Noted senior actor Gufi Paintal – who became immensely popular as the scheming legendary ‘Mama Shakuni’ character with the ominous limp in the iconic telly epic show ‘Mahabharat’, and has also acted in various TV serials and Bollywood movies thereafter – is now exploring one of his hidden talents. The exuberant Gufi, who was honoured at the annual Hum Log Shivraatri Awards convened by Mohan Mirchandani at the Radio Club, has discreetly turned lyricist. When Paintal announced this on the stage at the Awards event, the audiences gazed at him with disbelief. To prove his point, as a live-demo, he read out a couple of song lyrics penned by him for the upcoming youthful rom-com Hindi movie ‘Big Flirters’ written and directed by Arhan Akhtar (not to be confused with Farhan Akhtar), for which the music will be scored by Sajid-Wajid and will feature beauty pageant winners, including Afroze Khan, claims the director.
One of the catchy songs which goes ‘Charcha Hi Charcha’, has the word ‘charcha’ repeated several times. Talking about this, Gufi says, “It was a huge challenge for me to write lyrics for today’s fast-forward youth. Maybe chatpataa songs like these will make me the topic of ‘charchaa’.”
Currently, the actor is wrapping up his directorial venture of Chattisgarhi movie ‘Maathari’ (mother) in which he has also acted. “In this movie, all the seven songs have been written by me,” says the actor, who has also been shooting for a Rajshri project, which is being touted as a thriller produced by Kavita Barjatya and titled ‘Samrat & Co.’ It has Rajeev Khandelwal as the ingenious detective and Gufi plays the role of the family lawyer.