The Non-Conformist

by Parikshat Sahni

  After the film Hum Log, Dad began to be recognized and acclaimed as an actor. This, however, did not deter him from visiting public places, keeping close to the masses and mingling with common folk. He would put on a false plastic nose and moustache (a popular children’s toy) and sit on the railway station for hours, noting down people’s looks, walk and their way of talking.

  It was his ability to get into the skin of each role that made him an actor and not a star. For instance, Dev Anand remained a star. Even when he sported a moustache in Hum Dono, in which he had a double role, people saw him as Dev Anand, not as the army man he was portraying. This was because his personality and mannerisms were so popular and endearing for the audience that they did not want to see him as anything other than his natural, suave and handsome self. With Dad, audiences never saw Balraj Sahni; they always saw the farmer, the businessman, the rickshaw puller, the Kabuliwalla, the detective or whatever role he was playing.

  Dad played the famed role of Shambhu in the legendary film Do Bigha Zamin, which had originally been earmarked by Bimal Roy for Ashok Kumar (popularly known as Dadamoni). For Do Bigha Zamin (as for Hum Log), he researched with painstaking thoroughness the character of the poor and downtrodden farmer he was portraying. In preparation for this film, he visited a colony of milkmen in Josgeshwari, a Bombay suburb, to not only understand their work, but to imbibe their spirit. He watched farmers at work and became friendly with some of them. He went to their homes, ate with them, sat with them, listened to them and studied their mannerisms very carefully.

  When the film Do Bigha Zamin was being shot in Calcutta, Dad met a rickshaw puller, whose life was parallel to the story of the film. From him, Dad learned a lesson in acting. He wrote in his autobiography:

  The theory of acting be damned! The peasant, down-and-out, miserable and meek, whose life I was supposed to portray on the screen appeared from nowhere, and stood before me in flesh and blood. This was the chance of a lifetime, for which I should thank my stars. In a flash, I saw the role as a challenge to my acting ability, a responsibility I had to fulfil by exerting myself to the utmost. Come what may, I must not shirk it. That would be only cowardice, a sin, I told myself.

  I simply stopped thinking about the academic theories of acting, Instead, I entered into the soul of that middle-aged rickshaw-wallah, which was why I was so eminently successful in playing the role. I do not think any book on acting could have taught me what that unlettered villager did! I learned a lesson that day. It is only a character, straight out of real life, who can serve as a model for an actor, if he is to achieve any success in his career.

  Dad ran barefoot on the burning asphalt of the city’s roads, practicing how to ply the rickshaw. He developed blisters on the soles of his feet! It very nearly killed him.

  With this film, Dad’s reputation hit the charts. He could now be counted among the notable actors of the time.

  After Dad’s demise, Dadamoni (Ashok Kumar) became very close to me. We did many films together. In more than one way, he filled the vacuum created by Dad’s passing away. He encouraged and guided me, and gave me tips about acting techniques. He was an extraordinary man—a versatile painter, something of an electronic wizard (he had state-of-the art electronic equipment in his room on which he recorded rare pieces of music) and a voracious reader. He was young in spirit and found an equation with all the youngsters he worked with. His wit and ability to tell jokes made him fun to be with.

  One day, we were shooting close to Dadamoni’s house in Chembur. When lunch-break was announced, he invited me home to taste some Bengali food. After a hearty meal, he took me aside and said, ‘I want to confess something to you.’

  I perked up my ears.

  ‘Whenever I see a film, I watch the leading actor’s performance very closely and I invariably come to the conclusion that I could have done the role much better!’ Dadamoni laughed loudly at his remark, but I was sure he was right. He was a very fine actor and a great favourite with the public. He had a natural, unaffected style of acting, and was convincing in whatever role he played.

  ‘But,’ he continued, ‘there is one film I watched that was an exception to the rule. Do Bigha Zamin was first offered to me by Bimal Roy and I had agreed to do the role of Shambu with alacrity. I was shocked and disappointed when I was summarily replaced by an unknown newcomer, your father. I resented that very much and was sure that this lanky, fair, London-returned, gawky fellow would mess up the role and that Bimal Roy would rue the day he had replaced me. I was wrong. When I went to see the film after its release, I came out of the theatre stunned. That is the first and last time in my life that, after seeing a movie, I said to myself, “I could not have done the role as well as this unknown newcomer Balraj has done it!”’

  This was a candid confession from a man who thought he was the best. And he was one of the very best! There was a reason why Dadamoni said what he did. Dad made compellingly credible all the roles he enacted. ‘Always strive for excellence,’ he would tell me. A line he often quoted to me from Emerson was, ‘Conformity is mediocrity.’ He worked extraordinarily hard on everything he did, be it writing or acting, always aiming to give his best.

  Dad, like his younger brother, Bhisham-ji, had done his Masters in Literature, and like him, wanted to be a writer. He published some short stories in English and then in Hindi when he was teaching at Rabindranath Tagore’s Visva Bharati University in Shantiniketan. Although Gurudev Tagore was impressed by them, he reiterated the importance of writing in one’s mother tongue. Evidently Tagore had read Bulleh Shah and Heer and even parts of the Guru Granth Sahib and he felt that Punjabi was a very rich language and had a bright future. From that day on, Dad started writing in Punjabi in the Gurmukhi script. In a letter to Bhisham-ji, dated 12 May 1955, he wrote, ‘People need the best of knowledge in their own language. This is the only real way of taking the country forward.’

  Bhisham-ji recounts in his book about Dad, Balraj My Brother, ‘He felt uprooted from the Punjabi culture. He believed that no art can grow except in its own environment.’ Dad felt artistically unfulfilled just acting in films. He wanted to be a writer as well. He designed a Gurmukhi typewriter for himself, practiced the touch system and within a month was typing fluently in Gurmukhi. He would take the bulky Remington typewriter to the studio, where he set it up in his make-up room and would write during the breaks (and there were many!) between shots. Some of the books he wrote were later included in the syllabus of the Punjab University. A prolific writer, he wrote short stories, an autobiography, travelogues (of Russia and Pakistan), reminiscences, as well as some poetry and plays. Bhisham-ji summarizes his writings in the following words:

  ‘Thus, we have among his writing, two travelogues, two books of reminiscences, one full-length play, some poems, two pamphlets, one convocation address which he delivered at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, and a large number of articles, essays, etc.’

  But Dad was equally serious about acting once he took it up. His role in Do Bigha Zamin reminds me of what happened in the mid-seventies when I was shooting a serial I had written for Yashraj Films. Yash-ji was very close to Dad, who was very fond of him. It was magnanimous of Yash-ji to give me a serial to direct under his banner when I had no experience at all as a director.

  I was to write and direct this TV serial, which I had named Doctor Sahib. It was based on the life of a real-life doctor and a dear friend of mine. All the episodes were based on the stories he would relate to me about his patients. There was one particular incident during the shooting of one episode that I can never forget. I had asked Hangal Saheb to play the role of a poor, old Muslim cart-puller in the first episode of the serial. In the very first shot, I had the camera placed at a height on the third floor of a building and Hangal Saheb was to come down the road pulling a handcart with a small fridge strapped to it. It was a heavy load for a man of his age to carry. I suggested we use a duplicate for the shot, since it was a ‘long shot’ and the camera was at a conside
rable distance and would not ‘catch’ the face.

  It was mid-day and the asphalt was burning hot. It had melted in some places. Hangal Saheb insisted on doing the shot himself. I told him to wear chappals (slippers) for the shot and promised him that there would be no retakes. But when, perched up on the third floor balcony, I shouted ‘Action’, I was shocked to see Hangal Saheb walking down the road barefoot! I asked the cameraman to cut the shot immediately and told my chief assistant to run down and stop Hangal Saheb from walking any farther. But the cameraman reminded me that we were only allowed five minutes on the balcony and so there was no possibility of stopping in the middle of the shot and re-taking it. The flat-owners were already urging us to finish our work and get out of their premises.

  I forgot all about the shot and ran down three stories shouting, ‘Cut the shot!’ but before I could reach Hangal Saheb, the shot had already been ‘taken’. I ran up to him and helped him to our indoor set across the road. He was in great pain. ‘I told you to wear chappals, Hangal Saheb!’ I chided him and turned to my assistants, ‘Why did you allow him to walk barefoot?’ I shouted at them.

  ‘We implored him to wear chappals, sir, but he flatly refused.’

  I looked askance at Hangal Saheb. There were painful blisters on his feet. He smiled and said, ‘If my friend Balraj could run for a week on the boiling asphalt of Calcutta, this is the least I can do in his memory for his son!’ I had tears in my eyes as I announced ‘pack up’ for the day.

  Hangal Saheb was, like Dad, a senior member of the IPTA and also a Marxist. He was, in fact, a cardholder of the Communist Party of India till the end of his days. Dad was not. He had resigned from the Party long ago. But he remained a Marxist. Both he and Hangal Saheb remained, as far as their acting was concerned, realists, believing in living the roles they played. Like Dad, Hangal Saheb believed, as Bhisham-ji said, that ‘films, like literature, must be rooted in the lives of the people.’ Dad found this ‘cultural homogeneity’ lacking in Hindi films, unlike, for instance, Bengali films, where ‘there is uniformity of language and culture’, he said.

  While on the subject of realism, I remember that for the role of the Pathan in Kabuliwalla, Dad worked very hard. He disappeared from home for almost three weeks before the shooting started. We were all worried. No one had the faintest clue about where he had gone. Grandma even feared that he had fallen off a local train and got killed or injured himself, and that the police must be informed immediately about his disappearance. There was consternation and worry all round.

  But after twenty days, Dad returned home as silently and mysteriously as he had disappeared. He was unrecognizable. His clothes were dirty, he was unshaven and he had a soiled turban on his head. He laughed when we related our fears to him. ‘I was living with a colony of Pathans in Sion during this fortnight,’ he said. ‘I had to get to know them inside out before I played the role of a Pathan.’

  So it was with all the roles he played. He worked extremely hard at getting into the soul and spirit of the character he was portraying.

  In 1970, we began shooting Pavitra Paapi, a film that I had written and which Dad had promised I would direct. However, since the first film I had acted in, Anokhi Raat, had turned out to be a big hit, the producer chose to cast me as the leading man instead. By now, Grandpa had been dead almost three years. To my utter shock, one morning, I saw Grandpa walking towards me when the shooting was just about to begin. I thought I was going out of my mind and was seeing a ghost. I was ready to collapse. The same height, the same round cap, the same walrus moustache, the same sherwani, the same tight pajamas and the same stooped gait! I couldn’t believe my eyes. My feet quaking, my breathing laboured and my heart pounding, I almost passed out as the apparition drew closer. And then suddenly I saw a mischievous smile on Grandpa’s face and almost jumped out of my skin when he said, ‘How do I look?’ But his voice gave him away. Dad had taken on his father’s persona! During the shooting, when he spoke, his voice, demeanour, intonation and expression were exactly like Grandpa’s.

  This was the first time I was working with him and I was terribly nervous. When I ‘gave’ the first shot, my voice quivered and I thought the director would demand a retake. But Dad came up, hugged me and congratulated me, addressing me loud enough for the entire unit to hear, ‘Wonderful shot, Parikshat!’ he said and turned to the director. ‘Isn’t it a great shot? He is my son after all! And he is a better actor than me.’ And right through the film he bucked me up, encouraged me and made me feel ten feet tall. I never heard a single word of criticism from him. He insisted on only one thing, ‘Let there be truth in your performances. Don’t play to the gallery. Don’t do anything for effect. Feel the reality of the situation. Be honest and true to your work and always strive for excellence!’

  Dedication, determination, discipline—he was the apotheosis of these three Ds.

  In the end, it was these principles that killed him. Garm Hawa was his swansong, and to my mind, his best film. It was shot not long after my sister Shabnam died. Her failed marriage, a suicide attempt, manic/depressive moods and death took their toll on Dad. I don’t think I understood the gravity of the situation and was too young to share the burden of grief Dad carried. When she died on 5 March 1972 as a result of an undetected clot in her brain, Dad was completely broken. He never recovered from her loss. None of us did. It was at this juncture that Garm Hawa was offered to him. It was a film made by IPTA; Kaifi Azmi Saheb and Shama Zaidi wrote it. The film was about the Partition and is based on a short story by Ismat Chughtai. Another wound that refused to heal! Dad loved his boyhood and youthful years in Rawalpindi and Lahore. He was nostalgic about Murree, where I was born and he remembered very fondly his college, school and family friends who had been left behind in Pakistan. In fact, one of his first cousins, along with his family, had opted to stay back in Sargodha. Dad writes in his autobiography, ‘Within four months of Dammo’s death, India was partitioned and our family was uprooted from Rawalpindi. The house of cards I had built for myself and Dammo came tumbling down.’

  While shooting for Garm Hawa, Dad used the Stanislavsky Method Acting System, which he had studied and mastered through the years. The system requires actors to actually feel the emotion they need to portray, often drawing on a similar life experience in their own lives. This was the bedrock of his performances and what made them unforgettable. He never performed for approval from an audience. He resurrected ‘emotional memories’ that the scene evoked and didn’t just ‘act’ out the emotion, but felt it intensely and enacted it honestly. He relived the tragedy of the Partition and inwardly he bled again. So it was with the festering wound of Shabnam’s death. There was a scene in the film that depicts the death of his daughter (played by Gita Siddharth). The scene was set in a graveyard (for Dad was playing the head of a Muslim family). This reopened the still unhealed wound caused by Shabnam’s death and turned it into a haemorrhage.

  During the shooting of the film in Agra, he often wrote to me. He was disgusted with the indiscipline of the unit members who drank through the night till the early hours of the morning, creating a ruckus, which caused him sleepless nights. In one particular letter, which I have unfortunately lost (or which is perhaps lying in Ikraam), he even remarked, ‘This is not the IPTA of my day,’ and said he would never work with the group again.

  After shooting was over, he returned to Bombay a fractured man. It had been a painful experience and he was terribly depressed. Reliving Shabnam’s death tore him apart. Somewhere down the line, he blamed himself for her death. In a letter to Bhisham-ji, dated 13 December 1971, he confessed, ‘I have failed both as a father and as a husband.’

  Dad’s superb performance of a Muslim merchant was in many ways an enactment of his own life—whether it was in the rendition of the devastation resulting from the Partition or in the deep grief he emoted at his daughter’s death in the film. At a function in Dad’s memory, some known artists and directors were invited to speak about him. I was o
ne of the invitees. So was M.S. Satyu, the director of Garm Hawa. During his speech, at one stage he confessed that the scene of the daughter’s death and the subsequent one at the graveyard was not in the original script. He had added them for effect, well aware that he would capture a rare piece of acting by Dad. ‘It was cruel of me,’ he confessed, ‘I will never forgive myself for what I did!’ Garm Hawa literally killed Dad.

  Dad went through dubbing of the film looking haggard and worn out, and one day requested the director to complete the remaining work the very same day and not prolong it any further. Perhaps he had a premonition. And it came true. He died the next morning.

  6

  Kashmir

  Agar firdaus bar rōy-e zamin ast,

  hamin ast-o hamin ast-o hamin ast!

  (If there be paradise here upon this earth, it is this, it is this, it is this!)

  Amir Khusrau

  Paradise

  For all practical purposes, Srinagar was our second home. My paternal grandfather had built a huge, three-storeyed wooden house with a garden in Wazir Baugh (opposite the Parade Ground). Before Partition, our haveli in Rawalpindi was our winter home (because Kashmir got too cold in winter) and Srinagar our summer home (because Rawalpindi was too hot in summer). After Partition, we had no option but to move to Srinagar for good. I spent my entire childhood there.

  Like Paris, which Hemingway called ‘a moveable feast’, Kashmir is also a feast that gets into one’s blood. People who have lived there for any length of time carry it in their heart, no matter where they go, for the rest of their lives.