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What we learn from Naseeruddin Shah’s autobiography And Then One Day..A Memoir (Penguin Books India/Hamish Hamilton), is what we need to learn. No more, no less. Nothing extravagant about milestones reached, rewards gathered, boxes ticked. Like  tempered chocolate or like a quintessential Naseer performance, the writing is perfectly poised between a melting point and gradual, cool normalcy. This celebrity autobiography does not turn into a perfect platform for preening. It is not even like Dilip Kumar’s autobiography where only others reflect upon your greatness. This is about a man who stumbled upon fame and negotiated with it to keep his privacy, his sanity, his love for his craft intact. A love that survived his innate dislike for how most Hindi films inevitably turn into a,”bastard child… of an earlier filmic experience.”

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Having experienced the derision of the audience towards actors who don’t fit in recognisable moulds, he is distrustful of admiration too as most of it is ill-informed. Like he writes, “I am still often mistaken for Om Puri or Girish Karnad or Nana Patekar.” You may take that with a pinch of salt but the fact remains that the average film goer in India relates more to Rohit Shetty than to a Shyam Benegal and more to Amitabh Bachchan than to a Naseer.
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Because in our cinema, an entertainer has more clout than an actor. That may have bothered Naseer once and he does narrate how “apocalyptic” his commercial outings were, starting with Sunaina, Dil Akhir Dil Hai, Misaal, Khwab and many more but then he by chance and choice fell into a “spot” that belonged to him and no one else. A spot created by films like Nishant, Manthan, Akrosh, Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, Bazaar, Junoon, Katha, Sparsh and counting. A spot that he is happy with but won’t take for granted because as he says, there is still that dream he gets often where an old man acknowledges his talent but then adds an infuriating, “but.” And Naseeruddin Shah is beginning to understand that the old man just may be him, with traces of his Baba who never really appreciated the success of his rebellious son.
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It does seem incredible in retrospect that a man who hates the mass peddling of populist fantasies, survived in an unforgiving industry. His account of having watched Sholay, in its second week is amusing. As the film progressed, Naseer unfailingly traced the film’s “blithe borrowings from Hollywood,” spaghetti Westerns and even Mr Chaplin! He further writes, “the action scenes were competent but by no means breathtaking, I had seen stunts of surpassing excellence in many a second-grade Hollywood Western.”
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He would ofcourse go an and star in his own share of mediocre but commercially films like Tridev but the book ends by the time Naseer hits his 30s, almost as if only the formative years of his life needed to be documented.

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The narrative however is packed with interesting confessions like how his impetuous first marriage unfolded and how his distant relationship with his daughter became whole only when she came to make a life with him and Ratna Pathak Shah, his soulmate.  And just how ‘scrumptious’ he found Ratna at first sight but then also discovered what a “solid citizen” she was in the way she dealt with her own father’s death, Naseer’s chaotic life, his finances and his family.

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We also learn how a disgruntled and mentally unstable colleague once stabbed him in a dhaba and Om Puri, his friend for life intervened and possibly saved his life. There is the priceless anecdote about how he tried to be an “extra” in Rajendra Kumar’s film Aman and was seen fleetingly in the scene where the hero is being taken through the streets in a flower-covered bier. And his tryst with paid sex and unpaid work in cinema and then the trickle of money that came when Benegal’s films began to magically, miraculously do well.

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And how during the worst days of struggle in Mumbai when he was barely subsisting on hope, he was given shelter in Dilip Kumar’s bungalow. In the drawing room, seven Filmfare trophies were lined up like impossible dreams. Naseer recounts the memory of lifting one of them and faking a moving acceptance speech. He would often stroll into the private den of the “great man” and greedily consume rare books on cinema, only to be dismissed by the legend himself with a firm, “boys from good families don’t work in films.” It was another matter altogether that  Naseer worked with Dilip saab in Karma, many years later without either of them acknowledging the incident. 

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There is so much more. The first time, he got a mention in The Times of India for his performance in an NSD play. His youthful fascination for marijuana and most of all with the process of becoming an actor. We witness the early stirrings when as a child. he fell in love with a performer on stage. Then we meet the boy who feasted on Hollywood classics in his hostel in Nainital. And then we finally watch the actor who against all odds was committed to the idea of giving life to a character, be it on stage or on the sets of a film. 
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What the book celebrates most of all is Naseer’s perfectionism not just as an actor but as a memoirist and also his honesty that spares neither the holy cows of our cinema nor his own flaws. But there is an unapologetic conviction. The kind that cannot be bought or altered by success or stymied by failure.After reading the book, it becomes clear as daylight that even if success had not come visiting. Naseeruddin Shah would have been the same man. Still an actor for whom acting is “life’s blood” and who believes that love  can “withstand anything.” Even an empty stomach and an absence of applause. The realist, you learn is a romantic after all.
 images (4) with The New Indian Express  Reema Moudgil works for The New Indian Express, Bangalore, is the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of  Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, an artist, a former RJ and a mother. She dreams of a cottage of her own that opens to a garden and  where she can write more books, paint, listen to music and  just be.

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