NO JOKE BEING A COMEDIAN

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By Team Bollyy
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NO JOKE BEING A COMEDIAN

JYOTHI VENKATESH reproduces this interview which first appeared 37 years ago in the now defunct eveninger Free Press Bulletin dated May 28, 1983 to commemorate the 81st birthday of the well known legendary comedian Jagdeep , better known as Syed Ishtiaq Ahmed Jafri, yesterday as he was born on March 29, 1938

It was with Afasana that Jagdeep made his bow 58 years ago in 1948 in filmdom, when he was barely nine years old. “It was a durwan’s role in a play staged by kids in the film. I spoke my dialogues in Urdu. It was difficult to get extras who knew Urdu then. After the partition I and my brother had crossed the border and come down to Bombay in search of some livelihood. We were practically on the footpath during those harrowing days. I grabbed the offer when an extra supplier staying in my neighborhood asked me if I would do the role and promised me three rupees as my remuneration for it.” 

Jagdeep is actually his screen name. His original name is Sayyed Ishtaq Ahmed Jaffri. He was known as Master Munna in those days as a child star. According to him, his memorable films in which he could make his presence felt are D.M. Pancholi’s Aasman with which, by the way, O.P. Nayyar also had got his break as a music director, Footpath directed by Zia Sarhadi with Meena Kumari and Dilip Kumar in the lead and Phani Mazumdar’s Dhobi Doctor.                

Says Jagdeep, “In every way Dhobi Doctor proved to be the turning point in my life. Though mine was a tragic role in it, Bimalda offered to cast me in a comedian’s role in his Do Bigha Zameen as Lallu Ustad. I still remember Bimalda’s words that a person who could make one weep can also make one laugh heartily. It was then and there that I decided to take up comedy roles. I realized that a role is a role whether it is that of the leading man or the comedian.” 

According to Jagdeep, every artiste has a definite place in the industry. “It is a wrong notion that a character artiste has to hang around the hero and pamper his every wish to be in his good books in order to survive. In view of my having survived in the industry for the past 51 years, I am being treated with dignity by producers as well as the stars. Sadly, it was only the press which used to give us a step motherly treatment and ran only after stars. Hardly one or two magazines have dared to feature me on the cover.”

Not many are aware of the fact that to his credit, Jagdeep has quite a few films as a full-fledged leading man too with leading ladies like Vyjayanthimala. It was with Bahar that he arrived as a comedian. “The late doyen A.V. Meiyyappa Chettiar bound me to a contract and dared to cast me as a hero. However I realized that I was just not cut out to be a hero, because the kind of films made those days’ required chocolate faced heroes who had nothing to do but to prance around with the heroine. I have absolutely no regrets having lost the bus as a hero and taken the plunge from the leading man to the comedian” 

Jagdish adds, “It is no joke to be a successful comedian. It is difficult to make people laugh. Today the audience is very intelligent. You cannot fool them like in the past with slapstick comedy. I’m happy with my ‘standing’ I the industry today as a comedian ‘in demand’. I have no ambition to turn a hero like Asrani did. In fact at this stage of my career, I do not want to experiment with a different role other than that of a comedian, because the audience expects me to be the same old Jagdeep and wouldn’t be able to stomach me in a different role, say as a villain or a tragedian. It is too late for me to turn over a new leaf.” 

Ramesh Sehgal cast Jagdeep in Shikwa which is perhaps the first and last film in which Dilip Kumar and Nutan were teamed together. Though even the mahurat shot was taken on the young Jagdeep, after three or four reels were ready, he was thrown out of the film. Yet Sehgal cast Jagdeep as a pickpocket in his film Railway Platform with which Sunil Dutt got a break. “People raved about my performance and thus instilled a lot of confidence in me, though mine was a minor role when compared to that of the late Sunil Dutt’s. Even today it’s my belief that what matters is one’s performance in a film and not the length and the breadth of one’s role.”

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