By Sidharth Mishra
Former Union Minister Shatrughan Sinha and late film actor Sushant Singh Rajput worked in the same Mumbai film industry and also came from the same state of Bihar. The similarity ends here. While Sinha has had a very long innings and has closely identified with his roots winning the title of ‘Bihari Babu’, Rajput’s career pales in comparison. Actually, till his suicide made headlines, not very many would have known that the talented actor came from Bihar.
Bihar’s tryst with Mumbai film industry doesn’t start with Shatrughan Sinha, nor would it end with Sushant Singh Rajput. In fact, recently we heard of actor Kum Kum, a heartthrob of the 1950s and 60s, passing away. She too came from Bihar and that too from a landed gentry. Films are not only about actors, they are as much about directors, lyricists, music directors, editors, writers, dress designers, so on and so forth. The list of people from Bihar who made it good and enjoyed much bigger status than Rajput too is pretty long with Prakash Jha, Neeraj Pandey, Manoj Bajpai, Sanjai Mishra, Vinay Pathak, Pankaj Tripathi, music director Chitragupt and his sons Anand-Milind, lyricist Shailendra to name a few.