And Then One Day: A Memoir

by Shah, Naseeruddin

  One of my last performances at NSD was the lead in a production by Srilata Swaminathan, of a play called Marjeeva (living dead). It didn’t excite me terribly but in NSD we were powerless to turn down any part we were asked to do. When we started moving the action, Srilata instead of instructing the actors asked us all to move as we felt we should and when we felt we should. I interpreted this trust of the actors’ choices and regard for their abilities as sloppiness on her part and kept insisting on being given a ground plan of the moves; I was incapable of performing without one and, lazy devil that I was, could not be bothered coming up with anything on my own. Add to that my natural boorishness and arrogance and the fact that at that stage I understood nothing of what an actor is supposed to do but still managed to put on an all-knowing attitude, and you’ve got one noxious mix. With saintly patience Srilata kept telling me that I could move when and where I pleased and I kept insisting she tell me when and where I should move. The situation became an impasse and ultimately about a fortnight before the play was to open, she threw in the towel and resignedly worked out my moves for me because I refused to do so myself. I had not only contributed nothing, I had mistrusted the faith she had in me, and messed up an opportunity to explore this quite novel and what should have been really exciting approach to acting. It was quite a few years before what Srilata was trying to do sank into my brain but then I could only apologize to her for my earlier stupidity. I cringe inwardly even now when I recall this episode and often wonder what I would do if I were ever to encounter an actor with the attitude I had. To my great relief none has showed up yet.

  Jaspal/Shah, now certain that they wanted to go to FTII, once again were at Alkazi’s door to unload. Why we felt the need to do this I don’t know, but after hearing us out he blew a gasket saying I was betraying the faith he had in me. He called me a traitor to the cause of theatre and accused me of misleading others. I think he could have given Jaspal more credit than that. Alkazi for all his greatness could be unbelievably churlish at times; this was one of those times. Net result was that he barely stayed on speaking terms with either of us for the remainder of our stay. What it was that so hurt and offended him, I can still not figure out. I wonder if it ever occurred to him later that among his students in Bombay I was one of the few who actually continued to work in the theatre.

  On completing their courses at NSD the students who returned to their native places would promptly attempt tatty replicas of Alkazi with themselves in the leading parts, some joined the Song and Drama division, an undertaking of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry; some got teaching jobs in schools and some got employment in radio or on TV, then in its infancy in India, and some were absorbed by the school’s Repertory Company and paid 500 rupees a month. Staying on in the Rep and being paid for it was naturally considered the most secure temporary recourse for students. It was another matter altogether that most of them would hang on there for years if not decades. None of these alternatives appealed to me in the least and I thought I’d chart my own course. Alkazi in any case had made no bones about the fact that neither of us was getting into the Rep (one of the reasons given was our open use of marijuana) and on the other hand disapproved of us seeking an alternative for ourselves. ‘So what am I supposed to do?’ I countered. ‘Sacrifice for the theatre’ was his oratorical response. For once he didn’t seem to be talking sense. I saw my dreams of playing Tughlaq or Danton vanish in the haze. No matter, I told myself; only a matter of time before a film of Tughlaq would be made and guess who would be starring in it.

  R had adjusted to the US by now and her letters dwelt less on how much she missed me and so forth, they were about the excitement and stimulation she was experiencing. She persuaded me to also apply for a course in America so we could be together, something I reluctantly agreed to (even sitting for a bloody TOEFL and GRE exam) and to my relief was rejected. I was certain I had no future in America and she didn’t think my going to the Film Institute was a good idea. I wouldn’t get in, she predicted, ‘You’re not good-looking enough to be in movies. ‘

  Jaspal/Shah went ahead with their plans, spending 25 or so rupees each getting photographs taken (close-up, three- quarter face and full figure). When the precious pictures came out I shuddered inwardly at the thought that maybe R was right after all, but recalling what Edward G. Robinson and José Ferrer, for example, looked like I felt a lot better. I decided there and then that there was no fear in going for the audition looking as I did. I mean real-looking actors like Messrs Robinson and Ferrer must have started somewhere and must surely at that time have been mocked about their looks. Since I bore absolutely no resemblance to Shammi Kapoor there was no point trying to look like him. There wasn’t in fact a single actor in the world I resembled except, I feared, Anthony Quayle or the Mad magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman. And anyway, why the hell should I try looking like anybody? These apparitions were not going to come to my rescue and get me work. I had to make do with what I was and if this was how I looked then this was how I looked. I would be myself and the damn film industry would have to put up with it. I hadn’t a clue what was expected of film-acting aspirants, but if it was to be the preening-like-a-peacock act then I knew my chances were slim. I used to be good at that when I was in college but no longer. Now there was no alternative but to depend on what I was, I just had to convert my perceived weaknesses into my strengths.

  I borrowed the colossal sum of 400 rupees from Jasdev Singh Rehncy to finance my trip to Bombay for the audition, an amount I have still not returned. I had also in the remaining months played a few small roles in Tughlaq, been hopelessly miscast as Danton and then played the Professor in an excellent student production of Ionesco’s The Lesson. I had by this time been converted to Om’s approach and way of working, or rather I was compelled to adopt both, considering the nature of the role in The Lesson. Without burning the midnight oil I could see that this time I wouldn’t be able to even memorize the lines, there were so many. So for the first time in my life I found myself waking early without being compelled to and doing what was expected of me. The results that this kind of application produced were not long in coming. Most exhilarating of all, for the first time I felt I was in complete control of what I was doing onstage. The warm praise I received for this performance, particularly from Alkazi, was therefore not entirely undeserved even though my ‘betrayal’ had still not been forgiven.

  The entrance tests to FTII consisted of an audition and a screen test. Heading the acting department then was Professor Raushan Taneja who fortuitously, someone slightly acquainted with him informed me, had seen and liked my performance in Chalk Circle at Pune two years earlier. Also on the selection board were Ms Jaya Bhaduri, an FTII graduate who had shot to stardom with her first film, and Om Shivpuri, then the most celebrated NSD alumnus. Mr Shivpuri later informed me that but for him I wouldn’t have got in. Evidently the big question mark that arose was why a student who had already done one acting course in theatre wanted to do another in cinema. Wouldn’t I be depriving someone else of a chance? Mr Shivpuri, after turning out excellent theatre work in Delhi for more than a decade with his company Dishantar, had himself recently abandoned the theatre for more lucrative prospects in films, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he did vociferously argue my case as he claimed he had. Possibly it was a combination of that and the hangover of Chalk Circle on Mr Taneja, with Ms Bhaduri presumably in a neutral corner, that got me in. Jaspal had gained admission as well. He had auditioned in Delhi whereas I travelled to Bombay for the same. We, or rather I, had calculated that the odds were stacked against two NSD students being chosen from the same centre. Through the kindness of a friend’s sister in Bombay I got a roof over my head for the month I was there, then I moved base to Pune to stay with yet another friend’s uncle until the Institute reopened and I could move into the hostel.

  Admission fees plus two months’ hostel rent and tuition charges had to be paid before anything could move. A grand total of 600 rupees which
neither of the Zs could afford was required pronto. I shot off a telegram to Baba who, despite his reservations about my doing yet another course in acting, came through. ‘You will study this bloody acting for five years?!’ he had incredulously enquired, ‘Might as well have become a doctor!’ But a money order from the old man for the required amount arrived quicker than I had hoped. For the two years I was there, however, it was the two Zs who helped me keep body and soul together by sending me 100 rupees each month without fail. Considering they were both married now and themselves each earning something in the region of 600 rupees a month, this was magnanimity of the highest order.

  Jaspal and I were allotted a room together and went through identical ordeals of the rather vicious and stupid custom of ‘ragging’ which I had encountered only in its mildest form in AMU. My beard, grown to disguise a weak chin, was long and straggly by now, as was Jaspal’s, and we both looked anything but potential Hindi film actors. The two of us with maybe three pairs of jeans and two pairs of shoes between us (I had a suit as well, which I had worn twice at the siblings’ weddings) were ragamuffins compared to the peacocks who usually populated the acting course and we were the cause of much mirth and not a few deeply cutting observations by the seniors, all in good spirit, of course, ha! ha! ‘You are acting students???!!!’ ‘Have you seen your faces in the mirror?’ ‘What roles will you get?’ ‘Come on, show some acting!’ etc. ad nauseam.

  My confidence was not at an all-time high those days, and this sorry state was not helped by our screen tests being shown to the entire student body in the Main theatre. My burning desire to see what I really looked like was fulfilled at last—I had known I didn’t look like Sean Connery but this was no Spencer Tracy either, not even Jerry Lewis. I looked like a frightened rabbit badly in need of a shave and a meal; all I could see was teeth. I was not the least bit reassured, sitting amid the trumpeting laughter and booing that greeted each of us on screen. On meeting my classmates, either well-hung, strapping hunks or adolescent girls out of school, most of them heavily Hindi-film-influenced flakes, I could see very clearly that Jaspal and I didn’t fit into this place but I was determined not to let that faze me, or at least not to let it show. I kept to myself, and stumbled upon that part of me which revels in being alone. I was also desperately unhappy. R’s last letter had sounded the death knell of our relationship. She wrote of her great need for a friend, someone to share things with; how she hated the terrible winter, ‘the snow like a widow’s garment’. There was also frequent mention of someone (male) who she seemed to be spending much time with. I needed no help in deciphering the writing on the wall.

  The tumid conviction when I entered NSD that I knew it all and was going there to finally start plying my trade had deflated completely towards the end of my stay. My first attempt at working hard had yielded results, I began to suspect there was something more to this acting business than I knew, but hadn’t a clue what it was, nor where or how to learn it. The stint at drama school gave me immense self-confidence in strutting the stage but had not really taught me the nuts and bolts of the job, and I could see it was high time I tried coming to grips with those. I was watchable onstage but had not the faintest idea why. Each performance went by like a blur—over before I knew it, and always too soon. I always felt I’d done wonderfully each time and those who were dissatisfied didn’t know what they were talking about.

  Now, the nagging suspicion that I had been kidding myself was fuelled by watching Om’s steady growth from being a modest insecure wallflower into an actor and person of considerable assurance. I, though, was exactly the same arrogant loudmouth I had been when I joined NSD, had found nothing new, had learnt nothing in three years; the thought would hit me like one of Delhi’s hot winds that in these three years I had grown only in my conceit. I hadn’t gotten any better than I had been three years ago. Om without a doubt had, but I being incapable of that kind of genuine humility had instead frittered away the time, falling in and out of love with various women and thinking that was all there was to make life complete. The thought that my time there had been a total waste had to be swallowed. My adolescent boast that ‘I would show the bloody world’ began gradually to transform itself into a resolve to become worthy of the arrogance nature seemed to have bestowed on me in such abundance. If I wanted to survive as an actor I had to bring more than just competence and cleverness to the table and I suspected I didn’t have very much more than those. It was time to learn my job.

  The Film and TV Institute of India, Pune was the last place I expected it to happen though, I just needed the ‘passport that would ensure entry into the film world’. No less a person than Mr K. A. Abbas, when I had gone knocking at his door, had assured me that that was exactly what the FTII acting course was.

  Professor Taneja walked into class on the first day and launched into his daily ritual of changing from dark glasses to clear ones, briefly drumming two forefingers on the table edge, clearing his throat and going ‘Mmmmm’ for a second as if testing out his voice, and having found it working beginning to speak. That day he barely got to ‘Er... I need someone to...’ before I was on the floor itching to display my magnificence to the rest of the class, ready to do anything he might ask—laugh, cry, mouth magnificent dialogue, get angry, get dejected, make funny faces, stand on my head, roll on the floor; whatever he came up with I could do it. What to my astonishment he did ask me to do was go out of the door and come in again ‘just that, nothing more’ he added, pre-empting the ‘why, what for’ questions. Ah! He wants me to think about it myself, I thought. No problem. In the few seconds before entering I furiously thought about how I could make this entry interesting, assuming that was the purpose. Summoning up the pathetically scant tricks I had from my bag, I ‘made an entry’, deliberately tripping over the doorstep and berating an imaginary person who I had not in fact imagined at all. Barely had I begun when I heard ‘Stop! Shah, you’re not right for this one, sit down. Someone else please.’ Completely mortified, and clueless as to what I’d done wrong, I took my seat while Vikram Mehrotra, a handsome hunk who was not really interested in acting, and who in fact later never worked as an actor, but generously provided me many a breakfast while at the Institute, took my place on the floor and executed Taneja saab’s instructions to perfection. He came in through the door and stood in the middle of the floor not knowing what to do—precisely what was needed to make the point.

  Prof T then, taking Vikram’s watch from him, told him to repeat the action exactly, only ‘this time you are coming in to get your watch’, and there was a discernible sense of purpose when Vikram entered this time, no awkwardness or self-consciousness at all; he knew exactly what he had to do—look for his watch, which the Prof had concealed in a drawer. Far from performing ‘exactly the same action’ he was this time actually looking for his watch; he was actually thinking, and looking in places it should reasonably be. BINGO! It made sense to me instantly why I was not right for this exercise. Incapable as an actor of responding to immediate stimulus, I had always needed a map, so to say, and was lost without one.

  Here one was expected to wing it, to respond on the spur, so to say; something, which despite dear Srilata’s exhortations during Marjeeva, I had not realized was an essential requirement for an actor’s work. The meaning of the word ‘improvise’ began to make sense. After all when in life one threads a needle one doesn’t have a ground plan, so why should one be needed when handling an imaginary needle and thread? So far all I had understood of ‘improvisation’ was two actors each trying to say cleverer things than the other, with the wittier of the two being considered to have ‘improvised well’. It was always just an improvisation of put-downs, each actor trying to outdo the other, paying no heed to creating a situation or a relationship. To make matters worse, we had often in NSD been asked, in improvisation class, to imagine ourselves as characters, the portrayal of which would strain the resources of Mr Daniel Day-Lewis himself. Without even possessing the acting chops to r
espond convincingly to an imaginary cup of tea, we were asked to believe in complex imaginary situations like being a roadside dweller, a beggar, a thief, or discovering a spouse’s infidelity, being struck by paralysis, warning a crowd about a fire, and so forth. ‘Stay true to the character’ was a constant admonition without any guidance at all towards understanding even the physical characteristics we were asked to represent. We were just told to believe we were these people, we were expected to ‘fully understand’ and represent the character’s behaviour without even being given a context. The Stanislavskian phrases ‘super- objective’ and ‘emotional memory’ and ‘psychological gesture’ were flung around quite a bit without anyone ever explaining them or illustrating what they meant and they were invariably misunderstood.