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When I look back ,I find it difficult to believe that I knew the makers and the characters of the two epic TV serials "Ramayan "and "Mahabharat"well.I knew Dr Ramanand Sagar and his sons and their families like my family and I knew Ram (Arun Govil),Sita(Deepika Thikhalia ), Sunil Lahiri (Lakshman), Raavan (Arvind Trivedi ), Meghanad (Vijay Arora ) and Lord Hanuman (Dara Singh)and almost all the others which included the lyricist and music director Ravindra Jai - Ali Peter John
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I knew Dr B.R.Chopra and his son Ravi Chopra,the makers of "Mahabharat" and the writers, Satish Bhatnagar ,Ram Govind and the great Urdu writer,Dr Rahi Masoom Raza who wrote the dialogues and bacame immortal , the music director Raj Kamal and all the characters Bharat (Raj Babbar) Yudhishthir (Gajendra Chauhan), Arjun (Feroz Khan who later took the name Arjun), Gandhari (Renuka Israni) ,Dhrithrastra (my dear friend, Girja Shankar), Duryodhan (Puneet Issar, who had knocked out Amitabh Bachchan on the sets of Manmohan Desai's "Coolie ") ,Shakuni Mama (Gufi Paintal), Bishmapitamaha (Mukesh Khanna ,my friend Ved Khanna's younger brother ), Draupadi (Roopa Ganguly from Calcutta ) and how can I dare say that I didn't know Dr (?) Nitish Bhardwaj , the young man who fitted the role of Lord Krishna like a glove ?
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I knew Nitish ji as a struggling actor who whiled away his time with many other actors from the NSD and FTII , who couldn't find work and wondered what their future would be in a city like Bombay .
They had a room in an old building called "Sagar Sameer" near Seven Bungalows in Versova and depended on their booze beer and food from the dhaabs on the main road outside.
I spent quite some time with them sharing their dreams and drowning in their sorrows. And Nitish Bhardwaj was one of them.Some of the boys found work as assistants and in small roles. The well-known filmmaker Sai Paranjapye was instrumental in bringing some light into their lives ....
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The day Nitish Bhardwaj found his first big breakthrough to play the role of Lord Krishna in "Mahabharat" was like Christmas for the boys at "Sagar Sameer"and life was not the same again for Nitish Bhardwaj for years.
He had like all the other actors in "Mahabharat "become a star of some other world and He started behaving like one. I could never imagine that I would desperately need his help one day...
It had become a way of life to invite these "Gods" to different functions and events where hundreds and thousands of people treated them like real God and they were offered good money and gifts and within no time , these "God's" who had no home in Bombay had their own homes flats and cars, besides their own staff. The Gods were being kind to them in a big way.
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I had by this time taken legends like Dilip Kumar , Amitabh Bachchan , Shashi Kapoor, Manoj Kumar , Dara Singh and Smita Patil among others to different events in the city and the highlight was when I took Dara Singh to an all -Christian events and the entire crowd welcomed him with the chant "Jai Shree Hanuman" and the mighty man was taken aback and smiled his Hanuman-like smile...
I don't know what got into me when I thought of the new "Lord Krishna", Nitish Bhardwaj when my people in my village were celebrating Ganeshotsav the nine-day festival to celebrate Ganpati. I felt my people would be very happy to see the avataar of Lord Krishna in flesh and blood .
I called Nitish and he was very kind and courteous and not for a moment could I imagine that he was putting up an act to take some unknown revenge on me.I too was treating him like Lord Krishna himself and told him about how I needed him to come to my village atleast for half an hour .He said,"Why half , I will be there for two hours? I will come in my new car which has come only today .You meet me at nine o'clock at night outside the L & T Welfare Center and I will pick you up "I reached fifteen minutes before nine because after all it was "Lord Krishna" who was coming to meet me .
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I waited on the Highway for two and a half hours after working in office for eight hours but" Lord Krishna" did not appear before me. I was dead or too tired to be dead. I didn't have the courage to face my people in my village where I had grown up .I took an auto and cried my way home in Versova and cried again before my wife and my little daughter ,Swati .
I had never been humiliated like this before at any time .I don't know why my wife called Girija Shankar (Dhritrashtra) who was a family friend.I told him my painful story and he roundly abused Nitish Bhardwaj and volunteered to go with me to my village. He was equally popular , but I had lost heart and a man who I thought was a good man and friend . How could a naughty Lord Krishna turn into a Nasty "Lord Krishna"
P.S.the next night I went back to my village with Anil Kapoor and Boney Kapoor and the mood of the people brightened up again . Ordinary human beings turned out to be far better than a nasty "Gods? ".