MYSORE: It was a special day for Bungle Shama Rao Dwarakanath, better known as Dwarakish, an actor, director and producer in the Kannada film industry, as he visited Gandhi Square in Mysore to witness a rare moment.
After completing his education, Dwarakish and his brother Madhu opened an automotive spare parts shop called ‘Bharath Auto Spares’ at Gandhi Square in city, which completed 50 years on August 9, 2010 on Tuesday. Dwarakish’s elder brother Nagaraju’s son Sundheendra, who runs this shop presently, had organised the golden jubilee function on Wednesday.
Dwarakish accompanied by his sister Parimala, and her husband, noted Kannada film director Bhargava, visited the shop and participated in the ‘pooja’ on the occasion of golden jubilee.
Later, Dwarakish issued a bill to a customer Mahesh, on purchase of some automobile spares. The customer was so excited that right there he planned to keep the bill throughout his life.
Dwarakish interacted with other customers and collected feedback.
Dwarakish was born at Hunsur in Mysore taluk on 19 August 1942. Bungle Shama Rao and Jayamma were his parents. He grew up in Ittigegud in Mysore. He completed his education in Sharada Vilas and Banumaiah’s school and passed out of CPC Polytechnic with a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering. He went on to look after the shop, as advised by his brother.
But, Dwarakish had a passion for acting and always used to ask his maternal uncle, a famous cinema director Hunsur Krishnamurthy to provide him with a chance to act in the movies. He used to skip the work in the shop and went out for acting in plays. Finally, one fine day in 1963 he quit business and started acting in movies. Flooding with memories, Dwarakish said, “I started my career in this shop 50 years back and left the shop as I was interested to join sandalwood. In fact, next year I would be completing 50 years of profession in sandalwood!”
The comedian did not forget to give gift cheques to nine employees in the shop.