Dialog kamti pada kya re? – An ode to Sadashiv Amrapurkar

I saw very little of Sadashiv Amrapurkar’s work. To be precise, I saw two movies he featured in. One of them was Ishq, released in 1997, a movie I saw in a dusty old theater in Aurangabad. Amrapurkar played Ranjit Rai – by all means a typical Bollywoodish dad of the ‘90s. His was a character reeking of stereotypes, as was the trademark of the 90’s. The movie was largely average too, but Amrapurkar’s nasal voice and his quirky sense made an impact and of the few things I liked about the movie, he was one.

The next time I saw him was about a decade and a half later, in 2013. He dazzled in a blink-and-miss cameo in Bombay Talkies. A movie to commemorate the completion of 100 years of Bollywood, Bombay Talkies brought together four fine directors, each bringing to the plate 30-minute mini-films that together constituted the movie. Amrapurkar appeared in Dibakar Banerjee’s ‘Star’, an adaptation of a Satyajit Ray story ‘Patol Babu – Film Star’.

His four and a half minutes of screen time brought Amrapurkar face to face with Nawazuddin Siddiqui, a forceful talent himself, and the acting master-class the two delivered amidst a skyline dotted with Mumbai high-rises was phenomenal. Emerging out of the garbage bin as the spirit of Siddiqui’s ex-mentor and theatre-guru ‘Appa’, Amrapurkar rises above a shoddy make-up job to deliver a life lesson to his protégé, underlining Purandar’s (Siddiqui) failures as an actor and as a human being.

‘Dialog kamti pada kya re tereku?’ says Appa in his trademark voice, telling Purandar how he has always shied away from taking any risk in life; always wanting the ultimate prize without putting the effort it warrants. His delivery of the famous line from the Marathi play Natasamrat leaves you with goose bumps as he attempts to take Purandar back to days of heady success; but he leaves his best for the last, spelling out ‘aye’ in five different ways. Purandar is left spell-bound as Appa asks him why is his character saying ‘aye’?  Is he saying it before or after being pushed? Is he saying it from his stomach, his eyes, his nose? The message is passed on effectively and Appa is free to vanish into the garbage bin again, having done his job.

It either takes a special talent or a big name to leave such an impact in so little time and Amrapurkar had both on his side. His was a case of a special talent, only rarely provided with a special role to showcase the stuff he was made of. Like the character in Natasamrat, Amrapurkar wouldn’t find it difficult to rent a place in the heart of his fans. His memory will live on for a long time to come.