Chapter 6

He had been nearly hopeless. I moved with him for all his movie shoots, lest he does something stupid on the sets. The 26 movies were completed, and he was not signing any other movies. I started taking him to a lot of temples, where he could try to obtain some peace of mind. He would blankly stare and the idol, and after sometime, ask me if we could leave. One of these days, we went to the Sri Raghavendra temple at Triplicane. Within a few minutes of entering the temple, one could see a drastic change in him. His eyes closed, mind fixed on meditation, and the calmness his face exuded, was something I hadn't seen in months. Something told me this guy was going to be fine, and he was going to be better than ever. After that day, he gave up on drinking. Chain smoking was difficult to give up, but he reduced it drastically. He visited the Raghavendra temple everyday, and spent an hour there. Within a few days, the chance for career to be back on track was obtained. There came the script of a movie, in which the hero was a replica of a dreaded underworld don, and he goes into the den of the criminals to come out with information about the don's activities, and gets caught there due to circumstances. He came to me with the story, asking me if he could get back to acting. I told him that if he felt cool about his body conditions, and if he felt confident about getting back and going the distance, he might very well get back to acting. The movie was a watershed. Wiping box office records, the man was on sight again, fans thronged the theatres, and the march was on again.

Soon, offers started pouring again. This time, a bit of parallel cinema too. A storyline of a man who lives all his youth for his brothers and sisters, who ditch him when he needs their help, and then grows up to become a great writer, only to find his brothers and sisters coming back to him, by when fortunately he has put life in the right perspective. The thing about Shashi was, even parallel cinema was a big hit with him, in a country like India where commercial rules the roost! Another film showcasing his acting skills, was one where he was a husband, whose wife ran away because he was a poor guy, in an impulsive decision, and both of them living the rest of their life repenting the action of hers, and unable to obtain the nod of the society for her forgiving. These established him as an actor par excellence.

I was starting to feel the urge to work with him again. It was nearly ten years since I last did, and it was for a film in Singapore, where Rajeev and Shashi were part of a music band, and Rajeev was the protagonist, with Shashi just being a sidekick. I wanted to make a movie exploiting an unexplored side of Shashi, something for which he would later be hailed universally apart from his style, comedy!