And Then One Day: A Memoir

by Shah, Naseeruddin

  The struggle to build and maintain that home in Sardhana cost both my parents heavily but they embarked on it with a zeal I never thought they had, grappling with family politics, greedy contractors, lazy workers, grasping relatives, even burglars who practically cleaned out Ammi’s modest jewellery collection, but they slugged it out. Baba was to live most of his remaining life there, Ammi with one of the three of us for the rest of hers. No forebodings crossed their minds when they made the move. All they wanted was a place to rest their ageing bones, but their stay in Sardhana was by turns peaceful and turbulent, marked by a major falling-out between Babar and Khalid Mamu over (what else) property, a quarrel in which my parents naturally sided with the former, thus antagonizing the other. What exactly it was all about I have some idea, but do not wish to speculate upon it further. It forever soured relations between Khalid Mamu and us, and it hurt Ammi terribly that her brothers were at war with each other.

  Everything was packed for the move, Baba typically giving away all he didn’t need or couldn’t transport: a large dining table, an ancient Afghan rug, the two leopard skins. His complete detachment from non-essentials was the one thing that always affected me, no matter how bad the equation between us may at that time have been. He would give away stuff on impulse. He had practically gifted away the only car we ever had to Ammi’s brother, sold his guns for a pittance to his own, gave away books, clothes, whatever money he could afford and once, to my great dismay, a beautiful antique pocket watch I’d had my eye on. He consistently refused the official car the Dargah kept offering him, choosing to cycle to work. He finally consented to be given what was then known as an auto cycle (a mo-ped) which he never used, and on which we were infrequently allowed to zip around. When it ran out of petrol, rare because it covered about a hundred miles to the gallon, you could even pedal the thing home.

  The girl in the tent and the miracle at St Paul’s

  My whiskers had by now sprouted fully, as had my libido; and in Class 10, now that Baba was not around any more, I grew a beard, something I had been dying to do. He had always disapproved of the idea, probably fearing it proclaimed a Muslim identity. Being able at last to see the ‘adult’ Gina Lollobrigida or Marilyn Monroe films did little to calm the raging need males of that age—or of any age—feel for female companionship. Those were the days before prudery became fashionable and much before the moral police had begun flexing their biceps in India. Playboy magazine could be found in bookstores, nestling between copies of the Illustrated Weekly of India and Woman & Home. While browsing in the only bookshop in town, Rampersad’s, located under a giant tree and wedged between two shops, one of which belonged to Girish T’s dad, I discovered a weird Scandinavian publication, Health and Efficiency, with a feast of pictures in it of nudists of all ages frolicking in their colonies. I couldn’t have enough of it, fantasizing about naked women all the time but in the dark, so to say. I had no idea what one actually DID when in the act of sex. Though ignorant of masturbation, I knowingly bandied the term about when others did; it was assumed everyone knew what was implied when ‘five finger exercise’ was discussed, which was often, and I would play along. The inevitable fallout (no pun) of this ceaseless stimulation was wet dreams, which despite being kind of delicious puzzled me no end and provoked Baba’s wrath. I would ruin my health if I ‘kept doing this’ I was told. I had no idea what he meant.

  My own beard, I realized, would look far better onstage than one of JR’s stuck-on jobs. This time I wouldn’t need the rubber solution and crepe hair. Despite my energetic efforts to persuade Rev. Cedric to stage another play, he kept resisting. In an attempt to improve my mind or more probably to get me off his back, he suggested that I read Macbeth and Hamlet, ‘because most people can’t distinguish between the two’. I could, having seen Mr K as both. By the time I left his office I could see myself quite clearly in both parts, performing to hordes of delirious audiences. Without having read either play, I even mentally designed posters for both. When, a couple of weeks later, I tentatively suggested that we might try doing Romeo and Juliet, preferably in collaboration with the St Mary’s girls, he came as close to swearing as he ever had, ‘Have you even read the blessed thing? For that matter have you read the ones I asked you to?’ Thus chastised, Zaheer’s Complete Works of W. S. (which he, movingly, later presented to me when I joined theatre training) was hauled out and dusted off again and I manfully started plodding through R&J.

  It was not my first attempt to read a Shakespeare play but as anyone who has tried to read him sitting comfortably in a chair will attest, it can’t be done. It HAS to be recited or read visualizing it as it should look onstage. No mean task for one so green behind the ears. But with some persistence it began to reveal itself a little. I could sort of imagine it, just as I could sort of understand the language and the plot. What I had no problem visualizing, however, was that Romeo was not the part for me, Mercutio was my man. And attempting this play was absolutely out of the question anyway—too much hugging and kissing, and alluring though that prospect was I was no longer fool enough to not know that this dream scenario was just not going to materialize, at least not with the St Mary’s girls. I followed up by attempting to read The Merchant of Venice in full but kept returning to Shylock’s speeches and having memorized them all thoroughly, abandoned it. My reputation as a debater was also taking wing, representing the school at various (inter-school, district and state) levels with some distinction. Most memorable of all, however, was a visit for the state-level debate to Kishangarh, a town about 20 kilometres from Ajmer, but for reasons completely unconnected with debating.

  We’d sometimes cycle all the way to Kishangarh for a picnic or just to loaf, and whenever we crossed the fringe of the town, our horny adolescent gazes would alight on some women of various ages sitting around not doing much, outside these half-dozen or so tents pitched in a field. These tents belonged to women referred to as ‘nattnis’, considered a coarser word than ‘prostitute’ but one which originally meant ‘actress’ in the folk theatre. ‘Itinerant ladies of pleasure’ would describe them better. Word was they were available really cheap. Despite being the object of much salivating fascination, none of us had ventured anywhere near them but this time we were staying in Kishangarh, there was no getting home before dark. Mir, a classmate, and I decided to visit the tents. Our combined wealth consisted of five rupees, an amount Mir assured me would suffice, ‘Two rupees each’ he confidently asserted. Girish was not with us, and JR refused to come along. This was long before HIV was discovered and named but he warned us we’d catch something. He sniffily assured us he knew.

  At fifteen, all I knew of sex had been gleaned from books written by Ted Mark: ‘the sword entered the sheath and all heaven broke loose’ kind of thing. At last I would uncover the mystery of the female anatomy, luxuriating on silken sheets, alabaster legs wrapped around me; I would be drinking from honey-lips by candlelight, the odour of roses and incense everywhere. On the way there I enquired with a great show of nonchalance what one was supposed to do after penetration. Mir nearly choked on his cigarette, ‘Hold on as long as you can!’ he snickered. I had no idea what he meant. I must be one of very few guys who had sex before learning to worship at the altar of Onan.

  A couple of vicious-looking mongrels welcomed us as we made our approach. Two girls, not exactly young, were outside and a distinctly older one made an appearance shortly. Mir seemed adept at the bargaining, it was short and expert. Between the two younger girls, Mir and I both decided on the same one, then to avoid further delay left it to the girls. The fancy I’d felt turned out to be mutual and so the greasy four rupees having changed hands, I found myself alone with the woman who was to initiate me into manhood. My anxiety and impatience tried like hell to transform the smell ofburnt rubber into the fragrances I had envisioned. I thought a little romance was in order. My favourite Shammi Kapoor fantasy routine involved hoisting a woman in my arms and sweeping her off her feet on to the bed, but when I attem
pted the manoeuvre it didn’t quite work, she was heavier than I expected and had no time for tomfoolery, she had a job to do. As I blundered around in the vicinity of her breasts she slapped my hands aside, closed the ragged tent flap, hoisted her kameez, holding its hem under her chin as she undid the drawstring of her salwar and, issuing a terse monosyllabic instruction, plonked herself on the bed with her legs in the air, the salwar dangling from one ankle. I was aghast, but mad with desire as well. I don’t know if the illusion about sex I’d had shattered then or I found thousands more. My trousers were at my ankles by the time I found my way to know orgasm for the first time, curtly guided by the lady in the tent who wouldn’t let me kiss or touch her anywhere. At the end, as a very great concession, perhaps because she liked me so much, she finally allowed my hand to venture into the neckline of her dress for the briefest of moments, but in its groping, dislodged a button and so in strong colourful language the session was declared closed. When I emerged, somewhat dazed, Mir was still in his tent. The world hadn’t changed but I felt different. And I felt great. I felt grown-up. This was like the whole experience of acting enclosed in a capsule.

  Having tasted blood, so to say, the appetite started its demands, but making love to more women at that time did turn out to be somewhat more difficult than doing more plays. I tried to persuade the leggy athlete from St Mary’s to come cycling with me to Foy Sagar, then a deserted lake with many ‘So-and-So loves So-and-So’s carved into the trees there, but she’d just giggle and would neither consent nor refuse. It was the age when a ‘young man’s fancy turns’ very determinedly to thoughts of sex. And love and sex do not seem separate, as indeed they don’t at any age. I was Duke Orsino, drunk on thoughts of being in love, and to help this indulgence along, fate decreed that I soon encounter another person worth falling in love with, a North-Eastern girl, daughter of one of Baba’s starched-collar associates. I flipped for her because she was the first girl in my life to take the initiative in starting a conversation with me. I saw her once in my life, I later even forgot what she looked like, but devotedly believed that I had found the woman who was meant for me. The closest I got to her physically was getting her to write a message in my autograph book. Then we sent each other many letters; mine made her laugh, she always wrote. I asked for her photograph several times but she didn’t oblige; I sent her mine but got no reaction. Later she said she hadn’t received it. The moment I made a declaration of my ardour, she terminated the correspondence.

  Schooldays were now numbered. I now only had to figure out whether potassium permanganate dissolves in water or not and how a poor chloroformed frog is opened up without cutting it to shreds. The thought of the approaching final exams was giving me insomnia but, as usual, without the accompaniment of that which I thrived on, I began to lose focus again. The formulae and the Latin classifications once again became meaningless jargon. Final exams rolled around, physics giving me special nightmares. The opening paper was to be chemistry, followed by physics. I mentally put my head upon the chopping block and closed my eyes. With some whispered prompting from the chem teacher who liked me and had once enquired from me in some despair, ‘Why not you become actor?!’ I managed not to disgrace myself in that subject. Exiting the exam hall I noticed feverish consultations in progress among the few knowing students, the ‘bastards’ as they were admiringly called. Turned out that in a nearby school, St Paul’s, instead of that day’s chemistry paper the next day’s physics paper had been distributed by mistake. Discovering their blunder the teachers kept the students locked in the exam hall for the rest of that day and night, but the damage had been done, the contents of the paper leaked out anyway. I still marvel at and bless the resourcefulness of the guys who managed it. And on reading that questionnaire, the horror! The horror! Prof. Bannerji (of ‘Prof. B’s Guess Papers’) at his most devilishly sadistic would not have been able to cook up the kind of knotty problems it contained. I was not the only one who would have been floored. There was a question on the Wimshurst machine (if I’ve got the name right and a particle physicist I know assures me I haven’t), an object the size and shape of a knife-sharpener’s wheel with what looked like a number of cut-throat razors attached to it in circular fashion. I had spotted the accursed thing in the physics lab and had always left it well alone, as evidently had the rest of the class. What it is used for I still couldn’t tell you but I managed that night to chew the cud and ingest enough information to regurgitate it all on to the paper the next day and scrape through by the skin of my whatsits. The frog dissection in biology practicals was a disaster but by getting some pretty complicated Latin spellings right I managed to compensate in theory. The rest of it was a breeze: Eng literature/composition and Hindi secured me the marks I needed to get through with a second division (52 per cent) as I discovered after a nerve-racking month and a half in Sardhana before the results arrived. In those forty-five days I prayed five times a day, making that 225 rounds of namaaz. I even performed the ‘muezzin’ duties once in a while, preparing myself to blame the god I believed in, in case he didn’t come through again this time. I had a sneaking suspicion I had used up my quota of miracles.

  Meanwhile, in the weeks before the final exam I had finally started to think about the future. Reading the fortnightly Screen in a barbershop one day I saw an ad for something called the Filmfare-United Producers’ Talent Contest. I promptly cut out and pocketed the attached application form, wondering where I’d find the money for the ‘three cabinet size photographs; one front face, one profile and one full figure’ that needed to accompany the application. Those would cost a fortune. The only possible saviour, Shah Mamu who had a camera, was now a cop posted in Poonch. My pocket money, ten meagre rupees a week, wouldn’t suffice. I actually considered asking the divinely beautiful Mrs Capoor for the money, but shuddered at visualizing the meeting and the refusal and the trouble that would inevitably follow. There was nothing to do but watch the parade go by. Every story does not have a great twist or a happy resolution: that application stayed in my pocket, and the dreams in my head, as long as I was in school.

  And then one day, final exams had just given over and I was savouring the bliss felt ONLY once in life, of being done with school, when in the very same barbershop I saw in a new edition of the same paper the results of the Fi’/m/are-United Producers’ Talent Contest. I examined the winner’s face in the photograph very carefully, comparing it with my own in the barber’s mirror. The man in the photograph already looked like a star: square-jawed with coiffed hair, perfect teeth, clear eyes and the confidence of having the world at his feet. I was glad I hadn’t wasted my money, this guy beat me hands down in the looks department. But could he act? All the biggest guns of the industry had organized this contest and vouched for his potential so he was definitely no mug, I reasoned. I had to consciously check another strong attack of resentment at nature for not having given me a face like his. He was twenty- one years old and went by the name of Rajesh Khanna. And so that, as they say, was that.

  The road less travelled

  The euphoria of passing out of school didn’t take long to dissipate. As reward, Baba had gifted me my first wristwatch though not before reminding me that my constant praying was responsible for my success. I chuckled inwardly at how very gullible this god I was dealing with was. I was also reminded that Zaheer was already at the IIT though emulating his example, to my enormous relief, was not even considered. The Foreign Service, the IAS, the tea gardens, even an agricultural college were considered. Appearing for the National Defence Academy, where the other Z was, was discussed and, not without reluctance, I sent in an application. Zameer’s first homecoming from the NDA had been dazzling. With his height and good looks he had always cut an imposing figure anyway but that day, in cadet’s uniform and newly grown handlebars when he alighted from a first- class compartment and the cop standing around saluted him, he looked as grand as Mr Kendal making an entrance onstage. For a few brief fantasy moments, I was already in the ND
A myself and was coming home to make such an impression. But I had, while in school, attended NCC camp a few times and slept in tents with other cadets, whose favourite pastime late at night was to tie one end of a long string on to a sleeping guy’s willy, then thread the string through the top of the tent to ‘fly kites’. Kicked awake sore-backed on freezing winter mornings to put on starched uniforms and go parading, we then lined up with our enamel mugs and plates (same mug for ablutions and drinking) to get some slop to eat and drink, and then till lunchtime were drilled some more. This life was definitely NOT for me. But I dutifully filled out the forms for the NDA, imagining myself looking spiffy in army uniform, waxed moustache and all. Z shortly informed me that though as cadets they spent a goodish amount of time learning to ride and sail and box and handle weapons and cycled from class to class, there was to be no escape from maths, that carrying a gun and looking cool was not all there was to it. I knew the only reason I wanted to go to the NDA was to look good in uniform; that thrill wouldn’t last a fortnight, and my endurance would give out even earlier I suspected. And then, Hell, I can wear all the uniforms I want to when I become an actor.

  The prestigious St Stephen’s in Delhi was where I fancied I’d go but they didn’t bother to reply to my handwritten request for an application form; perhaps they couldn’t decipher my handwriting, I sometimes can’t myself. The only recourse was the institution in which two generations of my family had studied, the Aligarh Muslim University. Despite its imposing architecture and long history of noble intentions, this place has remained stuck in a time warp. Far from fulfilling its aims of helping create generation after generation of educated enlightened Muslims to contribute to the growth of the community and to integrate with the rest of the country, it has stayed a hotbed of communal conservatism if not downright fundamentalism. There still are strict codes of dress and protocol, though not necessarily of civility and ethical behaviour.