Let’s not drag out the long-exhausted argument that the common man needs these films to get away from his own drudgery etc.; what I find terrifying is the degree of dumbing down of the audience that these films have managed to achieve, I daresay intentionally. A habit for consuming junk has over the years been created in the audience. They are now irrevocably hooked on that taste, they crave it so they swallow anything that comes thus packaged, and ironically they are blamed for having to be pandered to. The films we make reflect no one’s inherent taste but our own. Every few months when some nonsensical multi-starrer flops, everybody assumes the audience has finally come of age but very soon they flock right back to something else equally shallow. It’s impossible to explain.
The incident was also a reminder of how dangerous it can be to take celebrityhood seriously and how utterly disastrous it can be to consider oneself entitled and take it for granted. There are too many stories anyway about the flopping of the ‘don’t you know who I am?’ approach. Film stars, when they thank their fans for making them what they are and for their love, are basically indulging in what a star must do—play to the galleries. Stars who believe that the mobs going ape outside their windows actually love them are in for bruised shins sooner or later. Nature very kindly continued giving me small doses of fame, almost as if testing whether I could take it or not. I decided I had trouble digesting it, not because I dislike being told that my work is good or because my ‘precious privacy’ is being invaded or anything like that—I have been able to guard my privacy without any trouble— but because I am convinced that someone who cares for you would not make himself a nuisance when he can see that you would rather be alone.
It is being considered public property that gets my hackles up, when strangers try to put their arm on my shoulder, when they aggressively approach me for a photograph, when they feel they can disturb my meal. Not having and not desiring the security cordon that now surrounds most Hindi film actors, I am often subjected to looks of ‘What are you doing on our turf?’ or observations in my hearing of ‘Who does he think he is?’ on refusing to oblige autograph hunters while trying to retrieve my luggage at airports. Once, for Albert Pinto we were trying with a hidden camera to sneak in a shot of Shabana and me in the midst of the crowd at the Mount Mary fair. Of course she was instantly recognized; much jostling and misbehaviour followed, ending with Shabana spiritedly delivering a roundhouse whack on the face of a guy who was a particular pest. Things immediately got heated, and I had to step into the melee desperately holding on to my temper. In danger of being lynched if I lost it, I attempted reason and was greeted with more jeering and a response that left me dumbfounded, ‘Why she has to come here then?’
I cannot deny the paradox in my behaviour that my motivation for becoming an actor was not to uncover the secrets of the craft or to serve meaningful work or to make my contribution to society but to be noticed. I wanted to be known, I wanted to be rich, I wanted to be looked at, talked about; and when that started to happen in a serious way I found myself shying away. I hated being accosted and treated with familiarity by strangers and I could no longer take compliments seriously—they came to me even for some very inferior work. I had always thought I’d love signing autographs, in fact had dreamed of the day I would and had practised half a dozen different ones when I was in school. But when it started to happen, and I was often handed crumpled scraps of paper extracted from wallets or visiting cards with no space on them or even tissue paper, and not infrequently after signing was asked what my name was, I decided I hated this utterly meaningless exercise. I am still often mistaken for Om Puri or Girish Karnad or Nana Patekar and congratulated on the work they did in their films. Who they get mistaken for, I don’t know. To none of them do I bear the slightest physical resemblance but I suppose many viewers just lump us all into one category and can’t really tell us apart. When people at an airport (I am very good at the blasé flyer act now, by the way) or a restaurant come up and say they like my films, I appreciate it and would appreciate it more if they’d say it and go away because I am never quite sure they didn’t mean Arth or Swami or Ankur, none of which I was in.
It had been about twelve years since I had last seen Heeba, I knew that she was in Iran and one day received a letter from her in Farsi, which I could not decipher and had no one to help in doing so. Fortunately, along with it was a note from Purveen curtly informing me, ‘Your daughter wants to visit you if you will permit it.’ Ammi was staying with me those days so I got her to write a reply in Urdu permitting it. I was intrigued and anxious at the thought of meeting this child I had barely seen and who I knew not at all.
Ratna and I were also beginning to feel it would be a really good idea to live together now—I wouldn’t have to drop her home every night, for one thing. She was now through with NSD, and with absolutely no accountancy training had single-handedly sorted out the considerable financial mess her father had left behind when he passed away suddenly and much before his time. She spent months poring over accounts, meeting accountants, clearing debts and vainly attempting to collect unpaid dues from some rather big film-industry names. Much before we married, she had also taken over managing my monetary matters and continues to do so, much to my relief. I have only a rough idea how much I earn or how much I pay in taxes and the sight of a balance sheet still unfocuses my eyes, but she knows the numbers. Very quickly I realized my life could do with her kind of balanced approach, it badly needed organizing.
The distinction that I was a slob and she always immaculately turned out apart, we were alike in many ways. I was hot-tempered and impetuous, she was hot-tempered and rational. I found we had similar ideas about what we wanted from life. She made me aware of the worth of family, and her intervention actually brought me closer to Ammi and my brothers with all of whom she formed relationships completely independent of me, and in all of whom I then discovered aspects I had not known before. Besides, not only was she absolutely scrumptious in every way, her calm acceptance of Heeba’s existence testified to her absolutely solid citizen status. I knew I would be safe in her hands and I was right.
Ammi knew how long the relationship had already lasted and had been quite bowled over by the regard and affection with which Ratna always treated her. When I first told her that we were planning to marry she wanted to know if I would ask Ratna to convert to Islam, and when I said I wouldn’t she looked long and hard into my eyes, then nodded once very slowly and ever so faintly. She didn’t say anything but I got the distinct feeling that she didn’t disapprove, and she happily went across to Laxmi Sadan and asked Dina for her daughter’s hand. We didn’t consider any engagement necessary, we had pledged ourselves to each other long ago.
Wedding plans were afoot when nature reiterated, as if reiteration was needed, the absolute truth of how much an actor, to be effective in a film, depends on his performance being orchestrated right by the director. Even though I had managed not to disgrace myself recreating a few Shammi Kapoor songs for a film called Situm, it was as obvious as the nose on my face that I was just not the right material for this kind of thing. But there was also the nagging suspicion that I hadn’t yet been cast right. Esmayeel Shroff, who had made some slightly unusual but highly successful films and who had long said he wanted us to work together, offered me the leading part in a film called Dil Aakhir Dil Hai, yet another of the kind of romantic films I had always been allergic to. I could not for a second see myself in the part but thinking I had everything to gain—three songs to sing, thus the chance to atone for Sunaina—and the fact that I was paired with not one but two gorgeous leading ladies, Rakhee and Parveen Babi, both major-league stars then, made me promptly accept.
Simultaneously a failed actor called Shekhar Kapur, who I had known till then only as Shabana’s boyfriend, came asking if I would act in a film he was planning to make. He said he was adapting the story from a paperback by Erich Segal which he handed me and which I abandoned after Chapter Two, but the premise was interesting
and I thought that if well made it had half a chance; besides it was to be shot in the delicious Delhi winter and partly in my old school, St Joseph’s, Nainital. I had begun to enjoy Shekhar’s company and when we discussed the shoot, even though he seemed to know what he was talking about, I went along feeling somewhat uncertain, half fearing this would be another of those annoying family melodramas in which the children could give you diabetes. I have to say I did not entertain the highest hopes for it. A very big lesson was in the offing.
Shekhar said from the start that he didn’t want me to be a ‘character’, he wanted me to be myself, an instruction I found reassuring. I had so far mostly been told what the character is an analogy to, or representative of or a personification of. For the first time since Sparsh I was being told that it was my behaviour and my reactions that were needed, not those of an imaginary person. Despite not knowing Shekhar well I immediately felt in a comfort zone with him and, as earlier with Sai, enjoyed the same kind of freedom in revealing myself on camera. I felt trusted and appreciated; the film-maker seemed to know my strengths and weaknesses and would very gently nudge me back on to the right track when needed. It was astonishing sometimes, the way the subtext miraculously appeared in scenes that would be maudlin in the hands of a less perceptive director, and as in Sparsh I was helped enormously by a wonderful script. From the moment the first shot was taken it was clear that Shekhar knew his onions and he cared deeply for the performances. I stayed completely stress-free, and apart from giving the production department some anxious moments by developing food poisoning in mid- shoot, I don’t think I gave anyone any trouble at all though at times I did feel like throttling the child lead. Shekhar however was patient and constantly caring, and with unending calm and affection managed to coax out of all of us what I still consider rather good performances.
This film, Masoom, has introduced me to three generations of children and not only holds pride of place in my memories, it is one film which everyone everywhere seems to have seen, whereas the other one on which I had pinned not a few hopes and which I shot for just before going to Delhi and had to shoot for immediately on returning, is buried in a grave without a marker and deservedly so. A cloying moronic piece of fluff, in which situations of conflict were created only because ‘dramatic’ solutions had been thought of beforehand, it pretended to tackle a progressive subject but pusillanimously conformed to all the tried and tested formulae, without a clue as to what had made those clichés work in the first place. I never saw it, I didn’t need to; even though this time I hadn’t tried to be real and followed to a T every instruction about plastering myself in make-up, keeping hair in place, no creases in clothes etc., I knew that my performance was another huge embarrassment. I was given the kind of moustache I’d never ever have in real life and I had to enact situations I wouldn’t have expected to in my wildest dreams, among them romantic scenes in bed with both these ladies and songs where I resemble a marionette whose strings are being pulled by an inebriated puppeteer. Hardly anyone saw it and the couple of loyal friends who did assured me it was so excruciating to watch, Sunaina was great cinema in comparison.
This has occurred not a few times in my career and it has taken me a while to figure out that in these films the behavioural references of the actors must not be to real life but to other films. I had absorbed nothing of the Hindi-film acting style at all; and, in fact, despite greatly admiring and imitating many actors, had absorbed nothing lasting from any of them, except Mr Kendal, and I had outgrown most of that as well. My dictionary of references was from life, not from Hindi films in which the incidents are neither close to life nor the result of either the writer’s or the director’s empathetic resources but the bastard child of an earlier filmic experience. Every scene felt like a rehash of stuff that had worked well before in another context; I could feel no connection to these scenes, even the originals of which I hadn’t liked and had in fact rewritten in my head when I saw the movies. I couldn’t find a smidgen of truth in anything; and not having the fondest affection for the kind of acting in popular Hindi cinema and nothing of a grasp of it, I could not bring an iota of conviction to the part. This nearly apocalyptic choice, the mention of which stumps even trivia buffs, wrote ‘finis’ to my stint as a leading man in mainstream cinema for many years, whereas Masoom, about which I had been initially quite condescending invariably finds first mention among my films almost thirty- five years after it was made. As Grotowski had said in another lifetime, ‘there is no such thing as talent but there is such a thing as lack of talent, and lack of talent occurs when one is not in one’s right place’. Finding my ‘spot’ has taken me well- nigh forty years but I think I have spent at least some of that time in the right place.
Whether as husband and father I would be in my right place was a question that did give me some anxious moments until it finally happened, and I think I acquitted myself in both roles with not a little credit. Ratna and I didn’t get married by the sea, the registrar not being willing to travel all the way to Madh Island, but in Dina’s home—for sentimental reasons also. As soon as the vows were taken in the presence of only immediate family, we spent the rest of the day carousing with a few friends on the beach, innocently believing life is perfect until we got to the Khar subway that day on our way home.
When about a year later Heeba finally arrived to live with us, I did what I could to repair the breach. The memory of the childhood in Iran, when it is discussed, still seems to distress her. She seldom talks about it and I have to kill the urge to enquire into what was probably a delicate and difficult time. Purveen, Heeba and Bushra, Heeba’s half-sister, were in Iran through the turmoil of Ayatollah Khomeini’s return and the revolution, which forced the Shah (no relation!) to flee. Both girls had probably been subjected to a rigid orthodox upbringing, they both always wore a chador covering their hair and ears, a sartorial custom which to our combined relief she abandoned almost as soon as she moved in to live with us. Namaaz continued for a few days but then that too quickly went by the board.
Purveen had evidently turned into quite a fundamentalist herself shortly before embarking on her travels; probably the reason Iran was chosen as a destination. Heeba had never been to school and spoke only Farsi then but, having spent the first couple of years of her life in England, had probably learnt to speak English first. Though out of practice, she understood it well, and it came back very quickly indeed. She was fourteen and I don’t know too many fourteen-year-olds who could so gracefully handle the ignominy of being admitted in Class 6 with children much younger. She went on to graduate and study drama in Delhi and is now a well-adjusted, contented working actor, an asset to our company and an inspiringly positive influence on her two half-brothers. But though I have to live with the knowledge that the scar tissue of my earlier indifference will never disappear, I wouldn’t think she has too many complaints now. The credit for her rehabilitation goes entirely to Ratna.
I wish I could say we all lived happily ever after but life is too complicated for such a smug summing up. And anyway, that is another story.
Epilogue
Ever since I was fifteen years old, following my triumphant turns as Shylock and Lear in school, when I actually began to dare to think of myself as an actor I have always had this waking nightmare: one day I meet up with a wise old man who, after watching my work, says to me, ‘Well... doubtless everyone has always said you are a very good actor but...’ And I still have no clue what he says after the ‘but’. My imagination doesn’t exactly fail me at that point but it doesn’t seem sure in which direction to head, and thus I have found many different directions, but never a resolution to the conversation.
This fear which over the years I have actually begun to enjoy living with, half fearfully half eagerly anticipating hearing the rest of what that old man has to say, has perhaps propelled me to take nothing whatsoever for granted and made me stumble upon answers when I wasn’t even looking for them. The old man himself has not shown up to thi
s day. But he has manifested himself in several ways and at the most unexpected times, and never in the garb I expected: sometimes a young Jesuit, sometimes a woolly- headed professor, sometimes a stoned companion, sometimes a beautiful woman and sometimes a guardian angel. I think I have reached the stage that when I look in the mirror I get a hazy glimpse of him and he’s looking right into my eyes.
Baba (left), and a friend, in a rare flighty mood.
Ammi at her glorious best.
Shortly after Zameer (extreme left) rejoined the family, his discomfiture is evident.
Assembly of Ammi’s side of the clan, Sardhana 1953.
Shah Mamu with his big cup, me (centre) with my tiny one. It is one of the few years Zameer (left) didn’t win anything; I never won anything again in that school.
Agha Habib Shah with a leopard he killed, and the tigers he spawned...
Khalid (Chand) and Babur (Shah)
Agha Mohiuddin
AT ST JOSEPH’S
With Ma Perry.
AT ST JOSEPH’S
With John Lefevre.
AT ST ANSELM’S
NCC camp, JR on my right.
Confident at last.
Moustache courtesy JR.
Newlyweds Purveen and I.
With Heeba at 14.
Quite a few unsurprising similarities!
And Then One Day: A Memoir Page 29