A Gujarat ved, Dr Ashok Aswani, impersonated Charlie Chaplin, even started an annual parade. On the icon’s 135th birthday, Hemant Chaturvedi exhibits his photographs of Aswani at work
Nearly every year, Ashok would organise a parade in Adipur where children would take part, dressed up in Chaplin costumes. PICS/HEMANT CHATURVEDI
Unlike Charlie Chaplin, Dr Aswani was very happy—and funny and loved. Often, if someone came to him and was feeling low, he would prescribe ‘Watch Modern Times twice, or The Gold Rush thrice’ along with medicine,” Hemant Chaturvedi recalls. The photographer and former cinematographer (Company, Kurbaan) is speaking of the late Dr Ashok Aswani, a well-known Chaplin impersonator in Adipur, a few hours away from Bhuj.
“In 2006, I had free time between movies, and I’d heard of Dr Aswani,” says Chaturvedi. “I booked a flight, landed in Bhuj, and then took a car to Adipur, in the hopes of finding him. When I asked around at my hotel reception, they exclaimed, ‘Charlie doctor!’ and a 10-year-old dropped me to his house on a cycle. When he knocked on the door, a blue-eyed, handsome man greeted him. The photographer went on to document him in costume around Kutch—on the salt pans and cracked earth.
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To celebrate Chaplin’s 135th birth anniversary, Chaturvedi has curated a selection of 50 photographs to be exhibited on the walls of Fort’s Kala Ghoda Cafe. These are photos he took of Aswani, as well as the grand Chaplinesque parade he organised nearly every year in Adipur, since 1973. As luck would have it, there was no parade planned in 2006, which compelled Chaturvedi to return 12 years later, determined to capture the spectacle.
A small-scale event at the start, it soon became an annual affair with anything between 50 to a hundred children and teenagers dressing up as the comic veteran and touring the town—DJ in tow. The parade would end at the town circle and a cake would be cut, as Chaplin movies would be screened for everyone. Dr Aswani, who was an Ayurvedic doctor, died last year at 75.
He may not have been as melancholic as Chaplin, but Dr Aswani’s life was full of ups and downs. He was a typist in 1966, when he first saw The Gold Rush in a cinema hall called Oslo; having watched all four shows and missing work, he was sacked the next day. “He then went to FTII, Pune, to study acting. After a year and a half, he was expelled due to some misunderstanding. But his batchmate, actor Raza Murad, told him ‘Don’t forget the Charlie inside you,’” Chaturvedi shares.
Perhaps that’s how he developed a sense of humour—to keep up with life’s challenges. “That’s what I was most inspired by. He once told me, that many villagers would come to him and speak in English, even though he was not very fluent in the language. One patient told him that his ‘dimaag was in tansen’. He meant tension, of course. So, Dr Aswani asked him ‘Bhairavi ya thumri?’” Chaturvedi laughs. Ask him what he wants people to take away from his exhibition, and he says, “I just hope they smile.”
WHAT: Charlie Doctor, an exhibition of photographs
WHERE: Kala Ghoda Cafe, Fort
When: April 1 onwards, 8 AM to 12 AM
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