Govardhan Asrani (1941-2025): The Hero’s Best Friend

 AT ONE POINT IN the film Chupke Chupke, when the phone stops working, Govardhan Asrani looks up, and says with a smile, there is only one solution for this: MISA (Maintenance of Internal Security Act, passed in 1971 and misused at will later). The year was 1975, Emergency was in place ostensibly to make trains run on time and telephones work over time. The director was the king of Middle Class Cinema, Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Asrani enacted the role of Prashant Kumar Srivastava, child­hood friend of Parimal Tripathi, played by Dharmendra, and also the friend of Kumar Sinha (Amitabh Bachchan), in a hilarious take on intentional mistaken identities, with huge splash of linguistic acrobatics.

With a studied economy of gesture and artfully enunciated dialogues, Asrani was able to do a lot with little. Think of his tiny role in Sholay (1975) as the “Angrezon ke zamane ka jailer”. Mixing physical humour, a Hitler-like moustache, a soundtrack playing “For he’s a jolly good fellow”, and some lucid lines, and Asrani could create memorable characters out of thin air.

And though he was predominantly a comic, he wasn’t always so.

In Chhoti Si Baat (1975), he was the man about town trying to impress Vidya Sinha with his knowledge of the menu at Mumbai’s swish Cafe Samovar, with a special dish that Basu Chatterjee, the director, playfully called Chicken Ala Poos (which didn’t exist). In Khoon Pasina (1977), Asrani played a farmer who is murdered. And earlier, in the delightful Bawarchi (1972), he played a music director who copies English songs and pretends he is an artist—and therefore cannot be bothered by the humdrum routine of running a household.

For those who came of age in the noughties, Asrani was the comedic elder statesman, even if in small roles in Priyadarshan classics such as Hera Pheri (2000) and Bhool Bhu­laiyaa (2007). These are movies in which he added to his character at will, given both his training as an actor at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) and his long experience across 350 films.

Asrani came of age at a time when comedic roles were performed by desig­nated comedians—actors such as Kader Khan and Johny Lever. That was before the hero became a complete all-rounder, and the writing in movies started declining, adapting to gigantic egos and bigger pay cheques.

At FTII, Asrani acted with the best filmmakers of his time, from Adoor Gopalakrishnan in a student film and Ritwik Ghatak in a staff film that was de­signed to train the students of the acting course. He had gone to FTII at the behest of Hrishikesh Mukherjee, with whom he had a long association.

But it was as the hero’s best friend that Asrani achieved immortality. In Abhimaan (1973), he was the hero’s conscience, counselling an increasingly giddy and arrogant Amitabh Bachchan about how his indulgences would ruin his singing career. As he watches his friend sink into depression as his wife becomes more successful, he tries everything in his power to help him, until it is too late. Whether it is scolding Bachchan or weeping uncontrollably when Jaya Bhaduri sings, Asrani is all of us, the voice of rea­son, simplicity and sanctity.

In Namak Haraam (1973), Asrani is Rajesh Khanna’s fac­tory worker friend who knows a thing or two about having fun on Holi. Khanna was, in fact, an offscreen friend, and they did 25 movies together.

And in Alaap (1977), again directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Asrani is the classically trained tongawallah who entertains chote babu Bachchan when he comes to town. He is also the one who wants his friend to go back to his rich fa­ther, even if he has to sacrifice the love of his own sister, played by a deglamorised Rekha.

They were all buddies and brothers-in-arms. Asrani was at Bachchan’s wedding with Bhaduri, as well as by Khanna’s side in many movies, and Govinda’s partner in laughter in many blockbusters. He had another life too, as a lead actor in Gujarati cinema, where he excelled in several movies.

One of Asrani’s greatest and most underrated achieve­ments was Chala Murari Hero Banne, a 1977 Hindi film he directed. Asrani starred as Murari, an outsider, the son of a master tailor, who comes to Mumbai to become a star. The movie had a host of cameos, and was one of the first films on life within the film industry. It showed the struggle of extras, the fandom around stars, the visits for work across studios and the eventual price of fame. “Jo aadmi sapne nahin dekhta woh zindagi main kuch nahin kar sakta (Those who don’t dream can’t do),” As­rani tells his father who berates him for day-dreaming, reading film magazines, and narrating film stories to his buddies all day long. This was not the comic Asrani one had come to expect, but a more mature and substantial performer. When the film ends, yet another Murari gets down from the train at Bombay Central and asks for directions to RK Studios, because he wants to meet Raj Kapoor. And so the cycle of outsiders becoming insiders continues.

But Bollywood plays by a strange set of rules. Nothing succeeds like success, and Asrani’s easy inhabiting of the Hero’s Best Friend cast him in that role for much of his career. And once the hero started to cannibalise the comedic parts, there was less and less for him to do.

Asrani was able to evolve with the times, finding newer filmmakers to cast him, but the space for manoeuvring was reduced as stars started dictating terms to filmmakers. It led to the erosion of character actors, until streaming services made stars out of them.

He died as he would have liked to, with his acting shoes on, having shot for a forthcoming Priyadarshan movie, with just one line of dialogue left to deliver. In one of his last performances in the second season of the streaming show The Trial, he almost managed to outwit the decades younger Kajol onscreen by trying to milk sympathy on account of his age.

It was a nice touch, a sort of farewell to the world of make believe, by a seasoned actor who knew full well how to make the most of emotions.