And Then One Day: A Memoir

by Shah, Naseeruddin

  Around this time, the suffocating relationship with Baba made me start detesting and fearing his company. Ammi was emotionally supportive, and I could vent things on her, but with Baba it came to a point where all I got was sternness and disapproval. Though he never ever struck any of us, I don’t think I’ve ever been as terrified of anyone in my life. His desire to see us well educated consumed him, and he believed I was throwing away the opportunity to equip myself for life. The unanimous opinion of my teachers that I’d find it difficult to amount even to a small bag of beans made him begin to despair for me and, in turn, whatever I felt for him was replaced not by fear of his disapproval, which might have spurred me to do better, but by sheer undiluted terror of, and extreme hatred for, him. I don’t think either of us ever recovered what we lost, and I do know that I was never ever at ease in his company again, nor he in mine.

  I had finally escaped Ma Perry’s clutches, but was still Burke’s favourite punching bag. One evening during games hour I found myself partnering him in a game of badminton, which I was reasonably enthusiastic about and not at all bad at, but being on the same side of the court as this gargoyle reduced my game to novice level, and I couldn’t do a thing right. We got creamed and a couple of hard knocks on the head was the reward for my pains. He once caught me reading Billy Bunter during study hour and the mandatory knuckles on the head preceded an order to stand in a corner and memorize three pages of my history book in the remaining time. He was probably slavering at the prospect of knocking me around some more when I’d be unable to accomplish the task. But to his utter astonishment (and mine) I managed it even before the hour was over. My recitation done, the disbelief in his voice is a memory I greatly treasure: ‘Ah caan nat oonderstandju, Teddy Bear, ‘ addressing me by this appellation which I abhorred but could never escape in Sem, ‘you cum laayst in yer claysss, yet you caan lurrn three pages so quicklyyyy!’ I didn’t remain in Sem long enough to be in Burke’s class or to get my nose bloodied by him again, but he did manage at the sports trials to disqualify me, unjustly I still believe, in the hop-step-jump, the only athletic event I ever was any good at.

  After reading Treasure Island and identifying with Long John Silver of course, I once mailed a ‘black spot’ to a classmate, grimly informing him that he ‘had till ten tonight’. The spidery handwriting being identified as unmistakably mine, I was hauled into the Principal’s office no less, and informed that writing anonymous letters was a grand crime for which I could go to jail. I fervently protested for two whole days, hoping for the kind of miracle that had happened before with the cigarettes, but on this occasion my guardian angel had nodded off and the stains had led straight to my doorstep. I was kept standing outside the Principal’s office from morning till night, allowed only to go for meals, and then to bed with the injunction ‘Come back here tomorrow morning, Shah’ ringing in my ears. The third day was movie day and the thought of missing the movie made me crack. I confessed, believing I’d get away with a mere public flogging, and get to see the movie. But after I had received the mandatory ‘six-up’ in the study hall in front of all present, old Burke stepped into the act. Deciding that I needed further correction, he made me sit behind the projector with my back to the screen through the movie. I heard the entire film but did not see a frame of it. A more perverse punishment I would not be able to devise even for old Burke. The film was called The Charge of the Feather River. It’s one film I’ve never ever come across again; probably just as well.

  Mr Shakespeare and St Anselm ride to the rescue

  The Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz

  Captain Hook in the animated Peter Pan

  Spencer Tracy in The Old Man and the Sea

  Jose Ferrer in I Accuse!

  Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady

  Peter O’Toole in Becket

  Dustin Hoffmann in The Graduate

  Geoffrey Kendal in Shakespeare Wallah

  All these film performances, which I first saw between the ages of five and twenty-five, hold special significance for me. It may seem strangely pretentious to some that there’s not a single Indian actor in that list. Let me explain. It’s not as if there’s never been an Indian actor I liked. I watched and loved almost every Dara Singh movie, and I found Shammi Kapoor, the ‘starriest’ star we’ve ever had, quite fascinating. The utter fearlessness, the astounding physical and emotional agility with which he performed is a quality he shared with Hindi cinema’s certified nutcase Mr Kishore Kumar, but both are undervalued as actors because they seldom or never did films of any consequence. Doubtless both these gentlemen appear terribly excessive in today’s context but then which Indian actor of that era doesn’t? With the possible exception of Mr Balraj Sahni and, in his middle phase when he allowed himself to be directed, Mr Dilip Kumar. These two gentlemen by virtue of their quiet intensity, their economy and precision of expression and their dignity and poise stood way above the crowd. For the rest, Dev Anand’s performance in the transcendent Guide was a one-off. Mehmood, one of the most skilful actors I’ve ever seen, was not quite up there with Chaplin in terms of ability but much ahead in terms of self- love. Yakub was a great actor who got buried in the myths of the pompous ‘dialogue delivery’ of Mr Sohrab Modi, and the very calculated cool of Mr Motilal. One could question Mr Amitabh Bachchan’s choice of projects though never his commitment to his job which was being a film star, and there is absolutely no denying that early in his career he delivered some of the most searing performances ever seen in Hindi cinema. And I fully endorse Satyadev Dubey’s view that Mr Pran Sikand was ‘the best bad actor in the world’.

  And there were the luminous ladies: Waheeda Rehman and Nargis, still Hindi cinema’s most modern actresses; the divinely gorgeous Madhubala, the statuesque Meena Kumari, the unbearably sexy and utterly unattainable Nutan, the off- centre Tanuja. There were the ‘perky sex-bombs’ Asha Parekh, Rajshree, Mumtaz, Kalpana; and of course the ‘temptresses’ Nadira, Shashikala, Bela Bose, Cuckoo, all décolletage and smoky eyes. I just love them all. And there was the one and only Helen. Delectable stars, every one of them, all worthy of lighting up any screen in the world.

  But none of the above do I consider seminal inspiration in any way. The fact is I stumbled upon Hindi cinema somewhat later in life although the first film I ever saw, and I recall it vividly, was Bahut Din Huwe. This particular film probably because of two factors: a) It had a child hero, and b) Baba was Deputy Collector in Nainital then and the entire family had free access to any cinema at any time. Ammi never watched movies until I started acting in them, and Baba only occasionally watched English-language war films. Hindi cinema being anathema to him, we would get to watch only films of his choice, either in English, or Dilip Kumar starrers in Hindi, so I was probably taken for this movie by Akabi or her younger sister Nikhat, both Hindi film addicts who made full use of this government perk during their frequent visits to Nainital. I also recall seeing Nagin which might well be the cause of my abiding terror of snakes, and one of the first Hindi colour (by technicolor) films, Sangeet Samrat Tansen. It was after the Cowardly Lion and Captain Hook, however, that some living actors made an impression: Errol Flynn in Robin Hood, Richard Todd in Rob Roy, Stewart Granger in Scaramouche, Alan Ladd in Shane. Other movies I saw—The Golden Blade, Tarzan and the She-Devil, The Bottom of the Bottle, Purple Plain, Trader Horn and many others—now form only a vague mishmash of memories but along the way there were also Insaniyat, Azaad and Uran Khatola. For some reason the first actors’ names that registered in my mind were Alan Ladd, Shelley Winters, Dev Anand and Johnny Walker.

  Even though in Ajmer I was under Baba’s spyglass, movies began exerting their inexorable pull. Starved of the weekly fare in Sem, my attention turned to what was available. The Sunday morning English movie was still allowed me but the Hindi movie posters I saw everywhere provoked a mad curiosity because I had seen so few. Genuine curiosity or craving that had to be stilled, I do not know, but my bicycle (as consolation I actually had my own one no
w) would often, instead of heading to school, turn in the direction of Prabhat or New Majestic Talkies almost of its own accord. Classes began to be skipped to catch the afternoon matinee; a friendship with the son of the Plaza Talkies owner and free movies thereafter was the fallout of my frequent visits to that theatre.

  Playing the morning matinees would be B-movies or old classics. Some of the so-called classics were pure brain- damage but I got irretrievably hooked on Dara Singh and the kitsch he starred in, to practically bail out a then floundering Hindi film industry I later learnt. To call these films shabby would be high praise; they were often just a series of wrestling matches put together to form a sort of apologetic narrative, stolen in bits from ancient Douglas Fairbanks or more recent Steve Reeves starrers. The movies had difficult-to-believe titles like Marvel Man, Fauladi Mukka, Tarzan and Delilah, Rustom-e-R. ome, Trip to Moon, and were, for most people I knew, difficult to digest but I managed each and every one that came my way, I have no idea why. I guess they served as case studies. And frankly they weren’t that much worse than the so-called good Hindi films. While I couldn’t have enough of Dara Singh, I also became aware of the unique qualities of Dilip Kumar’s acting; I daresay neither of these gentlemen would be flattered if they knew! Balraj Sahni’s earlier great performances (Kabuliwala, Do Bigha Zameen) I only watched much later; those days he always played the boring goody- goody elder-brother or upright-cop roles. The two-hanky family and social dramas I gave a wide berth to, but I saw everything else I could, including, astonishingly, dubbed versions of Fellini’s The Sweet Life, a Brigitte Bardot starrer called The Truth and Clouzot’s Wages of Fear in the Sunday morning shows at New Majestic.

  What I missed out on was an ‘extra-hot’ movie showing one weekend. It was in fact a World War II drama made by Vittorio De Sica, titled Two Women, and probably because it starred the buxom Sophia Loren it had this reputation. I would give anything to know Mr De Sica’s reaction if he were ever told that his dark harrowing film was being described as ‘hotter than hot’ on the billboards in a town of northern India, and that practically every lumpen guy there had turned up to see it.

  Repeating Class 9 at St Anselm’s with me was Girish Tandon. When the new term began, we had quickly bonded over humble pie, and almost as quickly discovered each had as much of a movie bug as the other. Combining our creative juices, we worked out a strategy for seeing as many Hindi films as possible. Ticket prices for the cheaper seats were well affordable then. Oblivious to my secret film watching, Baba would still innocently give permission, and ticket money, for the Sunday morning English matinee. It was the weekday afternoon/evening Hindi ones that were a problem to catch. A brainwave hit. In summer, classes gave over at one thirty so we invented cricket matches in school in the afternoons and took off, ostensibly to play them. What probably persuaded my parents to swallow this story was their knowledge of my obsession with the game. The two of us would dress up in full cricket gear, except bat and pads of course and cycle off to imaginary cricket. Strangely both my parents were quite uncurious about the outcome of these matches.

  But Two Women with a ‘Strictly for Adults’ certificate was showing come Sunday morning. Absolutely not to be missed. No question of asking for permission either. Wouldn’t get it. We decided there would be an all-important school match that day. The money for the tickets I helped myself to from Ammi’s little box and hid in my English textbook until Sunday dawned. Looking faintly ridiculous in our cricket gear we met at New Majestic a good hour prior to show time, parked our bikes, and joined the end of a serpentine queue extending into the street, and seeming to consist of every ruffian in town. Ducking sweaty armpits and elbows in our faces we advanced at a tortuously slow pace towards the ticket window, each of us clutching our precious and by now pretty moist Re 1/50p in palms dripping with sweat. Would we make it to the ticket window before the movie began? Would there still be tickets?? Our whites were in end-of-match condition by the time it was our turn. Summoning up my deepest baritone, I thrust the money through the grill only for it to be instantly returned with a ‘No! Pitcher not for you, only adult. ‘ I stood there appalled at the injustice of it, stuttering, ‘But... but I... I am adult!’ not for the first time cursing my youth, but in a matter of moments we were shoved aside by the drooling mob which would now get to ogle Sophia Loren’s mammaries. No cricket match was ever so ignominiously lost. The visits to these shrines however never stopped or decreased, but my regret at missing Two Women that day remained with me well after my teens and beyond.

  I have a very keen memory of these movie theatres, my temples of learning, with their sometimes Victorian, sometimes art deco facades and almost identical baroque interiors. Flat glass cases full of movie stills, the winding staircases accompanied by very widely grooved wall panelling adorned with movie star photos. No Indian star ever featured. Inside, some had a contour curtain which rose to dramatic music and purple lights when the movie, after an interminable wait, was about to begin, and I could feed my distracted gaze upon something, apart from the round-bottomed cherubim blowing little trumpets amongst billowing streamers and bunches of grapes in bas-relief above the proscenium arch. Popcorn was unknown to us, but at the first hint of interval approaching, the tea and samosa vendors’ cacophony would begin. Even recalling the names of these movie houses still makes my heartbeat rise to 48 frames per second: CAPITOL and LAXMI in Nainital, PRABHAT and NEW MAJESTIC in Ajmer, RIALTO in Mussoorie, PALACE in Meerut, and of course the old concert hall in Sem where it all began. All of them are now defunct except maybe the hall in Sem.

  St Anselm’s had a sort of concert hall too, though it was seldom used for dramatic activity. Apart from the classes that were often conducted in one section, inter-house debates and soporific lectures by visiting ‘dignitaries’ were all that ever happened there. The infrequent film screenings, mostly old mythologicals, didn’t star Dara Singh so they were of no interest to me. The projection system was ancient even compared to Sem’s and the sound was terrible. I began to go terribly snobbish about Sem until one day, as I was leaving school, a red open-topped Willys jeep driven by a white man with a highly recognizable face pulled up. The passengers in the jeep were two white ladies and a most interesting-looking Indian person. It took me a minute to identify the driver. He was Geoffrey Kendal. The others were his wife, Laura, daughter Felicity, and the interesting- looking Indian was Marcus Murch, for long a staple member of Mr Kendal’s troupe Shakespeareana. I had witnessed them perform in St Joseph’s often, they were a much anticipated annual feature there. Mr Kendal himself had always seemed to me to be on a par with the greatest actors I had seen on the screen, but like them he too was, I thought, an illusion unreachably distant and impossible to touch. Among my repertoire of acting fantasies was a pretty close imitation of this man who had already affected me profoundly in some mysterious way. I had no idea as I stood there gaping at this red-faced god as, cigarette- holder clenched in teeth, he alighted, how much his life (about which I was to discover later) would inspire me, and that memories of his attitude to his work if not the work itself would keep coming back.

  Shakespeareana had been founded by Mr Kendal with the express purpose of ‘spreading Shakespeare’ as he himself put it to me many years later in the only private conversation I had with him. He had fallen in love with India when posted here to entertain troops during World War II. I assume it was then that he decided that competing commercially for acting jobs in England’s provincial theatre was not his cup of tea, and he’d be far more content doing the work he loved and doing it for people who needed it: school and college students in Asia. Never doing a commercial performance, the troupe travelled extensively over the subcontinent and in fact over most of the continent, with no permanent base, without a home, ever willing to perform wherever they found an audience. Their austere approach to theatre was startling, and any one of them alone could fill the stage. The purity of their communication of the bard’s writing is for me still unmatched; I have sel
dom heard actors make such sense of Shakespeare’s words, and resultantly his plays. But Mr Kendal’s true greatness I would realize very much later. At that time it was enough that this, in real life rather ordinary- looking man could onstage transform himself into anything. With no fuss at all he could be the manic-depressive Hamlet one minute, and love-stricken Malvolio the next. Almost before our eyes he’d change from a heroic Henry V into a malevolent Shylock, then in a blink to a tortured Brutus or Othello. His voice had the mellowness of old oak and his body was an instrument capable of any virtuosity. He looked huge and intimidating with as much ease as he managed to look timid and funny. And when required, he could just disappear. An actor-manager in the old sense of the word, he always played the central parts but conceded to his fellow actors the space they merited. Never once while watching him perform—and I watched him perform over a period of well-nigh forty years—did I feel that he was at all concerned with anything but serving and conveying the text. That, along with his astounding versatility, produced the sheer clarity and precision of the result. Mr Kendal always had the same effect on me as that mystery man dancing on that platform in another lifetime... I wanted very much to be up there with him.