The Non-Conformist

by Parikshat Sahni

  Mummy, of course, did not react well to her presence in our house, especially since Dad and Louise spent a lot of time together. Louis got along very well with the family and loved Indian food. I was assigned the pleasurable task of showing her around Mumbai a couple of times and I got to see the city through her eyes as she exclaimed delightedly at all she saw. It was apparent she was enjoying herself immensely.

  Not so Mummy. She remained sullen and disgruntled. She took me aside one day and exclaimed bitterly, ‘Must be one of your Dad’s old flames! They were probably lovers while he was in England. Have you seen the way she looks at Balraj? It seems she is still in love with him. I have gifted Balraj to her for as long as she is here. I am sure they are having a good time and reliving old memories.’ She shrugged nonchalantly, although I could see that she was burning with anger inside. I could say little to defend him, as I knew that Dad was very fond of women’s company.

  I became aware of this when he came to Moscow while I was studying there. I discovered that he had a longstanding girl-friend stashed away somewhere in the USSR as well. She was a very pretty Russian lady, who spoke fluent Punjabi, which she had learnt at the Institute of Foreign Languages. Her surname was Tolstoy, perhaps a distant relative of the great writer! But then, as my dear friend and classmate in Moscow, Scherbakov, told me once, it was rumoured that almost all the peasants working on Tolstoy’s farm were Tolstoys. Tolstoy had confessed (to Chekhov or perhaps Gorky) in the crudest language, ‘I used to be quite a fu@#$%er!’

  I am not implying that this lady was the descendant of one of those innumerable Russian women with whom the great writer had had a good time, but just that Dad was very popular with women. I am in no way judging him; I have no right to blame him for ladies being attracted to him all the time. But, I daresay, he had had a ‘thing’ about white women since his Pindi days, as had most of the male population at that time. Although India was fighting for her independence from British rule politically and anti-colonial sentiments ran deep, Indians remained servile to the ‘white’ race and had deep-rooted complexes about the ‘fair’ people. It was most Indian men’s fantasy to be intimate with white, blue-eyed, blonde women—blondes, of course, being considered beautiful regardless of their features. Perhaps Dad also suffered from this complex.

  On one occasion, many years ago, I was flying back to Bombay after a shooting stint in Hyderabad. I was seated at the rear end of the plane. After takeoff, the steward came to me and told me that someone sitting in the front wanted to see me. I asked him who it was, thinking it must be an ill-mannered person delighting in making me leave my seat to walk up to meet him. I told the steward, ‘Tell this idiot that I refuse to get up. If he wants to meet me he’d better come here!’ The steward left but came back after a while and said that the person who wanted to meet me was not a man but a lady! ‘And believe me, sir, she is beautiful!’

  I was surprised. A woman, wanting to meet me so desperately and unashamedly! Never much of a romantic hero in the movies, I wasn’t popular for my singing and dancing routines or for my romantic image; as for the character roles I played, they were sober, staid and bereft of glamour. And I wasn’t a patch on Dad as far as looks were concerned anyway. I was comfortable where I was sitting and told the steward to tell the lady that I would meet her on disembarking at the airport. I was just getting a shut eye when he returned again and said, ‘Sir, the lady has ordered coffee for you; it is getting cold. I think you’d better go and meet her as she seems desperate.’

  My curiosity was now aroused. No lady had ever been ‘desperate’ to meet me. I was flattered and decided to go and meet her. The steward escorted me up the aisle to the front. In the very first row, sitting by the window, was a veteran actress of yesteryears, with a broad smile on her lips. The two seats beside her were vacant. On the open tray next to her lay a steaming cup of hot coffee.

  ‘Sit down my boy and stop playing hard to get!’ she said. I obliged, blushing to the roots of my hair. After the steward had gone, she took out a small bottle of rum from her handbag and poured the dark brown liquid generously into my cup and then into her own.

  ‘It is nine thirty in the morning!’ I stammered.

  ‘So bloody what? Rum tastes great on a flight in a cup of hot, sweet, black coffee. It’s a great concoction! You are not shooting today are you?’

  ‘Actually, I am!’ I said. ‘I’m going straight to the studio from the airport.’

  ‘This will put you in the right mood, my boy. Now forget all else and celebrate. Let us drink to the memory of Balraj!’

  And with that she raised her cup of coffee, clinked it with mine, took a sip and let out a satisfied sigh. ‘Ahhh! Now this is good. May his soul rest in peace!’ she said.

  I didn’t have the courage to have rum so early in the morning and just looked at the cup timidly, unable to lift it.

  ‘Are you a man like your father or a mouse?” she asked angrily. ‘Now pick up that cup and have a drink!’

  I obeyed and was surprised to find that the hot coffee and rum did taste good. I took another sip. After relaxing and savouring the taste for a while (forgetting all about the shooting) I became silent and ignored the coffee.

  ‘Your coffee is getting cold! Would you like your rum in cold coffee with ice cream?’ she asked.

  ‘No Ma’am, this is great as it is!’

  ‘So, what the hell are you waiting for? Drink up while the coffee is still hot and we will have another cup!”

  ‘Please . . . I think . . .’

  ‘Stop talking like a sixteen-year-old virgin! You like the concoction?’

  ‘Yes, actually, it is quite good!’

  ‘Then drink up! We don’t travel like this together every day. Let’s have another one to Balraj’s memory!’ she said.

  I followed her order and finished the coffee in one gulp. The steward brought two more cups, which she again topped with rum. Sighing deeply, she toasted Dad once again.

  I looked at her for a while. She was beautiful even in her mid-sixties. Her face became flushed and she closed her eyes, as if remembering something.

  ‘Did you ever work with Dad in a film?’ I asked.

  ‘In several! Great man!’ she replied, her eyes still closed.

  ‘Tell me something about him. Did you get to know him well?’ I asked.

  She opened her large and luminous eyes and stared at me. ‘More than that,’ she said off-handedly.

  ‘So, you were good friends?’ I remarked.

  ‘More than that!’ she said again, enigmatically, as she took another sip.

  There was silence for a while. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but couldn’t help taking another sip of the sweet, steaming hot brew.

  ‘Balli was bloody strict. Damn serious about his work!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Balli! That is what I called Balraj. He is the only fellow who yelled at me on the sets!’ she said with a faraway look and a wry smile on her lips.

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘The man was too serious about his work! It was a serious scene and I said something flippant during rehearsal. He was livid. “Be serious about your work!” he said. “Get into the scene and your character! If you don’t give me the right reactions I can’t do my job right,” he said. Oh, my God, I felt like a school girl being yelled at by my school master! He was bloody strict, yaar.’

  ‘You should not have minded that. He was your co-actor after all,’ I remarked.

  ‘More than that!’ she replied, looking wistfully out of the window.

  Now this was news to me. It was evident that Dad had made some conquests on the side and clearly, he had made quite an impression on women. I didn’t know much about his conquests. But it was obvious that he was adept at keeping things under wraps.

  The lady became a good friend after that. She was getting on in years and had some health-related issues. She lived alone and I visited her off and on. There were many people she did not like in the film industry a
nd she spoke freely about them, often using four-letter words to describe them. But about ‘Balli’ she had nothing but praise. ‘He was one of the few genuine people in the film industry,’ she said to me one day.

  Yes, Dad indeed was a man who left an indelible impression on people. They were attracted to him for his gentle manner, his simplicity, his transparent sincerity and truthfulness, and above all, for his uncompromising attitude towards his work. And so, he made long-lasting friendships.

  A man’s man

  Dad also had friendships with men that lasted a lifetime. Charles Parr was an Englishman who worked at the BBC with Dad in the war days. He had settled in Oxford after the war and boasted of the fact that his next-door neighbour was Nirad C. Chaudhuri, famous for his Autobiography of an Unknown Indian. Charles Parr was a regular visitor to Stella Villa first and later to Ikraam. He was a fun-loving, plump and bald Englishman, a writer of sorts, whose arrival we always looked forward to. Dad and Charles Parr’s close friendship was a fascinating reflection of how times had changed and was symbolic of the political turnaround in Indo-British relations. Before 1947, the British would look down on Indians and rarely interacted with them. But we hardly ever looked on Charles Parr as a firangee (foreigner) when he visited us, and he certainly did not behave like one. He is the only white man I have come across who loved green chilies and ate them raw with his food! He relished Indian food and went around everywhere in one of Dad’s lungis. The two of them spent a lot of time together, walking on the beach and sharing old memories, joking and laughing like schoolboys. It was heart-warming to see Dad so relaxed and vibrant in his friend’s company.

  Mr Parr remained a regular visitor at our house for as long as he lived. He had grown to genuinely love India and Indians, and had developed great respect for Indian culture, perhaps because of Dad who had introduced him to its history and richness. Dad took him to Kahneri and the Elephanta Caves, among other places. I often accompanied them and could discern a distinctly dumfounded expression on Mr Parr’s face as he beheld the great, monolithic monuments carved out of solid rock, unable to fathom how such sophisticated works of sculpture could be built before the Christian era.

  One of Dad’s comrades in the Party, Baba Sheikh, reminded one of the American singer, Paul Robeson (also a Marxist in the US who, along with the writer Howard Fast, openly professed his leftist leanings). Dad admired him for his talent and dedication to the cause and became very fond of him.

  Soon after the release of Dharti ke Laal came the sad news of the sudden demise of Baba Sheikh. Dad was deeply affected by the loss of his friend who was considered a hero among the comrades in general and for Dad in particular. They carried his bier on an open truck, which was bedecked with flowers. Thousands of people accompanied his bier as it moved solemnly towards its grim destination.

  Dad was seated on top of the bier next to Baba Sheikh’s body. He pulled the inert body close to his chest and kept hugging it till the cortege reached its destination. The Mullah accompanying the bier told Dad that this was no way to escort the deceased to his grave, but Dad couldn’t care less. When he loved someone, he loved the person with all his heart and soul. Indeed, love was the key word in his life. My memories of those days are hazy, but many of the older members of the Party remember this scene vividly.

  Film buddies

  I must say that close and binding friendships among film folk were not a rarity but quite common in those days. Dad was very fond of Yash Chopra-ji and also of his older brother B.R. Chopra-ji, with whom he had studied in the Government College in Lahore. He did many films with B.R. Films, the most memorable being Waqt. The song he sang in this film, Meri Zohra Jabeen, became so popular that it is still high on the charts to this day, and is a favourite at marriages and other occasions.

  Another great friend of Dad’s from his Government college days was Chetan Anand Saheb. They were as close as two people can be. In the company of Chetan-ji, Dad became like an adolescent boy and the two of them behaved, laughed, joked and fooled around like they would in their college days in Lahore. Chetan-ji and Dad had struggled together in Mumbai before they got a foothold in the film industry. Their families lived together on Pali Hill. In his autobiography, Dad writes touchingly about how they had stood by one another as they looked for work in Mumbai as well as in Pune. They visited Prabhat Studios together. In Mumbai, they often went to Dadar (to Ranjit Studio) on foot because they didn’t have sufficient money for bus or train fare. Chetan-ji was, like Dad, a tenacious person. He looked desperately for a financier for his first film Neecha Nagar, and when he found one with great difficulty, he made a film that got the award for the best film of the year at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival—the first Indian film ever to do so. Chetan-ji had first tried his hand at acting, but then settled down to being a film-maker. He was a high-spirited and adventurous person, often filming subjects that most other producers would not have touched with a barge pole.

  One of the most amazing films Chetan-ji made, and which was entered in the Oscars as an official entry from India, was called Aakhri Khat. This film, which I saw on my return from Russia, made a deep impact on me. It was made without a script and was entirely improvised. It told the story of a child lost in a big city, and most of the scenes were shot with a candid camera, leaving the child to wander on the crowded streets of Mumbai and film impromptu reactions of people who came in contact with him. In this respect, he was a ‘new wave’ or avant-garde film-maker long before the Italians. It was a very moving film and introduced Rajesh Khanna as an actor to the film industry. He became a super star after the release of the film and went on to become a ‘phenomenon.’

  The first film Dad did with Chetan-ji was Haqeeqat, which was, again an improvised film made without a written script, which won the National Award as the best film of the year. The leading role was played by Dharmendra-ji who was supposed to fall in love with the heroine. But evidently, as I am told, he did not turn up for shooting in Leh and Chetan-ji changed the storyline on the spur of the moment so that Dad took on much of the role assigned to Dharam-ji.

  Chetan-ji rarely shot his films according to a written script. He worked out the storyline in his head and then proceeded to improvise the scenes, writing the dialogues himself as he went along. As far as Haqeeqat is concerned, I was in Stella Villa on holiday from Sanawar and was witness to how the film was started.

  Dad asked Chetan-ji to narrate the subject to him or send him the script of the film. Chetan-ji came to Stella Villa personally to narrate it to Dad. For a while, they sat on the floor of the drawing room, chit-chatting about everything under the sun except the script. When Dad finally asked Chetan-ji what the story was all about, Chetan-ji asked for some paper and a pencil, which I brought immediately. After staring at the blank paper for a while, he made three dots on it, looked at the sheet of paper again and handed the paper to Dad, saying, ‘That is the script.’ Dad, totally befuddled, stared at the blank paper with the three dots on it and then looked quizzically at Chetan-ji.

  ‘Is this the script?’ he asked in consternation.

  ‘That is the story,’ Chetan-ji said and then went on to tell Dad that the dots were the three Indian army camps the Chinese had attacked. The story was about each individual camp and how they fought the Chinese. ‘You are the commanding officer of one of the camps,’ he said, and that was the end of the narration of the storyline. Dad was intrigued, but being familiar with his friend’s style of film-making, didn’t question him any further and promptly started going to the army camp in Kalina and taking army training (usually coming back in the evenings with scratched and bloodied elbows and knees acquired while learning how to crawl).

  Often, during the shooting of the film, Chetan-ji asked Dad to write or improvise his own dialogues. Such was the faith the two friends had in one another! The film was an all-time hit! It has been computerized into colour now and is to be released, I am told, by Ketan, his son.

  Film and theatre acting constitute a col
lective art form, and actors, as a rule, tend to be gregarious people. They thrive on company and need people around them to make them feel validated; the more sociable and gregarious they are, the more they seem to blossom. An actor who is an introvert and tends to remain aloof from people is heading for trouble. Most successful actors are outgoing and make strong friendships that often last a lifetime, as in Dad’s case.

  Some time ago, I was in Pune as the guest of honour at a function to mark the release of a book called Gul, Gulshan, Gulfam, written by Mr Pran Kishore, one of Dad’s closest friends. Pran Saheb was forced, like many of his Hindu Kashmiri Pundit compatriots, to flee Kashmir when the insurgency started, and is now settled in Pune. He is in his early nineties—a renowned painter, broadcaster and writer. He narrated a story that goes a long way in proving how firm and binding was Dad’s love when he made a friend.

  ‘Balraj-ji was in Srinagar for a stint of shooting one summer and was staying at the Lake Palace Hotel overlooking the Dal Lake, a couple of miles down Gagribal Point,’ Pran Saheb narrated. ‘One evening, after he had finished shooting, he met me at Raj Bagh, where I lived, and being in a good mood, suggested that we go to a bar for a tot (shot).

  ‘But tot followed tot and before long we were both tottering,’ continued Pran Saheb. ‘When we left the bar, it was quite late. I decided that after seeing Balraj-ji off in a taxi, I would walk to the First Bridge on the river Jehlum, and then cross over to the other side to my house. But Balraj-ji insisted on escorting me to my house. When we reached home, I invited him to come in and have a bite and rest awhile, but he declined, saying that he had to get up very early the next morning for the first shot at sunrise. As he turned to leave, I joined him, saying, ‘I don’t want you to walk alone. I will escort you to the taxi stand at Dal Gate.’