The Non-Conformist

by Parikshat Sahni

  And he used to get so exhausted at the end of the working day that after that it was necessary for him to unwind or he couldn’t have gone to sleep at night. For this purpose, there was ‘the cottage’, a retreat constructed on the site of RK Studio where he assembled his chosen few or his entourage to sit, drink, eat and carouse, often going over the details of the work done that day. Randhir Kapoor, his eldest son (who proved himself an extremely talented actor and director later) was one of the assistants and both of us joined Raj-ji in the ‘cottage’ sometimes.

  In the cottage Raj-ji reigned supreme like a Tsar over his kingdom. And what a kingdom it was! His films were some of the greatest ever made in India, in his own studio with his own equipment and lights, on his own sets. Raj-ji was an institution. The carousing in the cottage went on till the wee hours of the morning and dinner was served late. When he retired, it was well past midnight. He woke up leisurely the next day and his shooting shifts were usually from two in the afternoon till ten at night. During those hours, he was like a man possessed.

  One of the great tragedies that took place concerned my future career. It pertained to one of the films in which I acted (just for a taste of Hindi cinema), which became a big hit. After that the film I was supposed to direct was taken over by someone else and I was made to play the leading role instead. That took me away from the job I was doing with Raj-ji. If I had remained with him as his assistant, my future as a director would have been assured.

  With Raj-ji’s unit, I would probably have learnt more than I did even in the film institute in Moscow, where film-making was just a tool for blatant propaganda and a means to brainwash the masses. I was therefore ill-equipped in the traditions and ways of Hindi cinema. It would have been better if I had enrolled in the Film institute in Pune, rather than in Moscow. I went there as an Indian and came back as a Russian! Working under Raj-ji would have helped me get into the stream of things here in India. However, even so, there was a lot I learnt from him.

  One day he was shooting as a hero in the film of some other producer and I stopped by to speak to him. I was shocked to see the way he was dressed. He was, of course, playing the lead opposite one of the top heroines of the day, but he was dressed atrociously. He looked not just funny but ridiculous. He had on very baggy short pants and an equally funny shirt to match. And to top it all, the lines he had to speak had a double meaning and sounded quite obscene.

  I told him that the dress did not suit him and neither did the dialogues he was to deliver. It was then that I learnt a lesson from him that I have never forgotten. ‘I am not the director here, Parikshat. I am merely a performer. The captain of the ship is the director. He is the boss. On my own set, when I am directing, I am the boss and I expect my orders to be carried out to the ‘T’. But here, I have to carry out the orders of the man who is directing me,’ he said. ‘But Raj-ji’, I interjected, ‘you look ridiculous! And the dialogue is obscene.’ He laughed. ‘If the director asks me to perform the scene in my underpants, I will do it. And if he asks me to use a four-letter word, I will use it. This is his film and he is the boss. An actor’s job is to carry out his orders!’

  Since then I have tried my best to forget that I have been trained as a director, and so on the sets I make it a point to carry out the orders of the director as best as I can. Yes, I sometimes make a suggestion if I feel the scene can be improved in some way, but the last word is always the director’s.

  Raj-ji was a great orator, something most actors are not. They are good at delivering their lines on the sets, but if asked to make an impromptu speech, they often find themselves out of their depth. Dilip Saheb perhaps is also an exception to the rule. I have heard him give riveting speeches at the spur of the moment. Otherwise, it is the politicians who are past masters in this art. In fact, their success depends largely whether or not they can sway the crowds with their passionate elocution. Even the best politicians, if they do not have the gift of the gab, cannot make it big.

  I was invited one day to the NCPA for a function where the then Chief Minister was to give a speech. I do not remember what the occasion was, but the gathering consisted of some of the most respected intellectuals of the day. It was in the middle of the speech that Raj-ji appeared, walking down the aisle, huffing and puffing. That was the first time I got a hint that his health was not quite all right. He was breathing hard. After sitting down, he listened to the politician’s speech attentively. The politician said something vaguely funny and seemingly derogatory about film folk—something to the effect that he had more important things to do than watch Hindi films.

  When Raj-ji was asked to say a few words, he ‘took the pants off’ the politician. He had no written text. What he said was off the cuff. And what he said brought the house down. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘you politicians are important people—more important than us, I acknowledge—but let me tell you this, we are of the same ilk! You need a mike, so do we. You need a stage as much as we do. And sir, to be frank, you are much better actors than we are. We only act when we face the camera and the director says “Action!” Otherwise, we are our natural selves. But you, sir, act all the time, whether you are onstage or off it. That is the only difference between us. So please don’t be so condescending.’ As far as I can remember, the CM had no reply. The ovation for Raj-ji continued for several minutes.

  It was in the early eighties when I was going for a shooting stint in Los Angeles (for Jagmohan Mundhra’s Suraag) when I came to know that Raj-ji was not keeping well. Someone asked me to carry some of his medical reports with me and deliver them to a doctor in New York who would come to the airport to collect them. There was some urgency in the man’s voice when he handed over the papers to me and he repeatedly told me that I was to make sure that the papers were handed over to the doctor and should guard the papers well and let not let them fall into someone else’s hands. And sure enough, after I returned from LA, there was a rumour that Raj-ji was not well, but no one knew or said anything about what his ailment was. Asthma was given as the cause of his ill health.

  I was invited to a party in his garden in his home in Chembur one evening and was surprised to see that almost the entire film industry was present at the get-together. Raj-ji was sitting on a large wooden swing, which is so common in India, and swaying on it gently. When he saw me, he signalled me to go and sit down near him. I obliged and sat down on the swing. He put his arm around my shoulder and drew me close. I was touched! I didn’t know what to say. I was silent and so was he for some time. I felt awkward and tried to start a conversation several times, but there was no response from him.

  He just sat silently, holding me close. Once he turned to me and asked, ‘Is it well with you?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ but he seemed to know that was not so and that I was lying. And he was right. I had had a bad accident while shooting for a film in Rajasthan and broken my acetabulum and five six transverse processes in my spine. I had been on traction and in hospital for a month and after that in a wheel-chair for some time. I had been replaced in all the movies in which I was working with other actors. And so, I had been without a job for almost three years. The word had gone around that I would never walk again.

  Raj-ji seemed to be well aware of all this. We sat for a while in silence, his comforting hand on my shoulder, and then someone else came up to him and I quietly got up and left. I was lost in that party. Everyone seemed to be convinced that I was ‘out’ of the industry and perhaps could never make a comeback. However, I was not crestfallen. I knew there would be light at the end of the tunnel. And there was. I was contacted one day by Rajshri Productions, and after taking a test to see if I could walk again, was offered a film that did very well and I was back on track!

  But that was the last time I met Raj-ji. Soon news came that he was in hospital in Delhi, recovering from some serious ailment. On 2 June 1988 news came of his demise. He was only 64 at the time.

  The words of my Professor in Moscow rang in my ears, ‘A director’s job is very diffic
ult job. If a director gives his all to his work, he usually dies young because the pressure of work takes its toll on him. It’s a tough job.’ Raj-ji gave every bit of his physical and emotional energy to his work and paid the price for it. In doing so, he left behind a body of work that will be remembered for all time to come. He is one of the greatest film-makers and human beings I have ever met. Nothing will ever erase the footprints he has left behind on the sands of time!

  Amitabh Bachchan

  Our two families were close, and as I’ve said earlier, Dad was a great admirer or Amitabh’s father, Shri Harivansh Rai-ji Bachchan. When I was a child, I remember Dad reading out Bachchan-ji’s poems and translations of Shakespearean plays after dinner. I am told Amitabh met Dad before he took his first step in the film industry.

  I first set eyes on Amitabh when I was living in Warden Road in a building called Shiv Teerth in the early seventies. He came unannounced one night with the great documentary-maker Sukhdev, whom I knew well and admired. After introducing Amitabh to me, Sukhdev did most of the talking, Amitabh just stood in the drawing room and stared at me silently with piercing eyes. There was fire in those eyes. He had not yet made it big, but the fire in those eyes was soon to catapult him into the firmament and leave his competitors far behind. That flame has not been dimmed in the last 48 years!

  And then, a year later, when I was shooting for a film in Chennai with Mahmood Saheb, I heard him telling someone, ‘What a voice this lad has! It sounds like thunder.’ He praised Amitabh and said that he had an uncanny power in his eyes and speech and was unstoppable. He was right. But ‘the lad’ had to go through a back-breaking struggle before he could make it. He has to be admired for his sheer grit, passion, a never-say-die spirit and his tenacity of purpose. He can go to any lengths and take the most dangerous risks, often risking his very life, in order to excel on the screen.

  I have had the good fortune of working with Amitabh in a few films (in most of which he suggested my name, for which I am truly grateful to him). He has a seemingly hard and impregnable exterior, but is a very sensitive person, and like Dad, the friends he has he clasps ‘to his soul with hoops of steel.’

  Sunil Dutt Saheb was the first one, if I am not mistaken, to cast him for the first time in his film Reshma aur Shera, and in one of the shots, as he narrated to me, he was asked to run hard and bang his head into a brick wall ‘as if to bring it down’.

  I think Dutt Saheb did not mean this literally, but that is what Amitabh took it for. He ran full tilt into the wall and banged it so hard with his head that, I believe, he dislodged a few bricks, but in the bargain, passed out and had to be revived with considerable difficulty. Dutt Saheb was baffled and ran up to him to help, ready to call an ambulance if needed. Amitabh, however, got up slowly, swaying from side to side, completely out of focus and said groggily that he was ready for a retake if this shot wasn’t good enough!

  His dedication sometimes appears to be a form of madness, but as Zorba the Greek said to the staid Englishman, ‘You have to have a little madness in life . . . madness!’ And this ‘madness’ for perfection is what drives Amitabh. Here is another example of this trait. We were shooting for Yash-ji’s film Kala Patthar. It was a multi-starrer. In one scene Amitabh and Shatrughan Sinha (rivals in the film) are in a fierce fight. Shatrughan is a consummate actor and it was a formidable face-off!

  There were duplicates involved in the fight sequences as there were some dangerous shots to be filmed. One of the shots was particularly life-threatening. It involved diving over some sharp-edged iron rods jutting out from a cement column. The rods were about four feet high. If the actor failed to dive over them, he was sure to be disembowelled. A duplicate was summoned for the shot, but Amitabh insisted on doing it himself even though he was advised by everyone against it. People watched with great apprehension as he attempted the shot and everyone heaved a collective sigh of relief when he cleared the iron rods. He wanted a retake but Yash-ji said there was no question of that.

  Desh Premee was a multi-starrer made by Manmohan Desai in which (as I later found out) I was cast because Amitabh, again, suggested my name. I was in bad shape those days after an accident I had had in Jaipur and was out of a job for two or three years. Word had gone around that I was crippled for good. Due to Amitabh’s timely help, I was back in the saddle after this film.

  The action was set in a huge slum for which an enormous set had been constructed in Kamalistan Studio. For the roles of the four slumlords big stars had been chosen—Shammi Kapoor Saheb, Premnath Saheb and the superstar of Bengali cinema Uttam Kumar Saheb. I was cast in the role of the fourth slumlord.

  Something untoward happened during the shooting of the film. There was a massive fight sequence in the script between Amitabh and the slumlords. Amitabh was playing a double role, that of a young rebel and also of his sedate and aged father.

  I was playing a Muslim character, Shammi-ji a Sikh, Premnath-ji a South Indian goonda and Uttam-da a Bengali ruffian). I was to exchange a few lathi blows with Amitabh and Uttam-da was to step in and take over. I was standing behind Uttam-da facing Amitabh when Uttam-da swung the lathi, slipped on a stone and hit Amitabh full force on his forehead with a sickening thud. Blood oozed out of the wound and a huge lump formed on Amitabh’s forehead!

  Amitabh fell to the ground with a stifled moan. Everyone on the set was stunned into silence. Uttam-da apologized profusely for the mishap, blaming the uneven surface he was standing on, but Amitabh lay prone and unconscious for a while. Manmohan-ji came running up to him, took one look at Amitabh (who was doing two shifts that day and had to go for another shooting stint at two in the afternoon) and announced pack up for the day. But Amitabh slowly got up and told him to do nothing of the kind!

  He called for his medicine box, sat on the ground and dressed up the wound himself, covering it with skin-coloured tape and then looked at Uttam-da and said to Manmohan-ji, ‘I had a small fight with Jaya this morning. She must have called Uttam-da up and told him about it. So this is punishment for my misbehaviour! Sorry Uttam-da, I promise never to argue with Jaya again. Please don’t cause another bump on my forehead!’ Amitabh had made a joke out of what had happened. People began to laugh and the shooting commenced soon after. Amitabh left the set only after finishing the work for the day.

  I witnessed him doing something dangerous once again when I did my last film with him—Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s film The Bodyguard. Vidhu Vinod had taken great pains to make the film as authentic as possible and kept in mind the minutest details while shooting it.

  In one particular scene I, being the chauffeur, was driving an old vintage sedan with the maharaja sitting on the back seat and his bodyguard (Amitabh) sitting beside me on the front seat. In the scene, the maharaja was to be shot dead by the villain (played by Jackie Shroff), while, for visual effect, hundreds of camels stampeded alongside the car. On hearing the shot being fired, Amitabh, as the bodyguard of the maharaja, was supposed to leap out of the car and hunt for the perpetrator of the crime.

  A ‘duplicate’ for this and the action shots was ready to take Amitabh’s place, but he preferred to do the shot himself. I was sure there was a better way of tackling the situation than diving out of the car and suggested he not take the risk. He was amused at my suggestion.

  He did the shot, as required by the director. He opened the door of the car when the shot was fired and jumped out ten feet into the melee of stampeding camels running alongside the car. I saw a camel’s foot graze Amitabh’s head and race on. People clapped on seeing him jump out of the car, but none of them noticed the camel’s foot hitting his head. Amitabh himself didn’t mention the incident to anyone. He was as cool as a cucumber before the shot, during the shot and after it. ‘Fortune favours the brave’, as they say.

  ‘You will never stop,

  You will never halt,

  You will never turn,

  Take this oath, take this oath, take this oath.

  Walk on the path of fire, walk on t
he path of fire . . .’

  So goes the last stanza of the poem Agnipath by Harivansh Rai-ji Bachchan.

  Amitabh seems to have taken an oath to walk on the ‘path of fire’ come what may! He is unstoppable. It has been a great privilege to have known and worked with him.

  Apart from the invaluable lessons I learnt from Dad, the stalwarts I have mentioned above were also an inspiration to me. From each one of them, I have learnt something that helps me steer my way through the labyrinths of our complicated film industry. In more than one way, I am deeply grateful to them all.

  11

  Ikraam

  This is something that is not easy for me to write about. It is very painful. The reader may feel shocked to read it. But write about it I am forced to, because a hundred times every month people ask me and blame me for the condition in which Dad’s bungalow is today. I haven’t the heart to tell them that I feel equally pained to see its condition. I am quite fed up of builders constantly calling me up to ask me if the house is for sale. I am tired of repeating to them that the decision about the future of the house is not in my hands. So, it is high time I got this off my chest. It is a burden I have been carrying on my shoulders for the last four-and-a-half decades.

  Ikraam, the name given to the grand house Dad build, was the biggest paradox in his life. I don’t know when the idea was conceived, but the construction of the house started in the mid-sixties while I was in Russia. Till then, we had been living in Stella Villa, a small bungalow in the Theosophical Colony, a couple of miles away. It was a cosy little bungalow with a thatched veranda and two bedrooms, a dining and drawing room and one bathroom.