: when he was younger, he was a voice actor in radio, appearing with enough regularity for him to be paid a salary. When Asrani was shortlisted for Pune, his father was miffed: why did the boy want to abandon a secured gig in broadcasting for something unknown?

But truth be told, Asrani had been appearing in films long before FTII came along. As listed on Imdb and later ratified by film historians Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Abir Bhattacharya, Asrani made walk-on cameos in films like M Sadiq’s ‘Khota Paisa’ (1958) and Naresh Saigal’s ‘Ujala’ (1959). What was a Jaipur boy, barely 17, doing lurking in south Bombay studios (‘Khota Paisa’ was shot in Shree Sound Studios, Dadar, while ‘Ujala’ was filmed in Central Studios, Tardeo)? Evidently, the bug had bitten and drawn blood.

As he entered the hallowed halls of FTII, Asrani grabbed every opportunity to learn and to act. Thomas ‘Gay’ Waterfield, famous Pune resident, a British national who successfully fought for Indian citizenship upon Independence, once quoted Asrani as his student. He was among the first batch of acting students who tutored under Roshan Taneja and Jagat Murari between 1963 and 1965.

This was also the time when Ritwik Ghatak haunted that neck of the woods. Asrani famously featured in ‘Fear’ (1965), Ghatak’s fever dream of a short film about post-war paranoia, but he was also in Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s film ‘Light’ (1965), which featured Mani Kaul in the lead role. Asrani and Mani shared the screen for John Sankaramangalam’s ‘In Search of God’ (1965) as well. Alongside these, Asrani featured in three other FTII diploma films: ‘Masoom’ (1964), ‘Abhisar’ and ‘Parivartan’ (both 1965). Somehow, alongside, he also managed a bit role in Nitin Bose’s ‘Hum Kahan Ja Rahe Hain’ (1966).

Armed with cans of his diploma films, Asrani came to Bombay but his hopes were dashed. No credible offer came his way, and producer-director LV Prasad advised him to pack his bags. The only place he could return to was Pune, where he could continue to learn and coach his juniors. Meanwhile, he kept travelling back and forth, meeting filmmakers and hovering at studios seeking work. His first credited work was Kishore Sahu’s ‘Hare Kanch Ki Chooriyan’ (1967) as G Asrani. Around this time, he was famously hounding Hrishikesh Mukherjee for work.

The master would have relented and given him a bit role as Dharmendra’s friend in ‘Satyakam’ (1969). Mukherjee went on to feature Asrani in some of his most acclaimed work, beginning with ‘Guddi’ (1971), in which he plays a “struggler” much like himself. Whether it was ‘Bawarchi’s Babbu or the filmmaker from ‘Sabse Bada Sukh’, Chandru from ‘Abhimaan’, the brilliant drunk bit in ‘Mili’… the list is really unending. By this time, he was being slotted as a comedian but his work with Mukherjee was cut differently. These were often sensible, smart and sane characters who would occasionally even flash shades of grey (‘Chaitali’).

Gulzar, too, cast him in layered roles that allowed the actor in him to breathe: the combative youth in ‘Mere Apne’, ‘Parichay’s manservant Narayan, but more than anything else Kanu, Jaya Bhaduri’s up-to-no-good brother in ‘Koshish’. It was one of Asrani’s rare negative roles, performed with chilling intensity.

Hours after his passing, the Net was flooded with reels and pictures of his jailor bit from ‘Sholay’ (1975). That one performance was to become his calling card: the “angrezon ke zamane ke jailer”. Anupama Chopra in her book ‘Sholay: The Making of a Classic’ mentions how Salim and Javed narrated the role to Asrani: “a blow-hard man, hollow from the inside”. Javed showed him some pictures of Hitler. During his Institute days, Hitler’s speeches were discussed while learning intonation and voice modulation. The “Ha-ha!” was improvised by Asrani from Jack Lemmon’s turn as Prince Hapnick from ‘The Great Race’ (1965). The detailed character sketch and elaborate nature of his brief kicked in his training by Taneja, all that talk about Stanislavski and his “method” came back. Asrani had internalised the role, farcical though it may be. He had captured the essence so well that on the first day of his shoot, he pulled it off in a single take.

Somewhere under all that, a director was waiting to exhale. For his directorial debut, Asrani turned to the world he knew best: the film industry. ‘Chala Murari Hero Ban ne’ (1977) was about a struggler, much like him, who leaves home with dreams of becoming an actor. Ashok Kumar was known for breaking the fourth wall as the sutradhar in the iconic TV show ‘Hum Log’ in the ’80s, but ‘Chala Murari Hero Ban ne’ is where he did it for the first time; the film begins with Dadamoni addressing the audience. The film was a success, unlike the follow-ups: ‘Salaam Memsaab’ (1979) and ‘Hum Nahin Sudhrenge’ (1980).

Late 1970s onwards, starting from ‘Maa Baap’ (1977), Asrani had a glittering parallel career in Gujarati films.

Asrani was probably the only actor of his generation to be in circulation till 2025. If the Telugu remakes and his team-ups with Kader Khan and Jeetendra saw him through the’80s, it was his work in Priyadarshan’s films that made him familiar to new generations of viewers. In fact, just days before his passing, the last two films that Asrani completed working in was Priyadarshan’s ‘Bhoot Bangla’ and ‘Haiwaan’.

— Roychoudhury is a National Award-winning writer and film historian