The Baddie Who Beat the Blues

Bollywood may have cast its classic villains aside, but this actor kept the bad guy role alive and grunting

Before the 1980S, villains in Bollywood films—most of which were essentially morality plays pitting good against evil—almost had it as good as the hero in character treatment. They had underground lairs, molls who fetched them whisky-sodas, and buttons which when pushed revealed pools of acid under the floor. They dressed flashily and delivered dramatic dialogues in a deep baritone. Unsurprisingly, a number of villains of that era, including the likes of Pran, Amjad Khan, Prem Chopra and Ajit, are still remembered. The 1980s, however, ushered in a different era. Films became almost entirely about the heroes. How the male lead, with insurmountable odds stacked against him, manages to win love or avenge loss through the course of 180 minutes. The films of this period were garish and mediocre, and those of the decade that followed were not much better.

Except for Amrish Puri, who was already an established actor when the 1980s came, few found much success as villains in this period. The other exception was Sadashiv Amrapurkar.

When the actor died on 3 November of a lung infection he had been suffering from for around a fortnight, the news brought with it a rush of nostalgia on social media from those who had worked with him to those who had seen his work. Since his debut in the 1983 film Ardh Satya, he’d played several memorable roles. The most famous among them were the roles of the don Rama Shetty in Ardh Satya; of a eunuch, Maharani, in Sadak; and of the businessman Deenbandhu Deenanath in Hukumat.

The films of that era may have been terrible, but Amrapurkar the actor would almost always make his mark. And he remained integral to Bollywood, mostly as a villain but sometimes also in comic roles, for over two decades.

Amrapurkar was born on 11 May 1950 as Ganesh Kumar Narwode to an affluent Maharashtrian Brahmin family in Ahmednagar. Known as ‘Tatya’ among friends and family, he adopted the name Sadashiv Amrapurkar in 1974 when he made his foray into theatre. He did around 50 plays and began to act in Marathi films. Sometime in 1981, the director Govind Nihalani was impressed by Amrapurkar’s rendition of a comedian cop in a Marathi play, Hands-Up!, and offered him the villain’s role in Ardh Satya. Nihalani told The Times Of India, “The writer of Ardh Satya, Vijay Tendulkar, arranged a meeting between Sadashiv and me. I watched his play and halfway through decided to cast him in a villain’s role, that of a don. I felt that if his comedy was good, he would also excel in a negative role…”

The 1991 film Sadak, in which Amrapurkar played a menacing transvestite, also won him many laurels. After the Filmfare Award for best actor in a negative role was instituted the following year, he was its first recipient.

Apart from films, Amrapurkar is said to have been a philanthropist and social activist, engaged in a number of social organisations. He was in the news last year when some miscreants assaulted him near his residence in Mumbai for his protest against water wastage during Holi.

In all, he is said to have acted in around 300 films of various languages. A man so integral to Bollywood’s scheme of affairs in the 1980s and 1990s, he almost completely vanished after that period. He was last seen on the big screen last year—as an old, bald man in the film Bollywood Talkies.

It was a role that lasted only a few minutes, and he appears as an apparition, taunting the actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui for refusing a role in a film because of its short length.

About The Author

Lhendup G Bhutia

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