Vidya Is My Second Innings, Says Liliput! 

Jyothi Venkatesh

Lilliput, who will be seen in Mahesh Pandey’s Vidya, is happy to be part of the show. Calling it his “second innings”, the actor hopes that the audience loves his role. “My role as a principal is integral to the story. It is a performance-based role, so I am doing my best. It depends upon the audience and how they are going to like my role and react to it,” he says. Incidentally Liliput had lost out on big opportunities when his film Deva with Amitabh Bachchan as the leading man and Liliput as the villainous midget was shelved by showman Subhash Ghai after a difference of opinion with the Big B on the sets more than  a decade ago.

Talking about working with writer-producer Mahesh Pandey, he says, “He is not only my writer-director but also like my younger brother. He is a very nice human being. He is very nice to his team and this is the sign of definite success for a man. I pray for him that he will become very big producer and director in future.”The actor has had quite a journey in showbiz and has been part of plays, shows and films. Talking about all three mediums, he says, “Theatre is a very different medium and there you get a response immediately. Film and television take a lot of time to get a response from the audience, so theatre is the most enjoyable,” he says.

Ask him one project that was very close to him, and he says it was the show Idhar Udhar in 1983-84, which he wrote and acted in too. “I had come to Bombay for acting. Once I met Aanand Mahendro, the director of Idhar Udhar, first he cast me in his documentary film for GIC. One day, I went to his house. There Aanand told me that one of his concepts was approved by Doordarshan. But he was unable to find a proper writer to write it. I asked for the concept. He explained it to me. Just then, I asked for a paper and pen. I sat alone in his bedroom and wrote one episode of half an hour in exactly half an hour. He was not only surprised but so happy that he asked me to write 13 episodes,” he says.

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