Bollywood Will Not Forget Renowned Photographer Jagdish Aurangabadkar
Senior journalist and film critic Khalid Mohamed pays tribute to Aurangabadkar who said goodbye to the living world, last week
Have you ever spared a thought for the paparazzi? Or the
phalanx of photographers who pop flash-bulbs when show town’s celebrities
arrive at party venues during the late, late hours?
Last week Jagdish Aurangabadkar, stated to be 65, ended
his life at a Goregaon apartment. The tragedy was duly reported in some of the
daily newspapers. What I noticed though is that precious few words were devoted
to the scores of scoop photographs he clicked ever since the 1970s: his favourites
seemed to be Dilip Kumar, Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan.
The Aurangabadkar family was into covering the jagged
beat of Bollywood . Jagdish was born into this beat, but could never quite
afford to set up his own high-end studio or extend himself to glamour
photography. He was content being on the fringes, snapping candid moments on
the sets or at the party shebangs.|
At one point, Jagdish did handle the PR campaigns of a
few films. Again, he could never develop an systematic infrastructure to handle
this full-time. Polite and soft-spoken, whenever Jagdish called for the
coverage of a film under-production, it was impossible to say no. And he would
ask nervously, “Would you prefer to go to the location in the producer’s car or
a taxi?”
A taxi would be the preferred option. Invariably the
location would be Film City in Goregaon. The tab would be paid by the media
group I was working for anyway. En route he would not speak a word, knowing
that faux praise of producers, directors and actors doesn’t work anyway.
Early last week, oddly enough I was trying to contact him
for some vintage photos I need for a book I’m working on. His ‘phone number
wasn’t easily accessible. When I finally got it from a friend of a friend, it
was too late. Jagdish was gone.
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