Saeed Jaffrey: The Affable Actor

The movie that one shouldn’t really remember Saeed Jaffrey by is called Dil, a 1990 blockbuster that starred Aamir Khan and Madhuri Dixit. Jaffrey played the rich father who is against the romance of his daughter. It was a stern, unforgiving, negative character and yet in every frame you expected him to break into a trademark chuckle or witticism, slightly mystifying you in the process. Hindi movies of that age didn’t really worry too much about the nuances of casting—and this was at a time that Jaffrey was acting in 8 to 10 movies every year—but it was evident that this was not a role made for him.

Every profile or obituary you read of Jaffrey, who passed away at the age of 86, has one thing in common to note about him—an impossible-to-ignore likeability. This was the personality that shone through in most of the movies that he is actually remembered for. Whether it was a decadent nawab in Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj Ke Khilari or a neighbourhood paanwala in Sai Paranjape’s Chashme Buddoor, he left an aftertaste of geniality in the audience.

This was how he was he. As Paranjape remembered him in The Indian Express after his death, ‘For the part, Saeed was keen to study the mannerisms of typical old Delhi paanwalas. Every morning, he would visit that part of the city, and drag me along too, to sit and chat endlessly with some of the paanwalas and locals. He would listen to their stories, picking up their accent, leheza, and the words they used. In return he would enthral them with stories, speaking in chaste Urdu… What endeared audiences to Lallan Miyan is the affability the character exuded. But it isn’t a trait limited to the character. Even in other films, this remains a common thread. It perhaps stems from his off-screen persona — Saeed was an extremely pleasant and warm person who would never really hold back.’ A profile on him in the UK broadsheet The Independent found the writer, who had gone to interview Jaffrey, stating, ‘He is not shy of telling you about his achievements, or of quoting his glowing reviews. Still, after only a couple of hours, you can only feel fond of someone who’ll draw you a cartoon, sing you a song, and burst into tears at the memory of a friend.’

Jaffrey’s career is unusual for a man who began as an announcer at All India Radio in the beginning of the 1950s. He had done his schooling in Uttar Pradesh and acting seemed to have come to him as an inevitability even in those days when it was not a serious calling for a young man from a middle-class family. Jaffrey started a theatre company in Delhi and then went on to study drama in the United States. He would go on to work with directors like John Huston, Richard Attenborough and David Lean (remaining bitter about Lean cutting his role in A Passage to India and not having any kind words for him in interviews even half a century later). His return to India as an actor in mainstream cinema only began in earnest in the early 80s, something that was an offshoot of his roles in Chashme Buddoor and Gandhi. From then on, you can see a sudden surfeit of Hindi names to the movies he acted in: Masoom, Kissi Se Na Kehna, Ram Teri Ganga Maili and so on.

Articles on him in the UK often said that he was big in Bollywood. Actually he was a rather peripheral figure to an Indian moviegoer. Jaffrey seems to have been more amused than worried about how Bollywood operated—working in 12 movies at the same time.

Towards the later stages of his career, he became a household name in Britain through roles in popular television shows there. He is rarely called a great actor, but his presence, even when minor, was unmistakable.

Chashme BuddoorpaanwalaSaeed JaffreySai ParanjapeShatranj Ke Khilari