The Underrated Series – Sayaji Shinde
iView Author: Sridhar Mayur (Hyderabad / India)
Email: withheld
“The Underrated Series – Sayaji Shinde”
All struggling actors want to achieve success and have the burning passion to act and perform and at most time luck does not favor, Sayaji Shinde falls in the same league. With no real exposure to acting, no guidance and a family background that was basically agricultural, he knew there was only one way of achieving his dream is to not let go of his will. He was born in a small village near Satara, Maharashtra. Sayaji first came to Mumbai almost 3 decades back in 1981 to make his dream come true, he has worked his way hard to the level he is now in. He started his acting career on stage in 1978 in the play ‘Ghot Bhar Pani’(among the crowd on stage). After he came to Mumbai he joined Jaidev and Rohini Hattangadi’s acting group, Avishkar. His first play in Mumbai was Maha Bhojan Tervachi (1984). It was a dream debut. The Marathi theatre recognised him as an actor of immense talent and the Maharashtra government honoured him as the Best Marathi Stage Actor of the year. In a proper case this would be the start of a great acting career, but that was not in store for Sayaji, he had to wait for 3 long years to work in his second play and eleven years to break into the mainstream. In 1995 he played the role of an Adivasi painter in Amol Shettege’s Marathi film, ‘Aboli’ and got the Filmfare Award for Best Actor (in Marathi cinema) that year. The awards stand out as examples of his honesty, calibre and dedication towards work.
His actual breakthrough came after the result of a mammoth struggle all these years in ‘Shool’(1999) when Manoj Bajpai introduced him to RGV, and thats where his talent was recognized and he started getting offers after his superlative performance as a Bihari politician. He had also acted in Darmiyaan as a eunuch which garnered critical acclaim, but he was getting bored playing a eunuch as he was also doing plays where he was eunuch and that was looking too much for him. One more attribute of this excellent artiste is practice, hailing from a Marathi background it was difficult for him to speak as a Bihari in ‘Shool’, so his practice came in hand, he practised the language every day and when you see the film, you will believe that he is a Bihari named ‘Bachoo Yadav’.
I think his best role was in Gnana Rajasekaran’s Tamil film ‘Bharathi’ where he portrays the role of Tamil Nadu’s greatest ever poet and writer Subramanya Bharathi, aka Bharathiar. This is my favorite, I was awed looking at Sayaji pronouncing pure Tamil words easily and playing the ‘rebel’ Subramanya Bharathi to the core with ease. Sayaji was honoured with state awards for this role. He is also recognised down south as an actor with great variety and talent. He has acted in many Telugu and Tamil films till date, the latest in Telugu is the blockbuster – Arundhati(2009).
Have a look at the clip guys(just an excerpt from an interview) and be awed in the way he speaks in Tamil and specially those Bharathiar lines. He also talks about the film Pokiri(telugu) which was a Silver Jubliee film in Telugu.
List of his films is here
Till date, Sayaji gets more work down south. He is still underrated in Indian Cinema. A brilliant artiste with great conviction. Be it comedy or tragedy, he enacts it to the core. A peculiar thing about Sayaji is he mouths his dialogue in any language on his own without dubbing, thats a trait of a learner and perfectionist. Its true that the accent doesnt sound authentic, but its his intent and conviction that he can do justice to his role through his voice which should be applauded. Artists like Sayaji really need director’s and producer’s who look up to him and throw challenges. I think he’s still got that potential which needs to be tapped. Just out of the topic, but someone like Ronnie Screwwala(UTV) has to come into picture. I am really loving the movies that UTV is backing, be it the concept or the guys behind it. All talented!!
Any tribute or article will fall short of the talent these guys have and I am sure, what they really crave for is the recognition rather than anything else. Hail the underrated!!
Finally, the combinations I would like to see are…
Vishal Bharadwaj* – Sayaji Shinde
Anurag Kashyap* – Sayaji Shinde
Neeraj Pandey* – Sayaji Shinde
and Dibakar Banerjee* – Sayaji Shinde for a wonderful comedy series…
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
I dont about all the awards he has got, but whatever I have seen of him is not that great. He has lot of mannerism. We both can be right at the same time as we have seen Nana Patekar, immenssly talented but lot of mannerism. Which is why charactor actors like Paresh Rawal, Om Puri, Naseer are more successful than likes of nana patekar and SayaJi Shinde. The formers come with no or very less mannerism and potray the charactor better.
Again…my asshole(I mean, opinion), you may have yours.
Shivaji Shinde is wasted in telgu cinema totally. I wish he could get good offers in marathi and hindi.
i think this series should have been – “overrated”…
i m really glad RGV found this gem of an artiste. He can do comic, negative, bihari, south indian, marathi… what a full-blown range. this is one reason i guess he has an edge over nana patekar. NP always sounds marathi…
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More power to the under rated. keep ‘em comin.
Well Sridhar- well researched especially about his early days.Seriously it was good to see him doing something different in Arundhati.He had almost got stereotyped as a baddie with a comic touch doing inane roles in telugu.He looked so convincing in Bharathi.I also found him extremely funny in Jodi No.1
@Abhishek D. – Correct, he has mannerisms of his own. But, I applaud him for his patience and conviction which he has carried forward for 3 decades and just have a look(if you get a chance) of his work in Subramaniam Bharathi(Tamil Film) – Hes done a pretty good job. He badly needs the right guys behind the camera to get the best out of him! Please read my article completely again. I am not complaining that you haven’t read it, but just a request.
@cinemausher – Yes, he has selected some roles which are monotonous, but now and then you get to see a Arundhati. And, even I hope he gets to work under some good directors who can tap him to his potential and get some restrained performance out of him, thats a part of my wishlist as you see in my article.
@Satyendra Jha – Kyon bhai mere peeche lage ho, Ive seen you write excellent articles on Utpal Dutt and Sanjeev Kumar and I appreciate what you have written to the core. But, please dont degrade my articles, I am writing with a cause. I appreciate your work and will appreciate. I was really sad when you dint reply back to my comments on your posts(Both on Utpal Dutt and Sanjeev Kumar).
@Sethu – Thanks man, please explain Satyendra that we are all of the same league da.
@Ratnakar – Ekkadunava anna?
Thanks Magik for supporting me all through my series…
Really like Sayaji Shinde. Havent seen ‘Bharati’ but would love to watch it…
Really really liked him in Shool
>> Arre paani mein se bijli nikaal doge toh humare kisaano ke liye kya bachega!
>>mann mein hass ke dikhao
Sayaji Shinde, Danny, Kadar Khan, Rishi Kapoor are amongst the people that I would like to see more often. ofc Rishi Kapoor is doing more movies now, but still…
oh and ya, do keep the underrated series coming… Might not comment always but do read it regularly
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@rbehemoth – Wow, yep…the dailogues were real cool…in Bihari accent…Thanks mate
Sayaji was at his best in Shool. Whats his next?
Nice writeup Sridhar! We surely smell something here in the comments…
Anyways, we like the series & its a good tribute to the performers..keep them coming…
@#6 Sri, I can not comment on something I havent seen. I havent seen his work in other language movies. So I must have missed his best part.
Keep this series coming. Its good. We may or may not agree with you but it brings something new. I never knew ShayaJi is 30 yrs old in industry.
bharati – yes!!! someone told, the song ‘bharata samudayam vazhkave’ was apparently shot in pondy… in a single take… 3 minutes straight, and the entire audience… including the spectators and crew… wept with joy – to see this non-tamil actor become bharati… passionately singing a chaste tamil song, nonstop.
@Abhishek.D – Thanks for looking forward to the series mate
@wb – That was something new and never heard of. Wow! He did that in one take…Brilliant! Thanks for sharing this info with us
@Rahul Mitra – Thanks mate. You will see him in Salman’s ‘Wanted Dead and Alive’ the remake of Telugu Blockbuster ‘Pokiri’, he would be playing the same role he did in the Telugu version. And, apart from that some Telugu and Tamil films in the pipeline.
Nice article. Thanks Sridhar..
Underrated and wasted mostly… Havn’t seen any Tamil Telugu films though.
Saw him in Tendulkar’s ‘Sakharam Binder’ most recently.. Tour de force performance. He lives the character.
Thanks for ‘Bharati’ looks like a interesting portrayal. Will add to my list…
@Satya – Thank you
Sridhar @ 7: bro, i realise i was a bit too harsh and judgemental in my comments. didnt mean to deride ur article at all. im also in the same boat as u, trying to be a bit more ‘passionate’, and my comment must have been the outcome of a momentary ‘verbal-ejaculaion’. hope u understand. i really appreciate the positive comments u make on my articles, which u call great, (i may differ u on tht…).
i cant afford to lose a fellow PFCian, esp since i need all the eyeballs for my articles. hope sethu doesnt need to intervene now…
@Satyen – Please, no apologies bro. I already commented on your Sanjeev Kumar article on this
. I could refer any article as great(in the context) in my understanding without any exaggeration and you can think thats my range. Keep them coming and Thank you.
I think this guy has talent but currently in bollywood he is just a one film wonder.. what a performance though.. its very difficult not to overact in the role that he played in shool..