Sunday Sentiments

by Karan Thapar

  “My father wasn’t doing very well in Bombay so they told him to go to the Punjab. The Punjab? Where is that?” The Field Marshal began. “So my parents got into a train. In those days, there was an intermediate class for Parsis and Anglo-Indians. My mother was only 18. When the train pulled into Amritsar station, my father pushed up the shutter and my poor mother saw the first sikh in her life. She started howling when she saw his long hair and long beard. She thought she was in a zoo!”

  Manekshaw ran away from home to join the army, got commissioned in 1934 and was badly injured in Burma where he won the Military Cross. In the 1960s, he was almost cashiered. Krishna Menon took against him and ordered a commission of enquiry. Fortunately, he was exonerated and went on to become Chief. In 1971, he led the Indian Army to victory in Bangladesh.

  At the height of that war when India’s advance on Hilli was effectively stopped by a daring young Pakistani captain, Manekshaw found time to congratulate him.

  “He fought gallantly and I sent him a letter to say so. Later, when I visited Pakistan after the war, I told their Chief he should get an award.”

  Off camera, I asked him a further question. “Doesn’t it stick in the throat to compliment the enemy?”

  “Nonsense boy.” He replied. “It’s those damned dhotiwallahs that divide us. They have them too, you know, except their’s is a very funny sort of dhoti. No, a soldier must respect his enemy and never be scared or shy of praising him. If my enemy’s good and I still beat him, then I must be better.”

  Now 85 years old, Manekshaw lives in Coonoor.

  “I have a happy life. Children, grandchildren and a wife who looks after me — or at least pretends to.” He joked.

  Earlier this year, the Manekshaws celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.

  “The girls insisted I give Mummy a diamond.” He told me. “It’s damned expensive I said but they would have none of it. So I gave her one.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She said thank you.”And then after a laugh, he added,“but that’s all I got for the diamond. It did nothing for me.”

  The old FM tells wonderful stories and if, like me, you want to hear more, then look out for the next time I write about him. It will be to tell you when and where the interview is to be shown.

  9

  Shah Rukh, Mummy and Me

  “For someone who is supposed to be intelligent you, can at times be incredibly stupid. Don’t you ever pause to think before you shoot your mouth off?”

  That, incidentally, is the sort of thing my closest friends repeatedly say to me. It’s their way of saying they care. Usually I smile disarmingly and dismiss the criticism. I’m never offended nor, to be honest, do I take it seriously.

  Last week, however, I realised how right they were. If only I had listened to them earlier, I would not have made such a prized fool of myself. But then, we all learn the hard way.

  It started when my mobile phone began beeping. I rushed to pick it up only to find I was in the process of receiving an SMS message. Now, I receive several, and often they can be perplexing. This one was straight forward except for the sender’s name. It read : “This is to tell you my number has changed to x x x . Love. SRK.”

  Who, I asked myself, is SRK? The initials meant nothing to me and I could not think of who they might belong to. The more I tried, the less I seemed to be able to work things out. So, curious but not wanting to appear rude, I rang the number given. It was answered by a voicemail.

  “Hi.” I started off cheerfully. “Thanks for your message informing me of your new number but I can’t work out what your initials stand for.

  Sorry about this but my mind is a complete blank. So be a sport and fill in the mystery. Let me know who you are.”

  I thought I had been rather clever. To my mind, my message felt like discretion itself. Polite, witty though self-deprecating yet to the point. In fact, so pleased was I with myself that I walked out of my office and started to tell my colleagues what I had just done.

  “Christ!” said Vishal, when I finished. “You’re joking, aren’t you?”

  “No.” I said a little startled. “Why should I be joking? You can see the SMS on my mobile. It’s still there.”

  “Not the message.” He continued. “It’s your reply I’m talking about. Surely you know who SRK is?”

  “No.” I insisted. “I don’t.”

  But strangely I don’t recall Vishal telling me. I’m not sure what happened but I guess someone or something interrupted us and the subject slipped from our attention. Anyway, I soon forgot all about it. Until later, that night.

  I was sitting at my mother’s when it happened. The family tends to congregate around the television pretending to listen to the news. Actually, instead of listening, we all talk simultaneously – or do I mean quarrel? – and none of us is any wiser after the broadcast. That night was no different until the phone rang. I’m not sure how I heard it above the din but what I did notice is that as the others heard me talking the room hushed to pin drop silence.

  “SRK?” I said. “What do you mean why you’re SRK?”

  And then suddenly, like a blow on my head, I recognised the voice. I’ve heard it a thousand times before. I recalled its particular tone, its special way of speaking, its half-mocking quality. Oh my God, of course, this is SRK! It had to be. The initials fit perfectly. Why, why, why had I not thought of it earlier?

  “I’m really sorry, Shah Rukh.” I started to splutter. “I never thought it was you.You must think I’m an ass. The problem is I know you as Shah Rukh Khan and not SRK.”

  “No, the fault is mine.” The voice from the other side reassuringly replied. “It’s just that everyone in Mumbai calls me SRK so I assumed the initials would make sense. But I guess this proves I am not as popular as I think I am!”

  He was being generous and excusing my lapse. But the mistake was mine. I suddenly realised why Vishal had been so surprised. To him, SRK made immediate sense and he couldn’t fathom why I was thrown by the same initials.

  I was still apologising when Mummy interrupted me. I was repeating for the umpteenth time that I was an idiot. Shah Rukh, I suspect, was beginning to believe me. I can be very convincing when it’s not in my interest to be. That’s when Mummy spoke up.

  “Tell him his mother thinks so too. In fact, not just an idiot but a complete bloody fool!”

  So I did. I interrupted myself and conveyed her message instead.

  “Don’t worry, mums always think their sons are idiots.” Shah Rukh replied. And then, dropping that famous voice almost to a whisper, he added. “Sometimes they’re right.”

  10

  An Important Quality that

  Fardeen and Aishwarya Share

  Do you have little ways of gauging a person? Simple, straightforward but significant signs that interpret the people you meet? I do. And it’s one of these that lies at the heart of the story I want to share with you this Sunday morning.

  How a person responds to his or her mistakes is for me a telling test of character. We all find it easy to be candid and outspoken about other people’s errors. Usually it’s cost free. But when one is at fault oneself, it is neither simple nor easy to be frank. And the more important you think you are, the more difficult it becomes. Whilst we all have our pride, those who live in the public gaze have in addition position and prestige to worry about. These are often insuperable obstacles to honesty.

  So you can imagine my pleasant surprise — no, let me too be honest, my delight — when last week, I met two celebrities who overcame their star status and were unabashedly frank about their lapses. As a result, I’ve taken a shine to them and in my estimation, they’ve become special people.

  The first was Fardeen Khan. He came to our studio a month and a bit after his arrest for attempting to buy drugs. His plight had been front-page news. Pictures of him under police escort had been splashed all over our screens. And as you can guess, no one likes the world to know they’ve be
en in jail.

  “Are you going to ask him all about it?” was the only question my colleagues wanted to know.

  “I wonder what he’ll say?” Ashok pondered.

  “Oh, he’ll go red in the face.” Irene replied.

  “Or he’ll refuse to talk.”Vishal suggested.

  “Who knows,” added Birendra. “He may even walk out of the interview if you press too hard.”

  I must say I shared some of their concerns. I knew I had to tackle the issue but I also accepted that it would only be a part of the interview. For the majority of the time, we would talk about other subjects. Yet if the time we spent on his troubles made him defensive, it would damage the whole interview. Once I had pushed him into a shell over the drugs issue, it might be impossible to lure him out again. So what was I to do?

  I did not know and decided to postpone a decision till I met Fardeen. It seemed the safest but also the most sensible course of action.

  On the day Fardeen arrived in a tight-fitting tee shirt, beige trousers, suede mocassins without socks and a big, warm but sheepish smile. I mention these details because they made up my mind for me. He looked casual, chatted easily and I felt relaxed and comfortable in his company. I decided to risk it and pop all the questions about drugs that ordinarily I would want to. I felt he would take them well.

  I was wrong. Totally wrong.

  Fardeen didn’t just take them well. He handled them brilliantly. My colleagues, who were in the production room, later told me they were applauding his answers.

  What Fardeen did was to be completely honest but, at the same time, he didn’t indulge in any histrionic displays of guilt.

  “I’m old enough to know what I’m doing. It’s not that I do things without thinking.” He started. “I broke the law, I got caught, I paid the price for it but now I’ve got to move on.”

  I pointed out that the newspapers claimed the police were hoping to catch a senior politician and a celebrity singer when instead he fell into their net. Was he caught by accident? Was he the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time? The question was intended to let him off the hook. Most others – perhaps I included – would have grasped at it. But not Fardeen.

  He smiled. He has a full and friendly smile and he uses it a lot.

  “No, never.” He answered. “As I said, you’ve got to know what you’re doing. We’re all old enough and smart enough to know what we’re doing. If you get caught, you get caught. If it was not today, it could have been another day. That’s it.”

  So was it bad luck? Once again, I was offering him a cop out. Once again, he refused to accept it.

  “Well you can look back and say it was bad luck but, hey, I was breaking the law and got caught.”

  I must say I was flabbergasted. He’s only 27. Men of 72 would have found it hard to be so candid. But he wasn’t just frank. He took it on the chin, made no big deal of it and spoke of it in proper perspective. Yes, he’s made a mistake, a silly stupid mistake and he’s paid for it but it’s not the end of the world and it’s not something he must run scared of or be embarrassed about. I agree with him.

  The other person whose candour impressed me last week was Aishwarya Rai. Of course, in her case, the incident was very different. She wasn’t guilty of any crime or even of a serious lapse. She was simply late for an interview. Her explanation was foolproof : she was late because she was unwell. But nonetheless, she was still over two and a half hours late.

  Now, I’ve had many interviewees — and many of them big stars — who’ve been late and thought nothing of it. In fact, not being on time is a hallmark of success in Bollywood. It’s the sine qua non of being number one. But Aishwarya was very different. It showed from the moment she arrived. And I found it admirable.

  “You must be so angry!” She started, anxious to get in her explanation before anything else was said. She hadn’t even stepped out of her car but she had already started to apologise.

  The facts are simple. Aishwarya was due for an interview at the new ITC hotel in Andheri, the Grand Maratha, at 9.00 a.m. We had flown in from Delhi the night before. On arrival, I checked with her secretary and he had said all was well. At 10.30 a.m., we spoke again and he re-confirmed the arrangement. But at 1.15 p.m., long after I’d turned the lights off and gone to sleep, he rang to say Aishwarya had fallen ill and wanted to call it off.

  You can imagine how I reacted. I don’t think I slept a wink that night and right up till 11.00 a.m., I did not know if she would be well enough to make it. But she did. At 11.30 a.m., her car drove in to the Grand Maratha and she stepped out.

  “I bet you don’t want to know me!” She said with a big smile on her face.“You must be wondering what sort of girl this is and I can understand if you are upset. Maybe you don’t even want to interview me any more?”

  “Of course I do.” I said loudly just in case my silence conveyed the opposite. I wanted to interview her more than anything else.

  “But honestly, I’m really really really sorry.” She continued. “I’ve never done this sort of thing before. It’s just that last night I had a terrible migraine.”

  Now in fact the truth is I was a little hurt and my colleagues more so. But in neither case, anywhere near enough to warrant such generous behaviour. Her manner not only disarmed us. It won us over.

  So, if a grey-haired forty-five year old can turn bashful and look silly and coy well, believe me, I did.

  Later I recalled how frequently I too have pleaded illness to back out of appointments I’ve decided not to keep. My secretary, poor Aru, has had to tell lies so often he’s stopped admonishing me. As a result, I’ve come to think of illness as an excuse not the truth. I suppose that’s why I began by misjudging Aishwarya. And, who knows, maybe she guessed it too. Perhaps that’s why she was so fulsome in apology. But it worked. Not just because it was sincere but also because it was so unusual from a star.

  Now you know why I think Fardeen and Aishwarya are special people. Not because they are rich, successful and popular but because they are honest and don’t let their pride or position stand in their way.

  11

  I Say Mr. Laxman!

  When a man’s reputation precedes him, you often end up with a misleading idea of what he must be like. That’s what happened to me with R.K. Laxman. I’ve spent decades admiring his cartoons and foolishly I thought I knew him. My image of him was of a tall, garrulous, expansive and avuncular personality. I’m not sure why I thought of him as tall. But I did. I also assumed he would be plump.

  The person who walked into our make-shift studio at The Grand Maratha in Mumbai was very different. He’s small – even slender – reticent, measured and precise in his comments and he doesn’t make you laugh. But he does make you smile, a thoughtful frequent smile in response to his wry humour and deep cynicism.

  “I say, why do you want to interview me?” He asked.

  It took me aback. No doubt he had expressed similar sentiments when we arranged the interview but to hear them repeated as we sat down for the recording was surprising. I struggled for something suitable to say. But I soon realised he didn’t mean it.

  “I’ve been thinking of what to say.” He suddenly continued. “There’s so much. So much has happened but also so much has been forgotten. How am I to remember everything?”And then, after a pause, he repeated, “I say, why do you want to interview me?”

  This wasn’t reluctance but diffidence. He was shy and I liked him all the more for it.

  “Ready, Mr. Laxman?” I enquired as the cameraman cued me.

  He smiled wanly. I assumed that meant yes. But as soon as I began, he interrupted.

  “I say.” He said, using his favourite expression. “Have you got a pill?”

  “A pill! What sort of pill?”

  “Any will do. A small one or a big one.”And then almost sotto voce, he added, “I’m not well, I say.”

  I’m afraid I burst out laughing. In fact, we all did.

  “You’re a hypocho
ndriac!” I exclaimed but I meant it good-naturedly. I’m one too.

  “No.” Laxman replied slowly, his eyes twinkling behind his thick-set glasses. “Not really. But pills help.”

  Surprisingly, the interview started on a cheerful note. I began by asking how he had conceived of the common man.

  “He found me. I didn’t find him.”

  Laxman explained how long it takes to depict ordinary Indians. “You see,” He said. “Common people are not the same. Bengalis don’t look like Maharashtrians or Tamils. And they, in turn, don’t look like Punjabis or Kashmiris. It takes an awful lot of time to draw them, I say.”

  “So you created the common man to save time?”

  “Not at all.” He interjected.“At first I used to draw a crowd but then I started eliminating people one by one. First this one, then that one, then the other. In the end there was only one man left, standing and looking back at me. He was smiling. That was the common man in his striped coat, big moustache and large glasses.”

  Laxman speaks with a flat, almost monotonous, voice. There are few discernible inflections in his tone. This serves, oddly enough, to emphasise his dry wit. But it contrasts strongly with his animated eyes. They seem to have a life of their own. They enlarge, contract, smile or assume a look of mock horror depending on the response he elicits from you.

  Consequently, conversations take place at two levels. First there’s the verbal exchange. Then there’s the communication from his eyes.

  I discovered Laxman’s favourite ‘victim’ was Nehru. In fact. he didn’t hesitate to add that today’s politicians are less interesting.

  “There’s no fun any more, I say.” He told me. “And do you know why? They have no personality. They’re all the same. They all want to look like the next fellow.”

  “So is the great Mr. Laxman bored?” I found it hard to believe but I couldn’t resist asking.

  “I’m totally bored. With the politics of this country and with newspapers.”