April Fool’s Special : Guess Who’s The Biggest Prankster Of Bollywood?

Ajay Devgan, Akshay Kumar and Aamir Khan are known  to be the biggest pranksters  of  our film industry. When shooting outdoors they conceive elaborate  plan to prank their co-stars. On occasions they are known to go too far with their  jokes. But who dares to  stop them or not laugh at their masti?

Aamir in fact  lost a good friend Juhi Chawla when he went too far with his prank on the set of  Indra Kumar’s Ishq.Apparently he pulled  his favourite stunt on Juhi by pretending to read her hand and  then spitting on  it.Juhu  being  too propah  to  even  consider  such a “joke” to be funny simply stopped speaking to  Aamir for the next 15 years.

 But  seriously, the  biggest prankster  of  Bollywood is  not  Aamir Khan. It is veteran  actress Asha Parekh. In her heydays she was  know to pull off some of  the  biggest pranks in showbiz on her unsuspecting co-stars.

Sunil Dutt who did  films like Chhaya, Chirag and Heera with Asha Parekh told me once that  he had to be ever-vigilant   when  he was shooting with  Asha Parekh because one never knew what she  would do.

Ashaji  laughs at  the memory of pranking the very decorous and  gentle Sunil Dutt. “Yes, he was  one my  main targets,  as were Shammi Kapoor and Joy Mukherjee. I  was a  big masti-khor(fun lover) . And  when not shooting I’d be constantly thinking of ways  to   prank  my co-stars. I’d  zero in on my target,then take my other co-stars into confidence and then we’d  attack.”

She recalls her best prank. “It was on Dutt Saab. We were shooting for a film and I hid his chappals under the seat  of a  chair in the  studio. After shooting he looked everywhere for his footwear while I pretended to be  very busy with  other things. He did  look strangely  at me . I think he suspected I  was behind this grand theft. But I stared back  innocently.After all I was an actor, right?  He  finally gave  up the search and  left  the studio  barefeet.Many years later a pair of chappals were retrieved  from under that chair in  that studio where Dutt Saab and I were  shooting.”

Ashaji says she had a very bum-chum  rapport with all her co-stars. “I was like  a pal with them.They never  even dreamt  of having an affair  with me. The best way to keep working relations normal between men and women  at the workplace is to never let your gender  come in the way  of  your  equation.”

She feels humour is still the best medicine. “Look at  the world around us. In these troubled times  if we don’t  bring laughter into play how will we survive?”