It is Madhu’s (Madhuri Dixit) second day in college when Raja (Aamir Khan) plays a prank on her, to avenge his humiliation from the previous day. As Madhu realises it to turn around and see whose hand was on her shoulder. It belonged to a man with a face, swing and hand gestures uncannily similar to a yesteryear star. When Madhu asks him his name, he replies, “Dev…Dev Anand naam hai mera. Nafrat karne waalon ke seene mein pyar bhar doon, main woh parwana hoon jo patthar ko mom kar doon (My name is Dev Anand. For those who hate me, I fill their hearts with love. I am that who can soften a rock).” The film is Dil (1990). It made Dev Anand want to meet his doppelgänger and joke about having to imitate him instead, but he shakes too much. The latter must have sung after his rendezvous, Mere tere dil ka taye thha ek din milna…tere mere sapne ab ek rang hai, jahan bhi le jaayein raahein, hum sang hai. And with that began the three-decade-long screen career of this lookalike, Kishor Bhanushali urf/aka Jr. Dev Anand, Dev Anand carbon copy, Dev Anand duplicate.
Bhanushali, along with Firoz Khan (Jr. Amitabh Bachchan) and Prashant Walde (Jr. Shah Rukh Khan), duplicates of stars of three generations, form the pièce de résistance of Geetika Narang Abbasi’s delicious documentary URF/a.k.a. (2022), on the real people behind the identity of the actors they impersonate. The film, shot by her cinematographer-author-husband Yasir Abbasi, had its world premiere at the prestigious International Film Festival Rotterdam last year and won the Best Long Documentary Award at the 2022 International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala.
“Kishor was the most obvious choice for the film. He’s still among the most famous lookalikes. He was the last one I met and interviewed for the film because he is forever busy. Unlike the others, who became melancholic while telling their stories, Kishor had an objective view of everything. He was very articulate and practical, like he is in life,” says Gurugram-based Narang Abbasi, who was 9-years-old when she saw Dil and remembered his uncanny resemblance with Dev Anand. “Dev Saab was very handsome and charming, Kishor is nothing like that, he’s a true Gujarati, but when he enacts Dev Saab, he’s striking,” she adds. Years later, in 2015, she saw him play a cameo, as a broker, in Apartment: Rent At Your Own Risk (2010) and “wondered where have all these lookalikes disappeared. At one point, in the ’90s, these lookalikes were given separate comedy tracks to ensure the success of films,” says Narang Abbasi.
Actor Sidhant Gupta paid a fabulous tribute to Dev Anand in Vikramaditya Motwane’s web-series Jubilee, but what is it to live your whole life as a celebrity lookalike?
The late gorgeous Dev Anand, who turned a century today, and his doppelgänger Bhanushali both had similar beginnings, both lived in a chawl at the start of their struggle period. But the original came from his college in Lahore to pre-Partition Bombay in 1943, the stranger in the city lived in a chawl in Parel, while the junior is a Bambaiyya Kutchi who was born in 1962 in Jogeshwari’s Rani Chawl, which three months ago was torn down for redevelopment. Both, wanting to be actors — the mirror told them they had it in them — would hang around producers’ offices asking for work. Baburao Pai asked Anand to visit Prabhat Film Company and meet director PL Santoshi (director Rajkumar Santoshi's father), and thus he landed his debut role in Hum Ek Hain (1945). Bhanushali, of course, had a reference point, and an instantly recognisable face, but his struggle was tortuous, so he sang Hum bekhudi mein tumko pukare chale gaye and trotted away.
Bhanushali, who did his schooling from Surajba Vidya Mandir and Gokalibai Punamchand Pitambar High School, was in junior school when Rajesh Khanna’s Haathi Mere Saathi and Jeetendra’s Caravan had released in 1971. His parents took little Kishor to watch these at Hanjar Talkies. “Tickets, those days, were priced at 5 paise-Rs 2.20 paise. Going to the theatre to watch a film was a huge deal in those days, almost like a festival, the entire mohalla was informed about it,” says the eternally-busy Bhanushali, 61, who could only find time between his shots, for the TV serial Happu Ki Ultan Paltan, to speak to me. That his character was called Johny in the TV serial CID (1998) was no coincidence.
Bhanushali was around 10 years old when someone, who’d watched Johny Mera Naam (1970), remarked that he looked a lot like Dev Anand. “I had no idea who this Dev Anand was. But this pill called Dev Anand was fed to me, and I yearned to watch his films. But I was still young, and had no money to go to the theatres by myself. I egged my cousin in Palghar to show me Yeh Gulistan Hamara (1973) at Prakash Talkies, and then I shrieked, yeh main hoon, main hoon, main hoon (this is me, me, me!). At home, I urged my elder brother to source a second-hand video film of his and we watched Jewel Thief (1967). Then, I stood in front of the mirror, buttoned my shirt collar, tied a handkerchief around my neck and began shaking my head in Dev Saab’s style. That neck has been shaking even 55 years later,” he says, his twang is still distinctively Dev Anand-like, even on the phone, and this is, perhaps, the closest I’d come to the late legend.
Years before Bhanushali arrived on screen, there was another Gujarati from Jogeshwari whose claim to fame was also that he was a Dev Anand lookalike, Habib, famously known as Sev Anand, appeared in IS Johar’s Nasbandi (1978), but could never find popularity and much work in that era. Johar was the only person in those times who made films with duplicates. His 5 Rifles (1974), with Rajesh Khanna and Shashi Kapoor look-alikes, and a super-hit song Jhoom barabar jhoom sharaabi, was a blockbuster hit. Bhanushali lucked out in the ’90s. After Dil came Ramgarh Ke Sholay (1991), with him and the look-alikes of Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor, Govinda, Mehmood, and the original Amjad Khan, and then cameos in more than 150 films (Aunty No. 1, Baaghi, Gopi Kishan, Karan Arjun, Bewafa Sanam, Sabse Bada Khiladi, Barsaat, among others) over three decades. “I got to act with big stars, whose glimpse I’d craved for, Asha Parekh, Manoj Kumar (Jai Hind, 1999), Shammi Kapoor, Dharmendra ji, met Shashi Kapoor, had sev puri with Rajesh Khanna,” Bhanushali says.
But the road to landing a role in Dil was long and potholed. Kishor was in Class VI or VII when the acting bug had bitten him, so he’d cycle from Jogeshwari to producers’ offices. Autorickshaws hadn’t arrived in Bombay yet. Producers chided him and would say, “go, ask Dev Anand for work”. The 10-year-old cycled to Dev Anand’s bungalow, behind Chandan Talkies, in Juhu, which was like a forest in those days and scary to venture out in the mornings, too, he says. “One day, a blue Fiat came out of the gates, and Dev Saab was sitting inside. He always sat in the front seat. The driver would look at me and at him intermittently and laugh. I started acting there. Dev Saab said, not like this on the road, come see me in office (Santacruz). I got to know that a room in Juhu’s Sun and Sand Hotel always remained booked under his name. So, I mustered courage and shadowed him one day. We were alone in the lift, but I was a nervous wreck. After a few steps, he turned around and asked: ‘Why are you following me?’ I said it then, please give me work. He asked me what I was doing in life and added that I’m neither a kid nor an adult, he didn’t have any role my age. And that I should meet him after completing my education,” says Bhanushali.
On these trips, he befriended Shatrughan Sinha at Prakash Mehra’s office in Juhu during the shoot of Jwalamukhi (1980). Another actor he befriended was Jackie Shroff. Both were launched, so to speak, among many newcomers, by Dev Anand.
At age 12, Bhanushali started performing on the stage. “We would dance-sing on HMV records of Dev Saab’s and Mukesh’s songs all night long, at weddings and festivals, across Mumbai, for free. I wanted to perform. HMV records were for Rs 12 apiece, a lot of money back then, we’d borrow or buy second-hand and hide it from family. Nobody in our Kutchi caste had heard anyone become actors, then creatively most famous Kutchis were (composers) Kalyanji-Anandji. Our family was into a small business of boriya (gunny bags),” he says, “I’d mostly sing Mukesh. Later, I started singing Kishore Kumar, Mohd Rafi, Manna De, Mahendra Kapoor, everyone. Today I’m a professional singer. My house faces the airport, I have eight filled passports and have visited the US 11 times.”
At age 24, Bhanushali was married. Then came his son Karan. With a family to provide for, the acting bug was put on the backburner. At 26, in 1988, he did a show for actor-comedian Mohan Choti, then landed a small role in a video film Pagal Khana. Asking his father for leave from work was a matter of great conundrum for him. One day, he got called to Bandra Bandstand, where Dil’s shooting was going on. He was made to stand in the crowd, but he stood out so much to make director Indra Kumar (aka Indra Irani, actress Aruna Irani’s brother) roll away with laughter.
He was summoned the next day to Bandra’s Parsi Bungalow, a famous film-shooting location (Tezaab, Angaar), which today is SRK’s Mannat residence. More than 20 per cent of the film had been shot before Bhanushali’s first shot — as an extra in the scene of Anupam Kher’s house party — was okayed. There were no monitors back then. So, when Aamir Khan came in later, Bhanushali and others were asked to redo the shot. “Aamir liked my performance so much that he told the director he wants me to be with him the entire film,” says Bhanushali, who was given the Aashirwad Award for the Best Supporting Actor by director-producer BR Chopra.
Bhanushali fondly remembers Amjad Khan from Ramgarh Ke Sholay days, “Amjad bhai sona aadmi thhe, bahut achhe insaan. There was a scene where we had to jump from a great height. Now, in those days, India was swept by a Bruce Lee craze (Fist of Fury, Enter the Dragon). I had learnt riding. So, I insisted I’d do the stunts on my own, don’t need a body double. Amjad bhai said, don’t be a fool. Then I fractured my leg and shot the remaining film with a plastered leg,” laughs Bhanushali.
“It was, in fact, after watching Ramgarh Ke Sholay that a hopeful Firoz Khan left Badayun for Bombay,” adds Narang Abbasi, in whose documentary this Jr. Amitabh Bachchan says, with a contorted face, “I think, after Hrithik Roshan, no big star has had a lookalike/duplicate. It was easier to observe and imitate the yesteryear actors. These days it’s difficult to catch anyone’s acting style. Amit ji, Shatru ji, Raaj Kumar, all these stars had a style of their own. Today everyone follows the same way of indistinguishable acting: ‘natural’.”
Bhanushali, however, accords his god “Dev Saab” the title of “the most stylish actor ever to be born”. However, the very identity that gave him a place in the sun also became an albatross around his neck. “In our industry, there’s a problem, you get typecast. If you act a drunkard once, that’s the role you’ll get for life (Keshto Mukherjee) or a cop role (Jagdish Raj, Iftekhar). But in those days, I wanted to act any which way, I had no idea that I’d be typed and not get acting offers because of my face. Dev Anand ka thhappa lag gaya, lekin ussi thhappe se mujhe fayda bhi toh hua (I was stamped for life, but I also benefitted from that identity),” he says.
Bhanushali, a lookalike-cum-tribute artist, adds, “There’s a world of difference between plain lookalikes and lookalike actors. The formers only utter dialogues by rote. If I were just copying, I wouldn’t have survived in the industry till now. I’m also doing theatre now and doing all kinds of roles. Perhaps, not as busy as I was in the ’90s, shooting for three-four films in a day. Jeetu (Jeetendra) and Salman’s (Khan) dates you could have still got, but not mine. If in those days, we got Rs 5,000 a day, today we can get Rs 25,000.”
“On TV, I got a big role in Shaktiman, I did Asha Parekh’s serials Kora Kagaz and Dal Mein Kala Hai, I did 10-12 serials for Doordarshan, and, more recently, (as inspector Resham Pal) in Bhabiji Ghar Par Hai and Happu Ki Ultan Paltan. If you are not a manjha huya (seasoned) actor, the television folks will pick you and throw you like a fly from milk. You only get 10 minutes to prepare a scene. TV made me a household face but even today people remember me from Dil,” says Bhanushali, who’s just completed shooting for Prakash Vora’s Marathi film called Wasiyat, which will be re-shot in Gujarati, in January, with a meatier role for him.
Unlike in Hollywood, where there are entertainment companies managing celebrity lookalikes, in Bollywood, these star doubles are on their own.
“Someone told Kishor, perhaps it was Archana Puran Singh, that ‘Dev Saab ko aap logon ne zinda rakha hai (you lookalikes have kept Dev Anand alive)’. These lookalikes were not living off the stars but they also added to the stars’ popularity in some way. They reach remote places where the stars themselves couldn’t. People tell them, ‘inn sitaaron se mulakaat nahin ho sakti par aap logon se milkar laga ki filmi sitaaron se mulakat ho gayi’,” says Narang Abbasi, who hopes to release the documentary on an OTT platform.
If Bhanushali’s writer-actor son Karan, in the documentary, appreciates that his self-aware father never caricatured Dev Saab, left his own impression even in the enactments, and stopped accepting offers when he realised monotony was setting in, Bhanushali is all praise for his son, too, whom he lovingly calls Prem Chopra’s lookalike, “While I have travelled to perform in every nook and cranny in the world, when I saw him (Karan) act, I realised I’m nothing in comparison.” Perhaps, in another life, Dev Anand's advocate father would have appreciated his son, too.
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