For Asrani, in admiration

(Did this little tribute to Asrani for Frontline magazine. Didn’t get to revisit some films that I would have liked to, but the Koshish memory I mentioned – and the Bawarchi one, and a few others – are indelible, even after having watched the films many years ago)
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If you were growing up in the 1980s, watching Hindi films of that era and the previous decade – while also toggling between the mainstream and the so-called Middle Cinema helmed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Basu Chatterjee and others – the name Asrani could mean different things.

One Asrani was the comedian who formed a troupe with Kader Khan, Shakti Kapoor and others in a number of formulaic 1980s movies – many of them remakes of south Indian films – that had almost stand-alone comic tracks. Playing stock roles like hawaldars and munims and pandits. Some of those scenes were entertaining enough, but they were often facile and lowbrow – and if that’s how you first met him, it was easy to see him only as a funny-looking little man born to play slapstick.

As a child I thought of Asrani – if I thought of him at all – as a personification of a Jack-in-the-box toy I had. A clown popping up suddenly in the middle of a scene, with a big wide grin and a seemingly oversized head: speaking fast, veering towards hysteria while “heroes” and “heroines” retained their gravitas in his presence. I had him slotted as one of those comedians – along with Paintal and Jagdeep and, from an earlier generation, Mukri – whose truncated stature seemed symbolised by the fact that they were only known by a single name. These impressions were bulwarked by a film that cast an inescapable shadow – Sholay. Asrani, as the Hitler-like jailer, and Jagdeep, as Soorma Bhopali, are the two most slapstick-y elements in that classic – and (purely from a narrative point of view) also the two most dispensable, even though their performances are so skilful.

Given these perceptions, I was genuinely startled to learn that Satyajit Ray had initially thought of Asrani for the part of Wajid Ali Shah when he was casting Bombay actors for Shatranj ke Khiladi. This was surprising not just because of the physical difference between the lithe Asrani and the man who eventually played the role, the imposing Amjad Khan – but because of a perception that the former had a limited range.

How wrong I was about that!

Yes, Asrani’s non-“hero”-like physique and face did seem to limit him in terms of the roles he might do (especially in an industry which loved typecasting) – but watch a swathe of his films across the 1970s, and there is no second-guessing his versatility. The more you see, the more impressed you get. In Gulzar’s Koshish, he is aptly loathsome as the man who causes the film’s central tragedy, the death of an infant – this is a thickly moustached rogue who could have been another sort of caricature, yet he also finds beats of quiet naturalism, as in a little moment where he corrects someone who says “Devdas” instead of “Surdas” (to refer to an unsighted man). A year earlier, in Mere Apne, Asrani more than held his own while playing alongside such performers as Vinod Khanna, Shatrughan Sinha and Danny, who appeared to have more “swag” than he did. In Basu Chatterjee’s Chhoti si Baat, with all appearances to the contrary, he convinced us that he was enough of a potential romantic rival to Amol Palekar to justify the film’s amusing plot.

His style and personality made for a very intriguing contrast with another of my favourite performers from that era, Deven Varma (who was also closely associated with the Middle Cinema directors). Varma was a master of the deadpan, a style of acting common in Marathi theatre – some of the funniest things he did and said were with a straight expression and monotone voice. Asrani, on the other hand, had one of the most mobile faces you could imagine, and he made it work to his advantage across a spectrum from massy comedy to intense drama. This often happens in the same film: watch his effortlessly natural moves in the opening scene of Abhimaan, swaying and gesturing in the background as Amitabh Bachchan’s Subir sings “Meet na Mila” – then watch him a little later, squawking in astonishment when he hears that Subir has married Uma (Jaya Bhaduri). And then still later, in the marvellously performed scenes where his character chastises Subir: an example of someone who might have remained the irrelevant sidekick coming into his own and distilling the film’s themes and concerns.

Then there is his delightful work in musical sequences. Music has always been one of the great levelers in Hindi cinema – it can make equals of men and women, rich and poor… as well as of macho heroes and their comedian buddies. Asrani is magnificent in these scenes, including many directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee. One can point to the songs where he is central – the tonga-wallah’s song which he sang in his own voice in Alaap (after Kishore Kumar didn’t show up at the recording studio) and the energetic “Woh Jhootha hai Vote Na Usko Dena” number from Namak Haraam. But even when he isn’t centre-stage, the eye is drawn to him. One of my favourite moments from Bawarchi is when the impish old Harindranath Chattopadhyaya joins the “Bhor Aayi Gaya Andhiyara” song, and Asrani, playing the Westernised son, comes out of his room and sees his father singing: his expression goes from being faintly amused to becoming attentive and moving his head in tune with the singing, and nodding along approvingly, keeping the taal with his gestures and movements. As a viewer, here and elsewhere, you feel like you can appreciate a song better just by watching Asrani absorbed in it.

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Naseeruddin Shah has spoken of seeing American actors like Dustin Hoffman in the late 1960s and realising it was possible to look like that and still be a popular star-actor. With Asrani, if he hadn’t settled into the Bombay mainstream, it is very easy to imagine him fitting into the 1970s parallel-cinema world, with a personality and looks that were as off-kilter as Naseer's or Om Puri's. There is a precedent for this: when very young, at the FTII, he appeared in Ritwik Ghatak’s avant-garde short film “Fear”, where the striking black-and-white cinematography makes the most of his face, often seen in close-up in the foreground, enigmatic and inscrutable (he plays “the quiet man” in this eerie chamber drama). When you watch him here, many what-if scenarios open up.

But of course, what Asrani did accomplish in his chosen stream was enough. For me, and for others of my age, an essential step in growing up as movie-watchers was to realise that the funny little character actor of our childhood was a performer of tremendous depth and seriousness (and those qualities can apply equally to his comic roles, not just the dramatic ones). “Hrishi-da saw hidden things in me,” he told me modestly on email once, “Sometimes, I was taken aback at how he could tap in me something unusual which even I was not aware of.” But it’s the actor in front of the camera who has to execute, and Govardhan Asrani – to give him that full name denied in screen credits – did this over and over again in the course of a career that is studded with beautiful little moments. Even those who think they know Hindi films of that time inside out would do well to revisit them and savour his contributions.