NEW DELHI, Mar 9: “Calendar” of Anil Kapoor- Sridevi starrer-“Mr India,” the noted Bollywood actor director Satish Kaushik died in Delhi in the wee hours of Thursday after suffering a massive heart attack. He was 66.
His body was later brought in a chartered flight to his house in Andheri and was cremated in Mumbai in the presence of a large number of Bollywood fames and his fans who paid rich tributes to his memory.
Satish Kaushik, who had arrived in Delhi from Mumbai only on Wednesday to celebrate Holi with his friends, was at a farmhouse in Delhi’s Bijwasan last night when he started feeling unwell and was rushed to a hospital in Gurugram. Preliminary examination suggests that he died of a heart attack and breathed his last before he reached the hospital, police sources said.
Nothing suspicious has emerged in the investigation into the 66-year-old actor’s death, sources in Delhi South West police said. The sources added that further examination will provide more information on the cause and time of death.
The day before, he had attended the Holi party at Javed Akhtar-Shabana Azmi’s Mumbai home and posted joyful photos on social media. Police are still gathering information on where he was during the daytime. What they do know is that he was at the farmhouse in Bijwasan when he started feeling unwell. He was taken to the nearby Fortis Hospital, Gurugram, but he could not make it.
Among those who rushed Mr Kaushik to hospital is his manager Santosh Rai who said, “He slept at 10.30 pm. Around 12.10 am, he called me, complaining of breathlessness.” Since the patient had come from Delhi, the hospital informed Delhi Police. The police then moved the body to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital for autopsy. The postmortem was conducted on Thursday morning and the body handed over to Mr Kaushik’s family.
Police are in touch with Mr Kaushik’s companions, who took him to the hospital for further investigation. The actor-director’s death hours after he celebrated Holi with his friends and colleagues has shocked the Indian film industry, and tributes have been pouring in.
Born in Haryana and raised in Karol Bagh, Mr Kaushik was an alumnus of the National School of Drama. Known for his comic timing, his most memorable characters include Ashok in 1983 cult classic “Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron,” for which he also wrote dialogues. The cook named ‘Calendar’ in “Mr India” is another unforgettable character played by Mr Kaushik.
As an alumnus of Delhi’s Kirori Mal College, which he joined to do theatre with its well-known group ‘The Players’, he went on to the National School of Drama (NSD), and the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), his dream was to become an actor. But ‘that boy from Karol Bagh who came to Mumbai’s maya nagri with 800 rupees in his pocket’, as he often described himself, became much more: dialogue writer, director, producer, all-round entertainer.
One of the first things he did was to sweet-talk himself into assisting Shekhar Kapoor in ‘Masoom’ (1983), learning a great deal about making a film while on set. He stayed with Kapoor for the blockbuster ‘Mr India’ (1987), in which he wrote himself the role of Calendar, the good-hearted buffoon, which also became one of his most popular parts.
Which was great, but the insistence of Hindi cinema to typecast actors ensured that he kept getting similar roles where he would be called by outlandish names– Pappu Pager remains unbeatable in that long list– and would have to deliver even more outlandish dialogues. But he was never one of the ‘comedy picture ke thakele joker log’ ( Double Dhamaal, 2011) that his dialogue dissed: he was part of that breed of comics who made things better, whose appearance on screen guaranteed light-hearted moments, many created by masterful dialogue writers like Kader Khan.
What was strikingly different about Kaushik from those of the other popular comics that he worked with, that he managed to broad-base his slate very early on. From being assistant-director, he leapt straight into directing what was then the most expensive film in Bollywood, ‘Roop Ki Rani Choron Ka Raja’ (1993), also starring Anil-Sridevi, and produced by Boney Kapoor. That it became one of the most expensive duds in Bollywood history was balanced a whole decade later, when Kaushik directed Salman Khan’s ‘Tere Naam’ (2003), whose huge success gave the star a new lease of life in Bollywood.
In the last few years, with the proliferation of web series, Kaushik was finally getting the roles he deserved: the foul-mouthed moneybag Manu Mundra in Hansal Mehta’s ‘Scam 92’ was one such. It isn’t a big part, but the malice and the greed he brings to his character made it a stand-out. His recent turns in ‘Sharmaji Namkeen’, ‘Chhatriwali’, and ‘Thar’ were the best things about the films, all dramatically different from each other.
(Manas Dasgupta)