Ramesh Deo was destiny's chosen one

Ramesh Deo, the veteran actor who passed away on Wednesday, was nothing less than a legend. At 93, the actor had done over 250 films in a career spanning over 70 years. He was a character artiste (including villain) in Hindi and a hero in Marathi cinema. Deo also produced and directed Marathi movies, produced several plays and acted in over 1,000 performances, besides making ads films and six serials under his company, Ramesh Deo Productions.

He literally died with his boots on — Deo’s last films were ‘Jivan Sandhya’ (Marathi, 2021), preceded by the ‘Photograph’ and ‘Marudhar Express’ (2019) in Hindi. A Rajput by birth — his grandfather moved to Maharashtra from Jodhpur to become chief engineer to Shahu Maharaj, the first Raja of Kolhapur — he had wanted to join the Army. But destiny willed otherwise.

Deo always believed in destiny’s omnipresence in his life. “Everything just happened by a series of events,” he had smiled. His first break, in ‘Paatlachi Por’ (1951) happened because Marathi filmmaker Dinkar Patil was a family friend.

“I was in college. I wanted to take a girl to watch his shooting to impress her. But since people would gossip, I took seven girls and eight boys also along. As it happened, Patil was shooting a college sequence. He ended up cajoling me into persuading my friends to act as college students!”

Bitten by the acting bug, Deo enrolled as a junior artiste and soon graduated to featured roles. He broke through as a villain in ‘Andhala Magto Ek Dola’ (1956). Signed as a villain for ‘Saata Janmaachaa Sobati’, he was offered the lead instead when the hero was removed. Never typecast, many of his films’ publicity material would have a teaser asking audiences to guess whether he was the hero or villain!

His love story with his wife Seema resulted in their co-starring in over 50 Marathi and Hindi films as spouses or lovers. Deo had first seen her in a suburban train while heading to a studio and realised that she too was looking for film work. “That day, I got a plum assignment. We introduced ourselves, became friends, and soon got married,” he had said. Today, their children, actor-filmmaker Ajinkya Deo and filmmaker Abhinay Deo (‘Delhi Belly’) have done them proud.

A tea-stall owner in a Maharashtra village where Deo, with his drama troupe, had once stopped for tea, also made him realise that big stars for most people meant those in Hindi movies, because he did not recognise him. There were cutouts of Dilip Kumar, Vyjayanthimala, and Raj Kapoor there, so the first thing the ambitious Deo did on returning to Mumbai was to ask for a role in a Hindi film. And that was Aarti (1962), a super-hit.

Among his key Hindi films later were ‘Shikar’. ‘Saraswatichandra’, ‘Khilona’, ‘Mere Apne’ and ‘Anand’. For Jeevan Mrityu, there was a 700 feet-long shot in which he had to sequentially laugh, cry, go mad, run into the street and get killed by a car. Deo assured the director, Satyen Bose, that he would do it at one go after 20 minutes of preparation.

“It saved them huge money!” he smiled. “News spread and I was flooded with Hindi assignments. One grabs an opportunity, but that one golden chance is provided by luck!”