Saira Banu remembers Joy Mukherjee

Yesteryear actresses Saira Banu remembers her buddy late Joy Mukherjee. “Joy gone! It’s so hard to believe.. Just a week back I had sent him and his wife Neelam pictures that I had taken when they had come to the get-together at our home. He had become so overweight he had to be carried inside. Kya ho gaya Joy ko? His whole family used to be so much into fitness. Joy’s father the great filmmaker Sashadhar Mukherjee was keenly into physical fitness. He had an akhaada(wrestling ring) in his home. I think after Sashadhar Saab’s death Joy just gave up. He let himself go to such an extent that his wife Neelam had no control over his diet. She tells me she’d give him healthy food at home. He would then leave home with his driver to go and have all the unhealthy junk food like samosas and what have you. Such is life, I guess," recalls Saira Banu. "When you are hell-bent on self-destruction nothing can stop you. I can still remember his ever-smiling face. It’s hard to believe he’s gone. Joy and I were buddies. We did so many films together that we would look at each other’s faces on the first day of shooting and groan, ‘Not you again!’. Our most successful film together was of course Shagird. The director Subodh Mukherjee made Joy go on a special fitness regime for this role, just as he made Shammi Kapoor do when we did Junglee together. So Joy was fitter than ever in Shagird. By then I had gotten married to Yusuf Saab. So on the first day of shooting Joy said he hoped I will learn some acting, now that I was married to the God of acting. I was livid. ‘Joy ke bachche!’ I screamed at him. That was the kind of relationship I had with him. We could scream at one another and fight. But at the end of the day we were friends. I’ve seen girls swooning over Joy. I could never understand why. I never looked at him that way. Yusuf Saab and I visited him in hospital just a few days ago. We were told he was on the road to recovery. And now, this,” she says.