I remember chatting with Satish Kaushik in the mid-90s, while he was shooting for the film ‘Saajan Chale Sasural’, in which he was playing a Tamilian character, Muthuswamy. No sooner had we begun talking than he asked if he was getting the south Indian accent right. This, from an alumnus of the National School of Drama (NSD) and the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII)! He wanted to know if he was getting his act right; little did it matter that he was in an all-out commercial film.This was back in the day when non-Hindi belt characters were predictably reduced to caricatures in Hindi cinema; yet, Satish shone in the film with Govinda.
Of course, I had been seeing him onscreen, from ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron’ to ‘Jalwa’ to ‘Mr India’, where he played Calendar. Satish had come up the ladder performing plays with Nadira Babbar’s theatre group, Ekjute.
His background in the NSD and FTII helped him hold his own as a superb character actor infront of the big stars. And if one were to see him in ‘Brick Lane’, the recent OTT release ‘Thar’ and the webseries ‘Scam 1992’ –he had indeed come a long way from the Pappu Pager of ‘Deewana Mastana’ and ‘Hum Kisise Kum Nahin’ and BBC aka Banke Bihari Chaturvedi of ‘Jamai Raja’. He was an actor who would laugh on the sets but take the smile off the star faces that had to match up to his performance.
His astute sense of theatre, TV and cinema drew him towards direction, with the Anil Kapoor-Sridevi film ‘Roop Ki Rani Choron Ka Raja’, but the film was a disaster. He later made ‘Prem’, another disaster. But Boney Kapoor knew what Satish could do and made direct remakes – ‘Hum Aapke Dil Mein Rehte Hain’, ‘Hamara Dil Aapke Paas Hai’ and ‘Mujhe Kuchh Kehna Hai’, which made good money.
Honestly, as a film reviewer then, I did not find these films good enough and had panned them, as well as his next, ‘Badhaai Ho Badhaai’, with Anil Kapoor. A few days after the film’s release, I’d quit the tabloid I was reviewing films for and joined a TV channel.
At a film shoot, Satish saw me with the channel ID, ran up to me and hugged me, saying, “Please congratulate me.” When I asked him why, he grinned, “Mera ek dushman kum ho gaya!” He was hugely pleased with his own joke – I would not be reviewing his films in print anymore. That was Satish Kaushik for you: A man who found reasons to be happy. He would be smiling forever on the sets and there was never a sad moment when he was around. He just kept laughing and cracking up, even resorting to self-deprecating humour about his weight and baldness to make people around him happy.
As a filmmaker, Satish had once collaborated with his friend Raja Bundela to start a production house. Raja and Satish had come to Mumbai in 1979. Satish had assisted a few people and got a job with Shekhar Kapur, during ‘Masoom’. Not just that, he convinced Kapur to give him a walk-in part in the film, playing an old man and strode on to be Calendar in Mr India, which was no wallpaper act, as the name would suggest. After that, there was no looking back for Satish Kaushik, the actor.
Much later, Satish was keen to make a film on a man who is declared dead in government records and must therefore prove he is alive by producing a piece of paper which testifies to the fact. The film was called ‘Mritak Ramlal’. It never got made, but many years later Satish revived the idea and made the best film of his life – ‘Kaagaz’, with Pankaj Tripathi. He was very keen to do a ‘Kaagaz 2’, as the film had given him a lot of acclaim and money as well.
I would bump into him when he came to visit his elder brother – my building neighbour. I told him that I had liked him as a filmmaker for the first time in ‘Kaagaz’. He told me, “Main banaunga iska sequel bhi. Tum iska review karna!” How I wish he would come back and make ‘Kaagaz 2’.
