The Non-Conformist

by Parikshat Sahni

  And then one day, Dad, not wanting more tension in the house, suggested it might be a good idea for us to live separately for some time. I was saddened to see Aruna feeling lonely and lost. So she didn’t demur when we were asked to move to the new flat in Piroja Court which Dad had bought for us. We went for a holiday to the hills for a break before we settled in our new home. The past year had been difficult for both of us!

  We hadn’t been away for long when news came that Shabnam was not happy in Jamshedpur and might be returning to Mumbai. When she finally did, she was not in good shape. She was terribly depressed. The worst of it was that she blamed herself for it all. Dad got wind that her marriage was on the rocks.

  At Dad’s request, we moved back to Ikraam. He thought our presence might add cheer to the sombre atmosphere, and it did make a difference. Shabnam was genuinely thrilled to have Aruna there as the two of them got along very well. Even Aruna found the atmosphere changed with Shabnam’s presence. But the curse of Ikraam, it seems, was inexorable, merciless and ruthless. It spared no one. Shabnam’s depression worsened. She was put, like Granny, on medication but to no avail. Her condition went from bad to worse. Her medical problems went undetected, with every symptom being attributed to depression or an attempt to garner sympathy for herself. The irony is that, even though she was diagnosed with a depressive disorder, nothing other than medication was prescribed to mitigate her problem.

  As we discovered later, Shabnam had a clot (or tumour) in her brain, which caused her frequent headaches. Dad had gone to Indore for electioneering one day when Mummy asked me to go to Shabnam’s room and call her down for lunch. I called out to her to get up, but she didn’t react. I put my hand on her shoulder and shook her hard. When there was still no response, I was frightened, thinking that she had fainted. I immediately called the doctor. I could hardly get my words out, but I think the urgency in my voice made him come immediately. Seeing him arrive, the rest of the family had also come up to Shabnam’s room, looking on anxiously as he checked her pulse and looked at her pupils to see if there was any response to a bright light. It took him only a minute, and looking at us helplessly, he said, ‘She is gone.’ We looked at him in disbelief, not registering what he was saying.

  It fell upon me to get in touch with Dad in Indore. I rushed to Mr Rajni Patel, who was very close to Dad and also busy electioneering. His important post in the Congress party provided him the means to somehow get through to Dad to give him the tragic news. Her death was so sudden and unexpected! We all knew she was depressed, but no one suspected that her life was threatened. I was totally baffled and wanted to get to the bottom of the cause of her sudden demise.

  Quite a crowd had gathered in the large courtyard and garden on hearing the news. Everyone was as stunned as we were; there were some murmurs about history repeating itself—both mother and daughter dying at more or less at the same age. Both were 26 when they passed away.

  Even though I am not given to superstition, I couldn’t help but think that all these happenings were unnatural and not normal. Shabnam was four years younger than me and in the full bloom of youth when God took her away from us. Her condition was never considered terminal, so there was no anticipatory grief over the possibility of losing her. She died in my arms. I couldn’t get over the shock.

  When Dad arrived, I rushed to him, to console and be consoled. But he was a broken man. He looked half dead as he looked at me in stoic silence. I don’t remember him shedding a single tear.

  What happened after that is a blur in my memory. Bhisham-ji arrived but Dad also kept him at arm’s length.

  This was a shock that took a long, long time for me to get over. Dad never got over it. His shock and denial gave way to guilt and anger, and then he plunged into a state of restless over-activity, as in this way he could negate the magnitude of Shabnam’s loss. He devoted more and more time to writing as an outlet for his inner pain.

  It is very difficult for me write about all this. I have tried hard to forget those tragic days. Narrating them has opened up old wounds and I feel the pain all over again. The happenings of the last year or so were too much for me to handle. I had returned from Moscow hoping that life would henceforth be a bed of roses. On the contrary, it had become a living and breathing nightmare. I couldn’t share my pain with anyone, not even Aruna. Everyone had withdrawn into their private spheres, dealing with Shabnam’s death in their unique way, but no-one talked about her or shared their sense of loss.

  I took to tranquillizers and sleeping pills and tried desperately to drown my heart-breaking memories in drink. Those days, weeks and perhaps months are blank in my memory! Taking these pills twice a day helped me sleep through the day and then I drank myself into a stupor at night. My movies were the least of my concerns; I stopped going for shootings, not caring about my career. I was either thrown out of the films I was doing or my role was summarily cut short.

  This continued for a long time. One day, lying supine on the carpet in the drawing room, I overheard someone telling Aruna, ‘I am sorry to say this, but Parikshat is finished. If he survives, he will never be able to work again!’

  This shook me up. I had to take hold of myself. I looked at myself in the mirror—a pathetic, haggard and wasted man looked back at me. Is this what I have become, I asked myself? I needed to break out of my depression and decided to seek Dad’s help.

  He had gone with Mummy and Sanober to Srinagar, hoping that it would take his mind off Shabnam’s death. But I don’t think it worked. Dad blamed himself for the tragedy. As I have said, he was a very sensitive and emotional man. And he loved Shabnam to distraction. Bhisham-ji has written in his book:

  ‘In his diary of March 1973, there is a page, which reflects the unbearable suffering of his heart. However hard he might try, he was not able to overcome the thought of Shabnam and the galling consciousness of his own inability to solve her problems.’

  In one of his letters to his younger brother Dad wrote, ‘I have failed both as a father and as a husband. I have come to such a pass that I cannot understand what is right and what is wrong. I have to bear what has befallen me.’

  When they returned to Mumbai, one day I approached Dad and asked him what I should do about my own depression. He replied, ‘Son, the only panacea for this is work. Get down to work. Don’t sit and brood!’

  Dad was a man of action; he followed his own advice. He immersed himself in social work and even signed a film being made by the IPTA. Written by Kaifi Azmi Saheb and Ismat Chughtai Saheba, it was a story after his own heart. It was called Garm Hawa—a story about the Partition. He had lived through this horrendous period and knew what it had meant to those who had lost their homes and been forced to flee the land of their birth.

  The film unit went to Agra to shoot the film. As he told me on getting back, he was not happy with the shooting. He was irked by the indiscipline of the unit, which caused him many sleepless nights.

  But it was more than that. The wound of Shabnam’s death was still festering in his heart and it was made worse when the director Satyu confessed in a speech during a public meeting (that both of us attended in Dad’s honour) that he wrote a scene into the script showing the death of the protagonist’s daughter. He expressed his extreme guilt over the inclusion of that scene. Thinking only of its artistic aspects, he was sure he’d get a great performance out of Dad. He did. It turned out to be a memorable performance, but it pushed Dad closer to death. Garm Hawa, particularly that scene, became Dad’s swan song.

  Dad started dubbing the film at Rajkamal Studio. Towards the end, the director wanted to finish the little bit left the next day. However, Dad implored him to finish it then and there even if it took longer than usual. In the last loop of the dubbing, he said the protagonist’s last line of the film, which went something like this, ‘I am tired of living in this stifling condition!’

  Those were the last words he ever dubbed. He died the next morning. Ikraam had claimed its main victim—the master of the
house.

  But the story of Ikraam does not end there. It was not long before the structure began to crumble. Years passed and its condition went from bad to worse. But the house spared Mummy for many years. She reached the ripe old age of 95 before passing away. She left behind a vacuum that can never be filled.

  Epilogue

  I have always felt that a father is like a great banyan tree under whose shade one feels safe and protected. And if the shelter of the tree is taken away, one feels alone, lost and at the mercy of the elements. When Dad passed away, the first thing that came to my mind and which I shared with my wife was, ‘How will I live now?’ I found myself thinking, ‘How weary, flat, stale and unprofitable seem to me the uses of this world.’ I felt helpless and alone. I am sure all sons feel that way when their fathers pass away. And even though life has a way of compensating for every loss and of helping us move on, I feel that one never gets over the loss of a father.

  Soon after Dad’s demise, my children were born and I had to shoulder the responsibilities of fatherhood myself. But I missed Dad acutely and wished he had been alive to see his grandchildren. He had always wanted that. When Aruna was expecting Aditi, Dad went around proudly declaring to everyone, ‘I will be a grandfather soon!’ Alas, that was not to be. He was taken from us prematurely in his late fifties; his passing away created a vacuum that I’ve never been able to fill.

  I am not much of a believer in spirits and other-worldly phenomena, but I feel his presence in more than one way. I feel that he is still alive and with me. When darkness and despair descend on me, I hear his encouraging voice as clearly as if he were sitting next to me, whispering gently in my ear, ‘Never give up, son. Remember, the tide always turns!’

  Not only in my mind alone but in the minds of all those who knew him, loved him and admired his work, he is still alive. His memorable roles in multiple films, culminating in the remarkable success of Garm Hawa, made such a strong impact that his name can never be forgotten. Those who only saw him on the screen loved him for his realism and projection of his art; those who saw him on the stage loved him for his contribution to their cultural life; those who only read his books (although most of them were in Punjabi and hence had a limited readership) loved him for his literary prowess; those who knew him socially loved him for his gentlemanliness and affability; those who knew him politically loved him for the commitment and dedication he brought to whatever cause he espoused and those who knew him personally loved him for his honesty and simplicity.

  Times have changed drastically since Dad’s demise. I can’t help wondering sometimes what would have been his reaction to the present times. Some things would have surprised him, some would have upset him, some he would have found unbelievable and some would have gladdened his heart. Thinking about this I get lost in my reveries . . .

  He would have been shocked to learn that Marxism and Communism, as he visualized them, had more or less ceased to exist on this planet. He would have been deeply hurt to see the condition of Russia and the complete turnaround in its political system.

  He would have reacted with utter surprise to the rout of the Congress Party in India (being a great admirer or Nehru and Indira Gandhi) by the BJP, the emergence of the RSS and the fissiparous tendencies that have arisen in the country. He would have been sorely dismayed at the divide that has appeared between the different religious groups and the rise of fundamentalism all over the world.

  On the other hand, he would have been very happy to see the condition of the film industry in India today and the emergence of actors such as Naseeruddin Shah, the late Om Puri, Irfan Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Manoj Bajpai, Raj Kumar Rao as well as the leading men of today—Aamir Khan, Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan. He would have been thrilled to see the dizzying heights to which the son of his dear friend Harivansh Rai-ji Bachchan, Amitabh, had reached. He would have taken immense pride in and felt completely at home working with these actors.

  He would have been overjoyed to see the way films are being made today, the dedication with which scripts are written and the daring and off-beat subjects the younger generation is picking up. He would have been gratified to see directors such as Raju Hirani, Neeraj Pandey and R. Balki, and others tackling social subjects in films such as Pa, Pad man and PK, among so many others.

  What’s more, he would have been happy to see that the fair sex has finally found its place in the film industry. Women directors such as Gauri Shinde, Zoya Akhtar, Meghna Gulzar and so many other talented women wielding the megaphone would have been excellent news to him.

  But he would have been in tears to see the condition of his beloved Kashmir. He would have wept to learn that our ancestral home in Srinagar had been converted into a seven-storey hotel and that Wazir Bagh, the area where our house stood proudly once, had begun to look like a slum. He would have been sorely disappointed at the pollution and traffic jams on the roads of Srinagar (due to the number of cars plying on the roads now) and to see that the city closest to his heart had stopped looking like a charming little township and in places resembles Mumbai with its huge hoardings, malls and milling crowds.

  He would have been saddened to see the crumbling and dilapidated state of Ikraam, which he had built with such love and longing for a united family. It now looks like (as I call it) a ‘haunted house.’ The beach that he so loved would have appalled him; he would have been shocked to see the colour of the water and the trash floating on it.

  It is 5.30 in the morning and it is still dark outside. The monsoon season is fast approaching. The changes in the weather are not as dramatic as in the temperate zones, but they are just as palpable. The Gulmohur tree outside my window has turned a fiery red. The koel sings less frequently and soon its song will cease altogether till the coming of the hot season again. The skies are overcast; the sea has become choppy and begun to roar again. The breakers have become bigger and more intimidating.

  This is the time of the year during which Dad loved to swim in the sea the most. Today, at this early hour, I feel his presence more acutely than ever. Even though I haven’t ventured into the sea for many months, in fact, years, nowhere do I feel his presence more palpably than on the beach and in the sea, especially when it is rough and boisterous.

  I put on my swimming trunks and my shirt and venture out on the beach. It is deserted. The sea roars. I take off my shirt and leave it on the beach, and step into the sea in the dark. I begin a slow crawl along the shore towards the creek. I feel Dad’s presence beside me. I take off my swimming trunks and put them around my neck. I can see Dad smiling and I hear his voice in my ears, ‘Attaboy Parikshat! Attaboy Parikshat!’

  The faces of Grandma, Grandpa, Sheila-ji, Bhisham-ji, Dammo-ji, Shabnam, Dad, Mummy and Aruna pass one by one before my eyes as I swim on . . .

  My tears mingle with the salty waters of the Arabian Sea.

  Dad and his brother-in-law.

  Prem Dhavan, his wife, Dad and me (extreme right).

  Dad and me on the beach.

  Sanober (extreme left), Shabnam and me with Dad.

  Dad doing a headstand on Juhu Beach.

  Dad and his first wife, Damayanti.

  Shabnam and me.

  From the right: Dad, Santosh, me, Shabnam and Sanober.

  Dad and Bhisham-ji, his brother.

  Dad and me along with family at Dharamsala.

  Me with a shaved head; also in the picture are Hamid Butt (extreme left), Damayanti Sahni and Azra Butt (standing at the back), Uma Anand (Chetan Anand’s wife) and Dev Anand.

  Dad as Shambhu in Do Bigha Zamin.

  Dad in a still from Anuradha with Leela Naidu.

  Dad’s visit to the old haveli at Rawalpindi.

  Bhisham-ji and Balraj-ji in Moscow in 1957 during the youth festival.

  Dad and me in Moscow.

  Dad (extreme left) along with other delegates visiting Leo Tolstoy’s estate in Yasnaya Polyana.

  Me and Dad upon our return from Moscow.

  Me and Dad in Pavit
ra Paapi.

  Me, Chetan Anand and Dad during the shooting of Hindustan ki Kasam.

  With Dad at the frozen lake Alpather close to the Line of Control (LoC).

  Dad in Tangewala.

  Author’s Note

  I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Harshi Syal Gill, a friend of more than thirty years, who has settled in Los Angeles. She is an accomplished writer and has published some excellent books that have been very well received the world over. She has been a true friend, not only correcting content, but making valuable and apt suggestions, and pulling me out of the apathy and procrastination I am so prone to. In the years that I have known her, I have never made any effort to get to know her better. Los Angeles is a long way off! But in the past one year it has taken me to write this book, thanks to the latest gadgets on the smartphone (WhatsApp and FaceTime), we have been able to communicate with one another at will. And I have discovered she is one of the most warm-hearted, genuine, helpful and lovable people I have ever known. God bless you, Harshi!