Best Comedians

Top ten comedians in Bollywood

Mehmood

Definitely, a class act. Very talented, and very funny. A lot of classic roles of the hero's buddy went to him, and he partnered almost all successful heroes, Dharmendra, Rajendra Kumar, Jeetendra etc. in his films. Padosan, the cult comedy, was a landmark in Hindi movies, and his role in Gumnaam, and the song, Hum Kaale Hain to Kya Hua Dilwaale Hain, is unique. Bombay to Goa was one of Amitabh's early breaks, produced by him. Some heroes were actually scared to have him because he was a scene-stealer, it appears from a biography of his I read. One role I particularly liked was in an old movie, Aulad, where he played a Chaplinesque character and sang the song Jodi hamari bane na kaisejaani, hum to hain angrezi, tum ladki Hindustani.. with Aruna Irani.

Asrani

Some of his acts were over-the-top, but some were classy. His jailer in Sholay was a classic, with almost all the lines becoming household words. He also played some caricatures in Baawarchi and the like, as well as some mature, non-comic roles in films like Abhimaan, where he is a sympathetic friend of Amitabh through his bad times.

Deven Varma

A relatively sophisticated comedian, who played a lot of funny characters, but his best remembered perhaps will be the 'Angoor' role because the situations in the film brought out his best.

Johny Walker

An old-timer, he played a side-kick to many yesteryear heroes, from Guru Dutt to Dilip Kumar. Sang some famous songs too, like Jangal mein mor naacha... and Sar jo tera Chakraye. He also played an important character in Anand, who fulfills Rajesh Khanna's urge to act, and gives him the dialogue which forms a pivotal part of the film.

Johny Lever

Some good roles played by him were in Ishq, Baazigar and so on. His ability to contort his face, unfortunately, was over-used, but he was also a good imitator of people, and he came out with audio tapes that did justice to his talent too.

Rajendranath

He had a few memorable roles, some of them with Rajesh Khanna in his heyday. His look was at times enough to create laughter, but I remember him as a spy in an unknown movie called Saboot, wearing glasses that had wipers on them!

Jagdeep

This guy was also very talented, and used well only half the time. Some memorable roles were of Soorma Bhopali in Sholay, and Mithun Chakraborty's side-kick in his Gunmaster films like Suraksha and Wardaat, where he kept uttering Khamba Ukhaadke every now and then.

Kishore Kumar

He was a brilliant comic, apart from his many other talents. His films like Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi gave him ample scope to showcase his comic genius, and his role of a music teacher/singer in Padosan was unforgettable.

Amitabh Bachchan

If you saw him in Chupke Chupke or delivering his solo drunken speech in Amar Akbar Anthony, you would never mistake him for an angry young man. He had a great comic streak, mostly left to one or two directors to exploit. Namak Halal was also a great chance for him to use his comic timing, and he did that wonderfully.

Dharmendra

The he-man of the sixties and seventies is a great comedy actor too, as exemplified by Sholay, and also Chupke Chupke. He was the soul of Chupke Chupke, and his crackling battle of wits with Om Prakash made it an all-time great.

Sanjeev Kumar

He had a few good opportunities to show off the comic side, like in Manchali, and Manoranjan, which was supposedly inspired by Irma La Douce, a story of the Ladies of the night.

Institute Day

We actually have a day (when IMT Nagpur started in 2004) designated for awarding scholarships to students in recognition for their academic achievements in year one of their PGDM (MBA). It is like a mini-convocation, and it was on July 26th, yesterday. There were a hall-full of well-dressed students (is that an oxymoron?), and a chief guest who is an incurable Nagpur-lover. He has stayed back, and intends to stay on in the city.

Mr. Srikant Sampath is an active entrepreneur, who has set up two companies, in two different areas of enterprise- real estate and HR. It was interesting to hear him talk of success in different forms, for students at various levels of the CGPA curve. This matches my ideas that a person should not be judged by his grades alone. Grades reflect a current judgement of academic ability and motivation, but those "backward" in this measurement may excel at some other things- extra-curriculars, that may lead to a career, for example. As you can see, I might have been a full-time writer had I not been a prof.

Currently reading a biography of my favorite Bond- Roger Moore. Hitler came pretty close to finishing him off, by bombing London when he was a boy, it seems.

Top of the week of July 23rd

Murali's 800 wickets certainly are a handful. Sounds incredible, and will be tough to better. Indians can take solace that we helped him to achieve a great record. 'Galle'ing, the defeat was though.

There are amazing butterflies everywhere. I see them on the golf course, and around the greenery elsewhere. Can even spot a few from the balcony at home. A butterfly watcher can probably make a career here.

Plans for a Bangalore alumni meet of IMT Nagpur are almost final. Will be on August 21st at the Oberoi.

A marketing seminar at Nagpur is being planned by students on August 28th. We also have a program for managers of the RPG group starting on Sunday. Busy time ahead.

Nagpur as OOty

If someone had told me six months ago that Nagpur can look like Ooty, I would have laughed them off. But now, I would not. It is actually so green and lovely, that it could rival a hill-station! It has rained since June 15th, pretty regularly. And the arid landscape is suddenly transformed. Of course, it's a bit warmer than Ooty, but everything else looks similar. I wouldn't want to be anyplace else, right now.

The IMT campus also sports a clean, mean and green look. I use mean in the positive sense here. We played golf on a wet course last weekend, and shots that normally would go 100 yards went for half that distance. The game is a great ego-buster, and knows how to get you. I read about Louis something-or-the-other, a new winner at the British Open, played at Golf's birthplace, St Andrew's golf course in Scotland this year.

Saw a nice movie about Kashmir, Lamha. Also finally saw A Wednesday on the telly. Liked both. Lamha is a serious attempt to look at the Kashmir issue, without taking sides. If the Berlin Wall can fall, the LOC should be no exception. Maybe in another 50 years? Naseeruddin Shah is great in A WEdnesday, again a well-made, unusual movie about the common man's predicament when faced with terror.

Tax Talk

Brand Management for the Department of Direct Taxes was the topic for a small invited talk (not 'small talk') that I gave at a gathering of Chief Commissioners of Income Tax at their training centre in Nagpur. Rather intimidating, at first sight, you would think (and I thought). But we got along well, and nobody asked me for my PAN number at the end- so the revenge motive is ruled out.

Seriously, it was quite interesting to talk about marketing and branding to people from a government department. After all, it is a monopoly, and with a lot of power, so what would it be doing with marketing? I had to also think differently, and came up with a passable presentation based on basics of services marketing- the 7 Ps. We came up with a positioning statement for the dept. to uplift its image or give it a positive spin- call themselves 'Bankers to the Nation'. The trouble is, State Bank of India already uses the tagline. So we left the concept at that and moved on. There was a also a lively discussion about Mr. Nilekani and his project called Unique ID that seeks to generate one for every Indian. I also put forth my pet theory that Indian post offices along with e-seva centres can be used to deliver almost every known government service that a citizen needs in his lifetime, including driving license, passport, ration card, marriage, birth and death registration, and so on.

In general, the ideas that the image is important even for a govt. department went down well. We had an added bonus in the form of a TV crew that shot a few moments of our session for a documentary film on the tax dept. that they were shooting.

Faculty Development

We are doing a two day faculty development program on SPSS, the statistical software package, at IMT for Nagpur faculty from management, engineering, agriculture and architecture colleges. The response is good. There are about 30 participants who are on campus today.

This is something IMT intends to do more of. Apart from helping train faculty in various things like teaching methods, latest in subject areas, and research methodology, it helps them network, and grow as faculty. Joint research may also be a happy result. One reason foreign faculty members grow their careers rapidly is due to networking, apart from high productivity in research. Indian faculty need to get better at doing this. Indian education sector is growing, and the management faculty needs alone are in thousands.

The Virtuous and the Virtual

We were always told that one should lead a virtuous life- by the parents, by the elders, by the scriptures, and so on. What we (mankind, or most of it) have done is somewhat different. We lead a virtual life, instead of a virtuous one.

Question is, why? There are several reasons. The virtual life is a lot easier. All you need is a computer with an internet connection. You can virtually live your entire life on it. Of course, someone has yet to figure out how to drink coffee on the net and well,... brush your teeth, but pretty much everything else can be done on it. Education, for instance. From simple homework, to projects, to an entire degree, you can virtually do a KG to PG on the net. There are some students who believe that education did not exist before Bill Gates. Instead of B.C., they probably would probably understand B.G. (Before Gates) a lot better. And to think that we actually lived in that era- incredible as it seems to a youngster today.

If you wanted to be virtuous, you would have to go to the library, read books, copy (xerox) important stuff, re-read it, understand it, and so on. What a waste of time and effort. The virtual world, with its two step invention, reduces "virtually" anything to Cut and Paste. If the nice guys at google have already done it for you, why replicate the effort?

In an effort to be virtuous, you would need to take responsibility for everything. Making friends, rearing your children, doing household chores, and for growing up. Now, you don't need to. Remain in the virtual world, and you don't need anything, except a dad or mom early in your life, to buy you a computer (with an internet connection). Friends are made and maintained on facebook. When was the last time you met all your facebook 'friends'?

A virtuous life meant sacrificing things, for others' benefit. In the virtual world, all you sacrifice is your sleep, because nothing real exists, so there is no need to sacrifice anything.

My stomach groans in hunger. Is it for real? Let me find out. Will be back soon, after a short break.