Mumbai, Nov 28: Veteran actor-filmmaker Amol Palekar says he has always lived life on his own terms and that reflected in his choice of regular guy roles in Hindi cinema at a time when larger-than-life heroes were popular.
Palekar, who turned 80 this month, is looking back at his life and artistic pursuits in a new memoir, which is titled “Aiwaz” in Marathi and “Viewfinder” in English. Both the books are published by Westland — “Aiwaz” in partnership with Madhushree Publications.
The book is a deep dive into his life including his unlikely journey in cinema that saw him emerge as the star of the middle-of-the-road cinema of frequent collaborators Basu Chatterjee and Hrishikesh Mukherjee in hits such as “Rajnigandha”, “Chhoti Si Baat”, “Chitchor”, “Gol Maal”, “Naram Garam” and others in 70s and 80s. “I was not what a hero is supposed to be and what people loved was precisely that. They loved that I was not a Dharmendra, He-man, I was not the Angry Young Man (Amitabh Bachchan) or the romantic hero Rajesh Khanna. I was also not somebody who could dance beautifully like Jeetendra. I was none of them. And my being none of them was something which people liked,” Palekar told PTI in an interview.
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“I could do it on my own terms is something which I don’t know how it happened, but it happened. I am grateful to life for that,” he added.
The actor said one of his dilemmas, which also comes through in his book, was how to run away from the image of the star.
“Because the moment you say a star, it comes with its baggage. I was a person who always wanted to try something new and different in which being a star is not allowed. It’s a trap, in a way.”
Asked if he was ever tempted to turn to commercial cinema, Palekar said he has never measured success by box office collection. “Today, getting into the ` 100 crore club is the minimum, and you talk only about going into ` 400 or ` 500 crore. Everything is being judged only by the commercial success. I’ve always believed that whosoever has invested the money, if you have invested ` 5 rupees and if you make ` 15 out of that, you should be happy. “But the industry is not happy. Why only ` 15 why not ` 150 or ` 1500?” Palekar said he has always chosen the road less travelled whether taking a bank job to fund his creative side, choosing the fine arts stream instead of the more commercially viable applied arts at the JJ School of Arts or choosing theatre and then middle of the road movies.
“Something which will fetch money is applied arts but I didn’t do that. That was a choice, a very conscious choice. I hadn’t thought so much about it as I can do it today looking back but I certainly don’t have any regrets about it.
“I worked out a very simple formula… I took up a job in a bank, which would help me not to worry about where the money would come from because I didn’t want to have any compromise in my work… I thought this was the best way to do a 9 to 6 job, earn money and then evening onwards, it would be about my art. That’s how I started my living. That was the starting point where I went on evolving.”
The actor, who later turned director and made critically-acclaimed movies such as “Ankahee”, “Thodasa Rumani Ho Jaye” and “Paheli”, said he kept postponing the book for many years as he was busy with theatre and paintings but the break during Covid gave him the “time to introspect”.
“And then I sat down and wrote it,” he said, creditin wife Sandhya Gokhale, who has co-written many of his films, for helping him in the process. The English title of the book comes from a technology in films that’s now extinct, he said.
“During our time, Viewfinder was an essential apparatus for a director to choose a frame, to choose what lens to use, what angle to use, he used to use the Viewfinder.”
“So, that’s what the Viewfinder is. It is from there. (In the book), I have chosen the frame, the angle and the look at my own life,” he said.
Asked whether there were portions that made him emotional or were challenging to pen down, Palekar said he has written them “candidly” and, hopefully, “with dignity”.
“I can honestly say that I have tried to look at my own failures. Mostly we don’t like to look at our failures. We like to look at only our successes. And the bigger the success, the more we like to talk about it. (In the book), I have talked about my failures, and when I talk about the failure, it is mainly about the creative process,” he said.
One of the highlights of the book, he said, is the QR codes which can help the reader to become the viewer. They can scan the QR codes to watch films from his storied filmography without spending any extra money. “We are trying to reach out to as many people as possible. So, I think that will make it that much more interesting.” (PTI)
