The 1983 cult classic, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (JBDY) the feature film with which Kundan Shah made his debut as a filmmaker also turned out to be an albatross around his neck, whose success he couldn't live down. However, there is lot else that Shah deserves to be credited for. Like giving the Badshah of Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan, one of his early roles in the TV series Circus, that Shah directed along with Aziz Mirza. He also gave SRK one of his earliest, best and most beloved roles in films-as the bumbling, blundering man-boy Sunil in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa (1993). Shah was also one of the many who ushered in a revolution in Indian television by being part of series like Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi, Circus, Nukkad and Wagle Ki Duniya that would rival, rather better, the best on view on the small screen right now.

These two films and the TV serials represent the best of a body of work which, ideally, should have been far larger and weightier. Shah's cupboard was spilling over with film scripts in various stages of completion, as both filmmaker Ashutosh Gowariker and Sudhir Mishra, would have us believe. But in a cruel and competitive industry, where you are as good as your last film, there were not many backers for Shah's idiosyncratic ideas.

The one thing that binds all of Shah's work is the streak of comedy-of a varied kind. Mishra says that he could capture `grace in nonsense`, something that was evident even in the 23 minute comic-gangster short-Bonga-his diploma film at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune.

JBDY may not have set the box office on fire when it released some 35 odd years ago but gained in cult stature over the years through TV screenings, DVD and online release. It also won Shah the Indira Gandhi Award for Best First Film of a Director and gave Hindi cinema a mix of brutal satire and rollicking slapstick that it hadn't been seen before.

The hilarious cake scene, with that famous line 'thoda khao, thoda phenko' (eat some, throw some), the play on the word 'gutter', the riotous Mahabharata-Salim Anarkali-Draupadi cheer-haran mash-up on stage-many of JBDY scenes, gags and jokes have been memorised by film buffs, quite like the dialogues of Sholay.

But the humour was not for laughs alone. It was used to underline the highly cynical view of the absurdist reality, where justice, goodness and honesty don't necessarily triumph over evil. Here was a comedy that was far from feel good, didn't end with happily ever after, but with what Mishra refers to as a `joyous dance towards death`. Perhaps the one equivalent I can think of in the same comic space is Leo McCarey's biting take down of fictional Freedonia, war and nationalism in Duck Soup starring the Marx Brothers-Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo-and a towering Margaret Dumont.