Maverick Writer-Director B R Ishara Who Launched Top Stars Like Parveen Babi, Danny And Reena Roy, Felt That He Was ‘Hijacked Into Showbiz, As It Was Never His Dream-Aspiration’

Chaitanya Padukone

Rather disheartening to note that his living star-discoveries and the retro-media apparently chose to overlook the 85^th birth anniversary of maverick writer-director B R Ishara (real name Roshan Lal Sharma ) which was on 7^th Sept. Besides being a talented writer-director who had the rebel-killer instinct to expose social hypocrisy in some of his bold, controversial movies like ‘Chetna’ and ‘Zaroorat’ , ‘Babu-da’ had this God-gifted flair to spot new promising talent and give them acting breaks in his movies. It was Ishara, who launched an unknown college-girl from Junagadh called Parveen Babi in his movie ‘Charitra’(1973). Gorgeous Parveen went on to emerge an international celebrity with over 27 mega-hit landmark hit movies to her credit, But the person who initiated the ‘Barbie-doll’ Babi into showbiz ( Ishara) has hardly been given his due recognition. In ‘Zaroorat’ (1972), the three lead debut-actors Reena Roy ,Vijay Arora and Danny soon become popular top stars, all thanks to the foresight of ‘Babu-da’ who discovered their filmy potential. Are you aware that ‘futuristic’ Ishara was among the very first directors who ventured to cast Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bhaduri as a romantic pair in his musical movie ‘Ek Nazar’ (1972) . Having struggled for survival doing odd jobs of serving tea and washing dishes, the resilient Ishara , who directed some 36 movies. told me that he “never ever had any childhood ambition to get into movies, but somehow destiny hijacked me.”. When I first went to met Babu Ram Ishara, in the mid-80’s for an interview, I was taken aback to find him fast asleep on the editing lab cabin bare floor, without even using a mattress or a pillow. Grousing about the “scissor-happy Censor Board ” in that bygone era, iconoclast Ishara ( he had married his ‘Chetna’ movie heroine Rehana Sultan) said that his “hard-hitting films would often bear the brunt of several Censor cuts” . On a parting note, he joked whether his initials ‘B R’ also stood for “Ban, Revise Ishara” , alluding to his controversial bohemian film ‘Society’ which could not release.