Remembering Farooq Sheikh

“I would rather not be remembered,” Farooq Sheikh had said in a September interview over a decade ago. “Everyone comes into and goes from this world. I have no great desire to be remembered after I am gone. I believe in celebrating life and this is what I am doing through (his talkshow) Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai. If at all anybody cares to think of me after my death - my children, for instance - they should remember me as someone who intended to do them good as often as he could”.

Earlier this year, one felt a sadness watching Listen...Amaya – Farooq Sheikh and Deepti Naval's last film together – when Jayant, Farooq's character towards the end is disoriented and can't find his way home because of Alzheimer's.

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It was the same sadness while watching romantic comedy Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani. The one thing that stands out is Farooq Sheikh's role as Ranbir Kapoor's father. Not what they call a meaty role. It is the same unreasonable sadness when Farooq the father dies, and Ranbir doesn't get to know, much less return home to perform last rites, because he is travelling with his phone switched off.

A qualified lawyer who acted in his first film for free, Farooq Sheikh played roles that made people want to be born in a different time and place. In Katha (1983), he was Bashu living with Rajaram (Naseeruddin Shah) and taking him for a ride. In one scene in Rajaram's modest quarters, Bashu tells Rajaram to make him a cup of tea. The tea arrives and Bashu makes a face and says, “Yaar, chai tum bahut strong banate ho – ekdum ghaati.”

Meaning: “The tea is disgustingly strong, absolutely lower class-like!” And that's merely one punch he delivers in an utterly delightful comedy.

Another scene in the same movie, Katha, all the more sombre today, is one where a census-collector knocks on the door asks Bashu (Sheikh) if anyone in the house has medical ailments. Sheikh, who reportedly died on Friday night from a heart attack, replies: “Me, heart problems, I have a weak heart”. Who knew that would be a harbinger of the end to come, decades down in a hospital in Dubai.

In the hours since the news broke, messages of sadness and consolation have passed around the globe over computer and telelphone networks.

A message from one friend read: “I belong to a strange generation. Not the partition generation, like our parents, and not the liberalised economy, like yours. To us, such films and characters played by Farooq Sheikh, left a deep and indelible impression”.

It's true that movies are more watched by the generation in whose time they are released, the mantle now passed on to the Shah Rukh Khans and Aamir Khans from the Saeed Jaffreys, Ravi Baswanis and Farooq Sheikhs.

How tragic it will be if generations to come are deprived of Bashu and friends in the dozens of roles so memorably essayed by Farooq Sheikh. One-time co-star Swara Bhaskar (in Listen...Amaya) today wrote online: “Will miss you Farooq sir, this was too soon!”