New Delhi: Veteran Bollywood actor and director Satish Kaushik passed away at 66 on Thursday (March 9). Actor Anupam Kher shared the news of his death on Twitter. The actor suffered a heart attack in Delhi.
Satish was an alumnus of the NSD and the FTII and started his film career in the early 1980s. He acted and penned the dialogues for the 1983 classic ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron’, which acquired a cult following over the years. He starred alongside Naseeruddin Shah, Ravi Baswani and Neena Gupta.
Neena Gupta, in her autobiography, ‘Sach Kaun Toh’, wrote about her friendship with Satish Kaushik. She revealed that he offered to marry her when she was expecting her daughter Masaba Gupta out of wedlock.
“Don’t worry, if the child is born with dark skin, you can just say it’s mine and we’ll get married. Nobody will suspect a thing,” Kaushik told Gupta. Neena wrote in her book that Satish’s gesture touched her, but she declined his offer. The duo has worked in movies like ‘Mandi’, ‘Utsav’ and ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron’.
In an interview with the Bombay Times, Kaushik said he offered to help because he didn’t want her to be alone.
He told the Bombay Times, “I was concerned about not letting her feel alone. At the end of the day, that’s what friends are for, right?” He said that his offer to marry her ‘was a mix of humour, concern, respect, and support’, and that he told her, “Main hoon na, tu chinta kyu karti hai?”
Kaushik was in Gurgaon for a meeting when he suffered a heart attack. The actor’s last post on Twitter was pictures from a Holi party he attended on March 7. The actor was a part of Javed Akhtar’s Holi celebrations attended by many industry celebrities, including Richa Chadha, Ali Fazal, Divya Datta, Mahima Chaudhary and others.
Many Bollywood personalities have paid tributes to the multifaceted artiste after learning about the news of his demise.