The Non-Conformist Read online

  PARIKSHAT SAHNI

  NON-CONFORMIST

  Memories of My Father Balraj Sahni

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Prologue

  1. Early Memories

  2. The Bourgeoisie

  3. Marxism

  4. The Two Brothers

  5. The Actor

  6. Kashmir

  7. The Friends

  8. The Parent

  9. Paradoxes

  10. Extraordinary People

  11. Ikraam

  Epilogue

  Illustrations

  Author’s Note

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  For Aditi and Tanya . . . the best daughters a father could dream of having . . .

  And for my grandson Veer, who is already a great writer in his own right!

  ‘Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it—don't cheat with it.’

  —Ernest Hemingway

  Foreword

  ‘Be like Balraj Sahni—he is in the film industry, yet out of it.’

  So advised my father, soon after my first encounter with the film world on a private visit, seeking a job. Some of my experiences were disturbing. They troubled me and gave me reason to believe that maybe I was making a mistake in my choice. But no, Father was right. Balraj-ji was the epitome of my father’s vision.

  When he looked at you with his endearing smile, extending his arms in embrace and spoke, you felt it was your heart that spoke, not his. It was as though the air around him came from a different world, a world that embodied gentility, the goodness of nature, the resonance of divinity. . .

  . . . and as I drive past his home in Juhu, as I often do, I cannot but look at it in despair. Time and desolation have ravaged it and added to it what did not belong to its owner. Diverse conditions are the fatalities of life, and the house symbolizes this reality. But I believe that even though appearances may change, structures may decay, the purity of the heart endures, lives and breathes.

  And as Parikshat sets about putting pen to paper to narrate his father’s life, I send him my heartfelt best wishes and look on him with gratitude, for he will narrate what the world needs to know of this celebrated and distinguished soul, Balraj Sahni.

  I profess to be an actor by profession, and some of our work-related observations guide us in our careers. When I saw Balraj-ji on the screen, it was not the character he was portraying I saw, but only the purity of his heart. The way he moved, the way he spoke and the way he expressed himself were unique and straight from his heart.

  ‘Woh jab dialogue bolte the, toh aise lagta tha ki yahi sahi hai,’ commented a person when I asked him what he thought about Balraj-ji as an actor. There was a refined smoothness about him in all his performances. If I could have, I would have run up to him on the screen, touched his feet and embraced him!

  His cultured and literary background was evident, as I perceived during his meetings and reflective moments with my father. He always came across as one who lived life on his own terms; never derogatory about others and their beliefs, yet respectful to his own.

  There was a simplicity in his being: in entertaining you with a cup of tea in his home, inviting you to play a game of table tennis in the patio in his home, the gentle wave of his hand as he passed by you on his horse, ridden without any frills in Kashmir, quietly without accoutrements, climbing up to Gulmarg.

  I know, for I was a party to it all.

  And every time I drive past his home in Juhu, I recall with great affection the man of immense grace and nobility—Balraj Sahni.

  —Amitabh Bachchan

  Introduction

  It was never my intention to write a book about Dad. Yet I often found myself brooding over memories of him as they surfaced from time to time from the deep recesses of my subconscious mind. These memories were not always lucid and often out of focus, and I found myself trying to cling on to them as they threatened to disappear amidst a fog of shadows. I was treading on thin ice as I tried to evoke and refresh these flashbacks of Dad.

  It is more than forty years since Dad passed away and I am now in my late-seventies. I can’t turn to anyone else to clarify or even shed light on my memories of him. And the mind has a strange way of distorting facts, coloured as they are with the passage of time and the variegated perspectives one gathers through life’s experiences. Yet it never occurred to me that I should, perhaps, write about whatever I could remember to clarify and fix these recurring memories in my mind for good.

  One day, I ran into a close friend, Ali Peter John, a journalist who had known Dad well. We began talking about the old days of cinema and he patted me on my back and said, ‘Start writing your tribute to your great father. You are a very good writer. I remember the short story called “The Bitch” you wrote, which was published in the Illustrated Weekly of India, and the piece you wrote on Sanjeev Kumar on the day of his funeral. Keep acting, brother, keep acting, but you are born to write.’

  His mentioning the Illustrated Weekly of India brought back memories of another writer friend, Anees Jung, who had one evening seen a paragraph of a short story I was struggling to write and forced me to sit down and finish it, no matter how long it took. She goaded me on till three in the morning and only left after she had seen the story completed, taking a copy of it with her and later getting it published in the Illustrated Weekly of India. To Anees I owe a debt of deep gratitude. She injected the bug of writing in me (which, lazy that I am, I did not take too seriously).

  Ali had read that article and was now prompting me to write Dad’s biography, insisting that acting was my secondary job, and first and foremost, I must write. This amused me. He has a weird sense of humour. ‘Born to write’ did he say? I laughed and changed the subject, but the idea of writing about Dad took root in my mind. I tried to get it out of my head, but it kept coming back, prodding me and needling me. And then I remembered what my uncle, Bhisham Sahni Saheb (Dad’s younger brother and a writer of great repute), said to me once. It was February 1984 and we were visiting Delhi. ‘Acting is your job I know,’ he said. ‘But I also know that it doesn’t satisfy your creative yearnings fully. Your true creative expression will come through writing. You can write, I know for sure. You have a good command of the language. Once you sit down to write, you will find new vistas and horizons opening up and you will feel like a new man. Please, please, I implore you . . . WRITE!’

  At that time, I didn’t take what he said about writing seriously, but a few years later he reiterated, ‘I insist you keep your pen moving. Write your reminiscences, stories, anecdotes, articles and everything that interests you, and it will turn out well; take it from me. Give it some time regularly and you will find it worthwhile. If there is a recollection or thought in your mind, it will keep nagging you and keep wanting to be written. Sit down and write it. For the very act of writing will make you more alive. It will give you a deeper understanding of life.’

  Once again, I did not take his advice seriously. I was busy with my acting assignments.

  Then some years later, on 24 April 1992, I met the great veteran actress Dina Pathak-ji at Mumbai airport and she said, ‘Writing is such a rare talent. You have it. Make it a point to write four pages a day. Acting is not really worth much work. The only thing that makes life worthwhile and worth living is WRITING. Your father realized this. And writing is what keeps Bhisham alive. Creative writing must be your main priority. Acting should be only for making money.’

  I thought seriously about what my well-wishers had said. And slowly, the idea ger
minated in my mind. Why not? ‘The very act of writing makes you more alive. It gives you a deeper understanding of life . . .’ is what Bhisham-ji had said. I also began to think seriously about what Ali had advised me. Perhaps I could write little snippets of whatever I could remember. If not people in general, I felt at least my children would appreciate knowing more about their grandfather.

  But there was a problem. I had had a very stormy relationship with Dad. There were many misunderstandings between us. And I didn’t have the guts to put pen to paper (or my fingers to the keyboard) about these issues. I was reluctant to dredge up my memories and kept putting off doing so. But the idea kept nagging me. In the four decades that had gone by since Dad’s demise, I had begun to see life and my relationships in a different light. Ali had advised me, ‘Pehle idea ko khopdi mein pakao’ (first let the idea simmer on the boiling pot of your mind). I followed his advice. I began to introspect. Then, one day, my memories turned into a veritable flood that broke the dam of my resistance. The world knew Dad as an actor and admired him. They did not have a complete picture of him as a man, a father, a husband, a friend and a relative. They knew nothing about his quirks, his way of thinking, his hopes and his dreams.

  So one morning I found myself sitting before my computer and gazing at the blank screen. The burden of memories had become unbearable. My thoughts needed an outlet. I began to type slowly and diffidently about incidents that came to my mind.

  I still could not conceive the idea of writing a full-fledged book, and thought that random stories about him, with no particular sequence, might prove to be interesting to his admirers, whose numbers continue to grow. If the public could hold on to his fame and charisma long after his passing away, surely I, his son, could make a more concerted effort to write about the things that had never been written about him before; and perhaps that would be my humble contribution to posterity.

  Ali Peter John nudged me occasionally, reminding me to begin on this project. But it still appeared to be a monumental task, and I just didn’t know where to begin.

  However, as the book slowly began to take shape, I was amazed at the clarity with which my vague memories of the past started emerging. I became my own therapist as I began to view things from a different perspective and my father’s image turned into that of a colossus, a giant who towered above me, and whom in my childish immaturity I had never fully understood. All my grudges and misconceptions dissipated and I began to realize how wrong I had been in judging him. I am immensely grateful for having been given this opportunity to seek redemption.

  It has been inevitable that, while writing about Dad, I should write about myself too. The two of us were and are inextricably intertwined. While I have tried to portray him as he was, I have also tried to be true to my own impressions and viewpoints about how I saw him during different stages of my life. I have tried to write about all the salient aspects of his life, about what made him who he was and what he held important. In doing so, I have also written about how his life and his beliefs affected me. I have written about the people I met because of him and who played an important role in both our lives.

  I owe a debt of gratitude to Anees Jung for helping me take my first literary steps and to Ali Peter John for sowing the idea of writing a book about Dad in the barren desert of my mind, nurturing it into fertility and continuing to nourish the seed till it sprouted and grew into this book. I thank him for his critique and his input; the interest with which he literally devoured each chapter and offered ideas to add value to the book. He has been an invaluable friend, guide and philosopher for me.

  I also wish to thank Dr Parvin Syal, a dear friend in California, for his critical review of this book and his valuable suggestions.

  I have been a disturbed, confused, depressed and somewhat lonely person all my life. This book has been a catharsis of sorts. It has had a therapeutic effect on me. After writing it, I am finally at peace with myself. Dad has now taken his rightful place at the vanguard of the pantheon of the people I love and revere the most. He is a perennial source of strength to me.

  Prologue

  Balraj Sahni Marg (road): Perhaps this should conjure up a vision of a grand road, named in honour of a stalwart hero, of a person whose memory lingers on long after he has gone from the world. A simple name on a signpost, which commemorates the contributions of an iconic man, of an individual who deserved every accolade showered on him—this street celebrates the prestige of a simple man who rose to awe-inspiring heights.

  The street runs in front of the house my father, Balraj Sahni, built in the late ’60s. He proudly named his house Ikraam, a word that was synonymous with the character of the man who lived in it—generous and hospitable to all.

  I stand in front of the house, and see a great mansion with a beautiful well-tended garden and a huge lawn. There are flowers blooming in neat rows and stately coconut trees swaying gracefully in the sea breeze; the gleaming white walls of the imposing double-storeyed mansion reflecting the bright sunlight; the wide, smooth driveway; the sparkling cars neatly parked in the garages; a plethora of cheeku trees screening the mansion from the neighbouring bungalow. I hear the ringing sound of children’s laughter as they play in the lush garden. The ocean breeze carries with it the fragrance of the blossoming flowers, a delicate and sweet scent that tantalizes the senses as it wafts through the air. I feel my father’s hand on my shoulder as we both look with awe and a sense of proprietorial pride at the grand mansion and its grounds. I shut my eyes, revelling in the sensation of oneness with my father, my environment and myself, and my spirit imbibes this in a moment of complete peace.

  I am rudely awoken from my reverie and brought back to the present by the shrill honking of cars. Taking a moment to emerge from my trance, I look at the street. Far from being a majestic road, it can hardly be called even as a street. At best it is a small, untidy and dirty lane, full of potholes and littered with garbage. Following the monsoons, there are puddles of murky water on the street, evoking expletives from pedestrians as they manoeuvre their way to avoid getting splashed.

  My gaze moves to the once-opulent house, but it retains none of its former glory. It now stands in disrepair and ruin, a sad reminder of its one-time magnificence. Fragments of plaster have fallen off the walls and lie littered on dull and creaky floors, which have not seen the warm glow of fresh polish for decades; some of the mouldy doors stand ajar, loose on their hinges, which have succumbed to the ravages of excessive rain. Many of the windowpanes are broken, with jagged glass edges jutting out of rusting bars in many places, challenging people to dare to enter.

  I glance upwards; my eyes rest on the concrete balcony in front of Dad’s room. Only now it can barely be called a balcony. Completely broken down, it is just a skeletal reminder of a once sturdy structure. Huge plastic sheets cover the mansion’s roof and the side facing the sea to guard it against the monsoon rain and the sea breeze—testimony to the fact that the structure has developed serious cracks and fissures that can no longer withstand the elements. The sheets look like a huge shroud covering a dead or dying creature.

  I try to visualize my father sitting on his favourite chair, enjoying an early morning cup of tea, but my vision is clouded by the reality of the present. My heart skips a beat every time I pass by that dilapidated house, which has lost its splendour to time. The decrepit house is silent, empty and forlorn, in eternal mourning for a lost era, for bygone days, for lives lived and loves lost.

  The garden is full of weeds now. Overgrown and unkempt, there are no remnants of the blooms that had filled the air with their aroma. The plants that have survived despite the neglect make a futile attempt to seek attention—their droopy leaves the only testament to a once flourishing and verdant garden. It has become a jungle of wild bushes and thick undergrowth inhabited by snakes and lizards.

  It has been forty-three years since Dad died and with him died the house, the garden and all that it stood for. Perhaps somewhere, his spirit still hovers over
what was his pride and joy, saddened at the crushing annihilation of his dream. It is as though this material symbol of his existence has totally erased his memories from the face of the earth.

  And yet, his presence is still alive in the people who loved him and still love him. It is alive in those who stop me on the beach or on the road, or approach me at parties and remind me of what a great actor, what a remarkable litterateur and what a fine man he was.

  The other day a gentleman came up to me at a hotel, and shaking my hand, said emotionally, ‘I love your father . . . they don’t make people like him any more.’ A lump forms in my throat and I wish I could somehow conjure him up to receive the adulation meant for him.

  Frequently, people come and touch my feet just because I am his son, as if by this gesture they are venerating the man who gave me life. I find this embarrassing, but very humbling. I can’t hold a torch to Dad—whether in calibre or stature, I feel I don’t measure up to him in any way.

  The other day I was shooting for a marriage scene in a studio in the suburbs. I was acting as the father of the bridegroom. A real pundit, not an actor, was conducting the marriage ceremony. He was a tall and robust man with an imposing tilak on his forehead and dressed in a smart dhoti-kurta. He must have been in his sixties. On seeing me, he got up from his dais and approached me. Surprised, I looked at him questioningly, and before I could say a word, he touched my feet. Abashed, I pulled him up by his shoulders and said, ‘I am not that old and venerable, sir, that you, a Brahmin, should touch my feet!’

  ‘I was not touching your feet, sir, but your father’s,’ he said.

  To my response, ‘But why touch my feet at all? I am not a patch on him,’ he replied, ‘You are his son. You are his flesh and blood . . . and that is enough for me. Your father was a mahapurush (great man). It is an honour to touch his son’s feet.’