“Naseeruddin Shah Is Big Brother By Four Days”: Paar Director Goutam Ghose

Call it a happy coincidence or a destined connection, both Naseeruddin Shah and Goutam Ghose turn 75 this year. While the actor celebrates his birthday today, his Paar (1984) director will mark his 75th four days later. Ghose points out that Shah, Shabana Azmi, Om Puri, Smita Patil—actors he has worked with—and even his director-friend Ketan Mehta, are around the same age, give or take a few years. “We grew up together, struggling to make something meaningful in the creative medium. Naseer, of course, is the closest. He’s my big brother, bada bhai, by four days,” he guffaws.

Paar was based on Paari (1963), a Bengali story by Samaresh Basu. The 1984 survival drama bagged three National Film Awards—‘Best Actor’ for Shah, ‘Best Actress’ for Azmi and ‘Best Feature Film in Hindi’ for Ghose and his producer, Swapan Sarkar. It was nominated for the Golden Lion, the top prize given to a film at the Venice International Film Festival, where Ghose won the prestigious UNESCO Award and Shah the Volpi Cup for ‘Best Actor’.

The film revolves around a Dalit couple, who are forced the flee their village in the interiors of Bihar—where exploitation and oppression of the poor and marginalised caste is rampant—when the husband, Naurangia, a landless labourer, kills the landlord’s brother to avenge the death of a benevolent schoolmaster who was trying to bring in progressive change. Unable to sustain themselves, the fugitives finally decide to return home and face the landlord’s wrath. To earn their fare, they agree to drive a herd of pigs across the wide, gushing river and almost drown.

At one point, Naurangia’s pregnant wife, Rama, is convinced that she has lost the baby. But eventually, they beat the odds and cross over safely, to a future equally fraught with danger. The film ends on a poignantly hopeful note, with Naurangia pressing his ear to his wife’s swollen belly, listening to the heartbeats of their unbroken child.

Paar was Ghose’s third directorial, after his debut Telugu film, the 1980 Maa Bhumi, followed by the 1981 Bengali film, Dakhal. “Naseer is a brilliant and disciplined actor who can transform into any character. Naurangia wasn’t easy to pull off, but he fell for the role. He not only lost a lot of weight and acquired a tan to look the part, but also tried to understand the conflicts around the caste hierarchy in an Indian village, recollecting his own childhood in Meerut. Both Shabana and he were able to give such convincing performances because they were so well prepped,” he recalls.

Forty-one years later, the film still seems just as fresh, relevant and contemporary. Ghose smiles, “When you understand the conflict and convey it with irony, it remains timeless.” A lot has been written about how he shot ‘the crossing’ on the Hooghly, in the month of July, when the river was swollen with monsoon fury. Not just the actors, the entire crew, including the young director, risked being swept away by the strong currents, with only a few rescuers in a small boat around to help, should anyone go under. “We shot the climax first. In my contract with the producer, it was clearly specified that we would go ahead with the film only if we were successful in crossing the river and capturing the sequence on camera. It was an audacious proposition to make to someone who, if the project was aborted, risked losing a lot of money, but Swapan Sarkar gave his consent with a simple, ‘Let’s do it.’ That kind of conviction is inspiring and necessary for filmmakers to attempt something daring and excitingly different,” he asserts.

Today, if he were to make Paar, it would perhaps be easier to make the crossing, with better equipment and safety measures in place. There would also be the added advantage of visual effects and AI to create the whole sequence digitally. “But that’s not my cup of tea. For me, the only way of doing it is when what you see on screen is what we went through for real. You have to respect the passion and involvement of the entire crew,” he avers.

The filmmaker points out that today, when one talks of Naseeruddin Shah’s best films, one invariably remembers Paar. “Ditto for me,” he states with satisfaction. “It was a vibrant time. All my actors—from Naseer and Shabana to Utpal Dutt and Mohan Agashe, who play the landlord and his slain brother, and Anil Chatterjee and Ruma Guha Thakurta, as the schoolmaster and his wife, even Om Puri in a cameo as the village Pradhan—were full of creative energy and passion and that’s what made Paar the film it is.”

Ghose recently watched two of Shah’s plays, Ismat Apa Ke Naam and Manto, Ismat... Haazir Hain, in Mumbai, with his wife, Nilanjana, daughter, Anandi, and son, Ishaan. The evening brought back many fond memories. “When I had come to Mumbai for the dubbing of Paar, I was accompanied by my wife, who has always been a part of my team, and my daughter, who was a year-and-a-half old. My son wasn’t born then. When Naseer heard that we were staying in a hotel, he insisted we wouldn’t be comfortable there with a young child and move in with him,” he recounts.

The actor, who had just started his theatre group Motley, was staying in a small studio apartment. There would be rehearsals there every evening. “We had a fantastic time,” the director smiles as he reminisces. The actor recently watched two of Ghose’s new films. He attended a special screening in Kolkata, organised by the French embassy, of the Hindi film Raahgir-The Wayfarers (2019). The film depicts a journey of three strangers, who come together in a crisis and selflessly risk their lives to take an elderly couple to hospital in torrential monsoon rains and save their lives. Filmmaker Sudhir Mishra then hosted a special show in Mumbai of the Indo-Italian co-production, Parikrama (2025), another journey film that explores human displacement, environmental despair and cross-cultural connections in the context of the Narmada Bachao Andolan. “Naseer loved both and pointed out that they were two very important films in today’s time,” the filmmaker informs proudly.

Since the last one year, he has had a strong desire to collaborate with the actor again. Sharing that certain elements are playing on his mind and now that he is done with Parikrama, he needs to put them together, peacefully and creatively, Ghose admits the project is still at an embryonic stage. “I haven’t spoken about it to Naseer yet, but I probably will. I want it to happen, as early as possible, depending on both our schedules. As a human being, he is very close to my soul and I want to go back to a time when cinema was like an orchestra which, even if one violin went wrong, would fall flat. Tuning is important. If it’s right, no matter what technique or equipment you use, you will create a great symphony, yesterday, today or tomorrow,” he signs off with a flourish.