I am a bigger failure than Adhyayan: Shekhar Suman

Shekhar Suman feels that unlike his son Adhyayan, he had entered Bollywood at the ‘wrong time’. So is it some kind of remorse that is playing on his mind as he is seeing his son slowly climb up the ladder in Tinsel Town?

“Kind of, you may say. I can see my son slowly finding his feet in Bollywood and it forces me to think what went wrong when I made my debut in Utsav (1984). My entry was grossly mistimed. Other than the fact that my debut vehicle got delayed for two years because of Jennifer’s (Shashi Kapoor’s wife) death, it was definitely not a time for newcomers. The old guard hadn’t vacated their seat at that time and new heroes hadn’t yet found their feet. Whatever be the reason, I don’t have any qualms in saying that unlike my son, I was a failure on the big screen. His failures are nothing compared to mine,” says Shekhar.

Shekhar also doesn’t see Adhyayan appearing on television though he himself was quite successful in the TV soap Dekh Bhai Dekh. “Though there’s nothing wrong in TV, I don’t see him appearing in a soap for sure. For a long time, I was completely averse to doing soaps on television and was convinced that people will say, ‘Look, a failure from the big screen has come to TV’. But the success of Dekh Bhai Dekh changed the whole course of my career.”

Shekhar is also ‘shocked’ by the amount of newcomers making their debut on television these days and then getting lost in the clutter in a few months. “You see a good face on TV and a couple of months later it’s gone. They become one-serial-wonders. At times, some actors don’t get due recognition even after doing good work. I just hope that things will change in the television industry,” he said.