The actor gives an insight about his new identity and book he has written
And Then One Day: A Memoir, gives us back a piece of the young man we first met in Nishant
Naseeruddin Shah is not a star in box office terms. But in the firmament of Indian actors he shines bright. Though the assurance of a memorable performance, that his reputation is built around, is no longer a guarantee, we know that that brilliance is still there, somewhere. In 26 episodic reels, And Then One Day: A Memoir, gives us back a piece of the young man we first met in Nishant.
It’s the story of a boy born in Barabanki, to Farrukh Sultan and Aley Mohammed Shah — a below-average student who returns home from hostel for holidays, to a mother who loved him dearly and a father who disapproved of him strongly. Flunking in Class IX, twice, didn’t help his relationship with his father, but it gave him a new lease of life. He was made to change his school.
With no reputation, a new set of friends, he finally got the courage to do what he always wanted to — act. “I have since steadfastly believed that the only magic that happens in this world happens on the stage… no one in the cosmos is more desirous of loving you, for that moment, than an audience...”There’s other kind of love, too. His first wife, Purveen, their daughter Heeba, who he didn’t see for 12 years, and the love of friends.
But there’s also rejection, running away from home, sex, drugs, joining National School of Drama, staging a protest at FTII, getting knifed by his doppelganger, finding a life-long friend in Om Puri, and getting a break, thanks to Girish Karnad. In between the milestones runs the story of an actor who worships Geoffrey Kendal, goes to Poland to learn acting, but returns to suffer Bollywood. This story he tells with illuminating commentary, profound thoughts on acting, all wrapped in delicious bitching. He is wickedly cruel even about people he likes, and is unsparing about himself we see his narcissism and moments of extreme selfishness. At the end we get a film till interval, with a lead character who can only be defined in contradictory adjectives. I met Naseeruddin Shah at Delhi’s Oberoi hotel. In the interview, that was both invigorating and exhausting, he got emotional, joked, mimicked actors, went off-the-record for some serious bitching, and made me wish, for once in my life, that a camera was rolling.
Edited excerpts
Congratulation on your book’s release.
Thank you.
Now that “author" has also been added to your long list of identities, what does it feel like?
(Laughs) It’s a real thrill, I have to say. I am very excited. I think I’m more excited about this than I was about the release of my first film… Though I am fond of writing, I never thought I’d write a book. And the warm reaction I’m getting is very gratifying. It makes me very happy indeed.
You’ve hardly ever promoted your films.
Hmm, never. The ones I have promoted, flopped. So now I have a very good excuse to not promote any films anymore.
Yet you are promoting the book.
Aah! You got me there.Because it’s a thrill for me to talk about it and it’s also, if I may say, putting people off. There was a very angry exchange of emails by ex-students of my school, seniors of mine from St. Joseph’s (Nainital), who lambasted me for saying I hated the bloody school. I mean, I don’t know what business it is of theirs whether I hated it. They didn’t, so? I’m not contesting that… So why do you contest if I say I was miserable there and I got brutalised by those teachers. It was a fact… Promotion can also work that way.
But anyway... I want to talk about the book because I want people to read it... and I think I have written about my life up to the age of 32 in a way that will be interesting to young actors, who are the ones I am really, really concerned with. I hope there are other readers, too… There are aspects of my life that, perhaps, people who follow my work could be curious about, and so I wrote about that.
You begin the book with your childhood, and write very warmly about your mother, mamus, some aunts. And even your father, who you hated at times, but when your write about him, there is a respectful distance. But for yourself, especially when you are describing yourself as a child, you’ve used the choicest… abuses almost. There’s one sentence which is a string of un, un, un, un...
Yes, unattractive, unintelligent, unfriendly, unremarkable.
And later you call yourself stupid, duffer et cetera. Is that how you really see yourself as a child, even today?
I was that kind of child. I think I was afflicted with attention deficit… I just could not pay attention in class. I just could not care what we are being taught, apart from the poems and the drama that we were taught and the stories that we read, nothing else made any sense to me at all…
I was, in fact, a person whose mind was not operating too well at that age. And I had a very short fuse to make matters worse... I was pretty unpopular. I mean, people left me alone in school.
At home?
At home, with dad it was always a big gulf. I could never reach out to him… I could never talk to him, I never felt comfortable with him. For him all I was, was a bad student. It negated every other quality I may have had. It was all that was talked about... Why are you failing in this subject, why are you doing so badly in maths, I’m getting a tutor for you. There was this bloody (presses his fingers into his eyes) line of tutors through my holidays... one trying to teach me biology, one trying to teach me maths, one trying to teach me physics, and while they were talking I was thinking of the next Dara Singh film.
And yet in cinema halls, and sitting at the foot of a stage, you would be (before I can find the word)
Transfixed! Totally transfixed. And I knew that I had to be up there. Something told me I just had to be up there.
And from that age you had this incredible memory, you could memorise long passages?
Ya. From the age of 13 or 14, I’ve memorised these poems and I know them — Ode To a Nightingale, The Road Less Travelled.
So, which is the one soliloquy which you absolutely want to perform, and haven’t yet.
(Pat comes the reply) It is the speech from Waiting for Godot by a character called Lucky. That speech which is… it is complete gibberish of about two-and-a-half pages, one sentence... no punctuation, no comma, no full-stops, nothing. (He pauses for a micro second, and launches into Lucky’s monologue, in one breath, without a pause. I raise both my hands and bow, thrice.)
Some of the chapters — about being alone, disappointing your dad, and there’s that one, I have to say scene, where you keep on cycling away from the house — must have been very difficult to write?
See, I can look back on all those times without any pain now. I can think about them objectively now and I can even be amused about how stupid I was… but it was the terror of facing him, you know, I had failed for the second time in the same class (Class 9), I didn’t know what to expect. He was never violent with any of us. I didn’t think I’d get beaten up or anything, but I was terrified of what he would say. I didn’t know what to do. I think I must have cycled for 15 or 16 miles.
You have this quality about not “sentimentalising” stuff no matter how sentimental it is. Even in your writing, even now when you are speaking, you are always veering away from it.
Yaaa. It’s vulgar to show off your bleeding heart. I think it’s, you know, it’s vulgar. I didn’t say the things there was no need to say. (Speaks in a mock-artificial voice) I suffered greatly, or you know I was so... I felt… the world is not treating me right. What’s the point of saying all these things… I’m a very emotional person, but there’s a difference between being that and being sentimental. And even when I direct actors and so on, I detest sentimental acting. You know, when you act to background music (his eyes and his grin conspire to bitch).
But do you feel empathy for little Naseer?
Oh yes. I know him better than anybody else. I understand him now. I detested myself, I have to say, at that time. Yet, nobody would hang around me so I had to learn to like myself (takes a deep breath).
What’s your relationship with your father today...
(before I can finish, he looks straight at me and says) I’m not at peace with it still... because it never healed, and I think we both lost out on a great deal... I’m not at peace... about it. And the only way I suppose I can come to terms with it is that if I really do not make any of the mistakes he made, with my children. But there are things beyond your control, you know. I suppose I have made some of the same mistakes at times, though I’ve been very conscious not to, and I’ve tried very hard not to, but I think I have.
Do you it’s a tough question to ask, but tougher to answer do you hate your father still, at some level?
No. I don’t, because I heard, I never saw him on his deathbed, but I heard about it (eyes go red, well up, and he just stays in that moment), he didn’t deserve to suffer that way. Nature’s very unkind at times, you know, he didn’t deserve that kind of suffering. I think I (pauses)... No, I don’t hate him anymore. There’s no reason to. And I understand him now though I still don’t agree (laughs) with what he was, and I wish he’d been different.
So, you forgive him?
Ya. And I hope my children can forgive me.
What’s your relationship with your daughter Heeba?
Again, you see, it’s like a... I think she is... Till the age of 14 she lived with her mother. Her mother and I parted in a very acrimonious way... And I dare say she had heard a lot of things about me before she came to live with me. Yet she decided to come and live with me. So there was some pull I suppose, but I don’t know if all the stuff she heard has been forgotten... though I know she cares deeply for me... there is a distance.
Do you see today how you are your father’s son? His preference for all things English, forever isn’t that something you have inherited? Liking Western, foreign films much more.
(Laughs) No, see, liking western films, the reason is quite simple (hahaha) — they are better. Haan? Point made? Okay. I’ll give you an example. I’ll tell you. Bahut Din Hue was the first film I ever saw, about a child hero, a magician and I loved it. I think a few days later I saw Wizard of Oz and I remember even at that age thinking, “Wow! This is a film. That was good, but, it doesn’t compare.”So even at that age, when I would see the swashbuckling movies which we were allowed to see, with Dilip Kumar, Uran Khatola and so on, and then I’d see Rob Roy or Scaramouche or something, I knew. Where was the comparison?
Dilip Saab ko aap aise bol rahe hain?
Nahin, Dilip saab bahut achcha kaam karte the. But woh direct toh nahin karte the films. He was not responsible for the quality of those films. And those were the better films made those days, the Dilip Kumar starrers, which were the only Hindi films dad allowed us to see. Insaniyat. So that was the reason.
Then my preference for Western literature was a little, not because of him, because he was not much into literature, but because of school. I discovered Hindustani literature years and years and years later, almost when I was 45 years old, I discovered Ismat Chughtai.
After you acted with her?
Yaaa, I didn’t know who she was! Can you believe? You know, I have actually sat in the room...
That’s a bit self-obsessive.
Ya. Urdu! Bloody Urdu, shayari? What is bloody Urdu shayari? Gulab and shabab and nawab. What is this bloody nonsense, yaar. Poetry is Wordsworth, poetry is Keats. And I didn’t change my mind about Urdu poetry till I got cast as Ghalib.
I’ll tell you something — in the shooting of Junoon one evening I was sitting in a room with Ismat Chughtai and Amritlal Nagar, a great Hindi writer, as great as Ismat apa is in Urdu, and I had no clue who these two people were. Their stature. Nagarji was rolling some bhang (does, thumb on palm grinding action) and Ismat apa said, “Main bhi aaj bhang khaongi, Naseer aa-jao”. So we sat and we had bhang with Nagarji and, you know, to think that I was in the presence of these two giants and I had not read a word either of them had written.
Moving on to Bollywood, your favourite topic. This is where your books gets cocky, brilliant, bitchy. And you don’t come across as one of the most lovable people in the world, either. So I want to know, what were you smoking when you were writing these bitchy bits?
hahahaha haha No, I was clear headed while I was writing this, because I didn’t want it to become a stoned ramble.
You didn’t smoke?
No
Throughout?
Writing it I didn’t. Thinking about it, I did.While writing I wanted to be clear headed because... one tends to lose perspective when one is stoned. You tend to... develop tunnel vision when you are in that stage. And you lose perspective. And I didn’t want to do do that.
While thinking...
While thinking, yes.
Smoking what?
Oh, good Kerala grass.(We both grin. I check my dictaphone to see if it’s still on record. It is.)
You’ve written “some of the so-called classics were pure brain damage”. So, apart from Sholay, which you love dissing, what else was brain damage?
I think Kaagaz Ke Phool is pure brain damage. Yeah. It’s the most over-rated film of all time.
And Guru Dutt?
I think he made a couple of wonderful movies and he got wonderful performances from Waheeda Rehman. I wish he hadn’t acted in his own movies though. I wish he’d got better a actor. But he had a knack for handling actors. He definitely had a cinematic sense and I think he was plucked away much before his time... I think his body of work till the age of 32 was quite incredible
But?
But. I do not like Kaagaz Ke Phool and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam. At all.
Pray tell why.
I think Kaagaz Ke Phool is a very shallow film. It presents the film industry in a very fake manner. I didn’t believe a second of it. I’ve been in the industry, so I know what the atmosphere of the film industry is like. That’s not how girls are discovered yaar, I mean, come on.
I wanted to talk a little bit about what you’ve not talked about in the book. You mention “luminous ladies” — Waheeda Rehman, Nargis, call them “modern actresses”. You mention “divinely gorgeous Madhubala”, “unbearable sexy Nutan”, “perky sex-bombs”
Aaa, you are getting to Shabana Azmi, I can see.
(I wasn’t, at all) You write about them — “delectable stars, worthy of lighting up any screen in the world” and say you love them all. Love them all.
Yet not a word about their acting?
Arre!
Kahan hai?
Haven’t I said Waheeda Rehman and Nargis still, till today, are Hindi cinema’s modern actors. That’s enough compliment. I’m not going to analyse their work and all. I’m not writing about them... I think what you are getting at is why isn’t Shabana Azmi in that list.
(I’m not) My question is that you treat them as gorgeous women, which they are. But your connect with them is as
As gorgeous women, and not as actors. The only two who were great actor among this lot (which includes Madhubala Meena Kumari, Nutan, Asha Parekh...) were Nargis and Waheeda Rehman... The others were all great stars, very popular, and considered great actors, too, Nutan and Meena Kumari particularly... I think they were way too sentimental. Waheeda and Nargis were the last word as far as female actors in India go. They have not been bettered till today. And that includes Shabana Azmi. And about Shabana, what I’ve written, apparently she’s taken great offence to it.
Because you’ve said
Because I’ve said that she has a smug reverence for her own work... Hasn’t she been praised enough? I mean how much more praise does she want? And if she can’t take three lines of criticism, compared to three paragraphs of praise, then I think there’s something wrong with her.
So, Smita Patil.
She didn’t figure. Apart from the shots we did together, I had nothing to do with her.
She had pretensions about being a serious actor. She looked down on commercial movies even when she was doing them, but maybe that was her forte. Because I happened to work with her in that phase and I could see how she was being affected by it. So when I say that she was acting like Amitabh Bachchan in Umbartha, I’m not joking. She had been working with him and her performance is pure Amitabh Bachchan in Umbartha (Shakti, Namak Halaal and Umbartha all released in 1982).
Apart from film, theatre, cricket, the only extracurricular activity in your book is
Smoking dope (laughs)
Yes. And sex.
Ya, isn’t that enough to pass your time? They are two pleasurable activities and one can devote a lot of time to those two.
There’s this bit about how you wanted to experience sex on LSD, with the mysterious R. Did you?
Nooo.
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