In Ambala, we once again enjoyed the legacy of the British—a huge kothi (mansion) with a couple of acres of land surrounding it, where all my relatives from Dammo-ji’s side had found refuge after being uprooted from Rawalpindi. An uprooted lot, they too were trying to find their bearings in what was a totally new environment for them. A mud hut had been hurriedly patched together for Bhisham-ji in a corner of the huge garden.
It was quite a change from Dharamsala. Ambala was situated in the plains and did not have the salubrious climate of the Shivalik Hills. It got infernally hot in summer and extremely cold in winter. But here, for the first time in my life, I got the opportunity to be close to my maternal uncles and their children, and Ambala turned out to be as much fun as, if not more than, Dharamsala.
There was no sign of Dad during this time. I think Bhisham-ji hero-worshipped his older brother. He too it seemed had been impressed and influenced by Marxist philosophy and had joined the IPTA, and he too took part in union activities against the bourgeoisie and the capitalist class. He had become a professor of English literature in a college set up by my maternal uncle, Professor Jaswant Rai who was Dad’s mentor during his college days. Bhisham-ji’s union activities did not go down well with Jaswant Mama-ji (maternal uncle), and before long Bhisham-ji was asked to look for another job. I was sent to a school run by yet another aunt about a mile away. It was great fun being with my cousins and playing with them in the garden, but that too had to be cut short. Sheila-ji informed me one day that I was to leave for Bombay soon because Dad had remarried. ‘You have a mother now!’ she said. I was excited.
Bombay again
It was Stella Villa again; I was happy to be back. But it was different. I had a ‘Mummy’ now. In early 1949, unable to manage work and children all by himself, and going against his family, Dad married the woman he had truly loved all his life—his first cousin Santosh Kashyap. Tall and dignified, she was a woman of few words. Mummy, for that is what we called her all our lives, was a total contrast to Dammo-ji. She came from a talented family of artists, painters, writers, poets, dancers and intellectuals of great repute. She herself was a great artiste; what enamoured me the most was her love of music—both Western and Indian classical. She played the piano very well. Unlike with Dammo-ji, I connected with her almost at once and at long last had the feeling that our family was complete. We stood by or lounged around her for hours as she played captivating tunes from printed music in a thin book propped up on the piano. We got acquainted with western classical music. She had brought with her a huge collection of long-playing records of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Mozart, among others. As she played them, she explained to us the various ‘movements’ and the composition of the ‘orchestra.’ And she was also a prolific writer, fond of writing stories and poems for children, which she narrated to us in her spare time. For me, this was a time of great happiness. At long last I was living with my own family
And, of course, there was the beach and the perennial sound of the breakers, which lulled us to sleep at night. Juhu had changed. There was a regular road now leading to it (although a narrow one) and there was a bus service that plied on it. I remember vaguely that the buses were blue in colour. In the daytime, as before, we spent our time playing on the beach, which was our favourite haunt.
Swim in the sea
The sea was a wondrous pristine blue; the beach was clean and the sand was white as snow. We children often caught the crabs that could be seen flitting about in the shallow waters. I still remember the brilliance of the shimmering sea and the abundance of aquatic life in it. At a distance, we could often see dugongs moving in orderly rows towards their feeding grounds. Dad, who was an expert swimmer, often ventured close to them, much to our apprehension, but always said that they were harmless. There were no sharks off the Juhu beach, which was mostly deserted in those days.
I must have been about nine or ten years old then. I remember gazing at the vast expanse of water in fascination, wishing I could lose myself in the embrace of the never-ending waves, but I did not know how to swim and so was afraid of getting into it. Dad, on the other hand, spent long hours in the sea. I often accompanied him, but usually sat on the shore and watched him from a distance. He gave me some rudimentary lessons in swimming and also taught me how to float on the water. ‘The sea is your mother,’ he would say. ‘Let it caress you. Don’t ever be afraid of it.’ Encouraged by his words, I felt a little more at home in the water after that, but my fear of the sea never left me. And that fear turned into horror when the monsoons arrived. The sea became stormy and rough as gigantic breakers rushed towards the shore with a crushing force and a deafening roar.
Dad loved the swelling waves, the gigantic breakers and the blustery and strong winds. Every morning, he would venture out into the stormy sea, as I looked on fearfully. ‘Don’t go in, Dad. The sea looks rough!’ I often said to him. But he was unperturbed. ‘I like to swim when the sea is rough, son’, he always said. And then one day he invited me to swim with him. ‘Why don’t you come along with me? It will be fun.’ Sensing my hesitation, he said, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘What—are you afraid?’ That sounded like a challenge, and fool that I was, I accepted it, though the sane voice of reason reproached me for rising to this dare. ‘We won’t venture out too far,’ he reassured me, seeing that I had turned a little pale at the sight of the swelling waves. I stepped into waist-deep water and began to paddle around sheepishly, with no intention of venturing any deeper. But then a huge breaker caught us both unawares and dragged us out into the open sea. The currents were unbelievably strong and we were pulled relentlessly away from the shore. I thrashed around in panic but to no avail. Within minutes we were a couple of hundred yards away from the beach.
To this day, I break out in a cold sweat at my memory of the feeling of utter panic and terror that gripped me. I was sure this was the end. The wind was howling like a wild beast caught in a trap and the enormous waves looked threatening and ominous. One minute we were in a trough and the next we were on the crest of a mountainous wave. I was on the verge of tears, even as I tried valiantly to fight the waves.
‘Relax, son,’ Dad said as he swam up to me. ‘There is nothing we can do about the current. It is too strong for us.’ ‘We will drown!’ I yelled back in panic. ‘Not if we keep our heads. Never say die. Just relax. The sea is like your mother. Seawater is buoyant. If you panic and thrash around you will surely go under. Don’t worry, I am with you. Float! The tide always turns. And when it does, the sea will push us back to the shore on its own accord. Now let us sing.’
I couldn’t believe what Dad was doing. To my utter astonishment, he began to sing a revolutionary song at the top of his lungs. He joked. He clowned around in the water and floated merrily. There was not an ounce of anxiety in his demeanour as we drifted farther and farther away from the shore. By now the beach seemed a mile away. My panic returned. I started thrashing around once again. ‘Thrashing around will not help, son,’ Dad said gently. ‘One must learn to cooperate with the tide. The idea is not to lose your head. Stay cool!’
A small crowd of people had gathered on the shore and were pointing at us and waving their arms frantically. They knew that we were in trouble. Just then I saw a man walking towards the water carrying a kayak. He began to row towards us. I heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Someone is coming for us, Dad!’ I shouted joyfully. ‘We are saved!’ Dad was silent. He did not look too pleased. That surprised me. I pointed to the boat once again as it moved towards us, bobbing up and down. I could see that the man rowing the boat was a white person. I waved out to him and he waved back. But Dad looked impassive. When the kayak was near enough, I swam towards it as fast as I could. But Dad stopped me. ‘Wait, son!’ he yelled. ‘We are all right. We don’t need help.’
The man in the boat was an Englishman. ‘Are you mad? Do you want to drown and kill the lad too? You must be fools to venture out to sea at this time of the year! Come on, get into the boat,’ he yelled as he rowed
closer to us. I reached out to the boat and clung to its side. I think Dad had a chip on his shoulder about Englishmen. Perhaps it had to do with memories of how he and Indians in general were treated by Englishmen during their reign in India. ‘We don’t need that boat, son,’ Dad said to me. There was a note of finality in his voice. It was almost an order. ‘Let go off the boat!’
I was nonplussed. ‘Come on, get into the boat,’ the Englishman shouted above the roar of the sea. ‘Get into the boat or you will die!’ But Dad was unmoved. ‘We do not need you, Englishman!’ he told the man politely, ‘Leave us alone. We can look after ourselves.’ The Englishman was furious. ‘I risked my life rowing out in this weather. And you are refusing my help. Who do you think you are, a hero of some kind? Do you want your son to die?’ he shouted. ‘We will survive. Now go back before your boat overturns and we have to rescue you,’ Dad said coolly. This enraged the Englishman even further. ‘Go to hell! Die! You Indians are crazy,’ he bellowed and began to row towards the shore.
I looked at Dad in consternation. Why had he refused help when it was so gladly offered? He laughed and began to sing again. I was sure death was now inevitable. We must have floated helplessly in the sea for almost two hours. Dad did not stop singing. He kept close to me and did not let me drift too far from him. ‘People drown in the sea not because the water pulls them under, but because they panic and start thrashing around and tire themselves. Whatever the circumstances, non, never panic. And never give up. Remember, there is always a way out of every crisis.’
I did not believe a word of what he was saying till something miraculous happened. The tide turned. As if by magic, we slowly began to be pushed back towards the shore. We were by now more than a mile away from where we had entered the sea. Dad looked at me and smiled. ‘Let’s swim to the shore now. The tide will push us forward!’ Our progress towards the shore after that was rapid. Each wave and breaker pushed us closer to it. Till today, I can remember my feeling of exhilaration as we touched terra firma. We were both exhausted and fell on the wet sand in a heap. Almost instantaneously, I fell asleep from sheer fatigue. When I woke up, Dad was reclining on his elbow on the sand and looking at me with a smile. He got up, stretched out his hand, and pulled me up to my feet. ‘There will be many such moments in your life when you are a full-grown man, when the tides of circumstance and ill luck will swallow you up and overwhelm you. Just remember this—never panic. Float and have faith. Never give up. And remember, the tide always turns!’
It is more than forty years since Dad died. And the ensuing decades have not been without ups and downs. I have made grave mistakes in my professional and private life. I have reaped a bitter harvest and I deserved it. On many occasions, I have been swept out into the deep and thought I would not survive. But Dad’s words have always rung in my ears and somehow I have pulled through. I have floated, even as the wind howled and the sea buffeted me mercilessly. In those moments of darkness, I have heard his gentle voice calling out to me, ‘Don’t ever panic. And never give up!’
Sex on the beach
The beach was a godforsaken place those days and many people must have drowned there by accident. Occasionally, we came across a dead body left on the beach by the receding tide. I remember coming across the body of a naked girl in her teens, lying on the sand with a peaceful expression on her face. I stared fascinated yet horrified at her beautiful body, wondering why and how she had died. The image stayed with me for days.
There were hardly any policemen seen in this area and dead bodies were often left on the sea shore for hours before the police or the municipal authorities arrived. Usually, these corpses were ignored, and when the tide came in, they were claimed by the sea.
In his My Unsentimental Diary, a compilation of his memories, Dad wrote about one such body he and Mummy came across on an early morning walk. The chapter was called The Body of a Dead Girl. A long, meandering narrative, the story provides a glimpse into Dad’s sensitivity and utter frankness. It bewailed the fact that humans are basically callous, for the people who passed by the body didn’t even bother to notice it, let alone report the matter to the police, he then launches into a tirade against his own cowardice and helplessness, and reveals his desire to be done with the film world and acting, and devoting himself to writing, reading and social work.
This chapter of his diary again reiterates the fact that he was a misfit in the film industry. As his agent, secretary and close friend Rajinder Bhatia-ji told me once, ‘Actors love to be busy and show the world that they are shooting every day. But your father looks forward to the days when he is free and has no shooting so that he can devote himself to writing and reading and spending his time on the beach swimming and basking in the sun. He says he is in the wrong profession, but look what a success he has made of it!’
We had made friends with the children in the neighbourhood. Like Dad, we also loved to spend our free time, sometimes the whole day, on the beach, playing games and building sand castles while Dad lay on the sand. We often strayed far away from him and explored the beach by ourselves.
One day, I was walking with Dad on the beach when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a couple ‘necking’ in an isolated spot. I stopped to look at them, my eyes wide, my jaw dropping, as oddly fascinated, I saw them kissing each other with abandon, heedless of any onlookers, their hands caressing and fondling each other’s bodies. Dad pulled me away, telling me that it was rude to stare. I pulled my gaze away reluctantly and followed Dad, both of us quiet and pensive.
Suddenly, my mind went back to a scene I had witnessed on this very beach some years ago, when I had lived here with my parents. The war had ended and the beach was often the favourite venue for British soldiers. One day, we witnessed the uncanny sight of mass open-air copulation. A group of thirty or forty British soldiers, freshly returned from the Eastern front, had been provided women, mostly local, for sex (which, I presume, they had not had for a long time). Bed sheets were laid out in orderly rows, with another sheet for cover. Some of the soldiers were just lying around in an embrace with their partners, some were necking and kissing, some fondling the women and yet others were busy copulating, covered with a sheet. Their hectic lovemaking and their animal grunts were clearly audible. Jokes and laughter were often exchanged between them. One soldier’s bed sheet had been blown off and the sight of his posterior vigorously servicing the woman underneath him was for me quite unnerving. I had seen this sight before during the riots in Rawalpindi, and once again, it frightened me because I thought the woman was being beaten mercilessly. What was even more horrifying was that she was taking the hammering without complaining or making a sound! I stood riveted to the ground, watching the scene with consternation till the supervising British officer shooed me off unceremoniously.
I ran back to Dad and excitedly pointed in the direction where I had seen all this taking place and told him what was afoot on the beach. He sat up and looked in the direction to which I was pointing to. The mass fornication was taking place a mile or more away and one could only make out a group of white bed sheets, the figures being too small from this distance. Dad looked in that direction for a while, then slowly got to his feet and said, almost to himself, ‘Tagore was right when he said, “How much filth will the tide of British imperialism leave behind when it recedes from the shores of India!” Imperialism will end one day.’ Dad continued. ‘It is an anachronism. And with it will end capitalism. And the bourgeoisie will be given the boot.’ He looked disgusted as he saw the British soldiers.
He had already given me a lecture on communism and capitalism in Dharamsala. But I didn’t yet understand their meaning. Nor did I understand his whispered comment, ‘Come on! Let us go home. It is lunch time and Dammo will be waiting,’ he said. As we walked back home, I wondered who the bourgeoisie were and why Dad hated them so much.
2
The Bourgeoisie
Post-college days
After graduating from college, most of Dad’s contem
poraries who had studied with him at the Government College in Lahore went their separate ways. Khushwant Singh went to England to study law; B.R. Chopra became a journalist for a film magazine, Cine Herald, which he later took over; Prem Kirpal also left for England; Chetan Anand-ji went to Oxford (where he played tennis and was a big hit with the girls—he was an extraordinarily handsome man!), his younger brother, Dev Anand, after completing college, left for Bombay, and Vijay Anand, the youngest of the three, continued his studies in St. Xavier’s College in Bombay.
After Independence, most of Dad’s friends became the crème de la crème of Indian society. Khushwant Singh made a name for himself as a great writer, B.R. Chopra became one of the biggest film producers in Bombay, and the three Anand brothers leaders in their individual fields—film direction, production and acting. And Prem Kirpal joined the Indian Administrative Service after his return from England and went on to become a prominent secretary to a ministry in Delhi.
After college, Dad went back to Rawalpindi to look after his father’s business, getting orders from the market, earning his commissions and forwarding them to manufacturers and suppliers, but his heart was not in it. Running a business was just not his cup of tea. An MA in English literature had left an indelible mark on his psyche. His hero was the great romantic poet, Lord Gordon Byron, and like him, Dad craved for romance and adventure. He fell madly in love with his first cousin, Santosh Kashyap (Byron was in love with his half-sister) and a great romance developed between them till it was discovered by their elders. They were horrified and afraid it would sully their name in the Arya Samaj fold, particularly as my grandfather was the head of the samaj in Rawalpindi. The family was quick to quash this budding romance before it flourished. Dad was forcibly married to Dammo-ji, the youngest sister of professor Jaswant Rai, the principal of a college in Rawalpindi and Dad’s erstwhile guru when he was a student in Rawalpindi, before going to Lahore.
The Non-Conformist Page 4