Life for Amol Palekar may soon come a full circle. The actor-filmmaker is contemplating returning to the profession he had started from — that of painting.
Interacting with journalists at an informal gathering here on Monday, Palekar announced, "I am seriously thinking of going back to painting. I started my creative journey as a painter (in the late 1960s). I have had seven one-man shows to my credit. But that aspect of my life had been put on the back-burner. Now I am very serious about painting. In a way, a circle would be completed." The alumnus of Mumbai's JJ School of Art was responding to a query about his future projects. Palekar did indicate that these (future projects) would also include both theatre and cinema. "But as projects go, this is one of the priorities for me," the filmmaker added.
Clarifying this, Palekar went on to say, "The time has come again for me to look inside, and start my internal journey all over again. ...and, try and find something more (about life) that I may have missed all these years." He said he wanted to gain (that) knowledge all over again, and added, "This will make me even richer than what I am now."
When egged on to elaborate, Palekar remarked, "Please don't think that I am frustrated, or that I am retiring. It's just that I find this journey (as a painter) more and more compelling now. I need to have much more dialogue with myself, and be able to find the creative answers which I have always striven to find in whichever journey (cinema and theatre) I have undertaken. Today, I find it all the more compelling."
Palekar, who achieved critical acclaim for his portrayal of the affable, middle-class guy-next-door in the runaway hit films of Basu Chatterjee and Hrishikesh Mukherjee of the 1970s, was critical of the obsession with mainstream Hindi cinema at the cost of regional language films.
Palekar, who has made films in both Hindi and Marathi and also acted in Kannada, Malayalam and Bangla films as well, reacted to a question about the centenary of Indian cinema, "I have noticed that during most of these celebrations all we are trying to do is remember the commercial success of Bollywood. I have no quarrel with that. But are we forgetting the important landmarks of regional and parallel cinema? It is important that we remember all those landmarks, and recollect the contributions made by regional cinema. This would make 'Indian cinema', as I call it, far more richer."
When asked about a possible comeback, Palekar dismissed it saying that a comeback would be possible only if he had gone away. "The question does not arise because I have not gone away." He elaborated, "We, without our realising, are bombarded/brainwashed only by Bollywood and tend to forget what is happening in regional cinema. You may not even be aware of the last four films that I have made in Marathi. People would remember my last film as Paheli because it was done with Shah Rukh Khan (in 2005)."
