The 'Mahatma' Who Danced Like A Man

'People are talking about Vijay Crishna's roles in cinema, the few roles that he did, but his real body of work was on stage.'

Theatre luminary Vijay Crishna, who is probably best known for playing Shah Rukh Khan's stern father in Devdas, passed into the ages on March 3.

It's a sad moment for the Arts, and among those mourning his loss is Lillete Dubey, who worked with him for 26 years.

She shares beautiful anecdotes about the actor, many hidden talents, and tells Ronjita Kulkarni/Rediff, "When you have travelled for 26 years together, across the world with 650-odd shows, you become family. We have shared so much."

How I met Vijay Crishna

When I set up my own theatre company in Delhi, I was very clear that I wanted to set up a platform for original Indian theatre because till then, 99 percent of the plays were not written in India. There were great classics but not Indian voices.

So, when we started this company in 1991 -- we just celebrated 35 years this year on March 4 -- we did a couple of plays, which were adaptations. Our first original play was in 1995, Dance Like a Man.

It was a landmark in Indian English theatre because a lot of people started doing original writing after that.vWhen we opened it, people just fell in love with the play.

It gave us the courage to carry on in this direction, and to continue looking for scripts that were either classics by Girish Karnad or Vijay Tendulkar.

I opened Dance Like A Man in Delhi, and in a year, my husband got transferred to Bombay. In that one year, we did almost 25 shows.

The original cast was Shivani Wazir, who was also an Odissi dancer, Joy Sengupta, Siddharth Basu and me.

But when I moved to Bombay, I tried very bravely to keep doing the play with them. But financially, it didn't work.

So, in 1997, I started looking to replace the cast. Honestly, I hadn't even seen Vijay Crishna on stage, and I didn't know him. I started asking around, and two or three people, well-known from theatre, all pointed me in Vijay's direction and said, he is a fantastic actor.

So I cast him and Suchitra Pillai.

It is the longest-running Indian-English play, and has travelled across five continents, including Africa.

That's how I met Vijay.

'Vijay chose a corporate life, but his heart really belonged to the theatre'

We performed for two weeks in New York, in Brighton, in 1999-2000, and were reviewed by The New York Times, which was a huge thing.

They gave us a fantastic review, and a whole paragraph was dedicated to Vijay and his performance.

Vijay chose a corporate life, but his heart really belonged to the theatre.

He loved theatre with a passion, and he found time for it, in spite of being a CEO of a Godrej company.

You know, he trekked. He completed the walk across Spain (The Way Of St James) in his late 60s, walking about 1,000 km from one end to the other.

He went to the South Pole. He went to Leh and Tibet.

He was a man of many interests, but I felt always that the thing he loved the most was theatre.

People are talking about his roles in cinema, the few roles that he did, but his real body of work was on stage.

'He never carried any ego or any airs'

Vijay Crishna was a lovely human being.

He was bright. He was funny. He was very charming.

He was humble and never carried any ego or any airs.

When you have travelled for 26 years together, across the world with 650-odd shows, you become family. We have shared so much.

In the early years, he would share a room with Joy (Sengupta), as we couldn't afford two rooms, and he never made a fuss.

'He was so active, so alive. He had such a presence'

I know he was ill for some time now. Just because you know somebody is going to go soon doesn't make the loss any less.

And he was so active, so alive. He had such a presence. He acted in another play of ours called Sammy, written by Pratap Sharma. Another wonderful script, and he was very good in that as well.

He played the Mahatma.

There was Mohan, the regular man. And there was the Mahatma.

There were many lovely scenes between the Mahatma, his inner conscience, and Mohan. We travelled with that play too; we went to America, Australia, New Zealand, Dubai...

Theatre has lost a luminary.

Photographs curated by Satish Bodas/Rediff