Deven Bhojani: We wish Satish Shah had been here to receive it himself

Actor-director Deven Bhojani has paid a heartfelt tribute to late actor Satish Shah following his posthumous Padma Shri, saying the honour was long overdue but would have been even more meaningful had Shah been alive to receive it.

“Everybody knows Satish Shah was a great actor, but he was also a wonderful human being.

He was a gem of a person and incredibly knowledgeable. You could bring up any subject — sports, politics, history, mythology or cinema — and he would always have something insightful and interesting to share,” Bhojani says. Recalling their time together on Sarabhai vs Sarabhai, which he also directed, he says Shah’s off-screen personality was remarkably similar to his much-loved character, Indravadan Sarabhai.

“He was just as mischievous in real life. He loved pulling everyone’s leg,” he says with a smile. Sharing a fond memory from the sitcom’s shoot, Bhojani recalls that before signing on, Shah had requested to be packed up by 6 pm instead of working the long television shifts that often stretched from 9 am to 9 pm.“We honoured that and made sure all his scenes were completed before six. But after a few days, once he had bonded with the cast, he would stay back till 9 pm anyway.

I would jokingly tell him, ‘Satishji, your pack-up happened at six. Please go home now because I need to continue shooting.’ He would just laugh and say, ‘You do your job.’”Speaking about the Padma Shri, Bhojani says the recognition has been welcomed with overwhelming emotion by fans and colleagues alike. “After I shared the ceremony video on social media, so many people wrote that he should have received this honour years ago. We all wish he had been alive to experience this moment himself. It would have given him immense happiness, and all of us too,” he says.