And Then One Day: A Memoir
Page 30
My parents at 17 Chaman
Estate, Mussoorie.
IITian Zaheer in his
graduation gown.
Capt. Zameer
in his army uniform.
And undergraduate Naseer in his
first proper beard.
Jaspal and I at NSD,
‘a time of innocence, a time of confidences’.
Om Puri and I at NSD, first year, flat broke;
somewhat better days;
and really prosperous!
GREAT PERFORMANCES
These performances from the 1970s for me touched perfection and demonstrated the level it is possible for an actor onstage to achieve. I still consider them the greatest theatre performances I have ever seen anywhere in the world.
Mohan Agashe in Ghasiram Kotwal
Photograph by Bal Paranjpe, courtesy Dr Agashe
Chandrakant Kale in Begum Barve
Photograph by Saroj Parulkar, courtesy Dr Agashe
Shriram Lagoo in Adhe Adhure
Courtesy Popular Prakashan, Mumbai
Om Puri in the Kabuki play Ibaragi
Sudha Shivpuri in
Billi Chali Pehen Ke Joota
Courtesy Natrang Pratishthan Nemi Chandra Jain Collection
Sulabha Deshpande in
Shantata! Court Chaalu Aahe
Courtesy Arun Kakde, Aavishkar, Mumbai
Bhakti Barve in
Ajab Nyaya Vartulacha
Courtesy Vijaya Mehta
Salima Raza in
Azar Ka Khwab
Courtesy Salima Raza
NSD HIGHS AND LOWS
In Mrozek’s Out at Sea, with Jaspal, directed by Kirti Jain (above left); and The Lesson, with Jyoti Deshpande (above centre). Surekha Sikri seems to mirror director Srilata Swaminathan’s despair at my behaviour during a rehearsal of Marjeeva (above right).
In Danton’s Death, B. Jayshree and Rajesh Vivek watch with compassion as I flounder in a part I was pathetically ill-equipped to play.
Mr Geoffrey Kendal as Shylock, c. late 1950s.
A private moment with Geoffrey and Laura Kendal on the sets of Junoon.
This moment took twenty years to arrive and was over in a flash.
TWO SPECIES OF FIGHTING BANTAM
Godhuli
Junoon
Among the village folk who appeared in Manthan.
Shooting the motorcycle scene in Albert Pinto ko Gussa Kyun Aata Hai:
Virendra Saini with the camera, Kundan Shah behind him.
On the sets of Bhumika, trying hard to look dapper driving the expensive antique car; Shyam and Smita (behind) seem unconcerned.
The unit of Bhavni Bhavai, awaiting a sunset;
Ketan Mehta (extreme left), Archana Shah (extreme right).
My Spike Milliganish tribute to
Sunaina, Shaayad and Dil Aakhir Dil Hai
MADH ISLAND
All Fools’Day, 1982
(left to right, front row) Davinder Ahuja, Carol Alter, Jamie Alter, Ratna, Medha Kapur, Neelam Shukla; (back row) Saeed Mirza,Tom Alter, Shekhar Kapur, Me, Benjamin Gilani, Vikram Mehrotra, Ashok Ahuja, Vinay Shukla.
Hammered groom arrives astride equally hammered best man.
Revellers at the wedding (left to right): Bakul and Kundan Shah, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Rameshwari, Ketan Mehta, Paresh Mehta, Vinay Shukla and Javed Akhtar.
Escorting Ammi to the wedding.
Signed, sealed and delivered.
The mothers tuck into the wedding lunch.
Ratna as she looked when I first saw her...
and on our wedding day.
And we lived happily ever after.
Preface and acknowledgements
There were two strong motivations for saying yes to a big budget Hollywood film in the year 2002. They were: a) I would get to meet Sean Connery, who I had long adored, and b) I was promised an amount of money which if not totally obscene was definitely pretty vulgar. So vulgar in fact that with a couple of weeks’ per diem I purchased a laptop and hired a man to teach me how to switch it on.
Through a bone-wrenchingly boring six-month shoot, not knowing what else to do with the machine I started typing, ‘I was born in...’ and so forth and continued for about twenty-five pages. There are many reasons, not the least being indolence and self-doubt, why the final thing emerges a dozen or so years after I started on it. I got bored of it, abandoned it, re-engaged with it a year or so later, and then again a year or so later and so on.
Most of it was written during shootings, sitting in a trailer awaiting the next shot, then transferring it on to a pen drive, more than once losing the pen drive and having to start all over again. Ergo the travails I endured have nothing whatsoever to do with writer’s block or anything of the sort, granted that some passages proved tough to write about and my threshold of boredom is rather low I am told; it all had to do with the question of the intrinsic worth of such a book. I felt very much like writing it but not at all sure I wanted anyone to read it. I decided, for my own amusement, to write about incidents I could recall and I need hardly testify I really took my time over it, double-checking facts with my two brothers—the only reliable witnesses. I was also pretty certain that some of my contemporaries’ versions of later incidents would vary drastically from mine, but as I said, it was great fun comprehensively reliving those days. I never thought anyone would read about them though.
Then one day I handed over about half the final manuscript to Ramachandra Guha, of whom I had by then sufficiently overcome my awe to consider a friend. His exhortation to me to finish the job I never thought I would is why I must thank him first of all. His positive response to my output and insistence on ridding the text of superfluities, slang, swear words and exclamation marks (which crept in nonetheless, sorry Ram!) galvanized me into finishing the rest of it in one-twelfth the time it had taken me to write the rest.
What this book will mean to anyone I have no clue but I had to get it out of my system, and for helping me do that, warm thanks go to David Godwin of Godwin Associates, Chiki Sarkar, the head of Penguin India publications, and the wonderful Nandini Mehta and Jaishree Ram Mohan, who edited the manuscript. Their encouragement and support were invaluable even though my dearest wish that anyone proving that he/she consistently came last in class be given a free copy of the book did not find much merit in their eyes. Many thanks to my favourite performers for generously providing me the photos I needed, and the associates who helped me get through to them.
A warm hug to the teachers and friends I have been fortunate to encounter—all the remarkable men and women who had so much they wished to share and unstintingly did.
And lastly a big fat slobbery kiss to the jewel of my existence, Ratna, queen of her species, who while doing so much else has also steadfastly, through thick and thin, better and worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health held my hand and propped me up for well-nigh forty years. May her tribe increase.
THE BEGINNING
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HAMISH HAMILTON
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First published in Hamish Hamilton by Penguin Books India 2014
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Copyright © Naseeruddin Shah 2014
Words and music from ‘Time’ © Pink Floyd Music Publishers Ltd administered by Imagem (UK) Ltd.
The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by him which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.
ISBN: 978-0-670-08764-8
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e-ISBN: 978-9-351-18840-7
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