Decades ago, when Dara Singh was still king of the wrestling ring, I’d tagged along with him on a Sunday evening to watch a bout. His son, Vindoo, drove the Merc and since he was closer to my age than his dad, he kept me in splits. En route, Dara talked of his diet (he was a vegetarian except for the occasional chicken, and would dimple sweetly, ‘Even the elephant is a vegetarian’) and his disciplined lifestyle. “I get up by 4am,” said the father. “That’s around the time I get home,” his cheeky son had whispered.

Today, one is thankful that the gentle giant isn’t around to see his son behind bars, though I must say that Vindoo is a pretty nice chap to know. Always grinning, always ready with a wisecrack, always warm.

When he was wooing Farha (Tabu’s sister who was a pretty good actress in the 80s), the couple had done a cover shoot for me. She was a firebrand, spewing abuses that would make even Ranjeet blush. At the shoot which was on the beach, Farha and Vindoo decided to smooch for our camera — it turned out to be a sensational cover in the easily-shocked 80s. Shabana Azmi (who is Farha and Tabu’s aunt) had been extremely disapproving of it and had told me that the cover had shamed the family back in Hyderabad where the magazine was prominently displayed at every stall.

Dara Singh didn’t react at all. He didn’t react when Vindoo and Farha got married and broke up too after having a son. Till the end, Dara remained the uncomplaining grandpa to Fateh Singh who lived with his mom. And the doors were always open to Farha as well. Vindoo too, acquired his father’s trait of being inclusive and welcoming.

In fact, even when Dara passed away last year, the entire family (his mom included) was happy to receive guests with a smile. Vindoo had at that time talked of how one of the last things Dara had asked his son for was a peg of Scotch! The Singhs had collectively decided to remain cheerful after his death because that’s how Dara Singh would have wanted his family to be.

Cheerful is not quite the way they will be today.

The last time we met (at Poonam Dhillon’s birthday party), Vindoo had talked of his much-seen front row appearance with Dhoni’s wife Sakshi at an IPL match. At that time too, Vindoo had told me that he was very friendly with the team boss. “I was going to Balaji (Tirupati) when he invited me to watch the match,” he had casually shrugged. He had also said that he wasn’t quite a bosom Dhoni buddy and explained that Sakshi had met him on an earlier occasion. So when she spotted him at the match, she had waved out and asked him to join her. Vindoo had made it out to be just a casual coincidence that he was at the match and by Sakshi’s side. Whether he really had gone on a holy trip to Balaji or something unholy was cooking, should come out in the police investigations.

Close to Akshay Kumar (they played cricket together on Sundays with the neighbourhood kids), Ajay Devgn and Salman Khan, Vindoo always got a small role in most of their films, the latest being Himmatwala. But he is small fry, so he isn’t going to get the kind of public support from his film industry buddies like Sanjay Dutt did. Nobody’s going to say he is innocent because his dad was a good man, like they said in Dutt’s case. In fact, Vindoo should be prepared to be persona non grata once he comes out — even if he is only an accused, not yet a convict.

There is another small name from the film industry who’s once again in the headlines — actor Shayan Munshi who is being tried for perjury in the Jessica Lal case. Strangely, while the TV channels were full of it last week, Shayan himself was out of the country. He has been trying to build a new life for himself in the US where his sister lives, and he had no idea that the case against him was starting again.

Shayan has to try his luck elsewhere because, after the Jessica Lal case, Shayan’s acting career simply failed to take off in Hindi films. One may be reminded at this juncture that even Aamir Khan, who had signed and sealed Shayan for Delhi Belly, had second thoughts and gave the role to his nephew Imran. Let’s repeat it — not everyone gets the kind of support that Sanjay Dutt did.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is editor, The Film Street Journal