Dr Pradeep Awate with Amitabh Bachchan For Dr Pradeep Awate, Pune-based Maharashtra surveillance officer, a two-minute role with Amitabh Bachchan in the recently released Hindi film Jhund was an amazing experience. It may have been a small role for Dr Awate who shared screen space with Bachchan in the film in three scenes, but it was a learning experience as the surveillance officer marvelled at the fact that Bachchan rehearsed the lines at least thrice prior to filming.
Based on the life of Vijay Barse, a retired sports teacher who founded an NGO called Slum Soccer, the film Jhund was released on March 4. Barse was able to rehabilitate slum kids by keeping them off drugs and crime and turning them into soccer players and building a whole team.
“I played the role of the principal of a college in Nagpur and my role was essentially to rule out using the sports ground for slum kids. Amitabh Bachchan as a sports teacher is keen on using the ground so that it can help towards the holistic development of children and help build a soccer team. However even if it was one or two lines, Amitabhji ensured that we rehearsed at least thrice. Despite his stature and experience as an actor, Amitabhji took the effort to ensure a perfect shot,” said Dr Awate who was offered a role in the film by director Nagraj Manjule.
“”I have known Nagraj from my days as a medical officer in Karmala tehsil of Solapur district. We hail from the same areas. We used to have great conversations and I tried to guide him. He later earned his MA in Marathi literature from University of Pune and I still recall how my home had become a rendezvous of sorts for these brilliant minds to write the script of their initial films,” recalled Dr Awate.
This surveillance expert has often said that he takes time out to follow his passion – write and walk. For Dr Awate, these three years of the Covid pandemic has been involved in compressing vast amounts of data into bits of information for policy makers. He is also part of the state team that trains doctors, paramedics, nurses and health workers on containing an epidemic and strongly feels that a multidisciplinary approach to public health is necessary while dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic.
A poet and an author with three anthologies of Marathi poetry, two collections of stories for children and other books in his name, it was not surprising that both Dr Awate and Manjule bonded over poetry sessions.
When contacted, Manjule told The Indian Express that they (Dr Awate and he) had a long association. “We know each other for 25 years now and a common thread that bonds is poetry. I like to offer some small roles to the doctor as he has an artistic temperament and is a great person. With Amitabhji, it was a wonderful experience . I have been Amitji’s fan for several years and it was a great experience working with the super star,” the director who made his directoral debut with a Marathi feature film Fandry in 2013 said.
The film centres around the attraction of a Dalit teenage boy towards an “”upper’ caste girl in a village in Maharashtra. While Manjule’s first national award winning short film Pistulya focussed on the desire of a Dalit boy to attend school and his inability to do so because of his family’s poverty and a deep seated disdain for formal education within his community, he is best known for his Marathi film Sairat for which he received the national film award in non-feature film category. “Nagraj is family for us,” Dr Awate said fondly recalling how he has essayed small roles in each of his films. “For instance in Sairat, I am on one of the posters at a cricket competition in the village as a chief guest,” he added.
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