Watching Naseeruddin Shah as an exploitative superstar in The Dirty Picture may have reminded you once again of the many faces and skins and voices and bodies he inhabits as an actor. The film also made me recall some encounters I have had with the actor who never says the typical things, and never bothers about making an impression but still manages to be memorable. Always.
It is both unsettling and reassuring to meet Naseeruddin Shah. Unsettling because you stumble for words trying to tell him just how much he has given you to remember. And how vividly you recall his blind gaze in Sai Paranjpay’s Sparsh. How fondly you remember his drunken slob turned messiah in Iqbal. How convincingly desperate he was in Paar when he swam through a swollen river with his pregnant wife. How you rooted for his lawyer in Aakrosh. How you laughed at him in Mandi, laughed with him in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, cried with him in Masoom, hated him in Nishant, felt for him in Ijazat, were swept away by his anger in Bazaar, sang poetry with him in Mirza Ghalib, grew lonely with him in Pestonjee and boisterous with him in Tridev.
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But then you feel reassured because a twinkle in those piercing eyes and the smiling creases of that unforgettable face tell you that he understands and values your respect for his work. And no, the awards do not matter. So what if his brilliant coach in Iqbal was ignored by the juries? “Who gives a damn about these awards? It makes little difference to me whether gutka makers and makers of cleansing creams acknowledge my work or not !” He sways his salt and pepper crop to convey his disdain and adds, “When a child who has seen Iqbal smiles in recognition, believe me, that is reward enough.’’
But then you feel reassured because a twinkle in those piercing eyes and the smiling creases of that unforgettable face tell you that he understands and values your respect for his work. And no, the awards do not matter. So what if his brilliant coach in Iqbal was ignored by the juries? “Who gives a damn about these awards? It makes little difference to me whether gutka makers and makers of cleansing creams acknowledge my work or not !” He sways his salt and pepper crop to convey his disdain and adds, “When a child who has seen Iqbal smiles in recognition, believe me, that is reward enough.’’
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He continues, “This strange bond with children has developed over the years. First with Masoom, then with Tridev, with Karadi Tales (that he narrated) and with Iqbal.’’ His many faces and roles, he says, came from filmmakers who wanted to explore him as an actor, saw his potential and gave him an entire gamut to play. He says, “The role of an actor is to deliver and to serve the script. I hear a lot of actors say that they are trying to be different but I want them to know, there is no sense in being different for the sake of being different.’’
He continues, “This strange bond with children has developed over the years. First with Masoom, then with Tridev, with Karadi Tales (that he narrated) and with Iqbal.’’ His many faces and roles, he says, came from filmmakers who wanted to explore him as an actor, saw his potential and gave him an entire gamut to play. He says, “The role of an actor is to deliver and to serve the script. I hear a lot of actors say that they are trying to be different but I want them to know, there is no sense in being different for the sake of being different.’’
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Shah has also rediscovered for Indian theatre, the forgotten stories of Ismat Chughtai and Sadat Hassan Manto. He stages these stories because he is tired of emoting in a language not his own and believes it is time we stopped ignoring our own literary traditions. “Shakespeare is compulsory in our schools, not Rabindra Nath Tagore or Ghalib or Kalidas,’’ he says and quotes Satyajit Ray who once wrote just how surprising it was that a country surrounded by thousands of years of literary, music and theatre traditions could not find in its own milieu, original stories to film.
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It is always interesting to watch what happens when he is in a room. As he talks, necks turn elastic, air turns electric, faces range from wide-eyed to open mouthed. And you sense respect. Unquestionable respect. A few years ago when Naseeruddin Shah, wife Ratna Pathak Shah and daughter Heeba walked into a conference room to promote Ismat Aapa Ke Naam, their acclaimed three-tiered presentation of Ismat Khanum Chughtai’s short stories, in aid of India Foundation For The Arts (IFA), there was a palpable hush. A sense of quiet awe.
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Later as I found myself in an elevator with Shah and a few others en route to the interview den, it was a surreal moment out of time and I reminded myself that I have never been star struck before.But then the man before you with beautifully greying hair and a face full of well-earned dignity is a craftsman who works at acting like he were painting porcelain. He is unafraid of popular opinion and has survived the servile star system and the shortsightedness of award juries to create a staggering body of work in populist as well as `serious’ cinema.
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Recently, he has anchored the explosively successful A Wednesday even as his theatre group Motley completed three decades of bravura stage performances. He laughs,“ Come to think about it, that DOES make me feel good though I don’t think I am doing anything great. I do theatre because I love it. I don’t know why any of my contemporaries have not gone back to theatre because I don’t see how you can give it up. There is no greater joy. I treat it like a hobby that I take very seriously.” One of his most quotable quotes being, “If there is any magic in the world, it happens in theatre and on a bare stage.”
Recently, he has anchored the explosively successful A Wednesday even as his theatre group Motley completed three decades of bravura stage performances. He laughs,“ Come to think about it, that DOES make me feel good though I don’t think I am doing anything great. I do theatre because I love it. I don’t know why any of my contemporaries have not gone back to theatre because I don’t see how you can give it up. There is no greater joy. I treat it like a hobby that I take very seriously.” One of his most quotable quotes being, “If there is any magic in the world, it happens in theatre and on a bare stage.”
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Having spoken at the press conference extensively about Ismat Chughtai’s strong, provocative feminist voice with wife Ratna who very intuitively linked the protectionism that Chughtai was cocking a snook at, with contemporary incidents of moral policing, Shah still had a lot left to say, “I met Ismat Aapa as an actor first (on the sets of Shyam Benegal’s Junoon where Chughtai was playing Nafisa Ali’s grandmother and Jennifer Kapoor’s mother) and imagine the extent of my ignorance that I did not know just how great a writer she was even though she wrote about the milieu I come from.”
Having spoken at the press conference extensively about Ismat Chughtai’s strong, provocative feminist voice with wife Ratna who very intuitively linked the protectionism that Chughtai was cocking a snook at, with contemporary incidents of moral policing, Shah still had a lot left to say, “I met Ismat Aapa as an actor first (on the sets of Shyam Benegal’s Junoon where Chughtai was playing Nafisa Ali’s grandmother and Jennifer Kapoor’s mother) and imagine the extent of my ignorance that I did not know just how great a writer she was even though she wrote about the milieu I come from.”
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He was ofcourse to discover her work over the next few decades and to come to the conclusion that she was possibly the greatest short story writer he has ever come across, with her chatty, empathetic and insistent voice that never fails to open us up to the possibilities of a life of volition, of rebellion, of freedom. When he performs her story `Gharwali‘ on stage, it is with great enjoyment that he conjures up the beauty of a young girl who evokes obvious lust when she walks through a market place full of men whose tongues fall silent but eyes speak of the unspeakable and how a love that starts with the timid domesticity of a well-kempt aangan,’ then morphs into something sensuous and visceral.
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Chughtai’s writing, says Shah, brought him in touch with the kind of theatre he wanted to do. Minimal, shorn of flourishes and driven by honest to goodness content. Theatre that breaks away from the overdone Neil Simons and Shakespeare and instead unlocks riches of Indian writing for an audience bred on foreign writing voices. His recent streak of politically charged films like Khuda Kay Liye, Shoot On Sight, A Wednesday etc apart, you can’t resist telling him that you missed his acting chops in films like Cheeni Kum, Black and The Last Lear and he guffaws in dismay, “NO, you are citing some ghastly scripts which I would not have touched anyway! NOTHING could have saved The Last Lear! I don’t know why Rituparno Ghosh made this one! I know you are paying me a compliment but I have a body of work of my own and I don’t grudge anyone the work they do.”
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As for topical films like A Wednesday, he will do them ofcourse but refuse to commit to the idea that films can change the world.Says he, “Films are nothing more than the record of their times. That is all they can be. Some film makers in the 70s believed they could change the world with their cinema. The young filmmakers of today are leagues ahead of them. Their craft is more assured and they tell stories that really matter to them. Yes, poseurs will always be around but I expect great things from hungry, young film-makers who are making experimental films out of choice and not because they don’t have the money to make commercial films.”
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About the paucity of radical voices like Ismat Chughtai in writing, he says, “They reason why progressive writers like Ismat Aapa, Faiz and Sahir Ludhiyanvi emerged at the time they did is because the country was emerging from the national trauma of the British rule where as today, we are complacent. I won’t be surprised if great films, plays and writers begin to emerge from Pakistan because of all the suffering they have seen as a nation.”
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And his take on the success of films like Slumdog Millionnaire? He grins, “It is a Bollywood film made by a white director and I enjoyed it very much. Imagine, no one amongst us thought of making it first!” About the improbability of a slum child growing up to look like Dev Patel, he says, “If you can accept Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif jumping out of a window in Mumbai and landing in Switzerland, why can’t you accept that?”
Touche!
Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight (http://www.flipkart.com/perfect-eight-9380032870/p/itmdf87fpkhszfkb?pid=9789380032870&_l=A0vO9n9FWsBsMJKAKw47rw–&_r=dyRavyz2qKxOF7YucnhfXw–&ref=4fe1efd1-de20-4a30-8eb8-ef81a99cb01f