Originally reported and written in March 2023, this story has been republished as part of our archival content. 

“To me, Ravi [Baswani] was Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro,” said Kundan Shah, director of the film, in Jai Arjun Singh’s book Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro: Seriously Funny Since 1983. 

“He was the comic cement of the film. When I got him on board, I knew that a key component had been taken care of.”

Playing the character of Sudhir Mishra, an incorrigible photographer down on his luck in what’s arguably the greatest satire/dark comedy film in Hindi cinema, Ravi Baswani’s outstanding performance and immaculate comic timing opposite the legendary Naseeruddin Shah left a deep imprint on audiences in the 1980s. 

Despite a reasonably broad filmography, his popularity for the most part draws from his first two films — Chashme Baddoor (1981), where he plays the woman-chasing bachelor Jomo Lakhanpal (aka Jai) alongside Farooq Sheikh, Deepti Naval and Rakesh Bedi; and Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron (1983).  

Looking back at his career, Baswani once jokingly said that he would become a legend if he died after those two films. “I would have become the James Dean of Bollywood,” he said. 

Of course, one can argue with some certainty that nothing he did after those two films quite matched the heights he had reached as an actor, but the internet never forgets. 

As Mumbai-based writer and journalist Shaikh Ayaz argues in his column for The Indian Express, “It’s safe to assume that he may have remained yet another lovable sidekick on the fringes of mainstream Bollywood if not for the legion of absurdist humour fans who rescued him from near-oblivion. What also helped the Ravi Baswani revival was the rise of film clubs, the Internet and a young audience yearning for the soothing comforts of nostalgia.”

Born on 29 September 1946, Baswani grew up in the national capital and learnt acting while spending time in Delhi University’s theatrical circles. 

As a college........

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