 "Goodbye Deven Verma and thank you for all the laughs")
How often does it happen that when you hear the news of someone dying, along with the sadness come the smiles? Deven Verma (October 23, 1937–December 2, 2014), the nuanced actor who breathed his last in Pune on Tuesday morning, was one such rare person. In his film career that spanned 47 years, he gave us many laughs, plenty of smiles and also those pensive moments when his comic act offered more than comedy and got you thinking.
Verma was the comedian on whose shoulders rest many films that are today counted as cult classics. He was the anchor who held them together and gave them a direction – or comical misdirection. In Gol Maal, the 1979 comedy directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, where he plays himself, he’s the one steering the film.
He’s truly the main ingredient of the story that sends the key characters, played by stalwarts like Amol Palekar and Utpal Dutt, into a spin. He’s the one responsible for the ridiculously mini-kurta Palekar is stuck with through the film. The idea of creating a twin brother for Palekar to rescue him from being exposed before his boss, Utpal Dutt, is also his. And he’s the one who encourages Palekar to shave off his moustache, causing more confusion and creating the base for a comical climax to the film.
Also, try imaging Gulzar’s comedy of errors, Angoor (1982), without Verma who plays a double role, both of a servant to Sanjeev Kumar (also in double role). Take Verma out of these classics and they would collapse. He bought the dignity to comedy which we seldom see today. His was not the slapstick style of humour that films now are sprinkled with, much like item numbers that add nothing to the plot. He was not the filler in the film; he was its core.
Palekar remembers the first time he met Verma. “It was at a Filmfare award function in the early 1970s, much before we started acting together,” he recalls. “Here was this man, not very well known, doing a standup comedy act back then. There was no mimicry, no acting and no attempt to make people laugh. He was simply chatting with the audience with a straight, blank face and we were collapsing in our chairs, laughing.”
After the act, Palekar went backstage to meet Verma and to “introduce myself to him”. That was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. In 1973, when Bada Kabutar, a comedy film directed by Verma released, Palekar went to watch its very first show at Lotus Theatre in Mumbai.
“It was, oh my God, such a beautiful comedy, typical of what Basu Chatterjee and Mukherjee would subsequently make,” says Palekar. Lotus Theatre does not exist anymore. The film, Bada Kabutar, also lies forgotten. “It was probably far too ahead of its time,” says Palekar. “Whenever we met, we would have an adda (Bengali for intellectual exchange). I will miss that. I will miss him terribly.”
Verma once said that you can have a small role in a film and yet shine, or a big one and yet come out a dud. Verma had that ability and the discipline to shine no matter how tiny the role. In the 1969 black-and-white film, Khamoshi, directed by Asit Sen and starring Rajesh Khanna and Waheeda Rehman, he plays Patient No 22 admitted in a psychiatric ward. It’s a small side role, but unforgettable. Here, in one song, he reveals the several layers of the actor in him.
The song, Dost kahan koi tumsa by Manna Dey, sees him as a ‘drunk’ man intoxicated on an empty bottle that he has found in the ward; he’s also a playful inmate, teasing and provoking his fellow inmates; and then, the next moment, he is a traumatised man standing by a statue of a mother and child, his face contorted in agony and wearing a faraway look. He was a comedian who could transcend the genre he was seen most in and yet leave an impression.
Those who grew up in the 1970s and ’80s would surely remember the song Mummy O Mummy from Basu Chatterjee’s Khatta Meetha. It has Verma playing an endearing character of a Parsi bachelor who is getting on in age and is desperate to marry. His desperation is both comical and sad, and the heart cannot help but feel happy when he finally does find a bride in Preeti Ganguli (his sister-in-law in real life). That’s the power his realistic, believable comedy had.
Verma, whose father was in the silver business, was always interested in acting. He got into it early, participate in dramas and youth festivals during his college days in Pune, he told Patcy N of Rediff.com in an interview in July 2013.
The later films, like the Aamir Khan-Salman Khan starring Andaz Apna Apna (1994), couldn’t quite tap into the actor who finally decided to retire. But there was a time when he was working in 16 movies together because “I was in the industry for so long and had made so many friends, so I couldn’t say no and disappoint anyone,” he said in the Rediff interview. A good thing too. His inability to say ‘no’ has left us with more films to remember him by.
Clarification
An earlier version of this article had incorrectly stated that the 1969 movie Khamoshi was directed by Gulzar. It was, in fact, directed by Asit Sen. The error is regretted.
Verma was the comedian on whose shoulders rest many films that are today counted as cult classics. He was the anchor who held them together and gave them a direction – or comical misdirection. In Gol Maal, the 1979 comedy directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, where he plays himself, he’s the one steering the film.
He’s truly the main ingredient of the story that sends the key characters, played by stalwarts like Amol Palekar and Utpal Dutt, into a spin. He’s the one responsible for the ridiculously mini-kurta Palekar is stuck with through the film. The idea of creating a twin brother for Palekar to rescue him from being exposed before his boss, Utpal Dutt, is also his. And he’s the one who encourages Palekar to shave off his moustache, causing more confusion and creating the base for a comical climax to the film.
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In the 1983 Rang Birangi starring Parveen Babi, Amol Palekar, Farooq Sheikh, Deepti Naval and Utpal Dutt, he is the character who singlehandedly upsets the lives of all of these people in his attempt to rekindle the spark in the lives of the happily-married-but-bored Babi and Palekar.
Also, try imaging Gulzar’s comedy of errors, Angoor (1982), without Verma who plays a double role, both of a servant to Sanjeev Kumar (also in double role). Take Verma out of these classics and they would collapse. He bought the dignity to comedy which we seldom see today. His was not the slapstick style of humour that films now are sprinkled with, much like item numbers that add nothing to the plot. He was not the filler in the film; he was its core.
Palekar remembers the first time he met Verma. “It was at a Filmfare award function in the early 1970s, much before we started acting together,” he recalls. “Here was this man, not very well known, doing a standup comedy act back then. There was no mimicry, no acting and no attempt to make people laugh. He was simply chatting with the audience with a straight, blank face and we were collapsing in our chairs, laughing.”
After the act, Palekar went backstage to meet Verma and to “introduce myself to him”. That was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. In 1973, when Bada Kabutar, a comedy film directed by Verma released, Palekar went to watch its very first show at Lotus Theatre in Mumbai.
“It was, oh my God, such a beautiful comedy, typical of what Basu Chatterjee and Mukherjee would subsequently make,” says Palekar. Lotus Theatre does not exist anymore. The film, Bada Kabutar, also lies forgotten. “It was probably far too ahead of its time,” says Palekar. “Whenever we met, we would have an adda (Bengali for intellectual exchange). I will miss that. I will miss him terribly.”
Verma once said that you can have a small role in a film and yet shine, or a big one and yet come out a dud. Verma had that ability and the discipline to shine no matter how tiny the role. In the 1969 black-and-white film, Khamoshi, directed by Asit Sen and starring Rajesh Khanna and Waheeda Rehman, he plays Patient No 22 admitted in a psychiatric ward. It’s a small side role, but unforgettable. Here, in one song, he reveals the several layers of the actor in him.
The song, Dost kahan koi tumsa by Manna Dey, sees him as a ‘drunk’ man intoxicated on an empty bottle that he has found in the ward; he’s also a playful inmate, teasing and provoking his fellow inmates; and then, the next moment, he is a traumatised man standing by a statue of a mother and child, his face contorted in agony and wearing a faraway look. He was a comedian who could transcend the genre he was seen most in and yet leave an impression.
Those who grew up in the 1970s and ’80s would surely remember the song Mummy O Mummy from Basu Chatterjee’s Khatta Meetha. It has Verma playing an endearing character of a Parsi bachelor who is getting on in age and is desperate to marry. His desperation is both comical and sad, and the heart cannot help but feel happy when he finally does find a bride in Preeti Ganguli (his sister-in-law in real life). That’s the power his realistic, believable comedy had.
Verma, whose father was in the silver business, was always interested in acting. He got into it early, participate in dramas and youth festivals during his college days in Pune, he told Patcy N of Rediff.com in an interview in July 2013.
The later films, like the Aamir Khan-Salman Khan starring Andaz Apna Apna (1994), couldn’t quite tap into the actor who finally decided to retire. But there was a time when he was working in 16 movies together because “I was in the industry for so long and had made so many friends, so I couldn’t say no and disappoint anyone,” he said in the Rediff interview. A good thing too. His inability to say ‘no’ has left us with more films to remember him by.
Clarification
An earlier version of this article had incorrectly stated that the 1969 movie Khamoshi was directed by Gulzar. It was, in fact, directed by Asit Sen. The error is regretted.