It was with great reluctance that veteran Bollywood actor Farooque Shaikh, who passed away in Dubai on December 27, had given an interview to tabloid! earlier this month.
“Please ask her the questions. I will fill in for her when I feel she’s not doing justice to them,” Shaikh, dressed in his favourite white chikankari kurta and churidar, said during tabloid!’s interview with legendary singer Asha Bhosle for her show, I Am Asha.
It was only through my persistence after I saw a brief interview by another news agency that he obliged.
Shaikh was said to have been in Dubai for a concert when he suffered a massive heart attack, which tabloid! learnt was misinformation.
His friend and co-star Shabana Azmi — they appeared together in Sagar Sarhadi’s Lorie, Kalpana Lajmi’s Ek Pal and Muzaffar Ali’s Anjuman echoed the shock of many others upon hearing of his death. “I can’t believe he’s gone so suddenly and so cruelly! Farooque was in Dubai with his wife and daughters when he suddenly suffered a massive heart attack. He just collapsed! Just like that. Is that any way to go?
“We were close friends from before we worked together. We were in college together. I can’t believe he’s gone,” she said.
Shaikh had hosted the I Am Asha show in Dubai on December 13, a show conceptualised by him, said Anita Shah of Ccreans Communication, the organiser of the show.
“It was my first opportunity to work with him. He was an amazing soul with so much depth — something many industry people don’t have,” Shah told tabloid!. “He was the backbone of our show. His depth of industry knowledge brought the best out of Ashaji and made it the great show it was. Whatever he did, he did from the heart with no commercial agenda. We were planning to do the same show in London and Toronto in the coming year.”
Shaikh, a heart patient for a long time and a man of few words, preferred the world to see the smile on his face more than the pain he suffered. His only plea — as he put it — was that the audience of Indian cinema become more discerning.
“I don’t have too much intelligence, just 40 years of experience in this industry, so I earnestly plead with our viewers to become more discerning and demanding,” he’d told tabloid! on December 8. “You are spending precious time and hard-earned money and if you don’t get your money’s worth, please complain, make a noise. If you do that, the quality of cinema will improve immediately. There is a lot of young, very intelligent, educated filmmakers who are very sensitive to world cinema and India. But they lack the kind of limelight that a multi-starrer or major-starrer would get, despite presenting a much better film with unknown faces”.
A brilliant actor, Shaikh believed in doing quality work, thus keeping his filmography short, doing just about 40 films, mostly from the parallel cinema, in 40 years. He was last seen in Ranbir Kapoor starrer Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and a couple of unnoticed films, Listen Amaya and Club 60. But he shall always be remembered for his outstanding performances as the Nawab in the historical Umrao Jaan and rib-ticklers such as Chashme Buddoor, Katha and Rang Birangi. His next film is Youngistan, due out in March and co-starring Jackky Bhagnani and Neha Sharma.
Yet, humble to the core, he felt he had nothing more to contribute to younger actors.
“God forbid! No student should be that fortunate,” came the dramatic reply over the phone. “I still have to learn tons and tons myself before I reel it off to someone else… I don’t have an artistic bone in my body. I just happen to be in this profession because people have beaten me into submission. Otherwise I would be sitting at home yawning away”.
Surely there will be many out there who would refute this claim.
Soon after we finished our conversation, an SMS popped up. Shaikh sent a thank you for my “patience and perseverance” — a gesture one does not expect from anyone in the film industry. Then, least expected, last Monday came the message: “Adaab. Wish u a Merry Christmas, a Joyous New Year and a v happy life ahead. Best luck, always. Farooque Shaikh.”
Needless to say this was our last communication, as, I realised today, my delayed reply to him that day was never delivered.
