Sometime during the vacations I received a letter from R ending our relationship; something she tried to do repeatedly in the two years we knew each other; maybe she sensed we were wrongly matched, but I was just too smitten to see it. I went off to Aligarh for a few days to be with Asif and Jasdev. Asif’s parents had migrated to the US and he was due to follow as soon as his medical studies were done, Jasdev was to join his family in London after his commerce course. Luckily for me, these events were still a couple of years away and I had the solace of their friendship for a little longer. They both goaded me to visit Heeba but I didn’t. It was impossible for me to face my own inadequacies.
Meanwhile the report cards for our first-year exam had been sent home, mine resulting in yet another furious tirade from Baba. Unable to find anything to berate me about now that I was no longer wasting his money, he had probably been stewing for a while, and then like manna from heaven my report card arrived. Disregarding totally my tremendous achievement of for the first time in my life not being among the last few but the top two, he decided to pick upon a bit of criticism by Alkazi regarding my diction and habit of speaking nasally. How did I ‘hope to become an actor with such hopelessly bad speech’ though Alkazi had made no such observation. I ignored the letter, but set about correcting my habit of gabbling my dialogue and speaking through my nose.
In my second year at NSD an uneasy feeling that I hadn’t really learnt anything new about acting began to gnaw at me. I was fascinated by the theatre history we were taught; and reading new plays, even if they were completely incomprehensible, was stimulating, as was watching Alkazi breathe life into a comatose scene. But as far as learning acting went, the classes made absolutely no sense. It was the curse that has always beset the training of actors: only the failures come back to teach, and most have failed because quite simply they didn’t know their job. And in any case most student actors are only too happy to listen for hours to esotericisms spouted by acting teachers and are obsessed only with getting employment, not with understanding the mechanics of their work, which in any case the mountebanks who teach are not equipped to help them with. Thus the completely erroneous belief that ‘some can act and others can’t’ continues to hold sway. Students of acting in most places, instead of being made aware of their work as a craft, are pushed to recall past incidents and manipulate themselves to laugh or cry or rage, all resulting in great cathartic releases of emotion but giving the actor nothing except a momentary high of wallowing in memories. The actor is asked simply to recall, there is no guidance on how to sift these experiences and use them while working; no breakdown of the process of expressing. The notion that great acting ‘just happens’ is encouraged; the purpose of an actor’s job and his place in the scheme of things seems nebulous to everyone; meaningless words like ‘talent’, ‘inspiration’, ‘involvement’ are tossed about and most actors feel their job is done by merely mouthing these, bowing to the stage when someone is watching, sitting nervously alone before performing, and learning how to spell Stanislavsky.
Alkazi himself was a designer and had little patience with actors. He never bothered with the dynamics behind the action, for him it was all composition. His vast knowledge of painting, sculpture, music, literature and theatre had so honed his instincts that he knew the effect a particular composition could create. It was up to the actors to find their own truth, if they could, within that composition; it was never spelt out for them. He himself had been an actor once, had in fact played Hamlet and Tartuffe and Lucky (somewhat showily I suspect!) but his reputation rested chiefly on his impeccable productions in which the opening lights coming up on an elaborate empty setting could garner applause, but in which the acting was somewhat soulless, never less than competent but far from inspiring.
Vacations over, R returned and our relationship gradually resumed, not before she had one day mocked me mercilessly for hanging around some guy perusing an eveninger in which my picture had appeared, hoping I would be recognized. Gupta and Ankur’s little effort had not exactly made a killing but had been liked and had come out with a small profit, a rare enough event in experimental theatre then. My share of the proceeds, about 30 rupees, my first earning from theatre, made me feel like a professional at last.
But to bring me back to earth was a notification from Aligarh University instructing me to appear for my three theology papers, failing which my degree would be withheld. The notification had been forwarded to me by Baba without a word, he had so far been under the impression I had sailed through my exams. Either he was displaying enormous self- control or he was just exhausted. Followed a week of deep study of Sunni theology, ofwhich I cannot claim to remember much, in classes at the university; and then the three examination papers in quick succession, bang bang bang.
Then it was on with the second year at drama school. I was not too perturbed at never landing the leading parts in the new productions but I reasoned that was just a matter of time. Despite enjoying the classes in direction, I never seriously considered the possibility of becoming a director. Dreaming of being one was far less enticing than dreaming of being an actor. Playing even a walk-on was fun, but being an apprentice in direction meant running around fixing sets and arranging costumes and getting vertigo clambering into the catwalk to adjust lights, making ground plans and drawing out actors’ moves on them so they could be replicated exactly.
Purveen, I knew by now, had gone to London. Before leaving she had in fact come to meet me in Delhi. I was aghast and extremely suspicious at seeing her appear in the hostel one morning. She gave me a hug, handed me a flower and expressed regret about not responding to my overtures so far; she then started tidying up my room, all the while gently berating me for being tardy. I could not believe this, not just her turning up out of the blue and behaving as if nothing had happened but the way she looked. Her open hair had strings of flowers in it, there were beads around her neck and wrists. Her eyes seemed unfocused and so did her mind: this was not the person I knew. She kept saying we should get back together, give it another try—a conversation I did not know how to handle. In desperation I rang up her sister Surekha and begged her to take her off my hands, which she did, much to my relief, but only after extracting a promise that I would eat at her house that night. She lived in a large bungalow in a high-end New Delhi colony and the food there was really good. Those days one spent quite some time dreaming about food and an invitation to a home-meal could not possibly be passed up. That night, though, I had to abandon the dinner halfway because I could not cope with Purveen’s by now increasingly hysterical insistence on repairing the breach between us. Shortly after that, I assume, she left for London with Heeba and another child she had since had.
Babar (Shah) Mamu too had gotten married around the same time as I did and had a son almost the exact age as Heeba. After quitting the CRP he tried for a short service commission in the army but was turned down because he had wangled a recommendation from a superior officer. Shah Mamu never fails to astonish me even as a memory. The man was a mere sub-inspector in the CRP yet he hobnobbed with the commandants, was pals with Ajmer’s most influential families and dated all the prettiest girls. What he found difficult to do, presumably, was find some direction in his life. In the course of sowing his wild oats, it was whispered in the family, he had done things too terrible to mention. Blessed with almost superhuman strength and a very short fuse, he seemed always to be daring the world to take him on and at least twice have I seen him single-handedly get the better of more than one guy. As a student at Aligarh University he hijacked the vice-chancellor’s car just to horse around in and was expelled. Subsequently he loafed for a few years then got partially adopted by Baba who helped him get his first job as a malaria inspector in Kishangarh a few miles from Ajmer; and later a sub-inspector’s post in the CRP in which he lasted a few years, got fed up and returned to Sardhana with the intention of claiming his share of the land and living off it. The plan amounted to naught because Chand (Khalid) Mamu, a
few years older than him, and the one who had tended the land all along, felt aggrieved at having to give up to the wastrel brother a substantial portion of the land he had so long toiled on. With two such aggressive hotheads involved, things didn’t take long to go on the boil. Baba and Ammi, compelled to take sides in this ugly affair, were naturally sympathetic to Babar.
When threats began to be hurled and the danger of violence became real, the two were persuaded by the eldest sibling, Agha Mamu, the final authority in all matters, to sort things out amicably. We were too young to be included in these matters so only conjecture can serve. The upshot, however, was that Babar was given, in lieu of what he was claiming in Sardhana, a mango orchard and some fields in Mahmudabad to manage. The catch was he wouldn’t own it—he would only manage it and collect half the produce annually, the other half going to the owner. Who the owner was is not very clear, but the land evidently once belonged to the Raja of Mahmudabad and had been appropriated by the government under the Land Ceiling Act and the stopping of privy purses. Babar Mamu and his wife, a doctor, and their infant son Akbar moved to Mahmudabad and for a while it did seem as if the prodigal had finally come home. He had been there about two years when one day I received a hurriedly scribbled postcard from Baba containing the message: ‘Your mother and I are leaving for Mahmudabad today, we have heard that Babar has been shot dead. ‘
When I went to Sardhana to condole with Ammi and my grandmother (Grandpa had died a year or so ago) I learnt that he had not in fact been shot, far ghastlier than that. He had been hacked to death by an unidentified group of people. The only eyewitness had also been killed. Evidently one day at dusk Babar was informed that someone’s cattle were grazing in his fields. The plan obviously was to get him incensed and alone when it was growing dark. He fell for it, sallying forth accompanied by a friend, his. 22 rifle slung over his shoulder, probably intending, as was his wont, to mete out an almighty thrashing to whoever was responsible. Though I wasn’t anywhere near, I can imagine the things that must have been said. Presumably before he knew what was happening, he was surrounded, and the axes and scythes and spears and lathis did their job. His corpse was found three days later in a canal, some distance from the spot where he was attacked, meaning one of two things: either he tried to run and only got that far, or his dead body was thrown in. I prefer to believe the second; the heart refuses to accept he would run away from a good fight even though fatally injured. Running away, in his book, would have been worse than death. The murder is still shrouded in all sorts of dark tales and an impenetrable haze of contradictory versions.
I decided to spend the vacations after my second year with Ammi and Baba in Mussoorie. The two of them were devastated. Babar Mamu’s widow had, very wisely, severed all connections with the Sardhana family, and returned to Sitapur where she belonged, to set up practice there. Ammi was the only one in the family she ever stayed in touch with thereafter. Baba the stoic remained dry-eyed; and Ammi too, though always visibly affected by a death, showed amazing resilience. Very soon I was the one in need of consolation every time Babar Mamu was remembered. Ammi, to whom he meant very much more than he did to me, came to terms with it much easier than I did. I have to say that it haunts me still, I just cannot get the macabre way he died out of my head, and my imagination fails me when I try to visualize how it must have happened.
During these vacations Baba made me almost regret having come home—when it wasn’t my scuffed shoes or tattered jeans or beard or unkempt long hair that got his goat, it was my tardiness at rising in the morning that would set off the sarcasm about whether it was ‘necessary for artists not to bathe’. And of course THE eternal 60 million dollar question: had I thought about the future? What was I planning to do after the course was over? I had not the foggiest idea what I was going to do but I assured him he had an exceptionally talented son who could not be stopped. I also tried asking him whether, regardless of what I did later, it was not of any importance at all that I was now doing something I really loved. His eyes would glaze over and he would say nothing. He never enquired about what I was learning at the school; possibly he feared it was nothing at all, or it didn’t interest him, or more possibly it would have been quite beyond his understanding. I don’t think he was too well-read and had definitely not even a fleeting acquaintance with dramatic literature; I tried talking to him about absurd drama, Shakespeare, Chekhov but I don’t think it grabbed him.
While I was in Mussoorie we received the news that Baba’s older sister, the only one ever, incidentally, capable of telling him off and who was particularly dear to him (his other seven siblings were half-brothers/sisters), had passed away in Meerut. She had been under treatment for cancer for a year. Baba and Ammi left immediately for the funeral, I stayed behind because I felt like hanging around in Mussoorie for a few more days by myself. When I got to Meerut, Baba looked visibly haggard. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen him unshaven. He didn’t say much but just as I was readying to go off to Delhi that night, he asked me to stay.
If I had to wipe out all memories of my father and keep only one, this is the one I would keep. He actually wanted me to stay on another day, he actually wanted my company! He had never sounded anything but authoritative in all my conversations with him, but this was a side of him I had not known before, or had completely forgotten. He was almost plaintive, well aware that I might refuse; and instead of the authority which came naturally to him, there was the tone of a father who had begun to feel he wanted to spend the little time he had left, or as much of it as he could, with his son. This feeling was new, I was never the son he had wanted to spend time with, but that day I stayed on and for once in my life I was able to talk to him about my dreams. He listened but his universe was too far removed from mine. His only concern was what would become of me.
The other thing worthy of note that happened in my second year at NSD was R’s announcement that she would be going to the US next semester to do a postgrad course in drama at Smith College.
We returned from vacation for our final year, to be informed that auditions would be on for the next production, a Kabuki paly in Hindi, Ibaragi, to be directed by an expert from Japan. My awareness of this classical form was as immature as that of a twenty-two-year-old drama student can be expected to be. We had never actually seen a Kabuki play but had been shown films of some performances. It would be a stretch to perform like that, I knew, particularly with the vocal acrobatics required, but I felt more than confident that the big part in it would be mine. Even though I then had frequent laryngeal trouble, and had to often perform with a voice that was no more than a ghostly whisper, I was cocky to the core that if anyone could pull this off it had to be me. It did not occur to me that there were other actors too, not as showy as myself, who had been far more diligent in practising their craft than I had been. Arriving at the school for the first read-through, we were told that only the students of acting would be cast. We, the students of direction, were to only observe and assist in the production. I was gutted and so was Jaspal, who had naturally assumed that with his vocal abilities, he would be a shoo-in. And who should get cast in the main part but Om Puri, also a classmate, who had very quietly persevered in self- improvement through the time he had been at NSD.
When the play was performed Om, for once cast as a flamboyant warrior, was a revelation. I was stuck doing production duties for this play I would have killed to act in, and could only watch him in wonder and envy. Despite intensely coveting the role, it was difficult not to be thrilled at the level of performance he had achieved. Something told me I could NOT have done what he did. Om had always been a model, if somewhat stodgy, student and human being: completely virtuous, genuinely considerate, deeply compassionate, industrious, punctual, attentive, thoughtful; but had so far received attention because of his sweet temperament rather than for his acting. Now he had delivered a knockout performance, and I could see there was no magic formula responsible. He was so astoundingly good because, quite sim
ply, he had gone for broke and expended every ounce of his energy in preparation. Om continued to inspire me for a very long time. Even though I initially found his sincerity amusing and quite unnecessary—at complete variance with my own attitude—I finally began to see its virtues, and had to admit to myself that none of my own performances in the school productions could begin to approach Om’s achievement in Ibaragi.
Next morning Jaspal/Shah were in Alkazi’s office, insisting on a transfer to the acting course. We couldn’t bear to not be acting in any more plays, and that is what now seemed likely, with direction students normally assisting with the lighting and backstage jobs. We wanted to act, at least I did and I suppose Jaspal did as well. I find it hard to remember who was the mover behind all these decisions we took in tandem and who the follower. Alkazi was reluctant to let us go, reiterating time and again that we would benefit more by doing the course in direction. And he was right: we would have learnt more but, hell, we didn’t want to learn, we wanted to act. As a last- resort kind of thing to assure me I had a future as a director, he gave me a classroom assignment to direct Acts One and Two of A Doll’s House, with Om acting in it, and even though I acquitted myself reasonably well as director, with Jaspal as stage manager (it was incidentally the first of two more later unsuccessful attempts at directing Om), it did not deter me from resuming my pleas to rejoin the acting course, a request Alkazi finally had to grant.
The penny drops in super slo-mo
One evening, in Delhi, with nothing better to do, I wandered into Regal Cinema and watched a movie called Piya ka Ghar, a family drama—a genre I abhorred, and the actors in it were hardly my favourites, but seeing it proved fateful. Playing all the important parts in the movie were, I realized, at least five graduates in acting from the Film and TV Institute of India (FTII), Pune. I had visited the place during our tour in the first year and seen some student films with students acting in them. These films with titles like (and I exaggerate a bit but only a bit) Apocalypsis-cum-Genesis, And unto the Cosmic Void, Madhyasuryaya Mrigtrishna, Tribheeshan ka Teevra Maadhyam were pure punishment to sit through, but at FTII, acting students got to act in front of a camera! I would get to see myself on screen, finally find out what I actually looked like, it seemed like a thrilling place to be in. It was a time when a large number of graduates had gained immediate employment in the industry, the fallout of a couple of them having fortuitously attained stardom overnight, and FTII had become a factory for manufacturing stars. A list of its acting graduates, both male and female, from the mid sixties to the mid seventies, who enjoyed a quick but short-lived stardom would be as long as both my arms. Almost all of them also disappeared just as soon into the mist. Not looking that far ahead, however, I could see that FTII was the place to go to. Granted, I wouldn’t end up prancing around trees and beating up bad guys but there seemed to be plenty of other acting employment I could land in films if I only had the FTII passport. I could play the cop who turns up in the last reel, ‘Koi apni jagah se nahin hilega!’ I could be the doctor who emerges and says, ‘Maine injection de diya hai, ‘ I could be the villain’s henchman, ‘Mal aa gaya hai Boss!’ I could be the honest union leader who catches a bullet in Reel One. All I needed was one perceptive film-maker who would give me the opportunity. By the time I exited the movie theatre my mind was firmly made up. The first thing I did was go to Jaspal and confide my plan, asking him whether he thought it was a good idea, and whether he was game to go along. He seemed to see the sense in it.
And Then One Day: A Memoir Page 13