In 'TV se Bollywood tak!', on e-BIZ page of 'Weekend' supplement of 'SUNDAY FREE PRESS JOURNAL', dated 18th September 2011, Vivek Kar blunders miserably when he says Sachin Pilgaonkar directed the successful TV soap ‘Tu Tu Main Main’ and then went on to make several Marathi movies. The fact, however, is that before coming to the small screen with the said serial, Sachin had already produced and directed eight Marathi movies under his own banner 'Kittu Films Pvt Ltd.' And it was under this banner that some of the most successful faces in Hindi films like Nivedita Joshi, Varsha Usgaonkar, Rajeshwari Sachdev, Sushant Ray (V. Shantaram's grand son who later worked in hits like 'Vansh' and 'Baazigar' and in south under the name of Sidhartha), Neelkanti Patekar (Nana Patekar's wife) and Supriya Pilgaonkar, who later went on to become his wife, debuted. Of these Supriya Pilgaonkar (Navri Mile Navryala - 1984), Neelkanti Patekar (Aatmavishwas -1989) and Rajeshwari Sachdev (Aaytya Gharat Gharoba-1991) went on to win state awards for their debut performances. Sachin, besides being a a producer, director is an accomplished play back singer too. There are probably very few or no film personalities so well versed with every aspect of film making from production, direction, acting, music, set and costume designs, to dialogue delivery, script writing and choreography etc. Probably, that is the reason why he shares such a close rapport with the likes of Amitabh Bachchan, Subhash Ghai, late Shammi Kapoor and late Sanjeev Kumar. Sachin's talent was discovered and later honed by none other than one of the finest Indian film makers Raja Paranjape during the making of his Marathi film 'Hach Majha Marga Ekla' (1962) wherein he predicted Sachin would grow up to be a good director. Sachin won national award as a child artist for the same film at the age of nine. And the current film that he is directing in Hindi is not his first film but he has already directed a Hindi movie produced by Ashok Ghai (Subhash Ghai's brother) called ‘ Prem Deewane’ (1992) a multi starrer that featured Madhuri Dixit, Jackie Shroff, Pooja Bhatt and Vivek Mushran and wherein he also did some good play back singing for an excellent music composed by Laxmikant-Pyarelal . For someone who is credited to rope in a reluctant Kishore Kumar to sing in Marathi, which incidently, was also one of his very last recordings for Sachin's hit film 'Gammat Jammat (1987). For someone who's silver jubilee function of last hit 'Ashi hi Banva Banvi' (1988) had none other than Amitabh Bachchan as a chief guest remarking, “ Sachins skill to deliver eight hits in a row is indeed commendable. He must share the secret of his success with us!!”, Vivek Kar's write up is indeed a raw deal to an illustrious career! Evidently the writer not only has a poor know how of the subject but also has not done enough of homework - pathetic!
- Bhushan Sarmalkar.
