An Ordinary Life

by Nawazuddin Siddiqui

  Ever so often, this is how a star is born and lives on. Superstars play their image—the same image that is so beloved to the masses. They keep repeating it in film after film and people love it and them more and more. But then if the viewer happens to be a cranky guy like me, he will begin to doubt the superstar. I will get suspicious. And if I were to become the superstar through this route, then I would get suspicious of the viewers. Why are you as an audience not demanding more out of me? As superstars, people forget the nuances and the fine detailing of the character. An actor’s job is simply this: to create different personas out of one person, and different ways to portray them. Say, I am doing a romantic role and the girls love me in this role. This does not mean I should do only romantic roles to please them. I should do different roles, including different shades of romantic roles. But, of course, then people won’t like me. We are creatures of habit. There are enough trials in life as it is. We don’t want to change even our perspectives and so this change might threaten our stardom.

  But I must not just work for my fans. Only superstars work for their fans so that the fan following grows. It’s easier. Fans will love you. But someone like me will not love you because I want a new you in every film. I will only like you when I can see you have studied. For instance, take Al Pacino. I don’t like him at all. But I loved him in Godfather, in Scarface. He was amazing! But then, like stars, he repeated himself. In the eyes of a viewer like me, you have then become lazy, you don’t want to work on your craft or reinvent yourself. Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Marlon Brando—all stars. At one point, even Brando fell into the star trap and began to repeat himself. Therefore, someone like Leonardo DiCaprio is brilliant in my eyes. He takes such big risks with every film. He constantly reinvents himself, he shows a new part of himself. So in my eyes, he is extremely talented and a very big actor. Actors should skilfully experiment rather than create or fall into this trap of an image—that is the whole fucking game, do not get caught in this game. Don’t let the image happen. Break the fucking image with every film.

  At least, that is my intention for myself. I don’t want to be a star ever, just an actor who reinvents himself constantly, like DiCaprio. But yes, superstars have their charm and our country is obsessed with them. There are many advantages of working with them too, unlike with typical actors. One advantage, for instance, is that you know their dialogue delivery technique. This makes it easier to build the scene.

  Also, the industry has changed so much. Earlier, actors shooting together might not even look at each other while they sat waiting for their shot. There was a completely unnecessary cold war of egos in that silence. Luckily, those days are getting over. Today, stars respect actors and actually collaborate with them to build a scene. We are also seeing more and more good directors who give regular actors like us and superstars the same respect.

  Like in Raees, in my first scene I am at the desk taking my own sweet time fiddling with a pen and then writing with it, purposely portraying the caricature of pretentious busyness while Shah Rukh is waiting, getting more and more restless with my endless dilly-dallying. Before the scene, he had told me, ‘Nawaz Bhai, you do whatever you need to do. Tell me what I need to do.’ Of course, Shah Rukh is known for his intelligence. He hails from a theatre background and in his early days worked with directors like Ketan Mehta and Mani Kaul. But can you imagine a superstar like him having a conversation like this? Some decades ago, no superstar would have done this. These are all new and extremely welcome trends. Everyone wins this way, most of all cinema and the audience.

  * * *

  We spend so much of our lives waiting. Waiting in lines, waiting for responses, waiting for work, love, and so on. With actors, there is another kind of waiting added to the list. It is part of our day-to-day job. We spend a great deal of our time waiting for the shot to get ready. We wait in our vanity vans or directly on the set while the production team is hard at work. But we wait. And during those waits, every now and then a cute little treat or an adventure pops up. After the movie is over it becomes a memory etched in your mind like a picture in an old photo album.

  Like when we were shooting Freaky Ali on one of those acid-hot afternoons. After finishing a delicious lunch, we were hanging out, taking in the divine air conditioning as we waited to be called for our shot. Other than the team of our film, the golf course was almost desolate, with just half a dozen golfers or so playing on the giant course. The heat was that vicious! An elderly fellow actor too was unwinding during our time out. His age appeared to be close to eighty and his beard, though straw-coloured and thin like his structure, appeared to be like that of Santa Claus.

  The actor Arbaaz Khan who is known for his humour goofily questioned him about his ‘machinery’.

  ‘Chacha, is your machinery in place? Or has it rusted with age?’

  ‘It is in excellent condition!’ he responded immediately in a voice as skeletal as his frame.

  Arbaaz led him on.

  ‘Wow! That is incredible. What is your secret?’

  ‘Chuaara!’ he quipped promptly, referring to dried dates. ‘Soak two to four chuaara in milk and have this mixture for forty days.’

  ‘Forty days ka course. Aur phir intercourse?’ Arbaaz asked.

  ‘Absolutely!’ he assured. By now he had earned the moniker of Chacha Chuaara.

  ‘Is it as effective as Viagra?

  Immediately, Chacha Chuaara shook his grand old head in disapproval.

  ‘Viagra is poison, beta. Have chuaara!’

  Arbaaz teased him further.

  ‘Lekin hume deewar cheerke jaana hai. Chuaara kaafi hai?’ (But we have to break through walls, Chacha. Will chuaara suffice?)

  ‘With chuaara, your “machinery” will become as strong as a drilling machine. You can drill a hole inside a road,’ he assured. ‘Remember, it is called chu-aara. Chu (meaning touch), aara (meaning an electric saw). Chuaara! That’s how powerful it is. You don’t know its power until you have tried it.’

  * * *

  Strangely enough, now I don’t like theatre so much any more. Because there are so many tiny nuances, countless subtleties that theatre cannot depict no matter how hard it tries. If you are playing a bad guy, a villain, or if it is very hot, you need to say it, either through loud dialogues or through gestures, on stage to convey it to the audience. In Shakespeare’s famous play The Tempest, for example, we have to scream that a storm is coming and so we need to run.

  Theatre is a literal, loud medium. In cinema, you can show it all by conveying your character’s feelings without having to literally say it. Again, let’s take the legendary speech in Hamlet, ‘To be or not to be’. In cinema, there is no need for this speech in the first place. You don’t need to literally spell out the character’s dilemma. It is incredible! Cinema is a wonderful medium that is very personal and private. In cinema, I can express what is going on in my character’s mind without all of that pomp and show. You move your eyebrow and it conveys so much. You look sideways or your eyelids drop or you sigh . . . all of these are big deals on screen. This cannot happen in theatre. In reel life, the audience can read your mind just like people can in real life. In cinema, I can go to your room, I can watch you clandestinely. The magic of the 70mm screen is that not only does it show you, it also shows what is going on inside you.

  An actor should not mug up his or her dialogues. It is unnecessary if you have a feel of your character. And what’s more critical than the words themselves is silence. The absence of words or sound can create terror, romance, joy—an infinite range of emotions. The most difficult acting occurs in silence. It’s like in life, when, say, there is a conflict and we don’t talk at all. But our thoughts run amok. A tornado of turmoil swirls within us and the silence communicates all of it with the still sharpness of a sword.

  20

  Success

  Earlier, I used to get roles where I would get beaten up, like in Sarfarosh. After doing that and so many other films where I had just one scene
—to get beaten up in—I’d go to Budhana and notice that my beloved Abbu was consciously avoiding me. He would not talk to me, often he would walk away. When it came to his emotions, my father was not a man of few words, he was a man of no words. So I silently hoped my mother could help me with clues to explain his mysterious behaviour. ‘Ammi! Why is Abbu not talking to me?’ I asked her. ‘He might have watched one of your films,’ she said. ‘And he might have gotten angry.’ But it made no sense to me. ‘Why would he get angry, Ammi?’ I demanded. ‘You get beaten up in films, right? That’s why.’ I fell silent, gazing at the floor.

  Then came Gangs of Wasseypur which, of course, he watched. Not only was his son not playing a wretch getting beaten up, he was a victor, a gangster with great power. Finally, he was happy.

  The wave of Hindi cinema had changed. The kind of movies that were being made, the kind of directors who were making them—everything was a fresh wave. And it was because of this that a Gangs of Wasseypur and later a Masaan could even get made. Today, of course, the indie film industry is well established, so much so that quite a bit of poor acting in it gets passed off under the guise of being ‘realistic’. But back then, it was because of this change in mindset that someone like me could become a star actor. Or that an Anurag Kashyap could come into being.

  After those twelve years of struggle, people thought I had arrived. But I never wanted success. I only ever cared about my craft. To the world I might be the most famous face from Budhana. But if you ask me, in my eyes I am the most useless person in my family. The richness of talent that the colourful characters of my childhood had surpasses the riches of Ali Baba’s cave. There were so many folk artists who died as nobodies but the richness of whose talent surpasses that of most of Bollywood. I won’t give names but the lyrics and music of several were even copied by people who are big names in our industry today. If anybody called anything bad, even if it was bad, they were cast out of the family. That is how serious we were about tehzeeb, about rawangi.

  What is success in the face of all of that?

  I have no desire for fancy clothes. I have no desire for fancy cars. I have no desire for fame or glory. It has been this way since childhood. My concern has been that whatever work I do, I do it with cent per cent honesty, integrity and diligence and that I become a master at my craft. And that is what I have done. I work for the joy of the work itself, never for success or glory. My only philosophy is of pure diligence, as much as a human being is capable of. That is how one should live one’s life. I was not even aware that this was my core belief. I realized it only when I noticed that so many people around me were actually crazy about fame and materialistic possessions.

  I might sound monastic but I am not austere. I suppose I can trace the roots again to childhood. As a young boy, I could see how delighted people were when they got even a little bit of money—Eidi—during festivals. And how sad they were when the money was taken away from them. Very early on, I stumbled upon this nugget of wisdom that if I were like that, which is how most people are, it would mean that my happiness is dependent on factors external to me, like money. How could I be so cheap with myself? With my happiness? With my freedom? My happiness is not for sale.

  During those mad years of struggle, I breathed depression instead of oxygen because the atmosphere around was such. Several actors around me left, either Mumbai or this world altogether. Others saw silver linings and their careers slowly picked up. I didn’t have good looks. I didn’t have an exceptional voice. I did not have money even for food. I did not have a place to live. I belonged to a minority community. (So, even a simple thing like getting a passport meant battling so many hurdles.) So for me, the greater feat is to have not sunk, but stayed afloat through all of that with my sanity intact.

  Once, when I was still battling that nightmarish existence, Paritosh, one of my seniors from NSD, invited me over for drinks. He worked in TV and so had a stable income. ‘You know, Nawaz, one day my daughter said to me, “Papa, please buy me some ice cream. Please, please!” And I did not have the money to buy my little girl something as simple and inexpensive as a little scoop of ice cream. That day I decided that I will not see tears in my daughter’s eyes again. Howsoever, from wherever or whatever it takes me, I will get my little girl ice cream. No matter what I have to do, I will fulfil her wish,’ Paritosh said softly. ‘And today, Nawaz, I have a house, a car. My daughter, who is now all grown up and in college, is happy.’

  I listened in silence, sipping the alcohol. Then softly I asked him, ‘Paritosh Bhai, at least ask me what I would have done if I were in your place.’ He raised his head and his eyebrows to ask what. ‘I’d have told my daughter, “Sorry, but the ice cream cannot happen right now. I will feed you ice cream, I promise. But first of all, I need to work hard, I need to do good work, I need to become successful. Then you will eat ice cream. In fact, you will eat ice cream every day of your life. But right now, you need to let your daddy work because I will not do every odd job and odd role I come across simply to buy you ice cream. For the sake of your ice cream, I will not ruin my career. For your little joys, I will not compromise on my work. Persevere with me today, dear daughter, and tomorrow we will get everything you want.”’

  That friend of mine had made many compromises for life’s little joys, whether it was a steady supply of ice cream for his child or a steady supply of alcohol, food and shelter for himself. He worked in TV then and still continues to. He is as successful today as he was then. I was a nobody then but I did not make compromises, even when the sacrifices were very great.

  I am grateful that I am blessed with prosperity today. But I still walk out of home with very little cash in my pocket, perhaps not even enough to cover the fare of a taxi from Versova to town. It keeps me grounded, reminding me of my past and the fragility of everything, especially what the world calls success. Even today, the sight of a Parle-G wrapper gives me the shivers. Although I prefer the taste of this particular biscuit to that of most others, just seeing its packet makes me travel through time all the way back to my traumatic past when I had nothing to eat but tea and Parle-G.

  The media has written extensively about the concluding scene in Gangs of Wasseypur II, in which Faisal Khan fires hundreds of bullets into the chest of the villain Ramadhir Singh (played by Tigmanshu Dhulia). It was not just the gangster Faisal shooting his arch-enemy. It was a double-layered scene for me. Because it was also about me, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, pouring hundreds of metaphorical bullets into the arduous, cruel struggle that had almost killed him. In that scene I knew that finally I had murdered my endless trials of all those years. And I had won. The satisfaction on Faisal Khan’s face is real because it was also the satisfaction of Nawaz.

  Today, I am deeply humbled and extremely grateful for my prosperity. From fainting from lack of food to being able to buy Tai Amma’s house—or that Malad apartment we had rented during those dark days—at a whim or being able to afford the best treatment in the country for my ailing sister, it has been one hell of a ride. There was a time when I acted in street play advertisements for food and shelter. Now too I do advertisements, but of a different kind and for different reasons. The work is easier and the pay incomparably higher. There was a time, like when I did Shool, I never got my payment—a modest sum of Rs 2000 or so—in spite of making multiple rounds to the office asking for my money. I had to make do with a meal instead, which somebody in the production department offered me out of pity. Some years ago, a man chased down my vehicle near Costa Coffee screaming my name, asking me to stop. Obviously, I heard nothing since the windows were rolled up. Only when I happened to look into the side mirror did I notice this person and asked the driver to stop. It turned out to be the director of Shool, Eeshwar Nivas! He wanted me to work in his next film!

  I’ll never forget the days when I watched movies from slits in the gate of our local rickety movie theatre, paying 50 paise for what then was the greatest luxury in the world. Somebody told Abbu, ‘Nawab Saheb, your son
watches movies from the gate, paying 50 paise.’ Abbu felt ashamed. He came to me and in his quiet manner told me, ‘Don’t do beizzati (dishonour). Remember the family you come from.’ I hung my head in shame and muttered softly, ‘But, Abbu, I love watching movies.’ (I, Shamas, Faizi, all us, we never looked into our father’s eyes—it was out of respect, a part of our culture. We will look here, there, anywhere but avoided making eye contact.) He said, ‘All right, I’ll make you watch one movie a month but don’t do beizzati like this.’ From then onwards, he would give me money to watch one film a month.

  On one of those outings, I went to watch my monthly treat with a friend. While talking to him, I happened to turn around. ‘Fuck!’ I whispered to myself. Abbu was there watching as well. He was seated right behind me but luckily the darkness of the movie hall had hidden me from his view. I told my friend that my father was there. He needed no further explanation. I left the movie midway and walked right out. I don’t know if people today would understand this, especially when my father himself had sponsored my quota of cinema. But in our world back then, it was what today might be the equivalent of being caught watching a porn film. Or to give a less drastic example, perhaps an adult seen drinking or smoking by his parents when they are aware that he possesses these vices but don’t do it in front of them out of respect.

  * * *

  When Miss Lovely and Gangs of Wasseypur went to the Cannes festival, I had to go too, and adhere to the dress code of wearing a suit. So I approached some of the top designers in Mumbai, asking them to design me one because my films were being screened at Cannes. Each of their reaction was the same. They stepped back and carefully surveyed me from head to toe. None of them could believe that this guy who looked like a good-for-nothing could be going to Cannes. They said I must stop lying right away and asked me to get lost. I insisted but they refused. So I went to a local tailor near my house to get a tuxedo stitched within two days and left for France. Next year again, my films were selected for the festival. But this time around, all of Mumbai’s top designers, including the ones I had approached earlier, crowded at my door, begging me to let them design a suit for me. I refused as politely as I could. ‘No, thank you. I will wear my old suit from last year,’ I said and that’s what I wore to Cannes that year. How beautifully ironic life can be.