In 2020, Pankaj Dheer had spoken to us for an article we were doing on the Mahabharat TV series. Given below is our interaction with him.
“People would take their children and put them in my lap and ask us to bless them. A lot of children were named Arjun and Karan since they were great warriors," says Pankaj Dheer, who portrayed the role of Karan.
“There was a popularity poll at that time, which had Rajiv Gandhi at number one, at number 2 was Amitabh Bachchan saab, number 3 had some other actor and I was at number 4, because at that particular time a lot of my episodes were being shown. I was signing projects left, right and centre for films and TV,” says Dheer.
“Nobody had any idea it would be a hit. This is all predestined. Who knew a movie like Mughal e Azam would be such a landmark film? Who knew Sholay would run for five years or DDLJ would still be running in Maratha Mandir? That is the beauty of art, you do a sincere job, and then the people decide its fate. The Mona Lisa painting is still loved today and people still go and see it in France,” says Dheer.
“Mahabharat released within months of Ramayan, so the audience had already been created for us. We broke all their records, and it was bound to happen because we were far superior technically than them. Of course, we didn't have digital cameras, graphics or special effects- which used to look a bit childish,” Dheer was saying, at which point I interject and tell him that personally I still prefer the old school special effects of the 1988 TV series.
“That is because it reeks of sincerity, otherwise it would look gimmicky,” explains Dheer.
“The kavach (armour) which I used to wear was made of iron, and it used to literally burn my chest while we shot in the sun, it was like a steaming iron, and I used to put a cloth in between to safeguard myself. Even the mukut (crown) we would wear would be around 2.5 kilos and it would feel as if we were wearing a pressure cooker on our heads,” he says.
But there was one life or death moment which Dheer faced during filming.
“I was in a rath (chariot) and the saarthi (charioteer) was an actual ghora wala (horse rider). We had to make it go fast, and during that the middle portion broke and the horses ran off in one direction and the other half with me started going the other way. The guy who was sitting in the middle fell down and came under the wheel which went over his rib cage, smashing it.”
“The half which I was in was going towards a valley, with rocks hundreds of feet below. I said to myself if I have to survive and live, I have to jump, since there's no way I can control this. So with my dhoti, mukut everything on I jumped out of the rath, falling down and hurting my elbows, while the rath went down the valley and was destroyed. So it was a sort of second life for me.”
