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A gem among villains

M Mohammed

Ajit. Click for bigger pic!

It was easy to understand him being killed in all his films -- it seemed the only way to squash that irrepressible wit. But it is difficult to accept, somehow, that he is dead in real life. For in that we witness the passing of a good man, a gentleman.

His one-liners were picked and copied by various people but Ajit himself never placed much importance on his film career. And in his house there are no pictures from either his personal album or his roles.

His face had registered the ravages of time, but nothing affected that distinctive, well-modulated baritone.

Ajit was born Hamed Ali Khan on January 27, 1922 in a conservative Muslim family in Hyderabad. His father Basheer Ali Khan was a horseman in the third Golconda Lancers in the erstwhile Hyderabad state and was respected for his skilled horsemanship by the ruling Asaf Jahi family.

After going to school in Hyderabad and college in Warangal, his father suggested that he join the military since he was well-built and good at sports -- football and hockey being his favourite games. But he wanted to become a film actor, and his parents yielded to his request. In 1943, he came to Bombay, equipped with recommendation letters and a few pennies.

He lost everything when somebody robbed his suitcase containing his clothes and money. And for the better half of 1943, he spent his nights on the pavements of Bhendi Baazar and Victoria Terminus, doing insignificant roles in films as an extra.

This routine continued until dame luck smiled on him. He did commentaries for a couple of documentaries offered by Rafi Ghaznavi, the well-known AIR producer of the time.

Impressed with his voice and physique, a prominent film-maker offered him a role as hero in Shah-e-Misr. The film was released in 1948 amidst the political turmoil of Partition and failed at the box office.

He was noticed, though, and scores of offers poured in thereafter, but the film that really catapulted him to limelight was K Amarnath's Beqarar opposite Madhubala. He never looked back.

Some of his best movies were Baradari, Nastik, Naya Daur, Bada Bhai, Marine Drive, Delhi Door Nahi, Prince and Mughal-e-Azam. Out of the 200 films he finally starred in, he played the hero in 57.

Click for bigger pic!

He earned a niche for himself as a villain in the early 1960s with the release of the box-office hit, Suraj. He played the villain for the first time there because his friend, Rajendra Kumar wanted someone good at swordplay to play the villain.

Suraj made him the most sought after villain, with contemporaries like Premnath, Pran and Anwar Hussain being all sidelined. And in Zanjeer, he surpassed himself. People still quote his famous lines, "Mona darling..."

Compared to other stars of his time, Ajit was financially better off. He attributes this to the fact that he never thought of producing a film after retirement. Instead, he was among the few industrywallahs who invested heavily in government bonds in response to the call given by Indira Gandhi to curb black money -- and profited. Other actors, like Bharat Bhushan, burnt their fingers producing movies.

If he had any small regret, it was his inability to work with Nargis. He unabashedly asserted that the actors of his heyday were both dedicated and glamorous. He admitted there was no dearth of talent in the film industry even today, but he abhorred most of the new breed of stars for their affectations and tantrums.

Ajit himself wasn't ostentatious or fussy. He quit the film world after watching a young film actress treat those on the sets badly despite having come in hours late. It is hard to earn a name and even harder to keep it up and still remain human, he used to say.

When it was pointed out that he himself had the image of a bad man, Ajit once shot back that his screen image was in sharp contrast to what he was in real life. Deeply religious, he used to pray at home or in a mosque near his palatial house in Hyderabad's Banjara Hills area.

Ajit was a philanthropist and helped the needy without fanfare. When he read about the illness of an ailing football player in Hyderabad whom he had seen playing in his childhood, he called up the office of the newspaper that carried the story during one of his visits to Hyderabad where his conservative wife and children lived, and tried to locate the man in an effort to help him.

He showed no trace of reticence though when he said there were only two famous things that emerged from Hyderabad's Golconda fort --- the Kohinoor diamond and Ajit.

But then, who can deny that?

EARLIER REPORT:
Ajit dead

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