And Then One Day: A Memoir (9 page)

When eventually I was compelled to go home, Ammi would often ask me whether I had missed her, whether I had ever thought of her. I would evade giving a straight answer, and dwelt only on my adventures, which by then had become ‘the travails I endured’. The truth was that I hadn’t missed home for a second, not once had I felt homeless or put upon, even the bus stop or park I sometimes slept in were comforting; not once was I awed by this city, never had I felt scared of it, or alone and anxious in it, it had turned out exactly as I’d expected. I had taken to it instantly. Not once did I wonder what would become of me, not once did I find myself thinking of my parents. That was a closed chapter I thought, I was done with them forever.

Hanging around one evening I was brought by Cousin into the presence of a flashily dressed gent whose attire and bearing announced ‘Film industry’ in no uncertain terms. He barely looked at me, and like the top-dog of Intelligence sending crack spies on a do-or-die mission, he singled out some dozen or so of us from those around and in an undertone instructed us to be at Nataraj Studio at seven thirty next morning. We were promised Rs 7. 50 each for a day’s work. The rate was actually Rs 15 daily but since we were not Union, the tout was swallowing half. In any case I was over the moon at the thought of seven rupees, and he said there might be more. It took me some thirty-five years of travelling through the film industry’s intestines, so to say, to figure out what was actually happening then. Production on a film was nearing an end, there was patchwork to be completed, budget was probably strapped, extras were needed instantly and cheaply. The Extras’ Union in Bombay is and always has been pretty strong-arm. It has the power to prevent or stall a shoot if non-Union members are being used, if dues are not paid, if its members are ill-treated, etc. This was obviously being done in an emergency and on the sly with non-Union members being used at much cheaper non-Union rates. But to me this was my big chance. I was going to act in a movie! With many adolescent dreams jostling for space in my head, and accompanied by Cousin, I got to Nataraj Studio, the place of rendezvous well before time. Nataraj, now defunct, then housed the office of every big movie mogul in town. I walked around looking at the nameplates—names and emblems I had seen only on the screen, my heart jiving joyously all the while. It was well known that every runaway to Bombay ended up going home defeated sooner or later, but I thought that not many must have succeeded in getting even as far as I had.

Arriving at the verdant shooting spot, I was astounded by the size of the movie camera, and by how many people were attending to it. We were lined up, the blinding reflectors adjusted and as the camera panned slowly past I caught sight of myself in the lens; that felt really good, I was inside the camera! There was a sharp reminder not to grin and NOT to look into the lens. I assumed my most sombre expression, it was a funeral scene after all, mustn’t look happy. I did, however, manage to sneak a look into the lens every time the camera passed me, and I caught sight of myself every time. This shot did not make it to the final cut, and I would later tell anyone who cared to listen the oft-repeated strugglers’ story of how the star had my scenes cut because I was so good. The film,
Aman,
did later get shown and it still survives, and I am present in a couple of shots, one actually with the leading man Rajendra Kumar (playing dead), a major star of that period. (One Lord Bertrand Russell also made his acting debut in this film though I didn’t have any scenes with him. ) Mr Kumar arrived for the shoot in a black Mercedes sedan well after we had been there more than an hour. The man in the flashy clothes seemed to be a particular favourite of his. Hugs were exchanged all around, much laughter rang out, many cigarettes were lit. Mr Kumar, after thoroughly checking his somewhat yellowish make-up, climbed on to the truck bed where a flower-covered bier awaited, the camera above him on the truck. The truck moved, the camera rolled and all of us paid mourners followed looking suitably stricken. I, quicker than the others and more desperate to appear on screen than any of them, managed to insinuate myself into the very first row and that was how I first appeared in a movie.

We were then given lunch and told we were not required the next day but there might be something else soon. Cousin and I celebrated that evening by paying a visit to Falkland Road and had a woman each, which to my delight cost exactly as much as it had that first time in the tent. I wondered how come, surely everything cost more in Bombay? I began to feel maybe in Kishangarh we’d been ripped off.

After treating myself to two hard-boiled eggs at Bombay Central, I did my usual walk down Belassis Street, past Alexandra Cinema, left into Madanpura and home, counting the taxis lined in a serpentine row all the way, passing the time by checking if the doors were locked and locking them if they weren’t. My good deed for the day performed, I lay on my mattress on the zari factory floor and slept contentedly that night. But with more than three of the seven rupees already gone and next month’s rent to be paid, I began to keep an eye peeled at Pamposh for the saviour who had promised ‘something in a day or two’.

Finally taking the family’s now rather broad hints, I no longer ate at their house. I was fending for myself and not doing a great job of it. But flashily dressed gent reappeared and announced that we would be needed for another film; three days at the same rate. I felt loaded with money already. Twenty-two rupees fifty paise meant two whole months’ rent and a couple of cigarette packs on the side! That I’d also need to eat didn’t occur to me. The shooting was in Mohan Studios, yet another studio that has passed into the hands of time, and I was one of roughly two hundred attendees at a birthday party into which the leading man, the legendary Raj Kapoor ever the simpleton, stumbles with supposedly hilarious results. We were handed glasses of a Coca-Cola coloured liquid and instructed not to sip. Despite my best efforts, I didn’t upstage anyone this time, and couldn’t even spot myself when I saw the final film,
Sapnon ka Saudagar,
later. I considered paying up two months’ rent in advance but dismissed the idea and the money was well spent on a couple of visits to Falkland Road and the cinema.

I still steadfastly refused to buy a ticket on the local, sneaking out of the side exits cost far less. At times, if I’d missed the last train, I’d just settle down at a bus stop near Pamposh. If roused and told to move on by a passing cop there was always the garden nearby where, along with some homeless types, regulars there, I would sleep undisturbed on the grass. A month’s rent paid, the remaining Rs 12. 50 disappeared as fast as a snowflake in hell. Flashily dressed gent was nowhere to be seen, nothing was happening and the empty stomach had begun its growling entreaties again. Even a cup of tea was getting tough to score. At Cousin’s suggestion I sold the few clothes I didn’t need at throwaway prices in Chor Bazaar. The wolf was truly at the door. Month-end was approaching and no sign of the US cavalry.

And then one day, when I was sitting on the pavement outside Pamposh, a long shiny grey limousine pulled up right in front of me. The rear door opened and a pair of well-pedicured female feet in glittering high-heeled sandals stepped out. I heard a voice ask, ‘Is your name Naseer?’ Nodding in assent and raising my incredulous gaze, I saw an immaculately dressed, vaguely familiar-looking lady towering over me. She curtly instructed me to get in the front, which in a stupor I did, and nearly froze as the blast of air conditioning hit my sweaty shirt. As the car drove off I was not at all sure this wasn’t a dream, until the admonishments began and then I knew it was real. I recognized the lady now, I’d seen her picture in some magazine, she was Mrs Saeeda Khan, sister of the biggest star of the time, Mr Dilip Kumar, and now it began to make sense. Mr Kumar’s eldest sister Sakina apa, a devotee of the Sufi saint whose shrine in Ajmer my father had administered, had often visited there, and on one occasion even stayed with us. Obviously it had taken the two months I had been in Bombay for Baba to finally overcome his natural reticence and contact her. The only clue to my whereabouts he had was the surname of the girl I had corresponded with. With that lead it wasn’t tough, I suppose, for so resourceful a film family as Mr Kumar’s to track me down. In the limousine I didn’t even have the time to start imagining it was my own car before we were driving up Pali Hill, the residence of most film stars then, and a huge wooden gate was being flung open and we were entering Dilip Kumar’s own bungalow!

I was taken upstairs into the presence of Sakina apa, who I had met before in Ajmer. She was a melancholy person, always remote and detached, but that day she was spitting fire, and the exhaustion and sense of failure I was keeping myself from feeling finally overtook me in a rush and made me dissolve into a flood of tears and apology. I won’t go into all that was said that day; it has been and is being said even today to and by every young person who opts for acting as a career against the wishes of family. The upshot was I agreed to go home. The remains of my luggage were brought from Madanpura to Pali Hill, and I was lodged in the basement of the bungalow in a space obviously used at other times as a waiting room or a place for the domestics to rest. But I was being fed and even had access to a bathroom and to most of the house. I’d often wander into the drawing room where six or was it seven Filmfare trophies stood in a row on a shelf. I tried picking up one and found it so heavy I thought it was nailed down. I did manage to pick it up finally, held it in one hand, waved with the other and made a deeply moving acceptance speech.

At a remove from the main house was a cottage: the great man’s hideout, his thinking space, probably his working space as well, with two cosy interconnected rooms, a couch and mattresses on the floor, books stacked to the ceiling, paintings on the walls and a sitar. No one prevented me from going in there when I pleased. I was told not to go there when HE was around, but he never was, in fact he was seldom home at all, so I spent much of my time there. This was Dilip Kumar’s private den I was spending hours in, poring over books on cinema! The only cinema literature I had been familiar with till then had been
Filmfare
and
Picturpost
and sometimes Hollywood’s
Photoplay.
New names and faces now inundated my head: actors George Arliss, William S. Hart, Emil Jannings, John Gilbert; directors Michael Curtiz, F. W. Murnau, Georges Clouzot, Josef von Sternberg. Immensely depressed at the thought of perhaps never being able to see any of these works I, in one of my more Walter Mittyish—and dare I say clairvoyant—moments foresaw a day when one would be able to carry around a portable machine on which any film at all would be available to watch at any time. While I don’t claim credit for inventing the video player, until that day came I had to wait, and I am still waiting for some, particularly the silent Westerns of Mr Hart, whose middle name, incidentally, was Shakespeare.

I spent the few remaining days before I was packed off in this paradise-like cottage, once even bumping into the man himself. Displaying absolutely no surprise or curiosity at finding me there and barely acknowledging my presence, he went about whatever he was doing. A couple of days later, spotting him alone in his garden, I tremulously approached him, hoping to ask if he would help me find work, but the words I would say had barely formed in my head when I realized he had already delivered a short lecture on why ‘boys from good families should not join the film world’ and dismissed me from his presence. Much much later, I acted with Mr Dilip Kumar in a film I hated, and could never bring myself to mention this meeting; in any case he probably had no memory of it.

Sakina apa then informed me that I had been booked on the Dehradun Express back to Meerut the next day. I would be given money enough to eat on my journey back and, taking no chances, I would be escorted all the way to my berth on the train. Things were coming full circle. It was only then that thoughts of how I would face my parents occurred. They were not comforting thoughts.

A
s the homeward-bound Dehradun Express was pulling out of Bombay Central I did consider alighting at the next stop and staying on but of course that would have been far too intrepid. The journey back was a blur. My imagination, usually very active, just refused to go the route it normally would imagining the homecoming; and now my long-term memory which is pretty acute also fails me. I just do not recall it. All I remember is reaching Meerut Cantt station around noon and, not wishing to be spotted returning in Sardhana, deciding to wait till night and hanging around at the station the rest of the day. With my last remaining rupee I got a ticket on the very last bus, the 9. 30 p. m. to Sardhana. It got there in an hour and by the time I walked home with my luggage or what remained of it on my back, it was around 11 p. m., an ungodly hour for the parents. Ammi, however, was still awake, I heard her moving about in the kitchen muttering to herself. I was surprised at how comforted I felt hearing her voice again. I stationed myself under the kitchen window to prepare for the big moment, the knock on the door, the shameful homecoming. Thoughts of the mockery that awaited me at the hands of uncles, cousins, aunts made me hesitate repeatedly and before I could pluck up the courage to face the only two people who would not deride me, the lights went out and I knew I’d have to wait outside till morning.

I settled on my now considerably slimmer hold-all to pass the night. It was late February and the end-of-winter chill compelled me after a while to open it and cover myself in the only blanket I had left, the other two now warming some hustler in Chor Bazaar or bringing him a fat profit. Feeling not too uncomfortable, I dozed off and was awoken by ‘Ayyy! What are you doing sleeping here?!!’ For a moment I thought I was being hassled at the bus stop by a cop, and started gathering my things to move along, then remembered I was home and this was the one voice I hadn’t missed at all— Baba’s. They were both early risers and he had just risen and opened the door to find this bedraggled prodigal asleep on his bedroll on the doorstep. ‘Get up! Go meet your mother!’ he said, brushing aside my insincere apologetic mumbling. Ammi for the only time in her life abandoned her namaaz as I entered the bedroom. She held me in her arms with a fury I had never sensed in her, weeping and thanking the God who had brought me safely home. The smell of Ammi’s clothes I can still recall and I wallowed in it for as long as I could. The first breakfast in over sixty days lodged in my stomach, and a much-needed haircut and bath having been administered, I was marched off to the mosque to gain further absolution by giving thanks for having been delivered from ‘the path that had wrought (His) anger’. I instead entreated Him to ensure I would make it back to Bombay some day.

The mandatory visits to the grandparents followed, they both sort of made no mention of my adventure but the heroic mamus made it a special point to rub the humiliation in really deep. ‘Laut ke buddhu ghar ko aaye!’ went Chand Mamu, adding a translation in English in case I hadn’t understood. Fine specimens of manhood that they were, it’s not impossible they may at some point have entertained dreams similar to mine and were envious of my enterprise.

The beginning of the new academic year was not too far away and inevitably Aligarh began to figure once again in my life. Words like ‘books’, ‘application forms’, ‘semesters’, ‘credits’, which I thought I was through with forever, started cropping up all over again. Baba had by now, with a heavy heart, abandoned his ‘my son, the doctor’ dream and consented to let me try for the arts programme, into which I was duly admitted, but there were three more penitential months to go before term began. In these three months I did all I could (unsuccessfully) to quell Baba’s disapproval. I’d wake early, get the kitchen fire going, put the kettle on, make the beds, help with breakfast, read the newspaper— mercifully there was nothing I had to study yet—and spend the rest of the day shooting the breeze with cousins or toting Baba’s. 22 rifle around and bagging the odd dove or green pigeon. All kinds of game had by then become pretty rare but when some unsuspecting cheetal or blue bull got bagged we all energetically took part in the skinning. I became pretty adept at skinning and cleaning.

With my rudimentary knowledge of the Arabic script I struggled through reading the Quran on my own without any help. When I completed this monumental task, to my surprise there were no fireworks and I wasn’t carried shoulder high through Sardhana. Baba just grunted non-committally and Ammi smiled kindly and said, ‘Better if you had a maulvi, beta. ‘ That ended my study of the Quran but I was regular at namaaz and even at screaming out the azaan occasionally, as well as at sneaking off for a smoke in the afternoons when Baba and Ammi took a siesta.

In charge of the family mosque was a wizened, ebony- hued gent called ‘Sufiji’. No one knew his name, or where he came from or when, but he seemed to have been there always. In retrospect, recalling his accent and complexion, I assume he was probably a refugee from East Bengal, but who knows, Sufiji took his secrets to the grave. Always dressed in a saffron robe, he had long, straggly hair, a grey pointed goatee, no growth on his cheeks, no teeth in his mouth and dancing eyes despite a bad squint in one. His laughter was just loud exhalations of breath and he laughed all the time. On my return from Bombay Sufiji was the only one to welcome me back with a smile. He said he knew I would return. Sufiji was a walking Ouija board, he claimed he had visitations all the time, and in the pre- namaaz gossip sessions whenever he casually let it drop that ‘So-and-so [some long-dead ancestor] came to see me last night’, we children were immediately excluded from the conversation. I don’t know for a fact if these visions Sufiji had were geared towards attention grabbing or if he was pretending to pass on messages from the hereafter while actually being goaded to settle family politics, or if he was just stoned all the time.

When I discovered marijuana a few years later I knew I had smelt it before, around the Ajmer Dargah and around Sufiji. Whatever, the elegant little mosque from the late nineteenth century was kept clean by this mystery man. It sat tranquilly in the shadow of Jan Fishan Khan’s mausoleum, nearby was the gate to Nawab Bahadur Shah’s haveli. All around were verdant fields. Today the mosque stands in the middle of a teeming colony; in the lane leading to it you’d be hard put to swing a dead cat and there are unending rows of perfectly hideous cement houses and shops piled haphazardly on top of one another. It was after Sufiji passed that the itchy fingers of all those in the family with some claim to the lands around the mosque began to crawl towards their triggers.

Movies were totally missing from the agenda in Sardhana which had one mobile ‘picture house’, a tarpaulin-roofed tin shed which was not functional when it rained. The audience sat on the floor and the ‘balcony’ was two rows of benches at the back. There was a pause at every reel change. I would have loved to see the stuff they showed, mostly Z-grade stunt movies, but no member of the family could possibly be spotted there. Despite this restriction Chand Mamu, Zameer and I managed to sneak out one night and watch
Rustom-e- Baghdad,
a terrible Dara Singh film which I loved, and which probably put Zameer off Hindi movies for life. The only other person who shared my own now insatiable curiosity about Hindi movies was my cousin Mir Ahmed (Bobby), Agha Mamu’s son, who had also always been a close pal. He and I had shared the odd smoke stolen from his dad’s packet, and had broken many rules in tandem, until his recruitment into the NDA ended all his good cheer and peccadilloes—the result of a promise he made to his old man, a promise he has kept to this day.

It was Bobby who broke the news to me one day that Agha Mamu was contemplating buying a house in Mussoorie. The old man in his capacity as Superintendent of Police and later as DIG had resided in many palatial homes and was used to being waited upon hand and foot by a retinue which, since his wife’s death in childbirth some years ago, had also included trusty old Akabi, who had reared Bobby and his sister Mohib. So the news that this grand old cat was planning a country- gentleman retirement did not surprise me in the least, he’d always been a splendid creature. What knocked the wind out of me was when I heard my parents discussing the possibility as well. I had no idea there was so much moolah lying around. The house, it turned out, was going really cheap, practically at distress rates. ‘Chaman Estate’, consisting of twenty-four bungalows belonging to the Begum of Rampur, was being flogged for a pittance.

Somewhat like in a bad Hindi movie, the Begum had recently blown a considerable fortune unsuccessfully contesting parliamentary elections against her own son. Now finding herself somewhat strapped for cash, she had decided to dispose of these bungalows, probably lying forgotten for years. Though why anyone would want to build twenty-four bungalows all at once is another matter. DIG saab went for No. 24, the erstwhile ‘Banquet Hall’, and Baba for No. 17, a ‘smaller’ but fully furnished house with five bedrooms, a parlour, a living room, an outhouse, and about half an acre of land around it. It cost twice his entire savings plus his provident fund, fixed deposits and all. The situation needed a hero and in stepped Agha Mamu, offering to buy half of No. 17 as well. After a few weeks of high anxiety the deal was settled with No. 17 being acquired for 35, 000 rupees, half of which was paid by Baba, and we took possession of our own first real home.

Deciding which part of the house belonged to whom could have been the first bone of contention but Agha Mamu respectfully deferred first choice to Baba, the elder. The house came fully equipped with late-nineteenth-century teak and pine dressers, dining table, sideboards, sofas, chairs, coffee tables, all for some reason painted black. Dividing the furniture came next and that too passed without incident, with both deciding that the furniture should remain in whichever part of the house it already was—an agreement by which both dutifully abided, except that one exquisite roll- top writing desk from our part of the house mysteriously vanished and reappeared a few months later in Agha Mamu’s bedroom. However no walls were built this time round, with both families having a free run of the entire place for a considerable time. It was years later, while an abortive sale of the house (proceeds to be split three ways) was in progress, that in a fit of nostalgia I decided to take all the furniture as my share. I brought it back to Bombay and had it stripped, and the exquisite grain in the wood then revealed itself. That furniture, by now surely about a century old, still serves us and has in fact survived a flooding.

Living in a house atop a hill with a view ofdistant mountains soon became a drag when shopping had to be fetched from the Mall, as I was the one normally deputed to do the carrying. It wasn’t nearly as bad as having to do the same chore in Sardhana though, where, after word of my Bombay misadventure had spread, every time I ventured out, shopping basket in hand, it seemed as if every single person in that market dropped whatever he was doing to gape at this ‘going-to-be-actor’. In Mussoorie it felt very very uncool trudging uphill pretending that the radish and turnip leaves sticking out of the basket weren’t there. Not conducive to fantasizing at all and, besides, girls won’t give you a second glance.

New friends we made there were Aslam Khan and his brother Akbar, a pair of colourful landowners in the area. Also of Afghan stock and domiciled in India as long as or longer than our family, apart from being Persian speaking, their paterfamilias and Baba hit it off instantly. Our maternal grandparents were ailing and soon to pass, Shah Mamu had quit the police and taken up farming in a place called Mahmudabad and Chand Mamu was at loggerheads with us, so none of them ever came to Mussoorie, but we accompanied the Khan brothers on many poaching trips into the hinterland. Game was really scarce by now and our normal bag would be a partridge or a wild hen or two. We’d often return not having even spotted anything, but flocking with their own kind is a tendency shikaris have.

It was at the start of one of these sessions that I was nearly the victim of a horrendous hunting accident caused by Agha Mamu of all people. Bobby and I were squatting at the back of the jeep, plastering the number plates with wet mud—a precaution taken in case we were chased by forest officials, of which there was a real possibility. I had already imagined the chase in cinematic detail, and was just getting up to wash my hands when I was knocked over backwards by a flash, an explosion and a whistling that went past my ear with the force of a small gale. Recovering my wits, I saw Agha Mamu standing in a shell-shocked state, the smell of gunpowder was everywhere and blue smoke curled out of the barrel of the 450. 400 rifle he was holding. He who had subjected us to countless lectures on weapons etiquette had nearly blown my head off with a rifle that could lay out a blue bull. My thudding heart was stilled, however, by seeing the more than apologetic look in his sunken eyes. The danger to my life now past, I danced inwardly seeing him blanch and stutter in a timid voice I had never heard him use before, ‘I... I... thought the safety catch was on... ‘ No one dared ask him what he was doing fiddling with the trigger in the first place. Through the night, suddenly looking very old, he sat slumped silently in the front seat. Once again we didn’t spot a thing. Nor did the exciting chase materialize.

Mussoorie had its share of drudgery, and it didn’t end at vegetable shopping. Both the houses, in respective states of disrepair, needed considerable work. Doors had to be removed or installed, windowpanes replaced, sofas upholstered, roofs repaired. After the peaceful division came the discovery that all five bathrooms in the house were on one side, theirs; so washbasins and commodes were acquired and plumbing laid, stuff had to be carried back and forth, bricks and rubble cleared. Bobby, now a cadet at the NDA, and I were instructed to help in these tasks and were paid two rupees a day each. Since work continued for quite a few days we made a considerable killing. With my earnings I would head every evening to the Hakman’s Hotel to play tombola, hoping for a windfall. I always ended up losing, which actually is a pattern that has repeated itself in my life many times over, whenever I have attempted to get something for nothing. It’s almost as if nature is redressing the balance of having looked after the massive gamble that my life has turned out to be, and in which I have had moderate but highly satisfying winnings most of the time.