Veteran actor Mithun Chakraborty has led an illustrious career in showbiz that has spanned over four decades and various languages and to commemorate his contribution to Hindi cinema, recently, journalist-filmmaker-biographer Ram Kamal Mukherjee unveiled the biography of the veteran, titled Mithun Chakraborty: The Dada Of Bollywood.
The book contains some known and unknown parts of Mithun’s life, accounts of the people that he has lived with or worked with and a whole lot more. Ask Ram about what he took away from chronicling the journey of the Disco King, and he says, “I learnt that nothing is B grade in your life. Never think that some other person is getting something better than you. Whatever you are getting is probably the best in your life. It is not that if Amitabh Bachchan and Rajesh Khanna are getting some big director to make a film with them, and he is getting some smaller director, it means it isn’t the best.”
Ram goes on to share that this fact is reflected in Mithun’s achievements. “Mithun received three National Awards in his life, and none of them were for a film made by a mainstream filmmaker. They were made by Mrinal Sen (Mrigayaa), Buddhadeb Dasgupta (Tahader Katha) and GV Iyer (Swami Vivekananda). So, what you are getting is life, you should cherish that and Mithun always valued that,” he insists.
The biographer goes on to reminisce about one interesting incident that he got to notice while working on the book with Mithun. “While writing the book, Mithun told me one very interesting thing. He said that Zeenat Aman was the first big actress to say yes to work with him. During his initial days, all top actresses were busy with Rishi Kapoor, Vinod Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan, Shatrughan Sinha and Rajesh Khanna. They had all these priorities and then came Raj Kumar and such actors. Be it Hema Malini ji, Rekha or Parveen Babi, they were all busy working with and prioritising these big actors and Mithun didn’t get any A-list heroine to work with. But eventually they all worked with him, be it Rekha, Smita Patil or Shabana Azmi, when everyone realised his talent but the journey wasn’t smooth,” he concludes.
Image source: Instagram/ramkamalmukherjee/only_mithun_chakraborty, Wikipedia
Image source: Instagram/ramkamalmukherjee/only_mithun_chakraborty, Wikipedia