There is one more thing worth mentioning here, and that is Grandpa’s reaction (and that of most of the refugees who had migrated to Delhi from their homes in the newly formed Pakistan) to the tragedy that had taken place. It was a horrific cataclysm that killed millions of people and witnessed unbridled savagery and butchery. The loss of one’s ancestral home is a tragedy of enormous magnitude and yet the migrant population, and especially Grandpa (who was an affluent banker and businessman in Rawalpindi), in spite of being reduced to penury, did not ever moan about his loss. Instead, he got down to reinstating himself without much ado. No one ever saw Grandpa being depressed about what had happened. He didn’t mention the Partition even once. To the surprise of the Delhi-ites, who detested these refugees who had flooded the capital and ‘dirtied’ their city by opening up small shops everywhere and who had invaded the sophisticated ‘culture’ of this historical city, these ‘refugees’ were back on their feet and doing roaring business without batting an eyelid. It didn’t take long for these migrants to put down their roots in their new environment. Through this blood-curdling holocaust, Grandpa was unflappable and took all that destiny had dished out to him—the loss of home and hearth and the end of his business—with equanimity.
Like Grandpa, both his sons were unruffled and imperturbable under pressure. This was made abundantly clear to me during the days we lived in a little mud hut in Ambala (which was a far cry from the huge haveli we had lived in in Rawalpindi). One day, the dark clouds in the sky gave way to torrential rain and a massive leak appeared in the roof of the hut. We placed buckets on the floor, but they began filling up faster than we could empty them. We rushed to move our belongings to prevent them from getting drenched, but it was a futile effort as the rain water streamed through the widening leak.
Bhisham-ji decided that the only way to handle the situation was to somehow cover the leak. Next to the hut was a tall tree, which he attempted to climb to somehow get on the roof and cover the crack with a thick blanket. Donning a raincoat, head covered, blanket tucked inside his jacket, he gripped a branch and swung himself up on it. The rain was pelting down hard; the branches of the tree were slippery, but he moved up steadily, often missing his step. But when he was negotiating a thick branch overhanging the roof, he slipped and fell with a sickening thud through the fragile roof down to the floor below.
Bhisham-ji was seriously injured. His left arm was dislocated and the bone of his forearm protruded from the elbow as he tried to get up. He was bleeding profusely. It was an unnerving sight and Sheila-ji was in tears. I cringed on seeing the unnatural shape of his arm and was teary-eyed at the thought of how extreme his pain must be. But he did not let out a single moan; he was impassive through it all and did not show any outward signs of discomfort. The arm was operated on and then put in plaster. Luckily it was the left arm! But it remained bent at the elbow at an odd angle for the rest of his life.
Another time, in Mumbai, I remember Bhisham-ji had to undergo a nose operation. The bone on the left side of his nostril was overgrown and obstructed his breathing. Sheila-ji complained that he snored so loudly that it kept the whole mohalla (neighbourhood) awake at night. It was decided that corrective surgery should be performed to alleviate Bhisham-ji’s breathing problems. The surgeon chosen for the job was a renowned doctor, Arthur D’sa (as he was considered the best man for the job.)
I wasn’t around when the surgery was performed. I believe Bhisham-ji was stoic and calm during and after the operation, much to the admiration of Doctor D’sa who complimented him. ‘You are a wonderful patient Mr Sahni,’ he said repeatedly. But Bhisham-ji didn’t acknowledge the compliment. He just asked the doctor to come closer. Quite sure that Bhisham-ji would thank him and praise him for his work, he got the shock of his life when, before all present in the room, Bhisham-ji told him in measured tones, ‘I just want to tell you that you are not a doctor but a butcher! You should be working in an abattoir—a slaughter-house—and not in a hospital.’
The operation must have been traumatic for Bhisham-ji, but he didn’t for a moment show it. But what he told the surgeon with, as usual, a poker face, I believe, completely deflated the man. What I do remember is that he had a swollen and bandaged nose when he came home and Dad was in splits. He couldn’t stop laughing. He wasn’t laughing at his brother’s appearance, but at the look on the doctor’s face when Bhisham-ji took him down a notch or two. Bhisham-ji, though, was not amused, but other than glaring at Dad, he didn’t say anything.
If there is one thing I learnt from Bhisham-ji and Dad it was their tenacity and will power. This quality, too, was perhaps inherited from Grandpa. The Sahnis belong to a clan known as Khukhrains, who pride themselves on this score. There are various theories about who these people were, but I have heard that they were a part of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s army and were known for their purposefulness and blood-thirstiness. The name of their clan was, as I am told, derived from the word khoon-khar, which in Urdu means blood-thirsty. I believe when they went into attack, their boldness and unwavering courage often unnerved the enemy. Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s empire extended to Afghanistan, included much of what makes up Pakistan now as well as the Punjab and Haryana and parts of the Himachal Pradesh, which are in India. That the Khukhrains were a respected part of his army may or may not be a historical fact, but Dad and Bhisham-ji certainly displayed these characteristics.
When the two brothers made up their minds to do something, they went for it hammer and tong and refused to take ‘no’ for an answer. ‘Theirs is not to reason why. Theirs is but to do and die’ was their motto.
Dad became a consummate actor through sheer persistence and by dint of hard work, but their motto was particularly evident in Bhisham-ji’s case when he took up writing in Hindi. His lingua franca was Punjabi and his initial work in Hindi was not taken seriously. But Bhisham-ji, through unrelenting study and practice, mastered the language till he could write in it as fluently and efficiently as any Hindi writer. He was also a master of Urdu, and his prose was heavily influenced by the writing of Prem Chand, perhaps among the most celebrated of Hindi and Urdu litterateurs. This gave his writing a fluency that makes his books eminently readable.
Bhisham-ji applied great discipline to his routine. He started his day with a long walk early in the morning and then worked at his desk till noon with a frenzy that had to be seen to be believed. He took a brief break for a cup of coffee with Sheila-ji, often sharing the only cigarette of the day with her, and then went back to work. At noon, he would cook lunch. Not that Sheila-ji couldn’t cook. And, as far as I can remember, there was no cook in the house. But for Bhisham-ji, it was a means of relaxation. It was a time when his conscious mind could be switched off from whatever he had been writing, but when ideas were triggered in his subconscious. The bouquet of smells, sights and sounds was therapeutic for him, alleviating any stress he may have had. He fussed over pots and pans, asking Sheila-ji about which and how much masala to put in which dish. The chapattis came from a dhaba down the road and lunch was always delicious.
Bhisham-ji wrote in long hand in the Devnagri script, which is no mean task. His speed and output were phenomenal. Within a few years of his return from Russia (where he had worked day and night to translate the Russian classics, and which, I think, played a significant part in his apprenticeship as a writer), he had made a name for himself as a short story writer and novelist. So passionate and so prolific was his writing that Kalpana, his daughter, tells me that at the end of his life, when he had gone into a coma, his right hand kept moving as if going through the motions of writing! Someone even tried to put a pen between his fingers and a paper beneath it to see what he was trying to write, but I don’t know what the result was.
Dad was a fiery revolutionary and a non-conformist while Bhisham-ji was staid and conservative. He had been influenced by Dad’s Marxist and revolutionary views, no doubt, but not to the extent of throwing his past upbringing overboard. Bhisham-ji, for all his ‘progressive’
leanings, was not dogmatic in his outlook and kept his feet on the ground; he remained, till the end of his life, a pragmatist with a philosophic bent of mind. He did not take anything at face value and believed in flowing with the current rather than opposing it.
Bhisham-ji was half a revolutionary and half a conservative. Unlike Dad, he was not a man of extremes or towering passions. As I saw it, he followed the middle path. His brief career in Moscow as a lecturer and then a translator of Russian books into Hindi, and his other social and political activities gave him ample scope to study life’s phenomena with the half-closed, contemplative eyes of a philosopher, drawing conclusions based more on his own ratiocination than from any preconceived world view.
Tsetse said, ‘He is most widely drunk who is half drunk.’ So, whereas Dad loved his tipple in the evening (often overdoing it), Bhisham-ji was not too fond of alcohol and rarely drank. But in Russia, vodka is consumed by the bucketful. One day, when he was new to Moscow, and like Dad, a great admirer of the Russian people, he was forced to have more vodka than he could handle at a party. The result was that after the party, as Sheila-ji told me, he went berserk and was completely inebriated, going around, and to everyone’s astonishment, touching every passing Russian’s feet, mumbling, ‘You are great!’ When Sheila-ji reminded him the next day about what he had done the night before, he could not remember a thing. ‘You scared the Russians out of their wits! They didn’t know what you were doing. There is no tradition of touching other people’s feet in Russia,’ she said.
Dad, on the other hand, often overindulged in his drinking. On one occasion, when he was not around, Mummy recounted a story about a party they had gone to in Delhi, where Dad had had one too many and repeatedly called an army officer, who was unusually ruddy, a ‘leg of mutton’ till the army man lashed out at Dad. There was a free for all after that, in which Dad, normally a very peace-loving man, swung around at a couple of men under the influence of whiskey, calling them ‘petty bourgeois revisionists’ and ‘enemies of the proletariat’ with an abandon that shocked the guests. I was equally amazed, but rather amused as well. I had never thought that Dad could ever get into a brawl. But inwardly I was glad the fight went in his favour! When I questioned him about this later, he could not remember the incident.
Both brothers loved the working class, the ‘proletariat’ as they called them, and considered them the backbone of any society. Both stayed close to the working classes, the peasants and farmers, but in their own different ways. Dad regularly visited the slums and helped the slum-dwellers. He visited the Versova fishing village regularly and made friends with the fisher folk. There was one particular fisherman, Motiram Shile, who owned a trawler, who became a close friend of Dad’s. Dad often went out with him to sea to fish in deep waters. Sometimes he was out with the fishermen overnight, sharing their food and country-liquor, and spending the night under the stars on the deck of their trawlers in deep waters. He loved working with them, throwing out the nets and then pulling in the catch. He usually came home with a bagful of pomfret fish, looking tanned and as red as a lobster.
Once a year Dad went to villages and spent time with farmers in the Punjab, Kerala or Rajasthan or some other part of India, noting their ways, their turns of speech and their songs. I went with him only once (to the Punjab), but Sanober and Shabnam accompanied him to Kerala and Rajasthan and came back singing local folk songs (which he urged them to learn and learnt himself). His respect for the underdog and workers affected us all, and every member of the family treated the domestic help with love and respect. As a result, I learnt to treat all workers and technicians in the film industry with appreciation and regard. ‘No one is more or less important in the team; everyone has his place in the smooth running of the machine’, Dad would say, ‘and the workers and technicians are the backbone of our film industry.’
Bhisham-ji also believed in staying close to the working classes and the common man. But he did so in a different way. He lived in Patel Nagar in Delhi, and in the evening, he made it a point to go to the bazaar (market) and buy vegetables and provisions for the next day. He enjoyed chatting with shop-keepers and people, observing them closely and intermingling with the crowds. (Like Dad, he was a people’s man.) He discussed the latest political developments of the day with them; he loved finding out how they lived and what went on in their minds. Like Auguste Renoir, the great impressionist painter, Bhisham-ji felt that ‘to be a mere observer of humanity was both pretentious and sterile.’ He believed that the artist’s conscious desire to drink at the very springs of life should be entirely unconscious. For him, the problem was not so much in understanding man as in mingling with them; in being a part of the crowd as a tree is part of the forest.
Neither Bhisham-ji nor Sheila-ji were egoists; I think the very concept was foreign to them. Bhisham-ji, as I have said, was by nature a very humble man and totally bereft of anger, resentment or hate. He was the living embodiment of the saying that ‘the branches of a tree laden with fruit bend low.’
But this was not the case with Dad and Mummy. Dad, in particular, like all actors, thrived on adulation and admiration. He was proud of his talent. And justifiably so. He had striven to achieve his standing in the film industry. Mummy too was proud of her musical and literary talent. She had completed a Masters in English Literature and studied classical music and the piano for many years in England. Both of them could have repeated the words of Muhammed Ali, ‘It’s hard to be humble when you are as great as I am!’ Dad expected the same admiration and adulation from Mummy as he received outside and felt a little let down when she did not oblige. Perhaps their egos came in the way of a harmonious relationship.
As far as family life was concerned, Bhisham-ji was a conformist. His was an arranged marriage. This was in the Rawalpindi days. I remember it vaguely. They say I cried and bawled when he got on to the horse because I thought he was going away to live with his wife and leaving us for good. They ultimately put me in the saddle with him in order to quell my fears and reassure me that he would never leave me come what may. I spent most of my childhood and then my college and Moscow days with him. For all practical purposes, Bhisham-ji was a perennial father figure for me.
His did not have an overtly romantic bent of mind. His bride was a petite and very well educated lady called Sheila-ji, the daughter of a police officer (I think he was an SP in those days), and within months of their marriage, Sheila-ji became my surrogate mother. Although a charming lady, some of the life of a police officer had rubbed off on her. She could be strict when the occasion demanded and did not put up with any nonsense. And Bhisham-ji was an artiste, a writer and a professor, and a man of few words. Once in a while she would come down hard on him, but he never retaliated. He was humble to the point of self-abnegation and loved Sheila-ji for what she was, listened silently to her criticism and advice.
During my entire stay with them, although Sheila-ji lost her temper sometimes (she found him tardy and a bit slow on the uptake), I never witnessed any serious argument or altercation between them. His silence often irritated Sheila-ji, but she could do little about it. Bhisham-ji had an adjusting nature and never took a rigid attitude to anything in life. The bedrock of their relationship was harmonious, strong and unshakeable. In spite of an occasional outburst from Sheila-ji, the household was full of fun and laughter, with never any tension between them.
I remember when Bhisham-ji bought a second-hand Morris Minor in the mid-sixties. It was a two-door and miniscule car, but very sturdy. Both Sheila-ji and Bhisham-ji were very cautious drivers and went out of their way to look after the car. The dialogue between the two of them when they were in the car was usually one-sided and went something like this,
Sheila-ji: Bhisho! Instead of using the brakes, put the car in the second gear while turning.
Bhisham-ji: I know that Sheila!
Silence for a while.
Sheila-ji: Speed . . . speed up before you put it in the third gear!
Silen
ce.
Sheila-ji: Why are you speeding?
Bhisham-ji: But you asked me to speed up Sheila.
Sheila-ji: I asked you to speed up before putting it into the third gear, not to hit 80 miles an hour!
Bhisham-ji: I am driving at 35 miles, Sheila.
Sheila-ji: You almost killed that cow!
Bhisham-ji: I . . .
Sheila-ji: Take it easy! This is not a racing track. This is Rajinder Nagar and it is crowded.
Bhisham-ji: I . . .
Sheila-ji: You are going uphill now. Put it in the second!
Bhisham-ji: I . . .
Sheila-ji: And slow down! Concentrate. Stop talking and looking at me.
There was an endearing informality between the two of them which one could not help but appreciate and admire, and this had a salutary effect on the children. There was peace, amity and cheerfulness in the house.
Dad and Mum, however, were formal with one other. He called her Tosh-ji and she addressed him as tussi or aap, unlike Sheila-ji who called her husband by his name or Bhisho, and Bhisham-ji called her by her name, Sheila, without the ji at the end.
The Non-Conformist Page 10