Guess who plays Sharmila Tagore’s husband in Gulmohar? The identity of the person will SUPRISE you – Times of India

Director Rahul Chittella, who has been an associate of filmmaker Mira Nair, made his debut with the recent OTT release Gulmohar. The movie features an ensemble cast comprising Manoj Bajpayee, Sharmila Tagore, Suraj Sharma and Amol Palekar. The film has Sharmila Tagore in the role of a matriarch of the Batra family and through the runtime of Gulmohar the audience only catches flashes of her husband, who has passed away a few years prior. These flashes are merely through photos in a frame. But, ETimes was able to learn of a fascinating connection between the person who is shown to be Sharmila’s husband and the film’s director.

The person shown in Gulmohar as Kusum’s (Sharmila) deceased husband is none other than acclaimed Indian filmmaker Ramesh Sharma, who has made the sublime drama New Delhi Times (1986) and the recent award-winning documentary Ahimsa Gandhi: The Power of the Powerless (2021). There’s a story about how the celebrated filmmaker got cast as the Batra family’s patriarch in Gulmohar, too. It seems that the film’s director Rahul Chittella is a big fan of Ramesh Sharma’s New Delhi Times, which featured Shashi Kapoor and Om Puri in lead roles.

Rahul has been a fan of both the film and its maker Ramesh Sharma and while he was making his debut film, he approached Ramesh to play a brief part, that of the Batra family’s patriarch. But Sharma was busy with other commitments and he couldn’t accept Rahul’s offer. But the senior filmmaker was supportive in letting Rahul’s tribute to one of his idols see fruition. So, in the end, Ramesh Sharma’s photos were used to depict his character on-screen. These photos can be seen in the earlier parts of the movie, when it’s established that Sharmila Tagore’s character has lost her husband and that is a turning point in her life.

Ramesh Sharma has also made the documentary The Journalist and The Jihadi: The Murder Of Daniel Pearl back in 2006.