And Then One Day: A Memoir (32 page)

This film,
Masoom,
has introduced me to three generations of children and not only holds pride of place in my memories, it is one film which everyone everywhere seems to have seen, whereas the other one on which I had pinned not a few hopes and which I shot for just before going to Delhi and had to shoot for immediately on returning, is buried in a grave without a marker and deservedly so. A cloying moronic piece of fluff, in which situations of conflict were created only because ‘dramatic’ solutions had been thought of beforehand, it pretended to tackle a progressive subject but pusillanimously conformed to all the tried and tested formulae, without a clue as to what had made those clichés work in the first place. I never saw it, I didn’t need to; even though this time I hadn’t tried to be real and followed to a T every instruction about plastering myself in make-up, keeping hair in place, no creases in clothes etc., I knew that my performance was another huge embarrassment. I was given the kind of moustache I’d never ever have in real life and I had to enact situations I wouldn’t have expected to in my wildest dreams, among them romantic scenes in bed with both these ladies and songs where I resemble a marionette whose strings are being pulled by an inebriated puppeteer. Hardly anyone saw it and the couple of loyal friends who did assured me it was so excruciating to watch,
Sunaina
was great cinema in comparison.

This has occurred not a few times in my career and it has taken me a while to figure out that in these films the behavioural references of the actors must not be to real life but to other films. I had absorbed nothing of the Hindi-film acting style at all; and, in fact, despite greatly admiring and imitating many actors, had absorbed nothing lasting from any of them, except Mr Kendal, and I had outgrown most of that as well. My dictionary of references was from life, not from Hindi films in which the incidents are neither close to life nor the result of either the writer’s or the director’s empathetic resources but the bastard child of an earlier filmic experience. Every scene felt like a rehash of stuff that had worked well before in another context; I could feel no connection to these scenes, even the originals of which I hadn’t liked and had in fact rewritten in my head when I saw the movies. I couldn’t find a smidgen of truth in anything; and not having the fondest affection for the kind of acting in popular Hindi cinema and nothing of a grasp of it, I could not bring an iota of conviction to the part. This nearly apocalyptic choice, the mention of which stumps even trivia buffs, wrote ‘finis’ to my stint as a leading man in mainstream cinema for many years, whereas
Masoom,
about which I had been initially quite condescending invariably finds first mention among my films almost thirty- five years after it was made. As Grotowski had said in another lifetime, ‘there is no such thing as talent but there is such a thing as lack of talent, and lack of talent occurs when one is not in one’s right place’. Finding my ‘spot’ has taken me well- nigh forty years but I think I have spent at least some of that time in the right place.

Whether as husband and father I would be in my right place was a question that did give me some anxious moments until it finally happened, and I think I acquitted myself in both roles with not a little credit. Ratna and I didn’t get married by the sea, the registrar not being willing to travel all the way to Madh Island, but in Dina’s home—for sentimental reasons also. As soon as the vows were taken in the presence of only immediate family, we spent the rest of the day carousing with a few friends on the beach, innocently believing life is perfect until we got to the Khar subway that day on our way home.

When about a year later Heeba finally arrived to live with us, I did what I could to repair the breach. The memory of the childhood in Iran, when it is discussed, still seems to distress her. She seldom talks about it and I have to kill the urge to enquire into what was probably a delicate and difficult time. Purveen, Heeba and Bushra, Heeba’s half-sister, were in Iran through the turmoil of Ayatollah Khomeini’s return and the revolution, which forced the Shah (no relation!) to flee. Both girls had probably been subjected to a rigid orthodox upbringing, they both always wore a chador covering their hair and ears, a sartorial custom which to our combined relief she abandoned almost as soon as she moved in to live with us. Namaaz continued for a few days but then that too quickly went by the board.

Purveen had evidently turned into quite a fundamentalist herself shortly before embarking on her travels; probably the reason Iran was chosen as a destination. Heeba had never been to school and spoke only Farsi then but, having spent the first couple of years of her life in England, had probably learnt to speak English first. Though out of practice, she understood it well, and it came back very quickly indeed. She was fourteen and I don’t know too many fourteen-year-olds who could so gracefully handle the ignominy of being admitted in Class 6 with children much younger. She went on to graduate and study drama in Delhi and is now a well-adjusted, contented working actor, an asset to our company and an inspiringly positive influence on her two half-brothers. But though I have to live with the knowledge that the scar tissue of my earlier indifference will never disappear, I wouldn’t think she has too many complaints now. The credit for her rehabilitation goes entirely to Ratna.

I wish I could say we all lived happily ever after but life is too complicated for such a smug summing up. And anyway, that is another story.

E
ver since I was fifteen years old, following my triumphant turns as Shylock and Lear in school, when I actually began to dare to think of myself as an actor I have always had this waking nightmare: one day I meet up with a wise old man who, after watching my work, says to me, ‘Well... doubtless everyone has always said you are a very good actor but...’ And I still have no clue what he says after the ‘but’. My imagination doesn’t exactly fail me at that point but it doesn’t seem sure in which direction to head, and thus I have found many different directions, but never a resolution to the conversation.

This fear which over the years I have actually begun to enjoy living with, half fearfully half eagerly anticipating hearing the rest of what that old man has to say, has perhaps propelled me to take nothing whatsoever for granted and made me stumble upon answers when I wasn’t even looking for them. The old man himself has not shown up to this day. But he has manifested himself in several ways and at the most unexpected times, and never in the garb I expected: sometimes a young Jesuit, sometimes a woolly- headed professor, sometimes a stoned companion, sometimes a beautiful woman and sometimes a guardian angel. I think I have reached the stage that when I look in the mirror I get a hazy glimpse of him and he’s looking right into my eyes.