Characters are the vessels to connect an audience emotionally. Ask any concept artist, scriptwriter, storyteller or as is our genre today- a movie director. While the ordinary minds can see a character only from a black or white lens, the extra ordinary storytellers can conjure up a layered portrait with words, brushstrokes or the camera. The challenge so often however, is to find the right actor for a particular role. Some choices achieve a visionary status, like Amitabh's casting in Zanjeer, even after a string of failures. Some casting choices are deemed just plain stupidity- like Jesse Eisenberg for Lex Luthor in Justice League. Most actors based on their looks, dancing/acting skills (or the lack of it), or past box office success, unfortunately get assigned a typecast. Bollywood is a big culprit where apart from some new age exceptional cinema, SRK still can't help but romance the girls his daughter's age, bhai-jaan's imagination is still trapped in bravado of going topless, and no talented actress can aspire to be the protagonist of the whole story. Let's not even talk about the south, where it's a custom to shower a moniker for a superstar. Real star, power star, mega star, god-knows-what-next star- limiting their own potential for the fear of box office revolt. Of course courageous exceptions have began emerging slowly.
But back in the era of 50s to 70s, perhaps the most commercial yet meaningful era of Bollywood, one name made a lasting impact beyond his own generation. The veteran artist Pran Krishan Sikand, or just Pran (read his wiki) emerged as a unique talent. He defied the traditions by playing memorable characters and still avoiding getting a typecast. Pran played as a leading man, a supporting actor, and perhaps most remembered for his villain roles. So much so that in 2000, Stardust awarded him as "Villain of the Millennium". He could truly terrorize children in cinema halls with his glaring eyes, or so my grandfather (nanaji) used to tell.
This remarkably gifted actor impressed the world with his versatility from the moment he played the role of Sita in local Ramlila. And throughout the eras ruled by Dev Anand to Manoj Kumar to Rajesh Khanna, he just kept shattering the typecasts. His nuanced performances in Don (1978), Zanjeer (1973), Amar Akbar Anthony (1977) marked a special association with the Millennium superstar Amitabh Bachchan. These handpicked movies are also a testimony to his aura beyond a milky-white Hero and a dark Villain role typecast. Pran sparkled with brilliant shades of grey in these films regardless of the superstar names present. Pran hard earned a cult status in Indian cinema with his versatility, parallels of which come to mind only a handful across the world. Perhaps Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman in Hollywood and only Kadar Khan I could think of in Bollywood so far. A humble and down to earth human in real life, in reel life Pran made the characters his own and spellbound the audience with his on screen charisma. There was a time when after all the actors' names rolled out in the beginning, it was a custom to display "Aur Pran" after that in big block letters, and audience would whistle louder there than the superstars present in the film. In a truly poetic manner, his biography was also titled as "Aur Pran".
Pran was a real life personification of Sher Khan to be honest (his on screen persona in Zanjeer) and he embodied the values in his swansong "Yaari hai imaan mera yaar meri zindagi"? A protector and patron saint for sports and sportsperson alike, he had offered to bear the knee operation expenses for Kapil Dev in London, almost half a decade before 1983 world cup made them national heroes. BCCI later took over the matter, but Kapil Dev never ceases to sing about the generosity of his Sher Khan- his friend and father figure.
Multiple Filmfare awards winner, Pran was conferred the prestigious Dada Saheb Falke award for his valuable services to arts and cinema a few months before he passed away at a ripe age in 2013. There is a Pran chowk now on carter road in Mumbai after his name. An artist of his caliber is born in a generation. And in a haven for typecasting like Bollywood, there won't be perhaps another Pran coming out anytime soon. But if any actor wants to truly test his mettle, Pran continues to serve the absolute benchmark.
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