shiv: Film ‘Parinda’ writer Shiv Subrahmanyam passes away | Hindi Movie News

Film writer-actor Shiv Subrahmanyam, who authored the edgy yet elegant screenplays of films like ‘Parinda’, ‘Is raat ki subah nahi’ and ‘Hazaaron khwaishein aisi’ and who could stamp his presence as an actor irrespective of a role’s length, passed away on Sunday night in Mumbai. “He wasn’t keeping well for some time,” a family friend of the actor told PTI. He was 62.

Hindi movie fans would remember Shiv as the corrupt cop in ‘Kaminey’ and the hard-to-please father of Ananya (Alia Bhatt) in ‘2 States’. Not many would know though that he also flourished in the Mumbai theatre circuit as a playwright. ‘Clogged Arteries’ and ‘Irani Café’ were among his notable works.

Director Hanslal Mehta posted on Twitter, “Incredibly talented, he was much loved and revered personally as well as professionally.”
In an Instagram post, producer-director Anurag Kashyap revealed how Shiv had helped him get his first screenwriting credit back in 1994. “The most generous, beautiful man I have known,” he wrote.

Director Sudhir Mishra recalled being introduced to Shiv by Naseeruddin Shah on the sets of Saeed Mirza’s ‘Mohan Joshi hazir ho!’ in 1983. In the decades that followed they would often hang out together, crack jokes and spar over playwrights. “We shared the same sense of humour. I could start a joke and he could finish it,” Mishra said.

In those unplanned moments of creativity marked by an absence of deadline, memorable scripts were collaborated on: ‘Is raat ki subah nahi’ (1996), ‘Hazaaron khwaishein aisi’ (2003) and ‘Chameli’ (2003). The starting point of Hazaaron, for which Shiv was credited with story and screenplay, along with Mishra and Ruchi Narain, were two characters in Frantz Fanon’s anti-colonial classic, The Wretched of The Earth. “Shiv had such sharp insights…The script was written over a year and a half. The project took over three years. And there was no money to be made. But we did it,” recalled Mishra.

As a writer, Shiv’s early work happened with Vidhu Vinod Chopra. In an interview to Bollywood Satsang, Shiv said that he was a student of English literature and was just out of college when he assisted Vidhu Vinod on ‘Khamosh’ (1985). ‘Parinda’, a humanised gangster drama, was born out of a single visual image that Vinod had narrated to him: two boys walking on the streets of Bombay — the younger one scared and the elder one telling him not to worry and that he will take care of him. “Countless conversations followed before the characters acquired flesh and blood. It took us 2-3 years to write it,” Shiv said in the interview available on YouTube. He received the Filmfare award for best screenplay for the film.

Shiv also acted in at least 30 films and television serials. He got lengthier and meatier parts on TV; most notably the egoist businessman Virani in ‘Mukti Bandhan’ (2011). His more remembered performances on stage came in ‘The dumb waiter’ and ‘Extremities’. Shiv was last seen playing a family elder in ‘Meenakshi Sundareshwar’ on Netflix.

Tragically, the actor-writer’s teenage son, Jahaan succumbed to brain tumour in February. Shiv’s funeral was attended by many Bollywood personalities, including actors Naseeruddin Shah, Nana Patekar and Makarand Deshpande. He is survived by his actor wife Divya Jagdale.