BENGALURU: If you’re active on social media, there’s no way to have missed a forward on ‘The Bollywood actor who broke 8 cycling world records’ that has been doing the rounds. Interestingly, this message about Jankidas Mehra has a Bengaluru connect. Mehra happens to be the maternal grandfather of Grammy award-winning musician Ricky Kej. As netizens wondered about Mehra’s multiple achievements, Kej took to social media to clear the air.
Growing up, Kej would hear stories from his Nanaji, who, born in Lahore, started off as a cyclist and went on to be the only Indian participant in the International Olympic Squad from the British Imperial Empire in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. He also went onto establish the Indian Cycling Federation for the Olympics. Ahead of participating in the Berlin Olympics, Mahatma Gandhi met Mehra and gave him the flag of the Indian National Congress.”Gandhi gifted Nanaji the flag and asked him to hoist it in foreign soil after winning,” says Kej about his grandfather who passed away in 2003 in Mumbai.
After winning the gold in cycling at Berlin Olympics, Mehra for the first time, hoisted the Indian flag, gifted by Gandhi. The flag, along with a congratulatory telegram from Gandhi, is displayed at the Mahatma Gandhi National museum in New Delhi. After the incident, he was deported back to India and he was banned from cycling.
But that did not stop him. He ventured into acting and writing after his sports career came to a halt. “His first lead role as a hero was in a film called Daulat, directed by Sohrab Modi. The female lead was essayed by Madhubala, who was actually rejected during the auditions for the film. Nanaji and the director found her on a train to Mumbai, sobbing after she was not selected. This was the first film in which Madhubala was cast,” says Kej who also adds that his grandfather’s book called My Misadventures in Filmland has all the actors he introduced to cinema, including Meenakumari, Dharmendra among others.
Mehra went on to act in more than a 1,000 films, essaying the roles of villains, supporting characters and also introduced the designation of production design in filmmaking. He also holds the record in the Limca Book of World Records for acting in the most number of films in Indian cinema in the late ‘90s. “I was inseparable from my Nanaji. He was a man of knowledge, humility and humour. I’ve inherited some of my artistic creativity from him. I’ve understood the fundamentals of building something from scratch and excelling in whatever you put your mind to,” says Kej.
Over the last few days, a viral forward on sportsperson and Bollywood actor Jankidas Mehra, has been doing the rounds on social media world-over. Turns out that there’s a Bengaluru connect to this as it happens to be city-based Grammy award-winning musician Ricky Kej’s grandfather