The Non-Conformist

by Parikshat Sahni

  Touched, as usual, by the devotion and deference he still elicits from his admirers, even if it is only through me, I wish Dad were here to see that his life, his talent, his contribution as an actor and as a man had not been wasted; and receive in person, the respect and esteem bestowed on him.

  I don’t think he was given the recognition due to him when he was alive. Yes, he had his share of admirers—from ordinary people he met on Juhu beach to fellow members of the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) to contemporary writers and artistes. But he was still a misfit in the film industry.

  Many people in the film industry ridiculed him. I remember my friend and scriptwriter, Suraj Sanim, once telling me to my face, ‘Balraj Sahni is a fraud!’ Not knowing how to respond to this insult, I had simply walked away, seething at his rude words. I had said nothing in my father’s defence. His remark had struck me as totally unwarranted, but I felt there was no point in coming down to his level. I was sure he would one day realize his mistake.

  Then there was an uncle, whom I cannot name for fear of hurting close family members, who, in spite of the fact that he had been helped at every turn by Dad, openly made fun of him in my presence in front of his entire unit at a studio. Many other elders in the family laughed at Dad because he had chosen to become an actor. This was perhaps triggered by jealousy. Moreover, they refused to give him any credit for his accomplishments, even though he was pivotal in holding the family together.

  I remember an occasion when a man came up to Dad at Delhi airport and asked, ‘Your face is familiar. Do you act in films? What is your name?’ Dad was stumped and did not know what to answer. ‘He is I.S. Johar,’ I blurted out, trying to be funny. The man smiled and patted Dad condescendingly on his back and said, ‘Yes, of course. Sorry I didn’t recognize you! But then, I don’t see many Hindi films. They are trash anyway. But you, yes I remember now, are a great comedian!’ Saying this, he walked away laughing. Dad turned to me and remarked, ‘Yaar mujhe to duniya bhool hi gayi!’ (Looks like the world has forgotten me, friend!)

  There are numerous such stories. But that was when he was alive. Now, four decades after his death, his fame seems to grow day by day, while many of the names of the ‘stars’ of his time have faded into oblivion. No one remembers them except senior citizens. But people remember Dad. I think that is partly because of television; old films are often shown on the small screen. My daughters, who were born a couple of years after he died, had never set eyes on him. Yet, when they see his films, they often say, ‘Why don’t they make films like these nowadays, Pop?’

  More importantly, though, he lives on because he was such a superlative actor, and as it seems to me now, way ahead of his time. During his time, acting was stylized and often theatrical and stilted. Like the great actor Motilal-ji before him, he brought realism to his acting. He usually followed the Hollywood dictum that ‘less is more’. He under-acted. Or to put it better, he did not ‘act’ (as he told me once), he ‘believed’. People remember him for the realism and truthfulness of his performance. Today, all the leading actors worth their salt follow the realistic school and avoid theatricality. Times have changed.

  Venerable and renowned actors such as Naseeruddin Shah and the late Om Puri, stalwarts and dear friends, have been very vocal in declaring their debt to Dad. Even younger actors have accorded him the credit for what they learnt from watching his films and reading his autobiography.

  For many years, people have been asking me to write about Dad. I made several attempts at doing so, but could not get around to it.

  For much of my childhood and youth, Dad and I lived away from each other. I regret that I was deprived of his guiding hand and his benevolent counsel as I was growing up. I spent my early years in boarding schools or with relatives, but I cannot blame him for that. It was fate that caused us to drift apart.

  Looking back, I am now better able to appreciate and understand the battles and struggles he himself went through, which led to his leading a difficult, turbulent, itinerant and unsettled existence. Greatness comes at a price. And Dad had to pay heavily for it. I remember Dev Saheb telling me once, ‘In order to succeed, one has to sacrifice.’ He added, ‘In order to succeed, one has to follow a dream.’ Dad had a dream and he was willing to sacrifice all to fulfil it.

  He was an incredibly handsome man, and as he writes in his autobiography, he was fascinated by the films, both Hindi and English, he saw during his school days in Rawalpindi and college days in Lahore. These fed his dream of being an actor. And he was a tenacious man, unfaltering in his quest for success as an actor. My friend, Naresh Malhotra, the creator and prime mover of Prime Focus, once told me, ‘One has to have passion and madness to be in films.’ And Tolstoy said in his novel Anna Karenina about her lover, ‘He always set a goal before him and, irrespective of the difficulties that stood in his way, he gave it all he had and lived with the dream in his mind till he had achieved it. But no sooner had he achieved his goal than a new goal appeared before him, which took the place of the older one, and this overwhelming desire to reach his goal, and thereby to excel, filled his entire being.’

  Dad never took ‘no’ for an answer. When he made up his mind to do something, he gave it his all. He was an idealist and a staunch Marxist, and this philosophy determined all his actions. He did what his conscience dictated, not caring much about family or public opinion. His decisions raised eyebrows and his older relatives (barring his parents who doted on him) criticized and taunted him (often in my presence and that upset me a great deal).

  A free-spirited man, Dad always spoke his mind without any guile or thought about the consequences. He was childlike in his reaction to things.

  Writing this book has been a challenge, as it has forced me to delve into the deepest recesses of my mind and face old memories, some of which have caused me pain. All my experiences were lived and felt from the perspective of whatever age I was at the time. So while I may now be able to view them differently, it is those perspectives which helped to shape my life.

  This book is my tribute to my father, to all that he stood for, to all that he has left behind in the hearts of the people, his people. It is my tribute to a man whose greatness I truly appreciate the closer I get to the autumn of my own life. It is my homage to a man whom I did not understand in my childhood and adolescent years, but whom I am better able to appreciate now.

  Dad died at the age of fifty-nine. I am in my late-seventies now. If I am still functioning and still have assignments and a fair amount of goodwill, it is only because of him. I am thriving on his reputation.

  I am not qualified to write a dissertation on Hindi cinema or about his place in it, or an in-depth analysis of his ‘method’, or a chronological account of the films he acted in. I can only write about him as I knew him, about my personal glimpses of him as he was in the role of a father, a brother, a husband, a friend and a co-worker; about his habits, his idiosyncrasies, his adventurous spirit and his lust for life. In all these roles, he was larger than life. As the man at the hotel I mentioned earlier said, ‘They don’t make people like him any more.’

  1

  Early Memories

  Bewilderment and chaos

  Many people say Dad was one of a kind. However, he was absent from my life during my early childhood. The stars must have been totally out of alignment at the time of my birth, because bewilderment and confusion marked most of my childhood years. Destiny tore me apart from Dad and my mother, Damyanti (Dammo-ji) no sooner had life begun for me in 1939. I was barely six months old when Dad and Dammo-ji were forced to leave me behind in Rawalpindi, our ancestral home, and take a ship to foreign shores. I didn’t set eyes on them till I was five years old. Why this strange occurrence?

  Dad had worked with Mahatma Gandhi for a year in Sevagram in 1938. The following year, he was called upon to leave Indian shores and take a ship to England, to broadcast programmes in Hindi for Indian soldiers fighting overseas. Dad didn’t hesitate for a minute. He w
as unlike anyone else in the family. Influenced by the Romantic poets, he was a swash-buckling adventurer always looking for and taking on dangerous new challenges. He was a non-conformist and not one to pursue traditional lines of work. So, when he was offered a job in London by an Englishman called Lionel Fielden during the Second World War, he jumped at it with alacrity. It was right up his alley. As his brother, Bhisham-ji writes in his book Balraj, My Brother, Dad was ‘independent and impetuous by nature’ and would ‘do things that were off the beaten track’. ‘Nothing risked, nothing gained’ was his motto all his life.

  The Second World War was in full swing and Britain was being bombed incessantly and mercilessly by Hitler’s blitzkreig. Being a part of the Allied Nations, the British Raj participated in the war to the fullest extent. More than two-and-a-half million Indian soldiers fought under British command, travelling by ship not only to Britain but to fronts from Italy and North Africa to the Middle East. However, many of the ships and convoys that sailed for England never reached their destination. They were easy targets for German U-boats. At this time, travelling by sea to England was sheer madness; it was suicidal.

  Dad and my mother set off for England, even though there was a fair chance that they might never return; that their ship might be sunk in the Arabian or Mediterranean Sea; even that they might be killed during the bombing of London. My grandparents implored him not to take this foolhardy action, but Dad turned a deaf ear to their pleas. They thought he was fulfilling his patriotic duties and reluctantly let him and my mother go. However, they persuaded him to at least leave me behind with them in Rawalpindi.

  I lived with my grandparents and my uncle and aunt, Bhisham Sahni-ji and Sheila-ji (who were father and mother figures for me), through the first five years of my life. Those were horrendous days for the country, with the struggle for independence growing to a peak. But within the precincts of our haveli, I was pampered; all my whims and fancies were fulfilled. I felt no paucity of filial or maternal love while I was living with them.

  Bhisham-ji, I vaguely remember, was taking part in plays promoting and advocating communal harmony. I think he was a member of the Congress Party. There were dozens of theatre props, wigs and costumes stored in one of the rooms of the house; these were a tremendous source of entertainment for me as I enacted my imaginations, delighting my non-existent audiences with my histrionics.

  On one occasion, when I was about four years old, I was apparently compelled to take part in a play called Zubaida, though I barely remember this. All I had to do was walk across the stage sucking a mango. I believe I rehearsed this scene over and over with great enthusiasm because each time I crossed the stage, I was given a mango to suck. On the day of the final performance, suddenly there were no mangoes available! The cast was panic-stricken, until someone thought of bringing a small roll of woollen thread and asked me to mimic sucking a mango holding the roll in my hands. The audience would not notice the absence of a real mango. But I inadvertently, clumsily, made sure they did! The roll of thread came undone and kept unwinding as I walked across the stage, bringing the house down. This was a precursor to my ability to turn a tragedy into a comedy, as happened much later in my stage life.

  Grandpa was not happy with Bhisham-ji’s theatre activities; even less so when he found out I was also involved in them too. He looked me squarely in the eye and said something that turned out to be prophetic, ‘Try as much as you like, boy; do what you want, but you will ultimately end up being a ruddy bhand’ (ham actor).

  But life continued in the haveli with ease as I basked in the warmth of the family hearth. After dinner Grandma would switch on the only Phillips radio we owned; Bhisham-ji would turn a few knobs as the radio crackled, till he tuned into the BBC. Grandpa, tall, stately, fair, handsome and blue-eyed, with an imposing personality, would join the circle and the elders would wait in anticipation for the Hindustani news to be broadcast. There would then be great excitement when they heard Dad’s voice and Grandma would hug me and tell me excitedly that that was the voice of my father, which totally confounded me. I didn’t understand what the excitement was all about. The resounding voice on the radio was that of a total stranger to me.

  It was in the summer of 1944 that I was told that my parents were coming back from England. Although the news caused much excitement and jubilation among my elders, it failed to move me. I was more confused and puzzled than excited. Parents? Who were they? I had never set eyes on them before, or even if I had, I was too young to remember them.

  Everyone was in high spirits. They all fussed over me; they dressed me in new clothes; my hair was duly oiled and combed and I remember being taken to the railway station in Rawalpindi, where our entire clan had gathered to await the Frontier Mail and greet my parents with garlands and sweetmeats. I was bewildered by all this. And then, I remember, a railway carriage slowly came to a halt right in front of where we were standing. A fair, thin, good-looking man was standing at the door of the carriage, holding on to the rails on either side. Grandma, confined in a wheelchair due to a broken hip bone, beamed at me as she said, ‘That’s your father. Your father.’ But all I felt was consternation.

  Bhisham-ji describes the appearance of my Dad thus in his book Balraj, My Brother:

  Balraj looked rather pale and emaciated. His hair, too, had thinned, and he had greyed on the temples. He also looked somewhat lanky. He had always had a ruddy complexion . . . To see him now in his pale green shorts and a coarse, cotton shirt and chappals was rather bewildering.

  Not knowing what to expect, I stood beside Grandma, clutching on to her pallu (the loose end of her dupatta). I was overwhelmed by the excitement with which my parents rushed to me, showering me with hugs and kisses, but nothing they did endeared these ‘intruders’ to me. They had a baby with them, who, they told me, was my sister. I eyed her suspiciously and made a tentative move towards her, at which she let out a wail and made me stop in my tracks. Frightened, I retreated to the security of Grandma’s pallu, close to tears of fear and uncertainty.

  During the next few days, my father and mother reclaimed their role as parents. For me, it was a strange experience. I found it difficult to switch my affection and attachment to these strange new people. And to add to my confusion, I was uprooted from my home, (quite mercilessly, I thought), as one would pull out a weed from the ground. In those days, Kashmir was probably the safest place on the subcontinent, with no Hindu-Muslim riots taking place there. When my parents decided to take me to Srinagar, I wasn’t too happy at the thought of being separated from Grandpa, Grandma and Bhisham-ji. I had never been away from them before.

  Srinagar

  My discomfiture at being away from my grandparents and uncle and aunt was quite evident from the way I behaved in Srinagar. My parents had some ‘strange’ ways, which I later found was due to their years in England. They introduced me to toilet paper, which seemed totally absurd to me till they explained to me what it was used for. I messed up the bathroom and left behind mounds of used toilet paper the first time I experimented with it.

  I refused to wear the shirts and shorts they had brought for me and insisted on wearing the kurta pajamas I was used to. I spent hours ensconced within the branches of a walnut tree in our garden and didn’t respond to the gong that announced lunch and dinner. The idea of using a bell to call everyone to the table was new to me. For the new couple, I must have been quite a handful to manage!

  My Dad was tall and handsome. He played games with me and showed me magic tricks. He was a bundle of surprises, always finding new ways to amuse me. But all I could do was gape at him. He was, I remember, very kind and gentle. But I was incorrigible. I remember him becoming uneasy and asking me one day why I kept staring at him in such a strange way all the time. Of course, I had no answer; I just couldn’t help it. It was not easy for me to digest the fact that he was my father, because, for all practical purposes, he was an outsider for me. There was a chasm that divided us, a chasm I found difficult to span. As a
child, I was simply not equipped to handle this sudden jolt in the even tenor of my life and nothing they did helped to smooth the transition. Dad did his best to reach out to me, but the feeling of unease didn’t leave me.

  And then there was Shabnam, who had been born in England. She was like a cute baby doll to look at, but was made in the British mould and had the attributes of Winston Churchill when she felt threatened. She roared like a lioness whenever I approached her and started howling if I tried to touch her. She was as nonplussed as I was by my sudden appearance in her life and a bit frustrated at having to share her parents’ attention and love with me. She stared at me constantly (like I stared at Dad) with the piercing gaze of a dangerous predator; it intimidated me (just as my gaze unnerved my parents.) She was a tough child, and once, when I ventured too close to her, she hit me so hard with the heel of our mother’s sandal that the lump that appeared on my head didn’t subside for a month. I kept my distance from her after that.

  One day, my parents decided that it was time to ‘civilise’ me and took me to see an English film. I had never been to a cinema hall before and didn’t know a word of English. It was a horror film. The strange music and some of the scenes scared the life out of me. I couldn’t get the weird music and the horror scenes out of my head. The memory of these scenes remained with me for weeks and haunted me at night.

  As new ‘England-returns’, my parents’ ways were thoroughly British, very strange for me. I had been brought up with very different tastes and habits. The parathas eaten with homemade butter, sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor in Rawalpindi were replaced by bacon and eggs, porridge and a spoon of cod-liver oil—the memory of the latter’s taste sends a shiver down my spine to this day—followed by toast and marmalade. I missed the parathas and the freshly made butter which Grandma churned every morning. Moreover, I had to sit at a dining table to eat now, which I found really uncomfortable.