While I was able to survive on account of television commercials and live events, a film, my heart’s deepest desire, was nowhere on the horizon. Finally I signed my first film which, on paper, seemed to have all the qualities needed for a hit film. It turned out to be a sorry piece of work and flopped miserably.
Post this, I was virtually cast aside by the business, and all manner of new challenges arose. Not getting any work was the main one. The other was that many a cheapskate assumed you were now desperate and therefore fair game for their salacious advances.
So I had to go back to auditioning for television commercials and realised that the only way forward was to succeed at these auditions. A few actor friends, who were also new to the city and waiting in the wings, got together and worked out a plan. We did mock auditions with each other. The actual audition rooms often have people going in and out, and that can be hugely distracting. So we did our mock auditions at coffee shops, restaurants or public parks.
In the middle of our mock audition, waiters took orders, friends from other tables came over and we just had to keep going with our lines. It was an amazing exercise that built an inner focus. Our focus became razor sharp. Also, we lost any feelings of self-consciousness. This practice helps me even today.
Our task each week was to redo the auditions we had messed up in the previous seven days. We sat in a circle and watched, commented and directed the person redoing an audition. We gave ourselves homework each week, too. We had to stand in front of a mirror and see what we looked like doing certain actions and figure out all the bizarre things about ourselves. We spent hours finding out who we really were. I discovered that I could make my lower lip tremble at will. It is a great build-up for weeping scenes. I look like I am about to burst into a big boo-hoo. I have used it rather effectively (and not just on film).
We did every audition we could get our hands on. We did up to six auditions a day: from famous studios to small tests at Andheri, we did them all. The more we auditioned, the easier it became. We did so many that it did not matter anymore. And in that thin line between caring madly and not giving a damn lay the key to a successful audition. We met people and made friends. A lot of those young assistant directors are now prolific directors making feature films, and they do remember their friends from the early days. We got so good at it that soon, between the six of us, we had cornered the ad film market. We had succeeded in making it fun and not such a ‘test’.
I was getting used to the feast-or-famine scenario of an actor’s professional life but this time around my diary was looking as barren as a brick. I was beginning to worry. I had visited my surprised family twice, taken the not-yet-needed break in Goa, met all my friends several times over and had been massaged to within an inch of my life. I was virtually dying of relaxation.
And then suddenly, out of nowhere, a rather famous producer cum director (who we’ll call R.R. – Rapacious Rascal) called, saying he wanted to meet. Full of hope, I walked into his office, all a-splendour with dangling earrings and four-inch heels.
As I entered his office, R.R. gave me an eyeful. He then went on to describe how he had launched this female actor and that she owed her place in the film firmament to him. As he gave me a very thorough scrutiny, he told me I needed to learn how to walk in heels, lose weight and get spa treatment to make my hair glossy.
I was caught off-guard but was happy to work with someone with such interest in his actors. I promised him I would look into each of the things he had suggested.
He seemed to be impressed by my zeal and finally he described the role, which was small but had the potential to make an impact. Given my work situation, it was like James Cameron had offered me Kate Winslet’s part in Titanic. I was ecstatic.
When I told my actor friends I was part of R.R.’s big budget extravaganza, there was a visible shock reaction from most. Yes, R.R. had made many successful films, but he was also known to be a monster womaniser, I found out. He spared no one, I was warned. Working with him was the equivalent of agreeing to be his pet squeeze for the duration of the filming.
Why is it that when you don’t want to hear a particular thing, nearly everyone wants to talk about that very thing? Any actor friend I met mentioned R.R. and his philandering ways. Everyone poured out their tales of woe pertaining to being cast by someone who was in power and a womaniser. An actress friend who was just getting into the movies offered me her horror story. She had been called to Chennai (the other big hub of filmmaking in India) by a casting director for a Tamil film, to meet one Mr Raja, a new director. He began calling her far too frequently in Mumbai, ostensibly to discuss the script. She was getting annoyed because these phone calls were adding no value to the script or to her life.
Mr Raja finally asked her to accompany him to the very scenic Pondicherry and Kodaikanal to go location scouting. He told her he ‘wanted the script to penetrate every inch of her body’. Needless to say, she stopped taking his calls. He went on to sign two different girls one after another, who both went ‘location scouting’ with him. (I need not tell you but can’t resist … no film was ever made and Mr Raja is currently twenty crores4 in debt.)
Another actress friend from a small town, who had been approached for the same role that R.R. had offered me, had been propositioned by him. She said, ‘He tried to psych me. He said I needed a personality development course, diction classes, a stylist, a new portfolio, high heels and a godfather.’ He went on to tell her she needed to have ten lakhs5 (roughly US$15,000) spent on her and he was ready to ‘support and groom’ her. R.R. asked her to ‘compromise’. When my friend, the greenhorn, did not understand what he was trying to say, he sat her down in his large corporate office and explained thus, ‘So what will I get when you become a star? What will you do for me for the “support and grooming”?’
The penny dropped and the actress got up to leave. R.R. then told her this was the ‘basic’ rule of the film industry. ‘If you have joined this business, you should be ready for all this,’ he said. As a parting shot he added that that’s why he did not let his daughter join the business, but if she had, she would have had to ‘compromise’ too.
I lay awake nights thinking. While the film was crucial for me at that point, my moral compass pointed strictly north. There was no way I was going to ‘compromise’. Every possible scenario floated through my addled brain. Should I handle the situation when it cropped up? Maybe I should have a chat with R.R. before the shoot? But then why should I put an idea in his head if he hadn’t thought of it? Should I carry some sleeping tablets with me and drug the man, if he decided to get too close? Shall I call R.R.’s wife and get really friendly with her? R.R.’s son was an assistant director on the unit, so could he be my confidant and dissuade his dad? Should I do the film at all? I reached a decision.
Filming began with the traditional coconut being broken to mark the auspicious start of the venture. I was made to feel very welcome on the set and everyone treated me with kid gloves. I kept wondering if it was because I was liked for myself or because R.R. had given instructions to the unit to ‘look after’ me.
R.R. kept talking about how lucky I was to be a part of his film. I knew I was lucky to be part of the film, but I was a good casting choice too. So when he mentioned my being lucky one time too many, I told him I thought I was a good actress and so it was more than just luck that had got me the part. For a brief second R.R. looked taken aback but then he gave me an approving nod.
My guard was constantly up, alert for any sign of over-friendliness. We started the film with a few days of work in Mumbai. Friends called and checked up on me and I was happy to tell them that, as yet, there were no inappropriate overtures from his side.
But the big test lay ahead. We had a long schedule of filming in the U.S.A. The lead cast was put up at a ritzy hotel downtown. Sure enough, I was in the same hotel as the big man. And on the same floor, our rooms a few feet apart. My antenna started bristling.
The film needed me to be the
romantic vixen whom the hero turns down for the more saccharine and pious heroine. When filming started, R.R. went out of his way to shoot my scenes with a lot of care, taking his time to explain every nuance with meticulous detail. We shot a song sequence that makes Hindi movies what they are. The diaphanous clothes my character wore were blown about by a storm fan angled at the appropriate degree. A special light called the ‘softy’ was called for to give my face that screen goddess glow, and most of my shots were tight close-ups. R.R. gave me even more time than the leading man, which never happens in Hindi films. We were shooting some romantic scenes which required me to be in close proximity to the lead actor. Normally, the leading man gets first dibs with the leading lady – this was a hide-bound tradition in films that are still very much a male bastion. If the lady was willing, it would be the hero who would get the first go at wooing her at the outdoor location. Using the scenic setting as his personal backdrop for a romantic date, he would start an affair with the leading lady before his wife and kids showed up at the end of the filming schedule. At this point the affair would end and all order be restored.
But the leading man was much taken with the young, attractive make-up assistant at the shoot; he was quite happy to let R.R. spend time with me and simply went through the motions.
For some shots R.R. would lean close to me and demonstrate how he wanted the lead actor to touch me or be more romantic. It was left to me to bring sizzle to the scene, so I fairly outdid my brief.
It was clear to the unit that R.R. had grown very fond of me. The younger crew members were getting quite a laugh out of it. There was many a nudge-nudge, wink-wink and I was becoming self-conscious. With R.R.’s son on set, it was getting to be an oddly embarrassing situation. I had to concentrate hard to stay focused. I listened carefully to his direction and followed with my whole heart. Regardless of the other details, this was still an opportunity for me to show my chops and I was not about to let any self-consciousness get in my way. ‘Sir’ was very happy and the work was turning out to be quite excellent.
Towards the end of the day’s shoot, very casually, when no one else was within earshot, R.R. asked me to meet him for dinner in his room. To ‘discuss the script’. It was hard to say a straight no; very awkward. Thanks to the intimacy of the scenes we had shot we had developed a certain speed-dial closeness. Heart thudding loudly, I nodded. I wondered what R.R.’s son would think of his dad hitting on a girl his age. Or maybe he knew and was hoping for the same privileges when he made director.
Sometime during the day, before R.R. had mentioned the ‘script/dinner’, I had made plans with the assistant directors, including R.R.’s son, and the rest of the crew to go out that evening. I knew I had to think fast and clear. And suddenly I had a thought. It was tricky but it could work. Or I’d be on the plane back home later tonight.
When it was time to meet the director in his room to ‘read the script’, I requested that the hotel operator transfer all my calls to R.R.’s room. I reached his suite to find him alone, reclining on one of the chaise longes in a silky maroon lungi-kurta (a type of shirt and wraparound skirt that men wear). It looked so straight out of a film seduction scene that had I not been the fly walking straight into the spider’s web, I would have burst out laughing at the triteness of the situation.
I had arrived with a box of luxurious chocolates and a giant bunch of flowers from the hotel’s expensive boutique flower shop. I gave him a tight hug and thanked him for the extra pains he had taken over my shots. Barely had I finished my sentence when the phone rang. It was the crew (including R.R.’s son and the good-looking make-up assistant, who was escaping the drunk hero of the film) waiting for me in the lobby. I told them to give me ten minutes to figure out the next day’s work with ‘Sir’. I put my hand over the receiver and asked him if ten to fifteen minutes would be enough to ‘discuss the script’?
Needless to say, the whole unit knew I was in ‘Sir’s’ room. Sir lost all his ‘desire’ to discuss the script. I gave him another bear hug, said a truly meant thank you and dashed down to party with people my age. ‘Sir’ never asked me to discuss the script again, except on set. We became dear friends and today he is the one I call if ever I need any advice.
I have been asked, plenty of times – by actors, directors and producers. I play dumb. Smile and pretend I don’t get the hint. Yet, somehow, many men from the film business think it is their right to ask.
Outdoor shoots are where much of the alleged ‘action’ takes place. Female actors are often alone on location, without ‘mummy-ji’ or boyfriend. The hero or the director gets a chance to cosy up to the women in the cast. An interesting thing actresses in the 1960s and ’70s used to do to avoid the ‘pressure’ of being chased was pretend to be in a relationship with another person on the same unit. Often, the unsuspecting object of an actress’s affection, the decoy, would fall head over heels in love with her. Only to find himself left out in the cold once they returned to Mumbai.
Anyone who is an artist must go in with all vulnerability. It is an occupational hazard that cannot be avoided. One cannot be safe and a good actor. Yet one needs some mechanism of self-defence to stay sane.
* * *
1. A kind of red bean curry with rice
2. A popular Indian confection, typically made from flour and sugar, and shaped into a ball
3. Victoria Terminus, Mumbai
4. One crore is a unit of measurement equal to 10,000,000.
5. One lakh is a unit of measurement equal to 100,000.
MATAJI
DEEPTI KAPOOR
A visit to the apartment my grandmother shares with my mother in the Delhi satellite city of Greater Noida gives little indication of the life she has led. Ninety years old now, senile, withdrawn, often disobedient (prone to grinning like a naughty child when caught hiding the vegetables on her plate), she is hardly the fearsome woman of memory.
She won’t talk much unless prompted. Even then it’s hard to get words out of her, unless we’re returning to her childhood, the region of her brain that fires as the rest fades. Secondary evidence is hard to come by too; there are no photos of her working life on the walls, no souvenirs, no memorabilia, no certificates. She has carried nothing with her.
But she’s the head of our family. The last one standing.
The men in my family have a habit of dying.
My grandfather, my father, uncles, their children too – they’ve all died too young. My first boyfriend also died; he fell from a moving train trying to film the sunrise. For a long time death haunted me. I saw it everywhere when it wasn’t there. And even now I think my husband will die every time he goes out alone to the shops. As if it’s inevitable.
My grandmother, Prakash Patney, was born in British Lahore – modern-day Pakistan – in 1925. Her father, Lalji, was a confident, thick-set man with a remarkable square face, piercing eyes and a grand moustache. Self-made, very practical, he had trained to be a doctor in his youth and was sent by his older brother to England for higher studies in preventive medicine. When he came back to Uttar Pradesh, he took up a government job doing the same.
Lalji had two other daughters, Pushpa and Kailash, and, after them, three sons, but Prakash, fair-skinned, thin and beautiful, was his first and favourite. A music student, she had an exceptional voice, remarked upon by everyone. What’s more, she was obedient, diligent and highly respectful to her elders. Pushpa and Kailash, on the other hand, were always very naughty, and Lalji didn’t much favour Kailash, despite her intelligence, on account of her dark skin.
It should be pointed out here that Prakash is a boy’s name. Why did she have a boy’s name? Quite simply, because Lalji was expecting a boy; when the son turned out to be a daughter, he saw no need to change the chosen name.
Soon enough Prakash was sent away to the Annie Besant School in Varanasi. Just as she was the favourite of her father, she was of her teachers too. She was the star of the debating team and the drama class, and because of her othe
rworldly voice she always got the best singing parts. She had a friend there, Uma Singh, who was so exceptionally thin that she had to wear two petticoats to fill herself out. Jealous and determined, Prakash trained herself to do 1000 skips in one go, in order to be as thin as Uma Singh.
Life for Prakash here was good – not a care in the world. So when Lalji came to take her out of school, the teachers were terribly upset.
Married at sixteen: nothing remarkable in that. A matrimonial ad had been placed in the papers. Prakash’s future mother-in-law came to examine her. The woman didn’t care for the child’s oiled hair, but Prakash was told to sing for her, and by her voice she was sold.
Married at sixteen: ripped from a blissful life. Now she was thrown into a house to be a wife. There had been cooks in her old home; she’d never made a meal in her life. In her new home she was put to work. Her mother-in-law was aghast at her inability to prepare a meal, and told her she was useless.
Her husband, Lala Babu, was a policeman, a feared agent of the law, well loved in the community, well respected, famous for his mastery of disguise while hunting criminals and his penchant for reckless driving. There’s still a school near Meerut named in his honour, for his role in eradicating banditry in the area. A good husband, too, all told; he didn’t beat his wife. But Prakash’s days were spent with the mother-in-law, in the kitchen, being told how ungrateful she was, how worthless, how badly behaved.
Walking Towards Ourselves Page 20