As Bollywood veteran Satish Kaushik passes away at 66, all you need to know about his legacy

For decades, Satish Kaushik has entertained Bollywood audiences playing bumbling side-characters in hits like Mr India, Hum Aapke Dil Mei Rehte Hai, and Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro and many more. Sadly, Kaushik is no more, having succumbed to a cardiac arrest on Wednesday (March 8).

The entertainer who has appeared in over 100 films was still smiling like always in the moments before his heart attack. As of Wednesday morning, Kaushik could be seen enjoying a Holi party at Javed Akhtar and Shabana Azmi's house. 

The quintessential funnyman

Kaushik was in the leagues of B-town’s quintessential funnymen such as Johnny Lever, the late Kader Khan, and Rajpal Yadav. Even if the movie as a whole was forgettable, Kaushik’s presence in a scene or two would be remembered more no matter how random it might seem in the plot otherwise. 

A particular case in point is the iconic scene from 1999’s Hum Aapke Dil Mei Rehte Hai, a romantic drama that Kaushik also wrote and directed. The Anil Kapoor-starrer is just another conventionally outdated drama from the 90s but the scenes involving Kaushik’s German (yes that’s his character’s name) and Johnny Lever’s Sunny are comedic gold. 

Kaushik plays the secretary to Anil Kapoor’s hero and Lever appears as a moneylender with shady connections. As Sunny owes German money, he asks him if he needs the added “interest” too. In Satish Kaushik’s typical smiling attitude, German gleefully requests for interest. Sunny then traps him in a shop and lets his two heavily-muscled henchmen give him “interest”. The whole sequence of Kaushik getting beaten black and blue stands for the actor’s standard brand of nonsensical, family-friendly humour. It might seem rather too simplistic for modern audiences but back in the 90s, Kaushik rightfully had his moment to shine with such scenes. 

And while a good deal of his filmography included massy entertainers, Kaushik was also one of the most unforgettable faces of the talented ensemble on the iconic satire Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. Firing shots at the state of media and bureaucratic corruption, the cult comedy starred Naseeruddin Shah and Ravi Baswani along with the likes of Om Puri, Pankaj Kapur, and Satish Shah each of whom are on their comedic A-game. 

Kaushik yet again appeared as an assistant over here, playing Ashok Namboodirippad, the right-hand man to Pankaj Kapur’s corrupt contractor Tarneja. One of the 1983 film’s most iconic scenes finds Kaushik and Naseerudin Shah’s characters talking to each other on their respective phones while standing behind each other. Both are unaware of their presence in the room and keep on talking like the simpletons they portray. It’s a Chaplin-esque scene executed with Kaushik’s naivety. 

Anil Kapoor was a frequent partner in crime for some of Kaushik’s similarly iconic and hilarious performances including Calendar in Mr India and Kashiram in Ram-Lakhan. But his comedic brand aside, Kaushik also had a dramatic side which he either brought out through some of his latter roles and his tumultuous directorial career. 

A director with a mixed record

Much like Kader Khan who juggled being a screenwriter and an on-screen comedian, Kaushik embarked on several writing and directing ventures in the 1990s and 2000s. However, unlike Khan, Kaushik probably lacked a finesse with most of his films being remakes of South Indian dramas. And even when judged on their own merit, their themes of love and gender relations of that time might definitely not age well with modern audiences.

Regardless, the impact of some of his films are unmatched. After all, it was Kaushik who directed Tere Naam that defined the hairstyle of young men in North India for quite some time. Salman Khan’s toxic lover boy Radhe continues to be a “sigma male” and a meme template for Gen-Z even today (albeit in a negative sense among the “meninist” demographic). 

Two years before Tere Naam, Kaushik had directed the Tusshar Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor-fronted romance Mujhe Kucch Kehna Hai. Again, it’s not the most advisable film for romantic men given its infamous scene where the hero professes his love in a letter that he writes with his own blood! 

Transition to more dramatic roles

But despite Kaushik’s directorial misfires, the man was still respected as a character actor. Much like many other actors of his era, Kaushik was trying to rebrand himself with relatively  more serious roles as can be seen from his performance as the 90s-era stock market influencer Manu Mundra in Hansal Mehta’s wildly-popular web series Scam 1992. 

In fact, while mourning his loss, Mehta also took to Instagram to express how he was eager to channel more of Kaushik’s dramatic prowess in a working project titled “Ek Director Ki Maut” which as Mehta writes, “is no longer a film”. Roles of rugged policemen/politicians/gangsters were exemplified well with an aged Kaushik as can be seen from his performances as cocaine-addicted rapper Tommy Singh's manager in Udta Punjab, a sidekick to frequent collaborator Anil Kapoor in Netflix’s Thar, and a Labour Minister during the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy in the Hollywood co-production Bhopal: A Prayer For The Rain. 

One of his posthumous releases would be the period thriller Emergency that stars Kangana Ranaut as Indira Gandhi and Kaushik as former Defence Minister Jagjivan Ram. Regardless of how the film turns out to be, it might offer yet another chance for the late Kaushik to show his range beyond the slapstick comedy he’s identified with. 

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After all, one must not forget that Kaushik has had a dramatic background. Pursuing his Bachelor’s in Delhi University’s Kirori Mal College (KMC), Kaushik graduated in 1972 and went on to be a student at both the National School of Drama and the Film and Television Institute of India.A part of KMC’s iconic theatre society Players, one of Kaushik’s earliest stage roles included a part in the college’s reworking of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. The ever-humble star has often revisited his DU alma matter during theatre and film events. 

The underdog from Haryana

With everything he achieved as a side-actor and director, Kaushik’s story is ultimately inspirational. Hailing from Haryana’s Mahendragarh, Kaushik was an outsider to Mumbai like many other 70s alumni of NSD and FTII. 

He moved to the big city with a meagre 800 rupees in his pocket and worked his way up the ranks serving as an assistant director to Shekhar Kapur on Masoom and then forming such a bond with him that he ended up creating the character of Calendar himself for Kapur’s next feature, Mr India. It was a win-win situation as Calendar turned out to be one of the gleeful actor’s best roles and became an iconic Mr India character joining the ranks of Amrih Puri’s Mogambo and Sridevi’s Seema Sohni. 

But making industry connection and his struggle to separate himself from the funny man trope had its challenges. Before successes like Tere Naam, Kaushik started his directorial career with the 1993 Sridevi-starrer Roop ki Rani Choron Ka Raja, the highest budget Hindi film of that time. The film failed to recover its Rs 9 crore budget and is still considered as one of the biggest Bollywood duds at the box office. 

Yet much like the characters he played, his optimistic charm and friendly relations with industry figures like Anil Kapoor and his producer brother Boney Kapoor ensured his career’s longevity. He has managed to have friendly relations with the earliest of his friends such as Neena Gupta (who co-starred with him in his debut Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro). Gupta, in her recent memoir revealed, that when she had a child (designer Masaba Gupta) out of wedlock, Kaushik himself offered to marry her out of a friendly concern. 

The two remained good friends even though Kaushik later married Shashi Kaushik in 1985. The couple had a son Shanu who unfortunately died at the age of two in 1996. Since then, Kaushik had a daughter Vanshika who was born in 2012 through a surrogate mother. Now, with his unprecedented demise, the Bollywood veteran will be survived by his wife and daughter.