And Then One Day: A Memoir (25 page)

Both versions were shot simultaneously and directed by Girish and B. V. Karanth. The two, after making a couple of films in tandem, had made one each on their own and probably to affirm their commitment to each other went into this, their final effort together which in fact was Karanth’s last at filmmaking. The lead was played by Kulbhushan, cast against type as a suave ‘England return’ toting a white wife (Paula Lindsay) whose ideas prove too modern for his village; in the Kannada version the part was being played by another actor Manappa who later died tragically in a road accident. Paula and Laxmi Krishnamurthy playing the mother were also common to both versions and neither of them spoke Kannada either; but since the former had to speak only English and the latter, a deaf mute character, nothing at all, neither of these ladies had to undergo the kind of nightmares I had memorizing words I hadn’t heard before and whose meaning I barely understood. I had to resort to mnemonics to remember the lines most of the time, but I muddled through. Many years later, doing a Malayalam film and realizing that Kannada had been a cakewalk in comparison, I completely abandoned any attempt to speak it after a while and resorted to reciting numbers instead of dialogue. I had also by then somewhat lost the burning enthusiasm I had at the time of
Godhuli,
to believe in myself as the character, to stay in costume, to sleep on an iron cot in a tent, to be served a boiled egg for breakfast with my name in pencil on it, to be paid a pittance, but at that time it hadn’t seemed so bad.

In fact one morning I got a reminder that my lot could actually have been much worse. After having jogged up to the temple that was our main location, I was somewhat impatiently awaiting the arrival of breakfast, when I heard a clanking, huffing sound emerging from the direction of the roughly two hundred steep and uneven stone steps leading up the hill. The sound got closer before I realized it was a spotboy, maybe sixteen years old, ascending the slope I had laboured up carrying only myself. Half a dozen chairs were piled on his head, he had a kettle of tea in one hand and some cups in the other. Though the glaring disparity between the various echelons of workers who comprise the film industry has been illustrated to me many times over in the course of forty years, it has never manifested itself in so affecting a sight as this.

After a twenty-five-day schedule we had a fortnight’s break and returned to the city. Initially terribly self-conscious of the shaved head I took to wearing a cap, but then decided what the hell, it looked rather enigmatic. I threw away the cap and began to enjoy flaunting it. In this break I was summoned by Alyque Padamsee who, the rumours now confirmed, was planning to film Girish Karnad’s play based on the life of Mohammad bin Tughlaq, the eccentric fourteenth-century Sultan of Delhi, who assassinated his father, introduced copper currency and ended his reign in despair after unsuccessfully trying to shift his capital from Delhi to Daulatabad. Mr Padamsee had earlier produced
Tughlaq
in English on the Bombay stage to massive acclaim. I had seen it and had not come away impressed. Kabir Bedi played the title part and the production seemed more interested in flaunting his oily beefcake than focusing on the issues in the play. The mincing diva playing the stepmother seemed to be drooling so over those gorgeous pectorals, at times I wasn’t quite sure this wasn’t
Oedipus Rex
I was watching. At NSD I had acted in Alkazi’s Urdu version of
Tughlaq,
playing two or three minor parts and feeling terribly cheated that I wasn’t considered for the title role—I felt I could play it as no one had. The possibility of getting it in a movie I had fantasized about, but I assumed Mr Bedi had already been cast. However, I told myself there were plenty of other good parts in it and maybe Alyque had seen
Manthan
by now.

Mr Padamsee, at that time head honcho of Lintas, the advertising concern, had a secretary called Miss Pope, the better I suppose to savour the appellation ‘God’ by which he was referred to in ad circles, and she ushered me into God’s presence right away, the first sign that things were going to go terribly right at this meeting. I had never met the man, only seen some of his theatre productions, which seemed impressive until I saw the original versions later when I started travelling abroad. He said he liked the ‘raw-boned’ quality of my face and that he was looking for an actor with my kind of intensity. He had just seen
Manthan
and after hemming and hawing for quite a while he finally said he thought I was ‘right for the part of [it seemed an eternity before he said it] Tughlaq’. My heart by then was hammering so hard I could barely hear him speak. Swallowing resolutely a couple of times I refocused on God. I needed to grow a beard, start pumping up and learn to ride, he was saying. Apparently he wanted me to look as much like Kabir Bedi as I could; I didn’t waste time wondering why Mr Bedi himself hadn’t been cast. I was given money to obtain membership in the Amateur Riding Club at Mahalaxmi and enrol in a gymnasium. Even though my excitement was practically bursting out of my ears, I knew by now that talking about a film before it is actually released is foolishness, and in any case there was no one, apart from Ratna, to whom this news would matter, and she was on her way back from London, not having met the good Gujarati boy of Dina’s dreams.

The future now had a distinctly rosier glow. I had landed the eponymous role in what promised to be a seriously high- profile project. It was to be in Urdu but ‘on an international scale’ so Alyque promised, was to be shot on location in Rajasthan and Gwalior, and was to have a massive budget— until my fee was discussed that is, when it would suddenly become a ‘small film’. Simi Garewal evidently had been signed to play Tughlaq’s stepmother and Jalal Agha was to play the other protagonist, Aziz.

By the time I ended my work on
Godhuli
and returned to Bombay,
Manthan
had garnered not only great praise but healthy box office returns as well. A message awaited me from Rajshri Productions, the producers from another lifetime of the film
Dosti,
asking for a meeting. It transpired that one of the clutch of film-makers they had on their roster had seen
Hero
(my acting course film made at FTII by Shyam) and had got it into his head to remake Chaplin’s
City Lights
with me as the tramp. The script was being worked on, they said, and would I be agreeable? Since it was put that way I decided to lay down a stipulation—only if it was to be shot in one stretch, something they promptly agreed to. But first I had
Tughlaq
on my brain. Before my hair started growing back I was religiously working out in the gymnasium every morning, and every alternate afternoon brushing up on the rudimentary riding abilities I had picked up in Aligarh.

Even though I never received a monetary advance for
Tughlaq,
I no longer had to scrounge meals, I could now even pay the bills when Ratna and I lunched together. The workouts were severe and the brain-dead trainers at the gym advised me on diet but not about the need worked- out muscles have for rest on alternate days. So my regimen consisted of pumping all muscles every day in a two-and- a-half-hour session that would leave me feeling limp. Fortunately my body was young enough to take that sort of punishment. Soon my shirts started going tight around the shoulders and my trousers at the thighs. I was quickly able to recover my not quite forgotten riding abilities, got promoted out of the circle of beginners and was allowed to venture round the race track on my own, resulting in my turning a little more confident than was good for me and taking a tumble at full gallop that resulted in a shifted vertebra and forty-five days flat on my back, not allowed to rise or even turn over. As I was falling, all I thought was, ‘Hell! There goes
Tughlaq,
and here comes the bedpan.’ It had in any case been almost six months since I had come on board and there had been absolutely no movement on that project except that I was expected to turn up at God’s office whenever called and he, after leaning back in his chair, scratching his goatee, examining my by now not unmuscular body, would nod ever so slowly and inform me of a further postponement in the schedule.

Now that the fractured vertebra had put paid to my workouts and pushed the film further away, I considered going into a depression but decided not to. Govind Nihalani who was to be director of photography on
Tughlaq,
told me not to lose any sleep, the project was still pretty far off, even though Alyque kept insisting it would happen soon. A cyclostyled schedule was actually distributed, detailing every shooting location with exact dates right up to the day the film would be re-recorded and the date, time and location of the first screening for the cast and crew! I was within that year to become educated on the vast gulf between good advertising and actual film-making. I also made the monumental discovery while in hospital that there is one position in which it is impossible to roll a joint—flat on your back. Ratna and Om who visited frequently were closely instructed on how to do this essential job for me.

Bobby, now a major in the Armoured Corps and in town for some military matter, unexpectedly visited me in hospital, bearing the news that he and his long-time sweetheart Sabeeha were planning to tie the knot soon and I was expected to attend. Ratna had already met my brothers and their wives and won them all over completely, so naturally she was included in the invite. Agha Mamu, who had chosen another girl for Bobby and had without consulting anyone at all given his word to her family, was furious at the prospect of egg on his face. He threatened to not only boycott the event but to cut Bobby off without a cent if he went ahead. If it had been held in Meerut he might even have disrupted it, guns blazing; so Bobby and Sabeeha’s family had decided Bombay was the safest recourse. An uncle of hers made available a picturesque cottage his company owned at Madh Island and there the banns were to be held. Agha Mamu stayed away but Bobby and I were convinced that with time the old man would come round, after all even my father had; and Bobby had always shared a much closer relationship with his father than I had with mine. Besides he had been a dutiful son, always toeing the line, always obedient, always compliant; now for the first time in his life he had defied a diktat and asserted himself. Agha Mamu, if he truly wished to ‘make Bobby a man’ as he claimed, should have been proud of the new backbone his son had grown but his ego was too huge to allow that. Through the remainder of his life not once did he ever come close to melting, never forgiving Bobby’s solitary act of defiance, nursing his imaginary wound, even refusing to acknowledge his grandsons when they were taken to seek his blessings. I, who according to him had always been a ‘bad influence’ on Bobby, now having made a bit of a name for myself had, not so surprisingly, risen in his esteem. I received a letter from him telling me to advise Bobby against ‘this rash and unwise step’, which I did not bother to do; and Ratna and I happily attended the wedding held with no one present except us, Bobby’s sister Mohib and Sabeeha’s parents. It was the loveliest wedding I have ever been to, on a gorgeous day by the sea, devoid of the heartburn, backbiting and stress always present on such occasions. The beard and long hair I now sported got me mistaken for the ‘qazi’ when we arrived at the wedding location, and Ratna and I that day decided that when we wed it had to be by the sea.

Shooting on the
Tughlaq
project had been postponed so often it was becoming a bit of a joke; the bulk I had put on preparing for the part now became an impediment in the rehabilitation of my injured back. All form of exercise except lower-back therapy being forbidden for the time being, I could only look on in wonder at the bulges around my waist that hadn’t been there before.
Tughlaq
was looking more and more like a mirage but Shyam had decided upon his next, based on a Ruskin Bond short story called
A Flight of Pigeons
set around the 1857 War of Independence and I was cast in the part of a mutineer. The riding skills I had picked up came in useful for this film instead of for the other on which, tiring of Alyque’s constant procrastination, the producers ultimately pulled the plug.

Mrs Remedios came into my room one morning to wake me, something she never did, waving a telegram. She stood by as I tore it open; it was from Zaheer and it said ‘Baba died stop burial in Sardhana today.’

T
he word hijack had by now fully entered the lexicon: the first mid-air incidents had occurred, planes had been blown up and security screens were being tightened at airports the world over. I borrowed the airfare to Delhi (then around 500 rupees) from Ratna, and went to the airport hoping to get on a late morning flight and catch a bus to Sardhana before evening. There were no seats available, I was informed in the not-so-incomprehensibly rude manner in which Indian Airlines ground staff treated passengers those days. Ratna had told me I would get a seat if I showed them the telegram to confirm that my need for a ticket was genuine and urgent, but because of new security rules she couldn’t accompany me into the airport to do the talking; and the desk clerk’s dismissiveness so incensed me that far from telling him about my father’s death and pleading for a seat I felt like slamming him in the face. Besides, if there was no seat available how on earth could he have got me one? So I didn’t plead or produce the telegram and I didn’t get on the flight and I wasn’t present when Baba joined his ancestors that evening. His body had been brought to Sardhana by truck from Allahabad where, staying with Zaheer, his ulcer—a source of trouble for him always—finally got him. Zameer, posted in the North-East, had not managed to turn up in time either. Though all present knew Baba’s condition was grave, he instructed them not to inform me so I had no news until the telegram arrived. He either felt my time would not be my own or he didn’t want me to see him in that condition. On hearing later of the physical agony he went through, I feel thankful I was spared from witnessing his loss of dignity.

Ammi was remarkably composed when I met her—her last thirty years had gone by sharing his life and serving him ceaselessly; now the pivot of her existence was gone, the three of us were able to spare less and less time for her, she hadn’t another involvement she could immerse herself in, yet she was holding back on the lamentation. We knew though how deeply grieved she actually was and that suppressing one’s grief is not always good. We feared she wouldn’t last long after him but the old girl had more spunk than any of us gave her credit for. She not only squared her frail little shoulders and tackled life on her own terms, she outlived him by almost twenty years and had the time of her life revelling in her children’s successes.

The day I arrived in Sardhana I visited the mound of earth that was Baba now and we had the first of the many easy conversations I was later to have with him. That day I talked to him about the film I had just done, felt his amusement at my playing a shaven-headed Hindu priest. I told him about the one I was going to do, playing Sarfaraz the mutineer, and that I was modelling the way I would look in the film on portraits of Dada Jan Fishan Khan, my Afghan ancestor. I could virtually hear him chuckle. I told him about my dreams and my doubts, about Ratna whom he had never met, about how much I was now earning, anything that came into my head. I knew he was listening and responding. This was an actual conversation in which I took the initiative. I suddenly began to feel the weight of all I had lost out on and would never regain and I was surprised by how much I suddenly missed him. A few years later, I had a dream in which I see myself seated as for a job interview, at a long, polished table. Seated on the other side of the table is the interviewer, Baba looking beatifically happy, and he says to me, ‘Tell me about your father.’ I proceed to enumerate the ways he had failed me, how I had never felt loved or appreciated by him, how I never got what I wanted, how I hated his judgemental nature, his narrow worldview, his negativity, etc. etc. As I, quite unemotionally, poured out in a steady stream all I had in life never been foolhardy enough to say to him, he quietly listened, not saying a word and looking unflinchingly into my eyes, as if understanding perfectly what I was talking about. Through his life he had never seemed so much himself, so approachable, as he was in that dream. When I awoke I felt as if my troubled relationship with Baba had achieved closure to some extent.

When I returned to sin-city after the burial, Zaheer insisted on taking Ammi with him to Allahabad and she complied, but only for a couple of weeks before heading back to Mussoorie where she continued to live perfectly content for the next fifteen or so years, only coming down to Sardhana or to one of our homes if the cold got troublesome. If one of us compelled her to leave Mussoorie she’d often angrily acquiesce, and though we all really tried to keep her happy, she was never at peace anywhere except in those two places, in her ‘own home’. Many a rainy night in Bombay did I wonder how she was managing in Mussoorie. She was always desirous of being sociable, loved meeting people, but with Baba being the way he was she had always had to put that desire on hold. Through her remaining days she spent much time in Mussoorie alone or with people she liked, or with one of the three of us alternately and as briefly as she could, though she seldom had much to say.

I wanted to lose the beard and hair I had grown for
Tughlaq
but was told they would be required in Shyam’s new film, and the longer the better. This one was to have a much bigger budget than any of his earlier ones and I would be paid twice as much as I was for my first film. Mr Shashi Kapoor, tasting major commercial success those days, had not only decided with his wife Jennifer Kendal’s goading to build a theatre in his late father Mr Prithviraj Kapoor’s memory, he had also formed Film-valas to produce what he hoped would be memorable popular films, and to that end had signed up nearly every ‘different’ film-maker of those days. Shyam was the first to be taken on and his next two films (the first one
Junoon
was the first of four such ventures) were to launch the company. Mr Kapoor was in huge demand in the popular cinema, so common sense dictated that his coming on board as an actor as well would open up a whole new audience for Shyam. He was cast, much to my chagrin, as the lovelorn Pathan reluctant to join the war. I had read the original story and had always fancied myself in the part. Shyam, knowing I was feeling short-changed, gave me a stern talking to about how ‘the film was more important than individual parts’, and I should enter into it with the same spirit I had so far displayed. He also assured me the part he had created for me was pivotal and the most dramatic of all. I naturally assumed that in that case my job was to outdo everyone in the movie and proceeded to attempt to do that instead of playing as a team man.

The film was to be shot in Kakori and Malihabad near Lucknow, and we repaired thence. Staying at the Clark’s Awadh, the city’s only five-star hotel, I got a room to myself and so, glory be, did Kulbhushan at the other end of the corridor. Ratna, now at NSD, came down to Lucknow for a few days and amusedly witnessed my frantic efforts to stay in character all the time. I very slowly recovered my confidence with horses, and began once more to love it so much, I would have ridden back to the hotel every day if I could. It didn’t occur to me that less could be more and I went through this film straining every nerve and every sinew carrying a banner proclaiming how hard I was working at becoming the character. All totally unnecessary, but hell, it was fun being that guy, red-bearded and turbaned, muzzle-loader slung over shoulder, gunpowder pouch at waist, sword in hand, charging at the British soldiers like a messenger from Hades.

The film viewed now, despite the excellence of its making, appears like an acting contest and the only one who emerges with any laurels at all is a non-actor in a tiny part, Ismat Chughtai the celebrated writer, and that’s because she’s the only one of us not trying to ACT everyone else under the table.

The third day of the shoot, whom should I see standing in the lobby of the hotel with Jennifer but Mr and Mrs Kendal. This should not have been surprising considering they were her parents, but they were there because English actors were going to be needed for the film—somehow I just hadn’t joined the dots. Jennifer, who knew of my fascination with Shakespeareana, introduced me to them and I shook hands with ‘him’ for the second time. My twenty-year dream of acting with him was about to come true.

He was playing a priest delivering a sermon in a church when it is attacked. I am the leader of the attackers. After waiting one score years for this day, the only acting I get to do with him is to walk up to him and cut him down with a sword. But in the few days he was in Lucknow, finding him actually very approachable, I did corner him and talk to him. I soon eliminated the compliments—he would embarrassedly brush them aside anyway. I asked him one day if he didn’t feel regret at not having stayed on in England and becoming a Knight or Lord; I considered him no less than any of those actors who had. ‘Regret?’ he growled. ‘I did what I chose to do. I’m not an actor, I’m a missionary and my mission is to spread Shakespeare.’

A few years later, pungent irony, he and I were simultaneous recipients of the Sangeet Natak Akademi award for services rendered to Indian theatre. I was seated next to him at the ceremony and could not help wondering how much all this really mattered to him. This recognition by the Indian government was too damn late. But surely he felt honoured. I don’t think any Indian has done half as much to spread theatre awareness among schoolchildren in Asia as the Kendals.

I was able finally to tell Mr Kendal about my dream of joining Shakespeareana and in return he asked me if I would act in a production of
Gaslight
he was planning for the Prithvi. But three things conspired against it: a) he himself was not going to act, only direct, b) I was not free at the time he needed to rehearse, and c) I thought the rest of the cast totally unsuitable. The production was staged sometime later and I have to say I didn’t care for it.

The
Filmfare
awards were announced while we were in Lucknow, Ratna called me up from Delhi to tell me that she’d heard I had won something. I had no idea I had even been nominated. I imagined it might be for ‘best supporting actor’ and felt pretty pleased—my picture would start appearing in
Filmfare
at last and the next fortnight it did. I had been awarded a special prize for my performance in
Manthan.
Dr Shriram Lagoo won Best Supporting Actor that year, something I didn’t at all resent. What had happened was that the jury members, probably wanting to reward my efforts but not being able to find a category, had decided to curtsy to the fact that
Manthan
had succeeded critically and commercially, both factors being essential criteria in winning one of those ridiculous statuettes which Smita, while smiling straight at the cameras, presented to me at the function. Except that it felt exactly as heavy as the ones in Mr Dilip Kumar’s drawing room, the whole affair was a frantic letdown.

Barabanki had always been just a word for me. It had no memories or associations at all since I had spent only the first six months or so of my life there. But during the shoot, with Ammi deciding to visit Lucknow to meet her youngest sister Nikhat, and with Ratna discovering that Barabanki was barely an hour’s drive from Lucknow, we undertook a visit there. Ammi who normally could get lost in a phone booth was as sharp as I have ever seen her and guided the car unerringly through the by-lanes of Barabanki to the gate of Jahangirabad House where they lived when I was born. ‘The old house’, as Mr Tom Jones once sang, was ‘still standing, though the paint is cracked and dry’. The bungalow stood forlorn in a large unkempt compound which, knowing Baba’s fondness for roses, must once have had a garden in it. There weren’t many other dwellings around. It had a small gate of the kind one used to see at railway crossings and a short driveway leading up to a low, pillared veranda. The place was locked and looked uninhabited so we walked around; Ammi pointed out the room where my eyes first opened to the world. I didn’t have a camera so we took no pictures but I revisited Jahangirabad House some thirty-five years later to find it completely hidden from view amidst a teeming colony. All around where it stood, alone and somewhat grand, were clusters of newly built shops and houses for miles around. Half the house had fallen down, including ‘my room’; and there were some people, presumably squatting, in the remaining section. We were welcomed in and I saw a smallish drawing room, walls now stripped of plaster, and a tiny fireplace. I tried imagining Baba lighting the fire or Ammi sitting by it while I lay in my crib but it didn’t work. We were soon surrounded by a mob of gawking onlookers. But I now think of that house very often, surely it being the very first place I set eyes on has had some effect.

Rajshri Films, the makers of small, clean family entertainers, had been assiduously wooing me for a while, and with some misgivings I agreed to do their film
Sunaina,
a reworking of
City Lights,
even though the script when I heard it gave me a dyspeptic attack. I was to play the Chaplin part and an FTII classmate and friend, Rameshwari, who had always generously bailed me out with small loans and who despite being the unlikeliest of candidates had hit pay dirt with her first film, was to play the blind flower girl. Shooting was to commence the day I finished
Junoon,
but they gave in to my request for two weeks off before starting. Rajshri Films was nothing if not polite. Vastly relieved to exorcise the demons of 1857 I got a shave and haircut, stopped glowering at the world and started practising the ‘churmeeng ismaaile’ that the Bengali director of
Sunaina,
Mr Hiren Nag, wanted me to employ in almost every scene. Whatever little excitement I had felt about getting to reprise a part created by the greatest actor ever vanished the day we started shooting, and the little fact that Mr Chaplin himself would not be writing and directing this film really sank in.

The ghosts who passed off as the writers of this film obviously had been dissatisfied with Mr Chaplin’s effort and instead of just copying faithfully were intent on improving upon his mastery and control over every aspect of everything in his films: the tenderest subtlety and the broadest pratfall; his ability to manipulate the audience’s feelings in a flash, from the quiet smile to the belly laugh to the silent tear. Chaplin’s worldview, his spare elegant wit, had transmogrified into unfunny situations labouring for laughs or lachrymose self- pitying nonsense. There were endless pages of turgid dialogue instead of the silences or just the looks that say volumes in Chaplin’s work. Worst of all, his somewhat grotesque but deeply perceptive characterizations had become boring prudes, and a self-congratulatory morality had replaced the master’s frequently bawdy sense of fun.