Bollywood is often presented like a glamorous town where one’s most unimaginable dreams can come true, but the dark side of the film industry, where people deal with their demons is often brushed under the carpet. The discussion of mental health in an industry as public as the movies is often conducted in hushed tones in today’s day and age so one can only imagine how people must have addressed it 35 years ago. Actor Kamal Sadanah, who made his debut with actor Kajol in the 1992 film Bekhudi, went through a dark phase in his life and it all started on his 20th birthday when his father shot him, his mother and his sister, and then himself. Kamal was the only member of the family who survived this shooting.
Kamal is now 54, but the scars that were inflicted on him at 20, are yet to fully heal themselves. Kamal saw his entire family get killed in front of his eyes as his father, who was in an inebriated state, shot everyone one by one. Kamal was shot as well. The bullet entered from one side of his neck, and exited from the other side, without causing any severe damage. In an earlier interview with Siddharth Kannan, Kamal shared that his father was not in his senses when the incident took place.
Karishma Kapoor with Kamal Sadanah. (Photo: Express Archives)
“I had to carry my mother and my sister to the hospital while they were bleeding and at that time I didn’t realise that I was also shot,” he recalled in the same interview and said that when he reached the hospital with his mother and sister, the doctor wondered why his shirt was soaked in blood. When the doctor realised that Kamal was also injured, he sent him to another hospital as this one did not have enough beds. “I just told the doctor that you keep my mother and sister alive. I was also trying to check on my father,” he said.
Kamal also had to undergo surgery as the bullet has passed through his neck. When he woke up, and was taken home, he saw the dead bodies of all his family members in his house. 35 years later, Kamal continues to live in the same house. “I have always looked at it that way… I was also shot, I had a bullet go through one side of my neck and come out on the other side of my neck and I survived it. There’s no logical reason for me to survive. It’s almost as if the bullet dodged every nerve and came out on the other side. And I survived without any physical problems. It went through my neck. There’s a reason why I survived it. Let me move ahead and let me find that reason, let me live well,” he said.
Despite the traumatic incident, Kamal said that even though this was a “bad incident”, it does not mean that his “entire childhood or my family in their entirety were bad people or my father was a bad person.”
Two years after this, Kamal made his debut in films. Following this, he appeared in a few Hindi films through the 1990s. He also directed and produced a couple of films like Roar: Tigers of the Sundarbans and Victoria No 203.
