08 October,2017 09:07 AM IST | Mumbai | Team Mid-day
The industry goaded him to make another film, and the audience waited, but friends say Shah's simple genius felt out of place in today's times
If you were a kid growing up the '80s, you'd be disappointed today. The maker of Indian television's most remembered shows like Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi and Nukkad, Kundan Shah succumbed to a heart attack on Saturday morning. He was 70. The National Award-winning filmmaker, best known for the dark comedy Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, studied at The Film and Television Institute of India in Pune, with Saeed Mirza, Sudhir Mishra and Vidhu Vinod Chopra. He considered Charlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx his inspiration.
Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, starring Naseeruddin Shah and Ravi Baswani, won him the Indira Gandhi Award for Best First Film of a Director in 1984. Following his time on television, he returned to cinema after seven years in 1993, with the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa. The coming- of-age love story set in Goa was a box office winner and got Shah the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Movie. He later went on to direct Kya Kehna, the story of a single mother played by Preity Zinta. His last movie was P se PM Tak which released in 2015.
Shah's last rites were held at the Shivaji Park crematorium on Saturday evening and attended by Naseeruddin Shah, Ratna Pathak Shah and Rakesh Bedi among others.
