Moments of Truth: My Life with Acting

Alter

Chapter 1

One day in the late 1950s, late in the evening, it was raining so heavily that I was stuck in Ranjit Studio in Dadar, where I used to spend most of my time in those days. I was in director Mahesh Kaul’s office. That day, Kaul Saheb and the other staff had left after the day’s work, while I lingered on with my friend Manu Naik who looked after production. Surender Kaul, a nephew of Kaul Saheb who was also his Chief Assistant, and who used to stay at the premises, was also there with us.

Meena Kumari, one of the major stars of that era, was shooting for a film called Akeli Mat Jayio in a Bombay studio that day when it started pouring and shooting had to be called off for the day. Meena Kumari, with the cameraman, came up to Kaul Saheb’s office on the first floor for shelter. Soon rain turned to storm, and the Studio began to get flooded. Meena-ji’s car had not yet arrived to take her home, and there was no way for it to come for her in that deluge. Hence she had to wait until the situation improved, which seemed unlikely until the next morning, because along with waiting for the rain to stop, she’d have to wait for the water to recede, too, before she could leave for home.

Since everybody else also had to stay in the Studio for the night, food had to be arranged for all of us. Nothing elaborate was possible, so Manu Naik asked the office boys to get two dozen eggs, two whole breads, butter, and some milk for tea, which we hoped would suffice for the seven of us stranded there until next morning. Surender Kaul had acted in the film Saheb, Biwi aur Ghulam with Meena-ji, so she knew him. He brought out a deck of cards and he, Meena-ji and her cameraman Buwa-ji got busy playing a game of rummy. When the two office boys returned with the food, Manu Naik made them prepare whatever the guests preferred–boiled eggs or omelette, and lots of toast and butter with cups of steaming hot tea–very welcome in that cool weather.

Meena-ji saw Manu Naik and me sitting apart from them, so she asked who the other two men, besides the office boys, were. Surendra Kaul told her about us, and about my background as an actor who has trained in New York. Meena-ji was quite intrigued with that piece of informtion–training as an actor and that too in New York! She was most eager to meet this man who had gone all the way to New York to train as an actor. After we were formally introduced, she said, ‘Hmm … so actors undergo training too? This is the first time I’m hearing about this. We just memorise the dialogues, try to understand them properly and then deliver them. What else is there to do?’

I explained to her that just as all performing arts–whether dance, singing or music–need to be mastered by undergoing systematic training or riyaz, similarly actors too needed to hone their talents by practising certain exercises. She said, ‘Ok, but we always thought that actors are born …’ ‘Yes they are, and talent is a must, just like in singing and dancing, but it stays incomplete if one does not train with a master in the field. It takes a lot of time, too, to learn as you keep performing, and yet one can never truly master the art …’ Meena-ji saw some point in my arguments, and asked to see some exercise that the actor does while training. I explained to her that it was difficult to show someone all about training so briefly, but Meena-ji insisted, ‘c’mon, show me something …’ So I agreed.

I turned to Surendra Bhai and asked him to do an improvisation exercise. He said he had never heard of it, forget about knowing how to do it. I told him that I’d explain how to go about the exercise, and having done some work as an actor, he’d be able to do it–just enough to illustrate to Meena-ji how improvisation works. I explained to Surendra Bhai the five W’s–Purpose, Motivation, Place, Time, and Relationship, and then set him a situation. The scene was between two brothers who worked together in the family business. The younger brother felt he was under the thumb of the elder one, who had full control of the business. The younger wanted his space, and to be treated as an equal and be given equal importance. The dialogues were not given, and the actors would have to improvise the dialogue along the lines of real life conversations. The younger brother, played by me, was to start by stating his purpose, his wants and needs, and then the elder brother would respond to it, to which the younger would react, and so on. Acting really was just reacting to each other. Meena-ji exclaimed, ‘How will you do it without knowing the dialogues beforehand?’ I told her to wait and watch. ‘OK, let’s see,’ she said. And with that, we started.

Surendra Bhai, playing the elder brother, was sitting in the office doing some work when I entered and sat down opposite him. I said, ‘I need to talk to you.’ ‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’ he snapped. I responded with, ‘But this is important!’ Slowly, it developed into a heated argument. Finally, I told him I couldn’t work with him and he shouted, saying ‘Who wants to work with you?’ I said, ‘I’ll go and tell Dad.’ He shouted, ‘Go then.’ ‘I will! I will!’ I shouted before leaving the room, banging the door loudly behind me.

Meena-ji was left surprised, and wondered how it had worked out so well without the help of given dialogues. I explained to her that this was an exercise for the actors to get involved in their act, and if they really did get involved in the give and take of the conflict, the emotions occur of their own accord. All the actors have to do then is to give full expression to their feelings. It was an exercise for emotional limbering which helps actors get involved in their characters, so that they don’t seem to act anymore, but feel like they are real people to the audience. ‘You’re right,’ Meena-ji said. ‘Can I try it?’

Seeing her enthusiasm, I began to think of a situation to suit Meena-ji. It occurred to me that a situation from Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam, where she pleads with her husband (Rehman) to not go to the kotha that night, would suit her eminently, and it would be easy for her to do as well, given that she had already done it once. Even though the scene enacted itself through a song, she understood the purpose and motivation of it, and would easily be able to improvise it with dialogues. The song went like this: ‘Na jao saiyan chhuda ke baiyan, kasam tumhari main ro padoongi…’

I explained the situation to her and then asked Surendra Bhai to play her husband. The scene began with Surendra Bhai, who started getting ready to go out. Meena-ji came from behind and put her arms around him. Surprised, he reacted, saying ‘What’s all this suddenly?’ ‘This is love,’ she said, ‘that you never see. This evening you stay with me … I’ll drink with you and dance for you …’ He laughed derisively, saying ‘You, who won’t let me drink, will drink? And dance! You …?’ Thus they carried on, the situation heating up and both of them getting so involved that they started to throw invectives at each other. Finally, he left and she shouted after him, ‘Go see if you get love from that tawaif of yours. You’ll never find love,’ she cursed, ‘never!’

After it was over, she sat down, stunned, and kept saying ‘… I was there! I was there! O god, I never thought I could have such cheap thoughts, I never thought I could argue so violently … How did this happen …!’ Then I explained to her that when one gets really involved, then the subconscious comes into play and we find out sides of our personality that we never knew existed. We get surprised to see how it all happened, how unexpectedly we reacted. This exercise is good for an actor, because it helps him explore the depths of his feelings, get to know himself, and then live truthfully in the given circumstances of a scene. And then it remains with him for ever, helping him nurture the mechanism of spontaneous behaviour. It was a revelation to her, and she remained amazed. She told us how she had never had this kind of intense experience ever in all the years of her life she had spent acting in Hindi cinema–it was the experience of a lifetime for her.

* * *

The Pan Am Super constellation propeller jet took off from Palam, Delhi’s principal airport of that time. It was September 19th, 1954; I was bound for New York.

Family and friends had come up to the tarmac to bid me good-bye. It was permissible to do so then, long before the days of terror were upon us. From the plane’s window I could see them wave good-bye to me, adding to my already pent up feelings of separation. These feelings finally manifested themselves in the form of tears that I somehow managed to conceal from public view.

Once air-bound, the pilot announced that we would be making stops at Karachi, Lebanon, Istanbul, and Dusseldorf before landing in London, from where I was to change planes for New York.

New York! It hit me at last. For up until now I had been living as though in a dream. It was reality now. I was actually on the plane to New York! I could see the propellers of the plane working their way towards our destination. In two days’ time I’d be there. How did this miracle happen? While I mused upon this, I heard the pilot announce that we would soon be landing at Karachi.

Karachi, Pakistan! A stab of bitter resentment rushed through me. The pain of partition was still very fresh in the mind. This had been my country–North West Frontier Province, District Dera Ismail Khan, Tehsil Kulachi (where I was born) but it was now part of that country! I have never been able to visit my birth place–not once–because of all the visa problems that arise because of the tensions between the two countries that were, not too far back, parts of the same country. It’s incredible!

My birthplace Kulachi, a small tehsil, had walls built around it a long time ago to prevent the so-called wazirs (or robbers) from raiding and plundering the tehsil. Hence the four gates along the walls were kept closed at all times, to be opened only when required. The townsfolk would stand on guard at all times for fear of the wazirs. But by the time of partition, there was no fear of the wazirs any more. They had long been subdued by the British, in whose Raj law and order was absolute, resulting in the gates staying open at all times.

My mother and other female neighbours–most of whom were related to us–would go out of one of the gates closest to our locality to fetch fresh drinking water. About two kilometres outside of the gate there was a stream that would be dry all year round except in the summer, when water gushed down it with such speed and fury that it could sweep one away into oblivion within moments. In the dry season the women would dig up the sand in the banks of the stream to make tiny wells, from where pure fresh water would spring up, ready to be collected by the women in their clay pots.

My father, who had done a course in Sugar Technology from AHBTI, Kanpur, after his B.Sc., was working in the sugar mills in U.P. (United Provinces, now Uttar Pradesh) as a chemist, while my mother and I stayed back with my grandparents in Kulachi. It was one of the most memorable periods of my childhood. My grandfather, I was told, was so fond of me that when I was two or three years old he would carry me around the entire market on his shoulders, beaming with joy when everyone would admire his grandson.

My grandfather was a very religious man. He would be up at four every morning and, after performing his morning ablutions, would sit down for his prayers. After that he would set off to milk the cows, then leave them in the countryside to graze. I remember the summer mornings to have been nice and cool, perfect to trudge around in the countryside, but as the day progressed it would become extremely hot: the temperatures would go upto 120°F with the sandy banks of the stream adding to the heat. It seems amazing, now, that we could have spent the entire summer without electricity, without fans, but only with the breeze that nature provided. At night, on the other hand, a cool breeze would blow from the sandy banks to the first floor terrace where we all slept, lulling us to a sweet, dreamless sleep. The winters, however, were severe, making it necessary for us to sleep indoors, quilts and all.

My eldest uncle worked in the district courts in Dera Ismail Khan, and lived there. My father would come home in the summers, when the sugar mill would be shut because the supply of sugarcane had stopped. Sometimes another uncle, younger than my father, would come to stay with us too. Since he was in the army, his visits would be short. When we had visitors in the summer and had to sleep on the terrace, we would make separate cubicles for the guests and their wives to sleep in, to ensure their privacy.

We had a touch down at Lebanon. There was no sign of the strife that was to happen later. In Istanbul, where the stop was longer, we went into a cafe where I had my first taste of Turkish coffee. I invited my fellow Indian traveler, who was also on his way to the U.S., to join me, and both of us relished and savoured the exotic taste. I saw the waiters wearing loose pajama. It reminded me of my early school days in Kulachi where I used to wear the same to the madrasa where I was studying. We would walk down to the madrasa everyday, past bullock carts carrying large, tasty watermelons, a specialty of our town, carrying an Urdu primer called ‘Qaida’, and a ‘takhti’, a small wooden blackboard, on which we would write with a piece of chalk. I must have attended the madrasa only for a year or two, though, before my father called us over to U.P. to stay with him.

In my grandparents’ house all the meals were strictly vegetarian; even onions were forbidden. They were so strict that once, when my younger brother mischievously placed an onion in my grandfather’s thali, he got so furious that he flung away the thali, which went flying a good hundred meters, missing my grandmother by mere inches. This was accompanied by the choicest of cuss words that my grandfather could think of, which he was wont to emitting whenever he lost his temper. My grandfather was a bundle of contradictions; he had extremes of gentleness and rage. He would laugh his toothless laugh endlessly when the mood came over him, while when angry he was the devil personified. His temper made everyone scurry for cover: the children would rush to hide behind their mothers and grandmother, who would themselves be shuddering in fear, eager to get away from the brunt of grandfather’s anger.

On another occasion, my young teenage uncle had gotten hold of some boiled eggs, which both he and I were savouring as we lay under the cover of a quilt. This was my first taste of something forbidden, and although I relished the egg itself, I enjoyed it all the more because it was forbidden. It felt sinful eating it. The egg yolk was still in our mouths when, like a bolt from the blue, retribution struck in the form of my grandfather. Sensing something amiss, he lifted the quilt, aghast, to find the two of us chomping away on eggs. Ordering my uncle to go into one of the rooms, he followed him with a rope (the same one that he tied the cows’ hind legs with when milking them), waving it ominously in his hand. Hearing the loud sounds of whipping as the rope landed each time on my uncle’s body, my grandmother and my mother rushed in, but stood quivering in a corner, unable to save him from grandfather’s wrath. Having done with it, my grandfather came out of the room, cursing, and threw away the rope as he strode out of the house. That was the price you paid for breaking the vegetarian rule in the house.

In September and October, when the weather would become cool and pleasant, the town would get ready for ‘Ram Lila’, the folk theatre based on the Ramayan. This went on for a good twenty days, culminating in the killing of the villainous Ravana. A big effigy of Ravana would be erected on the sandy banks of the now dried-up river. A fiery arrow from the bow fired by Lord Ram would pierce Ravana’s body, setting it aflame; fire crackers would shoot out of the body, which would finally tumble down, thus putting an end to the saga of good and evil. Those are the days I enjoyed the most in Kulachi, as grandfather would take me every evening for the Ram Lila, and we would watch it till late in the night. My pockets would be full of dry fruits, which I would munch while I watched the events unfold before me with deep fascination. When Ram, Sita and Laxman were exiled, and would travel around the forests enduring all kinds of trials and tribulations, my heart went out to them. It was all so real for me. I fully believed in their narrative, and looked forward to the next evening for more inspiring, enthralling and spectacular adventures to unfold before me.

That is when the lure of acting was instilled in me. One day, while in the marketplace with my grandfather, the man who played Ram in the Leela was pointed out to me as he passed by. I couldn’t believe it. How could someone who was playing Ram be walking about like a commoner? I froze in my steps as I gaped at him. People asked me if I wanted to meet him, but I was too stunned, dumbfounded: meet Ram? He saw me standing transfixed and approached me, gently putting his hand on my head, but I still seemed unable to move; my eyes were glazed as I continued to stare dumbly at him. He smiled gently at me, and then walked away, as regal in real life as in the Leela. That was the moment my fascination with acting began.

Acting: the magical art that transforms men into gods and demons, Ram and Ravana, good and bad. The potential not only for good, but for bad and ugly which is present in all of us, but which we cannot act upon in our daily lives for fear of consequences, can be freely expressed through this art of acting, given one has the talent for it. We can express life in all its colours, spanning the widest spectrum of experiences and feelings through acting, giving them all a free rein of expression that we may not be able to otherwise.

We touched down at Dusseldorf, Germany, for a short halt. Finally arriving at Heathrow airport in London, however, was an altogether different experience.

It was in the wee hours of the morning that we touched down in London. From the airport we drove in the airline bus through the empty streets. I was eagerly looking forward to witnessing a fully awake London, with its hustle and bustle and the famous Piccadilly Circus. We were dropped off at a hotel, the name of which escapes me, as does the area of London it was located in. We were to stay there till late evening, when we were to take the flight to New York.

My roommate was the same Indian co-traveler who had shared the Turkish coffee with me at Istanbul; he was going to join a university somewhere in southern U.S.A. From the window of the hotel room, I looked down to see a delivery van screech to a halt in the street. London was waking up! After breakfast, my roommate and I decided to explore; we found out the bus routes to some well known places in the city, also making sure we knew the bus routes back to the hotel.

We spent the whole day sightseeing, returning well in time for our flight to New York in the evening. As there was a little time before we had to board the flight, I decided to try out some Scotch whisky, which was not easily available to us in India. My roommate was also eager to join in, and so we ordered some Scotch and soda. I still remember the occasion vividly: the waiter, a white man, had wheeled in a trolley and on it sat two glass tumblers in which sparkled golden yellow whisky, which the waiter served us with ice and soda. We savoured it like it was some kind of elixir. As per the custom there, we paid the waiter a ten-percent tip; when he said ‘Thank you, sir’, it added to the thrill of the experience. Having grown up before the Indian Independence, we were used to the sight of the words ‘Indians and dogs forbidden’ hanging above the entrance to important places. After having borne such insults for so long, the sight of an English waiter saying ‘Thank you sir’ made us feel nothing short of elated.

The flight from London to New York was a long one, with only a brief stopover at Shannon. We landed on the morning of September 21st, the day I was supposed to join my acting classes.

* * *

Once the seed of acting was sown in me, it was natural for it to germinate. The process started with my father bringing us away to Lucknow, far away from anywhere I had been to until then; Dera Ismail Khan was the farthest I had been to, and that too only to visit relatives. As the train approached Lucknow railway station, with its shimmering lights, I was enchanted; it seemed magical to me, never having seen so many lights at one place before. I don’t think we stayed there for long. But two things about the station stand out in my memory. One was the kulfi wala who came every evening with a big matka full of kulfi on his head, with a light flickering on its lid, chanting ‘kulfi, malai kulfi!’ And the other was the incident when I found myself all alone in the station. My parents were apparently lost, and for a while I thought I’d never see them again; I did not know the way home either, which further contributed to making me feel that I would be lost forever. My world collapsed in that instant. As a young child that can be a very frightening thing to feel