This was a pity. Santosh Kashyap, whom he was to marry many years later after Dammo-ji’s death, belonged to a family of great intellectuals and artists. Her oldest sister, Anna-ji, was a talented artist and poet, and Anna-ji’s son, Keshav Mullick, was to become a poet of world renown. Anna-ji’s daughter Kapila was an accomplished Kathak dancer, an intellectual and a writer. Sharat Kumar, one of Mummy’s nephews is a well-known writer who has received, among many other awards, the Sahitya Academy Award for one of his brilliant novels. So it is clear that Dad and Mummy (for that is what we have always called Santosh-ji) were a perfect match for one another.
Dammo-ji, my birth mother was, I am told, a vivacious and fun-loving girl and very beautiful. As I gleaned from some of the things I overheard, Dad was forced to marry her, though her beauty no doubt played a part in his reluctant acceptance. Keshav Mullick-ji once told me, ‘Your Dad and Dammo-ji, I remember, were constantly fighting.’ Unfortunately, I did not get to know her well for she died quite young, just before Partition. I was in Rawalpindi with my grandparents at that time, and to be truthful, the news of her death did not affect me much. She has always remained a stranger to me. I had first met her when I was six years old and didn’t live with her long enough to become attached to her. The only mother I have known was Grandma to begin with, after that Sheila-ji (Bhisham-ji’s wife) and then Mummy, whom I loved the moment I set eyes on her (I was about eleven or twelve years old when Dad remarried.)
Dad had compromised on his love, but there was no compromise with his career. His artistic bent of mind found no expression in the mundane task of running his father’s business, so, after his marriage to Dammo-ji, he quit the business and went off with his newly wedded wife to Calcutta, where he wrote articles for some magazines. After that he accepted the post of teacher at Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s Shantiniketan, although the remuneration was meagre.
The idyllic environment in Shantiniketan was a balm to his creative mind. And although he was teaching there, he continued to contribute articles to the magazines. He and my mother often visited Gurudev in his bungalow. The old patriarch liked this young and handsome couple from the North-West Frontier and Dad was all ears when the great man opened his mouth to offer invaluable advice.
Dad was a prolific writer, not in Hindi but in his mother tongue. Evidently, Gurudev had read Bulleh Shah and also most of the Guru Granth Sahib. He convinced Dad that the Punjab had a great literary tradition and that one wrote best in one’s own mother tongue. From that day onwards, Dad started writing in Punjabi. As he said in a letter to his brother in 1955, ‘People need the best knowledge in their own language. This is the only way of taking the country forward . . .’
Later in life, when Bhisham-ji took to writing, I was witness to some heated arguments between the two brothers about the best medium to write in. Dad insisted that Bhisham-ji was wasting his time writing in Hindi because that was not our family’s lingua franca. But Bhisham-ji reminded Dad that Hindi was not the lingua franca of the renowned writer Prem Chand either, who was a master in Urdu and Persian, and wrote excellent prose in those languages. But, realizing that his books would not have much circulation if he wrote in Urdu, Prem Chand began writing in Hindi, a language with which he was less familiar. This argument was perennial and continued till the end of their lives. Neither of the two could convince the other and both kept writing in their own chosen languages. In the end, I daresay, even though Dad’s books gained great recognition in the Punjab and some of them became text books in the Punjab University, they were not published as much as Bhisham-ji’s novels.
There is another incident Dad narrated to me, which had become his credo as far as artistic expression of any kind was concerned, be it writing or acting. One day Dad went to meet Gurudev, who was an agnostic and was not superstitious. To his surprise, he found Gurudev seated on the veranda with a long line of peasants standing before him. He was distributing prasad (oblation) to them in the name of the Goddess Durga. Dad had never seen Gurudev do this before and questioned him about it jokingly. Gurudev asked him to wait till he had finished distributing the prasad. Dad waited patiently. After the peasants had departed, Gurudev explained that there was an epidemic of malaria in the village and the peasants were depending on roots and leaves the local pundit had distributed as a cure. But these were ineffective and the epidemic of malaria did not abate.
‘This is not prasad, Balraj!’ Gurudev said. ‘It is quinine covered with a layer of sugar that I am distributing in the name of the Goddess. They will have it gladly and it will be beneficial for them. As simple as that!’ Dad thought it a brilliant idea. But then Gurudev said something that had a profound effect on him. ‘That is what all art should be,’ Gurudev continued, ‘It should be palatable and people should like its taste but in its kernel, there should be something medicinal; something that benefits their souls and spirits.’
This is the axiom that Dad lived by for the rest of his life, and that is what he taught me. He did not believe in ‘art for art’s sake.’ I have tried to live by this maxim, but not always as effectively as Dad did. ‘All art should have a premise,’ Dad would tell me. ‘For entertainment, people can see pornography or go to call girls. But art should be taken seriously. It should never be prostituted for filthy lucre. When you are in the process of creating something artistic, you are treading on holy ground!’ he would conclude.
During his days in Shantiniketan, Dad’s interest in drama led to him staging George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man. And although he kept in touch with his old friends, particularly Chetan-ji who had by then returned from Oxford and joined the prestigious Doon School in Dehradun as a teacher, he made new friends in Shantiniketan. He was deeply inspired by scholars and revolutionaries dedicated to fighting for India’s freedom. It was there that he first met Nehru and Gandhi.
As Bhisham-ji says, ‘Apart from Tagore, there were such stalwarts as Kshitismohan Sen, an authority on medieval poetry; Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, the famous Hindi scholar and writer, and Nandlal Bose, the great artist, whose masterpieces centred around the lives of common people.’
I was told that I was conceived in this abode of peace. My mother was preparing for her BA examinations at the time and I have often been reminded that it was Gurudev Tagore who suggested that if the child was a boy, he should be named Porikkhit, the Bengali spelling for Parikshit. Pronounced Parikshat in Punjabi, it means ‘one who has been tried and tested.’ This name has been a source of great embarrassment to me since childhood; my grandfather was against it in the first place (he wanted me to be named Arjun)—but who could have gone against the wishes of Gurudev Tagore! So here I am, living with the dubious honour of having been named by this towering figure. The name was prophetic; life for me has been nothing but an unending series of trials and tests!
After living in Shantiniketan for a while, Dad went to Wardha in Maharashtra to join the editorial staff of a newspaper published by the Wardha Scheme of Education. Gandhi-ji’s Sevagram was on the outskirts of Wardha, so being there also gave him the opportunity to be with Gandhi-ji and the stalwarts of the Indian National Congress. It was the late thirties; nationalism and the struggle for freedom were in full swing, and Dad wanted to be part of this struggle.
Bhisham-ji wrote, ‘His experience of life at Sevagram contributed vitally to the development of that outlook he was to have as an artist in later years. It gave him breadth of vision, a closer acquaintance with the aspirations of our people and a deeper understanding of life.’
On returning to Rawalpindi, soon after my birth in Muree, a hill station nearby, Dad, at the suggestion of an Englishman by the name of Lionel Fielden, decided to embark upon yet another adventure. Notwithstanding the fact that the Second World War had begun and Britain was being bombed by the Nazis, he and my mother sailed for England to work for the BBC.
My parents were in England for four years, but unlike his classmates who had returned to India as diehard Anglophiles, Dad was drawn to Marxist philo
sophy during his years there. Instead of aping the British, as was the norm of the Indian upper classes, he adopted the Soviet model, and on returning to India, joined the Communist Party. He believed in the inevitable triumph of the proletariat and the downfall of the ‘decadent West.’ Why was he attracted to the Soviet model?
Dad mentions in his autobiography that he had been personally insulted by an Englishman in Rawalpindi, and felt demeaned and infuriated by the way the British treated Indians. At the same time, the irony of the situation was that although Dad disliked the British, he had a weakness for their blonde, blue-eyed women. He wrote in his autobiography, ‘I was cycling on Pindi’s Mall Road. I had almost reached a busy square, when I saw a motor-cycle approaching from the opposite direction. I jammed on my brakes and got off the bike, chewing gum nonchalantly à la Gilbert. The motor-cycle rider had the entire road at his disposal to drive past me, but the fellow, an arrogant Englishman, started abusing me in the vilest language. Since a memsaheb was riding pillion with him, the sting of that insult became all the more unbearable to me. I had a feeling, though, that as they rode away, the fairy-princess smiled at me sympathetically.’
He dreamed, as he confesses in his autobiography, of the day he would find himself accidentally sitting next to a white woman in a movie theatre and gaining her favours. One of his main reasons for wanting to leave not only his six-month-old son but also his wife behind when he went to England was to have unhindered access to ‘the golden-haired fairies’, as he reveals with his usual candour in his diary. However, he ended up taking my mother with him, and that probably curtailed his desires to an extent.
After a brutal struggle and the horrors of Partition, the Union Jack was lowered and India’s tri-colour flag proclaimed her Independence from the British Raj. Yet it failed to procure freedom from British attitudes. The British had left India, but they left behind subservience to their way of life, their hauteur and their affected manners, particularly among the Anglicised upper classes. Dad considered these pretentious classes to be the enemy of progressive movement. As a result of his turning to Marxism, he developed a deep love for the working class and an antipathy towards the bourgeoisie. He truly detested these humbugs and the hypocrisy of ‘bourgeois’ society.
Despite the cost of millions of lives at the human level, the transition from British rule to independent India in 1947 was smooth at the administrative level. Indian bureaucrats slipped into the roles of their erstwhile British rulers with consummate ease. They moved into old British colonial bungalows and continued where the British had left off, with no break in continuity. Even the décor of these bungalows was reminiscent of British days.
Dad’s antipathy for the bourgeoisie was not just because of his Marxist beliefs but also because he had an innate dislike of pretentious superiority. That, coupled with his love of the ridiculous and hyperbole, could make him go to great lengths to make fun of them. He could not stand anyone putting on airs or trying to show off. And apart from being a non-conformist, he also had a rebellious streak in him. Like Jean Jacque Rousseau, he believed in the theory of ‘the natural man’ and did not like to act according to the intrinsically artificial norms of the so called ‘genteel’ society. He was down to earth and hated anything that was pretentious, artificial, ‘put on’, and therefore false. His aversion to this so-called ‘elite’ society is best illustrated by an incident I can recollect.
By the late 50s, Dad was a recognized actor, having established quite a name for himself in the film industry. I was studying at St. Stephens College in Delhi at that time. On one occasion, Dad was invited to a party at Mr Prem Kirpal’s official bungalow in Delhi. (Mr Kirpal had become Secretary in one of the ministries in the Central Government after Independence.) Dad asked me to join him. Weary of hostel food, I eagerly agreed.
The elite in Delhi society—high ranking government officials, prominent businessmen, well-known artists, writers and intellectuals—had been invited to the party. The men were all dressed in suits and ties; the women were in chiffon sarees and laden with colossal amounts of jewellery. Liveried waiters flitted in and out of the crowded drawing room carrying trays of snacks and drinks. It looked like a party ‘back home.’ But Dad didn’t quite fit into this milieu. He looked like a fish out of water. Unlike the rest of the guests and against all norms of protocol, he had come dressed like a Punjabi farmer and was wearing a lungi-kurta and chappals. He had taken to dressing in his ‘national’ garb when attending parties and even state functions. Guests stared at him in surprise and amusement. But this didn’t bother Dad. It was his way of asserting his patriotism and distaste of bourgeois servility.
Had it not been for the colour of their skin and their heavily accented English, the guests could have passed for Englishmen—with the same genteel manner of speech, the same gestures and the same topics of conversation, they looked staid and proper, and spoke with a stiff upper lip in hushed undertones as they shook hands and politely bowed to one another. Some of the women turned up their noses on seeing Dad. One middle-aged, thin, pale, cadaverous-looking woman, weighted down with jewellery and wearing more make up than a transvestite, came up to Dad and asked him mockingly, ‘I am told you are an actor!’ pronouncing the word ‘actor’ with distaste. ‘Yes, madam, I am an actor,’ Dad answered with an amused smile. ‘What trash are you working in nowadays? Indian films are trash, aren’t they?’
Dad was not used to this kind of rude behaviour and was fed up of the condescending attitude of the so-called ‘genteel’ society towards Indian Cinema. What she had said infuriated him, but he controlled himself. He looked at her pensively for a while and said, ‘Yes, Madam, you are right. Hindi films are trash. However, have you seen a film called Do Bigha Zamin?’ The lady gave Dad a toothy smile and said contemptuously, ‘Sorry, I never see Hindi films. I see only English or European films.’ Dad was put off by this sort of brazen hypocrisy and decided to put the woman in her place. He smiled. ‘Good!’ he said politely, ‘Do you see French films?’
‘Yes, of course I do. I don’t miss a single one.’ ‘Then you must have seen Hiroshima Mon Amour?’ Dad asked. She looked confused and said, ‘No, that is one film I seem to have missed.’
She was about to walk away when Dad called after her, ‘Just a minute, madam!’ She stopped in her tracks and turned around. Dad walked up to her with a smile. ‘You are right, madam. European Cinema is way ahead of our cinema. But how could you have missed this film? It is a masterpiece. I think it won an Oscar. It has a very artistic beginning.’ The woman raised her eyebrows and listened condescendingly. Dad continued, raising his voice a couple of decibels. People in the vicinity perked up their ears. ‘The opening shot of the film is of a naked woman, and when I say naked I mean stark naked. The camera shows a close-up of her bare breasts, lovely, rounded, upright breasts just like yours!’ The woman winced and people gasped. This sort of talk was taboo in genteel society. Dad, undaunted, and making full use of the hyperbole he so loved, continued, ‘And then, as the camera pulls back, a hand enters the frame and starts caressing the woman’s breasts gently.’ Dad made a gesture of fondling a breast in the woman’s direction. Alarmed, she quickly stepped back. Dad continued, ‘And then, as the camera moves into a mid-shot, it reveals a naked man, and when I say naked I mean stark naked, lying beside her. He then mounts her and we see his posterior moving up and down rhythmically.’ A glass dropped from someone’s hand. The woman turned pale. People stood rooted in their places.
Dad was about to continue with the lurid details when Prem Kirpal came up to him with a mischievous smile, took hold of him by his elbow, and steered him away towards a far corner of the room, saying he had something important to discuss with him. Everybody heaved a sigh of relief and conversation resumed.
Dad walked up to me after a while, smiling. I was nibbling on some titbits. ‘Hope you are enjoying yourself, son?’ I nodded, my mouth full of chilly chicken. ‘Frauds, all these people, I tell you! Humbugs and hypocrites! “Brown saheb
s” as the British used to call them. They are the scum the British left behind when the tide of colonial rule receded from the shores of India. These hypocrites look down on everything Indian. They need to be taught a lesson. Not one of them, I bet, is fluent in his mother tongue.’
A liveried waiter walked up to Dad with a tray of drinks. As Dad helped himself to a whisky, the waiter said in broken English, ‘Sir! I very much like Seema. Your song on big harmonium (meaning the piano) very good, sir.’ Dad looked at him and asked him in Punjabi, ‘Tussi kithon de ho jenab?’ (Where are you from, sir?) The man answered in chaste Punjabi, ‘Phagwara, saheb! Tussi gaye ho Phagwara?’ (Have you ever been to Phagwara?) ‘Jee bilkul’ (Yes, absolutely) Dad continued in Punjabi. Saying this he sat down on the carpet in open defiance of ‘cultured’ norms, leaning comfortably against a wall, and asked the startled waiter to sit down next to him. The man looked around in consternation. He was supposed to serve the guests, not sit on the carpet and chat with them. ‘Oye baith na yaar! (Do sit down, buddy!) Dad said to him, indicating a place next to him and pulling him down. The waiter was too scared to disobey a well-known film star and hesitantly obliged, setting his tray of glasses beside himself. Dad helped himself to another Scotch, picked up a glass and offered it to the waiter. The man by now looked quite horrified and started looking around, mumbling incoherently. Dad forced the glass of whisky into his hands and clinked glasses with him.
Heads turned to look at Dad sitting on the floor with a waiter, drinking whisky, and shook in disapproval. Oblivious to their looks and not caring, Dad began chatting with the waiter in Punjabi, asking him about his family, and about how and when he came to Delhi. The rustic tone of his Punjabi got louder to overcome the din of heavily accented English. The waiter looked completely befuddled. ‘Saheb, mainu naukri to kadd den ge. Eh allowed nahin, saheb.’ (Saheb, I’ll be fired from my job. This is not allowed, saheb!) he muttered apologetically. He looked petrified. ‘Ehna di aisi taisi yaar! Sale saare dhongi han! Tu pee na! Ik chhota hor mar lai!’ (To hell with them! They are all hypocrites. You carry on drinking! One more peg?), Dad said.
The Non-Conformist Page 5