By Subhash K Jha

`Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron (JBDY) played a major role in steering my career in films and I feel very proud to be associated with this cult classic of Hindi cinema. I remember I came back to Delhi after finishing Shekhar Kapur's debut film Masoom from Nainital and before coming to Bombay I went to visit Ranjit Kapoor who was a topnotch theatre director.

I met Kundan Shah at his house. He had come to sign Ranjit as a dialogue writer of JBDY. I had known Kundan because I had done my first film Chakra in which he was Chief AD also. The three of us were chatting when suddenly out of nowhere Ranjit told Kundan, 'Since you are making a mad comedy I'd like to have Satish as my co-writer. ' I was shocked.

Ranjit convinced Kundan that I have a great comic sense and timing and will be a great help in writing a film. And that's how my career as a writer started though I had never written before. We wrote the entire film in Kundan's house in Sion and slept there. Sometimes we were woken up by his little cute daughter lisping.

"Uncle Utho.. Likho". Everyday we'd take up a scene from the screenplay and start performing and improvising it in the room and record everything and bring it to paper as per Kundan's liking. Ranjit and I both used our theatre experience in moulding the dialogue and script of JBDY.

It took us ten days to write the Mahabharat sequence because in the screenplay it was just mentioned that they all get into a theatre in which some drama is being performed and chaos ensues. But which drama? ? ? We all got stuck because whatever play we thought of it was not bringing humour.


We took a break and for ten days we could not construct the scene. But one day while I was walking in the market in Santacruz I saw cheap colourful comics of Laila Majnu, Shirin-Farhad, Mughal-e-Azam, and from there idea struck that in the climax there should be mix-up of characters.

That is how the extraordinarily hilarious climax came on paper. I was not part of actors' repertoire of JBDY. But while writing everyday I used to wonder for which role I should forward my name to Kundan through Ranjit. Naseer and Ravi were already finalised. To my luck when we were improvising the mad telephone reciever exchanging scene I performed the role of Tarneja's assistant Ashok.

That turned out to be a very funny scene. Ashok's role was not finalised. Kundan said, "Yaar, teri kya timing thi is scene mein. Par aise timing kaun actor kar sakta hai? "

Ranjit immediately jumped in my favour. Kundan agreed reluctantly So from Rs 3000 remuneration for dialogues my total renumeration went up to Rs 5000. Rs2000 for acting. We used to get 10 rupees per day for conveyance. But the kind of fun we had while making the film was reward enough.

Working with Kundan was great because he himself had a great sense of comedy. It was very difficult for me to make him happy as a writer and actor too. He never show showed his pleasure. He had tremendous unchannelized energy at the time of making of the film and he injected that energy into his actors. He'd push everyone to give his best to the film.

Vinod Chopra playing a role in the climactic Mahabharat scene was hilarious JBDY had a romantic track among Ravi Baswani, Nena Gupta and me. But it got chopped off because of the film's length. The premiere of JBDY was no less a fun. We had no passes. Kundan charged money from us for tickets for the premiere.

This must be the only premiere where actors had to pay from their pocket to watch their own film. After the film there was no party. I walked down to the station to get back home and had dinner at a dhaba. We could not celebrate at that time. But till today JBDY is celebrated. I' m proud to be part of it. `