Comedian Jaspal Bhatti killed in car accident

Comedian Jaspal Bhatti killed in car accident

Jaspal Bhatti with his son during shoot of the film Power Cut 

 

Jaspal Bhatti, who used comedy to campaign against corruption and brought socially-aware and politicallyconscious satire to thousands of drawing rooms through TV, died in a car crash on Thursday. He was 57.
    The accident took place when Bhatti’s car, driven by his son Jasraj, smashed into a tree near Shahkot, 45km from Jalandhar, at 1am. Bhatti was sitting in the rear seat and suffered a head injury. Jasraj and the film’s heroine Surilee who were in the front seat received minor injuries. “There was a turn on the road and the car hit a tree on the other side. Either Jasraj did not notice the turn or slept off,” Shahkot DSP said. Bhatti was master in the art of intelligent fun
Chandigarh/New Delhi: Comedian Jaspal Bhatti, who was killed in a road accident on Thursday, and the others with him were returning from Bathinda where they, in the humorist’s inimitable style, had “worshipped” a thermal energy plant to “seek blessings” for the success of his venture, ‘Power Cut’, which was to premiere on Friday.
    The Amritsar-born actordirector had named his hero ‘Current’ and the female lead ‘Bijli’ in the movie.
    For millions who grew up watching Doordarshan in the late 1980s, Bhatti was always intelligent fun. He didn’t need big money to create meaningful and memorable comedy on the plight of the common man.
    Cult programmes such as ‘Ulta Pulta’ and ‘Flop Show’— that irreverent comic capsule often used as fillers in those presatellite TV days — were made on G-string budgets and relied heavily on his crackling wit and deadpan dialogue delivery.
    From the professor who exploits his PhD student to the crooked telephone mechanic who manufactures inflated bills, Bhatti spared none. But he focused mainly on critiquing the system and those who, he felt, were primarily responsible for the rot—the bureaucrat and the politician.
    In a sense, he was the Kejriwal of comedy — relentlessly crusading against corruption through street plays, television shows and, occasionally, cinema. He was also a master in the art of capturing media attention — he created a god (devta) of corruption, buried ‘dead’ telephones, prepared a savethe-corrupt bill and demanded that the right to scam be turned into a fundamental right.