Weekend Exclusive | The challenge was to enter the industry and to mark your presence: Veteran Actor, Gufi Paintal

Gufi Paintal, an outstanding actor who is still remembered and praised for his distinguished role "Shakuni Mama,' started his career as a mechanical engineer. Two ironic fields!!!! But yes he started off like that and then took a turn in the film industry with stepping into modeling in 1969. After working as an assistant director for movies and acted in various movies and serial, he marked his presence with his role in B.R. Chopra's epic drama, "Mahabharata'.

While speaking to Adgully exclusively, he spoke about his achievements, challenges and life. He says, "The journey has always been amazing. Slowly and steadily I took steps in my life and moved on."

During that point of time, when he started his career, there were not so many opportunities in this industry. There was only cinema, documentaries and commercials. But today the whole scenario has changed. Within "cinema' only there are so many opportunities. He says, "So the main challenge was to enter the industry and to mark your presence."

Gufi's inspiration has been people like Raj Kapoor, Amitabh Bachan, Dev anand and Dilip Kumar from film industry. He says, "I have always seen people like them as my mentors and I have learned a lot from them and I learnt what this industry is in terms of acting under their guidance. With this from nowhere I reached somewhere."

Remembering his work, he said, "My best roles have been "Shakuni Mama' in Mahabharata but otherwise I have done ample roles and movies with some marking roles. But I am proud of this role as it marked my presence in the industry. After this role I got recognition in that era.

Giving a piece of advice to the new entrants he signed off. He said, "Do your "karma' and don't bother about the results. Be passionate and hard working, leave rest on god."

Well the veteran actor was back in his most remarkable role, "Shakuni Mam,' in Imagine TV's mythological drama, "Dwarkadheesh,' during the time when the show entered the phase of the famous war between Kauravas and Pandavas on the historic battlefield Kurukshetra. He is so associated with his "Shakuni,' character in India that he presented a political discussion show on the news channel Sahara Samay in the character of Shakuni.

Paintal has recently directed the movie, "Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu' which sketches the life of "Chaitanya Mahaprabhu,' a 16th century devotee of Krishna. In 2010 he was appointed head of facility at the Abbhinnay Acting Academy in Mumbai, a school established by his Mahabharata co-star Pankaj Dheer. | By Aanchal Kohli [aanchal(at)adgully.com]