He was the Lakdi Ki Kathi boy in Masoom. And Sameer in Mohabbatein. He even won a National Award for his directorial venture. But what is Jugal Hansraj up to now?
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00My first reaction was, I don't want to do this.
00:09You know, what is this?
00:11The boys crying all the time, my friends will call me a girl in school, so I didn't want
00:15to do it.
00:44I faced the camera for the first time one week before my second birthday.
00:50So very, very long ago.
00:52Famous photographer Gautam Rajadaksh, who is sadly no more, he was well acquainted with
00:58my parents, you know, they used to meet at the park and all that regularly.
01:02So one day, my parents took me in the stroller and he saw me and said, you know, he was like,
01:10oh, this baby is so cute, you know, can I come over and click some pictures for this
01:13baby tonic?
01:15So my mom said, yeah, sure, come over, we'll, you know, chat, have a cup of tea and take
01:18some and he took a few rolls of me and then they used one for one of the ads and that's
01:25how I started doing print ads as a baby and then I got into TV commercials as well around
01:31the age of five or six.
01:33One of them got very popular, Nutramul, for this product called Nutramul, where I'm like
01:38dressed in a black belt outfit and doing karate or something.
01:43So I think Devi Dutt, the producer, his family, his daughter saw that ad and they were making
01:50Masoom at the time and she showed the ad to Shekhar Kapoor and from what I know, Shekhar
01:56really like thought, this is the kid I want and he, you know, they called up my parents
02:01and then Shekhar came to meet them and, you know, that's how it started.
02:08My first memories of Shekhar Kapoor walking into my flat in Mumbai, in South Bombay, where
02:20we were staying and he explained the story to my parents and to me, I was, I was already
02:25in my pyjamas because he came in the night, I remember, I remember very clearly he had
02:29a Sony cassette of one of the songs was recorded, Tutse Naaraz Nahi with Anup Goshalji sang.
02:36He played that for us and everything and explained the story in very simple terms to
02:39me and, you know, and my mom wasn't very keen about this whole film thing and, but my dad
02:46was because, you know, Shekhar was a very well educated, you know, person.
02:50He was a very polished man and he has such a nice story and it wasn't run of the mill.
02:55It was Gulzar Saab's script and RD Burman's music and Naseer and Shabana, Shabana ji,
03:02Naseer ji, Saeed Jafri, you know, very, those days what you used to call parallel cinema
03:07kind of a thing, which had a lot of credibility.
03:11So, you know, I, my first reaction was, I don't want to do this, you know, what is this?
03:16The boys crying all the time, my friends will call me a girl in school, so I didn't want
03:20to do it, but Shekhar became really friendly with me.
03:24Everyone went out of the way to make us three children, you know, feel good.
04:02In the early 2000s, I did one very big show called Karishma with a lot of film actors
04:20in it.
04:21And it was, I mean, it was nice.
04:22It was a big, big budget TV show and stuff, but I mean, it wasn't the, it's not the most
04:28fun, you know, you're like, deadlines are too much and it's a daily soap.
04:33So you're knocking off like 10-12 scenes a day, you don't know the script, you're giving
04:37it to it on, you know, given the script and lines on the, on the morning.
04:42So not the, I mean, that's how it is.
04:43You can't, either you accept it or don't do it.
04:48I didn't do too much.
04:49After that, I did a few projects for TV, but mostly like short stints.
04:58My first book came out in 2017.
05:04It was actually my script for my animation film, which I, since that didn't get made
05:08some years later, I decided to write it as a novel.
05:11It was more like a fun thing.
05:13Wrote it out and then, you know, it got published.
05:16I got really encouraged to write another one.
05:19So around the time my son was born, I was kind of not working much at that time.
05:23I was just, you know, taking care of my wife and newborn baby.
05:27And I had the time, I was like, you know, at home taking care of my newborn and I started
05:32writing, you know, whenever he would go to sleep, I would open my laptop and I had this
05:36whole story started to form in my head and I'd enjoyed writing the first one, but this
05:40was much more ambitious.
05:41It was a very layered story and with a very strong positive message, which I wanted to
05:47give to the readers.