Jagdeep, the eternal funnyman: a tribute

Irrespective of which golden era comedian was your favourite, the name ‘Jagdeep’ would invariably end up making it to the top half of the list. This is no easy task considering that the likes of Johnny Walker, Mehmood, Tun Tun, Om Prakash and the legendary Kishore Kumar dominated the 1950s and 1960s, and later Deven Verma and Asrani ended up walking away with roles that were better written.

Born Syed Ishtiaq Ahmed Jaffrey in 1939, ‘Jagdeep’ started as an extra, graduated to a recognisable child artist and a leading man before transforming into a tour de force comedian, who didn’t need anything more than the camera in front of him to create magic.

When it comes to popular Hindi films, the comedian has largely been an afterthought. Their presence in a film might be ‘integral’ to the narrative in a broad context but beyond a point nearly most comedians had to provide relief on the lines of the routine song and dance.

Johnny Walker recalled how in his collaborations with Guru Dutt, who often gave the comedian something more than just gags, the director made him exit the scene the moment things were about to get serious. In this aspect, Jagdeep was amongst the first to break the shackles and it’s a pity that few acknowledge him for liberating comedians.

When he arrived in Bombay post-Partition, Jagdeep did a host of odd jobs to make ends meet. He sold stuff on the streets, worked as a waiter for a bit and even pushed a handcart. These experiences enabled him to study people and pick up nuances that would come in handy later when he created memorable characters.

He began getting roles as an extra in films and somehow landed a part in B R Chopra’s Afsana (1951). He was supposed to be just one of the audience members clapping at a street-play, but he became the actor that enacted the scene as the one who was supposed to couldn’t speak the Urdu dialogue.

He went on to feature in some of the most talked-about films of the era that included Zia Sarhad’s Footpath (1953), Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen (1953), Guru Dutt’s Aar-Paar (1954), K A Abbas’ Munna (1954), Ramesh Saigal’s Railway Platform (1955), the Raj Kapoor produced Ab Dilli Door Nahin (1957) and Hum Panchhi Ek Daal Ke (1957), which won the Best Children’s Film trophy at the National Awards. The film left such an impression on the then Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and he presented Jagdeep his personal staff.

Jagdeep was blessed with leading man looks and his popularity prompted that Madras’s AVM studios that produced Hum Panchhi Ek Daal Ke to launch him as a hero. The success of Bhabhi (1957) where he was cast opposite Nanda, it also featured the song ‘Chali chai re patang meri’, proved AVM right but the next few films like Barkha (1959) and Bindiya (1960) failed to live up expectations. Between Bhabhi and the Shammi Kapoor-Pran-Rajshree-Mumtaz starrer Brahmachari (1968) that saw Jagdeep shift gears and transform into a comedian to reckon with he did nearly twenty films.

Some of the films that he featured in were Raj Khosla’s Solva Saal (1958), and Chetan Anand’s Aakhri Khat (1966), which was the screen debut of Rajesh Khanna, and S.M. Sagar’s Sarhadi Lutera (1966) that had future screenwriting legend, Salim Khan, as the male lead.

Through the late 1960s and early 1970s, Jagdeep became the regular comic relief along with Asrani and Devan Verma but rarely got the well-written roles that came along his contemporaries’ way. He was popular but roles that could allow him to become a bigger part of the narrative eluded him, and it wouldn’t be completely incorrect to say that had Sholay (1975) not happened Jagdeep’s legacy might not have endured decades after he had stopped acting regularly.

Both Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, who wrote Sholay, hailed from Madhya Pradesh and while the two helped Jagdeep to get the nuances of Soorma Bhopali right, the actor infused his mannerisms and style, and to quote an oft-repeated idiom, the rest was history.

Jagdeep is barely on-screen for a few minutes in Sholay but he made the character timeless and even after four and a half decades that’s one of the first things that comes to mind when one thinks of either him or the film.

Through the 1980s, remained a constant feature when it came to comedy and showed sparks of brilliance even in the briefest of the roles such as the Muhammed Ali obsessed boxing fan in Feroz Khan’s Qurbani (1980).

He formed a successful on-screen pair with Aruna Irani and Asrani in a bevy of South Indian films that were remade in Hindi. This was the Padmalaya-Jeetendra phase and the trio played the typical comic characters and had little to do with the main track of the film’s story. The success of these films transformed Jeetendra into a box office phenomenon, but if one were to take out the songs and comedy track, the sheen would be lost.

However, the pay-off was much higher for the likes of Jagdeep. He became associated with a brand of raunchy and double entendre-laden comedy that was introduced by Kader Khan through his dialogues and writing in most of these films. As a result, when the mood of the industry changed, Jagdeep found himself out of work.

Towards the late 1980s, he tried to revive his career by producing and directing Soorma Bhopali (1988) that relied on the popularity of his character from Sholay, but the film did little for him even with special appearances from Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Rekha, Danny Denzongpa and a few other industry friends.

In the 1990s, Jagdeep enjoyed a brief revival of sorts with Phool Aur Kaante (1992) that was the debut of Ajay Devgn and also saw Jagdeep and Aruna Irani revive the charm of their collaboration of the 1980s.

Filmmakers such as Rajkumar Santoshi regularly used Jagdeep in their films and also gave him one of his most memorable late-career roles as Salman Khan’s father in Andaz Apna Apna (1994). In the film, Jagdeep had the same amount of screen time as he did in Sholay and history repeated itself when he became one of the stand-out features in Andaz Apna Apna that continues to enjoy a cult following to this day.

This generation saw Jagdeep more as Javed and Naved Jaffrey’s father and enjoyed his appearances on reality shows. Jagdeep’s death following age-related complications reminded many that he was 81.

Perhaps, that’s the thing about the eternal funnyman: one never knew so much time had passed since he had been a part of some of our favourite funny moments in films.

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