2
Bangla Bolte Paro?
THE TAGORE FAMILY TREE
The first time I attended a press conference in Kolkata, a journalist kept referring to Amman as Sharmila Thakur. I let it go once, twice even, but finally I felt compelled to correct her. ‘My mother’s name is not Thakur,’ I explained kindly, ‘it’s Tagore.’ The woman looked at me as if I were joking and then as if I were mad. Back at the hotel my manager broke it to me that Tagore is the anglicized version of Thakur, just as Chatterjee is of Chattopadhyay or Bose is of Basu.
I am half Bengali and Bangla is my mother tongue but I am afraid I do not speak it very well. Or at all, really. I have learnt a few lines to appease the local media when I visit West Bengal during Durga Pujo, for an event or a film promotion. But in spite of my linguistic limitations, it would be unjust not to devote some part of this book to the maternal side of my family. If my fame pales in comparison to the begums and nawabs who pepper the paternal side of my pedigreed ancestry, my mother’s maiden name is no less daunting in its celebrity—Tagore.
The Tagore family has been one of the leading families of Calcutta for hundreds of years, rising to prominence during the Bengal Renaissance in the nineteenth century. The family has produced several notable personalities in various fields of art, the most famous being Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 and the only writer to have penned the national anthems of two countries—India, of course, and neighbouring Bangladesh. There is some confusion as to how exactly my mother is related to Rabindranath Tagore. I wanted to clarify the connection in this chapter and so I called up my mother to better understand. This is how our conversation went:
Me: Amman, how exactly are you related to Rabindranath Tagore?
Amman (taking a deep breath and launching forth): Dwarkanath Tagore had three sons, one of whom was Girindranath Tagore and one who was Debendranath Tagore. Debendranath had fourteen children (!!!), his penultimate child being Rabindranath Tagore. Girindranath (perhaps more aware of the population crisis which his brother was partially responsible for and seemed oblivious to!) had two sons: Ganendra and Gunendra. Gunendra had three sons: Gaganendra, Samarendra and Abanindra. Gaganendra had a son called Gitindranath, your Dada, my father . . .
Me: I’ll have to call you back. With a pen. And lots of paper.
And I thought it was silly of my parents to give us four-letter names starting with S—Saif, Saba, Soha!
After much name-dropping I figured it out. My mother’s paternal great-grandfather was Gaganendranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore’s nephew. Gaganendranath himself was an influential artist who studied and assimilated Japanese brush techniques and the influence of Far Eastern art into his own work. He then went on to develop a post-modern style and was responsible for bringing Cubism, considered by many to be the most influential art movement of the twentieth century, to India. But it is the connection with Rabindranath Tagore, or Robi Da as he was called by those close to him, that is most celebrated.
It is from my maternal grandmother, Ira Tagore, that I learnt about Robi Da. She adored him. She told us how she first met him in 1933 at Jorasanko, the Tagore ancestral home, where he was performing one of his dance dramas. He was seventy-two, she was thirteen and completely in awe of him. Yet somehow she mustered up the courage to approach him.
‘What can I do for you?’ she remembers him asking her. She shyly handed him her autograph book to sign, which he did. He then asked Lal Didi (we all called Amman’s mother Lal Didi after the red bindi she always wore) to act in one of his plays. It wasn’t much she told us, just a small non-speaking part—her first and last tryst with acting. Lal Didi met Robi Da a few times after that at family weddings and cultural events.
Robi Da loved eating luchis as did Lal Didi, and so she would seek him out during mealtimes when he was sure to be served hot fluffy maida luchis which he would share with her. Post dinner he would retire to his room and all the children would fight over who got to press his legs.
It was on one of these evenings that Robi Da confessed to Lal Didi that he found her pishi Swarnalata (her father’s elder sister) very beautiful and that he had wanted to marry her but because of her tainted background his father had not allowed it. Lal Didi’s grandfather, Rai Bahadur Gunabhiram Barua, had married a widow after his first wife died and this second wife gave birth to Swarnalata. Hindu social conventions in those days forbade widow remarriage and so this union and any consequences of it were viewed with disapproval.
You would think Robi Da’s father, Debendranath Tagore, one of the founders of the Brahmo Samaj, an enlightened soul and reformer of Hinduism, would not have paid heed to such an archaic custom but you’d be surprised. Lal Didi, all of thirteen and not one to let convention stand in her way, leapt at the opportunity.
‘So what? I’ll marry you!’ she told Robi Da passionately. Robi Da, perhaps accustomed to girls proposing to him over the odd luchi, asked for her autograph book and wrote her this poem instead:
Shono Shrimati Ira
Kon bishoshon-e mile tomar naam
Shokal bela onek bhabhilam
Jani na tumi adhira ki na
Othoba tumi dheera
Shono Shrimati Ira
Naamer mil kon ratan shaathe
Bhabhiloom tai kolom niye haathe
Noy to neela noy to chuni
Tumi kamal heera
Translation:
Listen Ira,
All morning I have thought
Of adjectives to define your name
Are you impatient?
Or are you tranquil?
Listen Ira,
Pen in hand I wonder
Which jewel do I compare you to?
Neither sapphire, nor ruby,
You are a rare lotus diamond.
A few years later when Didi went to Santiniketan to study under Tagore’s tutelage, he wrote her another poem:
Prayag-e jekhane Ganga Jamnuna
Milayechhe dhara
Sekhane tomar dekhechhinu ki chehara.
Dwibeni tomar naam diyechhinu
Dui beni mukhomukhi
Peethe nemecchilo achal jharna bujhi.
Aaji e ki dekhi khopaye tomar
Badhiya tulechho beni,
Chander majhiya jomechhe megher shreni.
Ebar tomar naam badal
Na kore upay nai.
Khopa-garobini khobani dakibo tai.
Translation:
Where Ganga-Yamuna meet in Prayag
I saw your visage, haunting,
Named you Dwibeni
Two pleats cascading down your back
Like a waterfall in spate.
And today, I see
Your hair tied in a bun
Like dark clouds
Gathering around the moon.
This calls for a change of name
Shall I call you chignon-proud ‘Khobani’
Many years later, in 1970, when my grandparents were moving home in Calcutta from Belvedere Estate to Niharika Building in Alipore Road, Lal Didi realized she had left her bangle box behind in the old house. She asked Dada, my maternal grandfather, to pick it up on his way back from the office. He did so the next day and as he handed over the brightly coloured box he told her that there were two tattered scraps of paper nestled among the bangles which he had done her the good service of tearing up and throwing away.
I would give anything to see Lal Didi’s face when she heard this! She must have turned as red as her bindi. The ‘scraps of paper’ were the precious first autograph by Rabindranath Tagore that she had lovingly kept for thirty-seven years and a letter from Jawaharlal Nehru! She could have killed him, she told us later.
Santiniketan
Lal Didi and Robi Da
Lal Didi was one of the most progressive thinkers in our family. She was liberal and funny and we all looked forward to her visits. Dada passed away in 1999, many years before her, and she must have been devastated to lose her lif
e partner. When Sarkar Abba passed away, Badi Amman resolved to only wear white—I can only ever remember her wearing white saris or a white gharara. She shunned all colour, all adornments.
Lal Didi dressed to the nines
Badi Amman (in the white sari) and her peeps
I had assumed Lal Didi, coming from a Brahmin family, would do the same. But she did not. She continued to wake up early every morning to dress up in colourful silk saris, matching shoes and handbag to boot; she always wore lipstick and kajal and covered up every pesky grey hair with painstaking precision, even when she was in the ICU with a heart scare. The only thing she stopped wearing was the big red bindi, a sign of wedlock. She told Amman that Dada had loved the way she made an effort to dress up every day and he would not have wanted her to stop.
Lal Didi was not one to be swayed by the opinions of others. Even when she was a young girl in a family with three brothers, she managed to carve a path for herself. She was always interested in philosophy and psychology and wanted to pursue higher studies after her BA. In early-twentieth-century India women were not encouraged to pursue a college education and Lal Didi’s maternal uncle, with whom she was sent to stay in Allahabad after her own mother died during the birth of Lal Didi’s younger sister, thought a BA was more than sufficient for her. On 15 November, her birthday, Lal Didi’s father wanted to give her a Benarasi sari as a present. The sari cost Rs 50. And in those days the fees for an MA were the same. Lal Didi appealed to her father to send her to Banaras Hindu University instead. Impressed by her steadfast focus he, being more liberal-minded than her uncle, decided to give her both but on the condition that she study privately since attending a co-educational college was out of the question. Once enrolled there was no money left for books and she had to borrow textbooks and reference material from those who could spare them.
The Graduate
Electricity had only just come to the main districts of Uttar Pradesh and her uncle would not allow her to keep the lights on to prepare for her exams. Undeterred, Lal Didi studied hard and when she passed her father told her how proud he was of her. In getting an MA in English she had managed to do what none of his sons had done.
When I think about my grandmother and her struggle to attain what I took to be my right—a tertiary educational qualification—I am inclined to believe the struggle for women’s empowerment in India has progressed, if not in leaps and bounds then at least by a few meaningful steps for some of us.
My paternal great-grandmother was married at the age of nine and had her first child when she was thirteen, Lal Didi had to fight for her degree and Amman has been asked her whole life how her husband ‘allowed’ her to work. My life, in comparison, has been smooth sailing where at every stage I have enjoyed the privilege of choice—be it higher studies, occupation or life partner, and for this I am so grateful to my foremothers for paving the way!
My mother’s side of the family has always been driven by intellectual and creative pursuits—Amman and her two younger sisters were also trained in dance and theatre from a young age. In 1956, at the age of five, Oindrila or Tinku Mashi (her ‘daak naam’), was cast in the role of Mini in Tapan Sinha’s Kabuliwala with Chhabi Biswas in the lead role. The film was based on a short story written by Rabindranath Tagore and it seemed appropriate that someone from his family play the role. Chinki Mashi, the youngest sister, was also offered a role in 36 Chowringhee Lane by Aparna Sen which she turned down as she wasn’t interested in films. Of the three, it was Amman who went on to become a celebrated movie star.
After seeing Tinku Mashi in Kabuliwala, Satyajit Ray came looking for her elder sister to cast in the role of Aparna in Apur Sansar, the World of Apu. At the time, most ‘good’ families did not allow their daughters to work in films but Ray felt that as this family had already permitted one daughter to act in a film they would be less likely to object. Even though Amman was only thirteen at the time, Dada said they had no objections to her acting in the film but would not take any responsibility for her acting abilities or lack thereof!
Still from Apur Sansar
The objection came from Mrs Das, the principal of the Diocesan school where Amman was studying. She was adamant: ‘If Sharmila will act in films she cannot continue to study in this school,’ was the ultimatum given. The reason: It would set a bad example for the rest of the students. Dada could not contain his indignation.
‘We are that Tagore family which has broken all stereotypical practices. Our family was one of the first in Guwahati to allow widow remarriage,’ he declared proudly. ‘We don’t want our daughter studying in this school.’ (He was referring of course to Rai Bahadur Gunabhiram, Lal Didi’s grandfather who married a widow.)
Amman was enrolled into Loreto Convent, Asansol, the next day. Apur Sansar went on to become a huge success and Ray cast Amman in Devi the following year during the school summer holidays. She was offered more films after that, notably a role in the film Kanchenjunga, but had to turn them down because she had to sit for her senior Cambridge exams, which she passed with distinction.
The call from Bombay came in 1961. Shakti Samanta was making a film called Kashmir Ki Kali starring Shammi Kapoor and he wanted to cast Amman in the lead. Lal Didi and Dada had to think hard before letting her do this film; they understood this would mean a complete change of direction for her—commercial cinema, living in Bombay, not being able to go to college. When she finally signed the contract it was for two films together. One thing led to another and soon Amman was a successful Hindi film heroine. She was famous. Lal Didi would accompany her on outdoors to Kashmir and Nainital, among other places, and when she couldn’t—like when she was expecting Chinki Mashi—one of Dada’s sisters would go.
An Evening in Paris
Swati
Apur Sansar
Lal Didi happily confessed to us that she was most excited when Amman was shooting with Uttam Kumar. She had a ‘massive crush’ on him—her own words—and would arrive on set every day during the shooting of Nayak and stare at him until he became uncomfortable and moved out of sight.
Lal Didi embraced life and enjoyed every moment of it: She loved the company of young people—her grandchildren and their friends, and we in turn adored her. She loved her two watered-down whiskies every night. In fact, she told us it was her father-in-law who taught her which alcohol to drink, and that it was easier to stay within one’s limits with whisky as opposed to other drinks.
She would make us laugh—like the time when she had to have an eye operation. I called her to ask her what had happened.
‘I was watching Salaam Namaste in the theatre,’ she said agitatedly. ‘The heroine’s voice was so shrill I dislocated my retina!’
She loved watching movies. Towards the end, when she was in hospital, and the promos of my film Ahista Ahista were being shown on TV, she kept saying that she wanted to be able to see it. She never could see the movie but she did watch all my other films, the good and the bad, and would call me to tell me her thoughts.
I remember watching Rituparno Ghosh’s Antarmahal with her, a Bengali film set in nineteenth-century Calcutta where I play a repressed ‘Chhoti Bahu’—wife to a wealthy zamindar intent on producing an heir. Attired as all Bengali women of that time period, I was wrapped in a sari without a blouse. The movie was commercially and critically acclaimed and my performance was well liked by most, but Lal Didi was insistent that I play no more of these blouse-less characters.
If Uttam Kumar was her crush in the 1960s then my grandmother’s twenty-first-century crush was undoubtedly Aamir Khan. When I told her I had bagged a role in Rang De Basanti she said she wanted to come to the set to meet Aamir. We shot in Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur and Punjab but sadly she was unable to come to any of the locations. However, in January 2006, when we were in Kolkata for film promotions, I asked Aamir if I could invite my grandmother to his hotel room to say hello. He kindly agreed. Lal Didi arrived beautifully turned out in a green silk sari the colour of bottled glass, her hai
r elegantly swept back into a neat bun at the nape of her neck. Aamir sat her down in a comfortable chair and asked her if she would like some tea or a fresh juice of some kind. Pat came the reply: ‘Teacher’s, no ice.’ I bit back a smile at Aamir’s look of surprise. It was 4 p.m.
If Lal Didi was liberal and independent in spirit, my Amman is much the same. At seventeen she was already living and working in Bombay. She was the first Indian actress to model a bikini on a magazine cover. At twenty-four, when her career was at its peak, she chose to commit what many called professional hara-kiri, and got married—to a Muslim prince at that, at a time when inter-religious marriages were uncommon. She continued to work after marriage and well into motherhood; my brother was born two years after her marriage. In fact my childhood memories are of Abba being at home and Amman going to work—she would get us to wish her ‘10 on 10’ as she was leaving.
The first dance
You can never be overdressed or overeducated
Two hearts and a diamond
I am the youngest of three. By the time I was born Amman was not working as much as she must have been when Bhai was young. I remember her being an active member of the school PTA, participating in bake sales and charity fundraisers. She would drop my sister and me off to school every morning until we reached that age when we are embarrassed by our parents and prefer them to stay a mile away from us in public.
There was even a time when she had chickenpox—which she got from me because I refused to stay away from her during the contagious phase—and I still insisted she come to school to drop me. Which she did, wrapped from head to toe in muslin and swooning from the fear of being discovered to be an irresponsible parent, exposing the children to pestilence. But apart from this one lapse of judgement, Amman continues to be the wisest and most sensible person I know. I have sought her advice on multiple occasions because I know she will not merely say what I want to hear but what I need to hear. From choice of boyfriend or college, to length of skirt and shape of eyebrow, I have always known where my mother stands. She is not exactly subtle with her opinions. Although not easy to digest, especially as a rebellious teenager, it would annoy me no end that ultimately she had the uncanny ability to always be right.
The Perils of Being Moderately Famous Page 3