Rana Dasgupta's Capital: Shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award

(c) Radhika Iyengar 2015

Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First Century Delhi is an ambitious departure from Rana Dasgupta’s previous work. He maps, with acute patience, the turbulent history of a city that was built, torn apart, ravaged and rebuilt over centuries—the aftermath of which provide important brushstrokes to the portrait of contemporary Delhi. The book shifts back and forth chronologically, juxtaposing modern-day events with the city’s macabre past in order to supply a wider context to the construction of an informed narrative about modern Delhi. The pages are littered with historical playbacks that sweep across centuries—the magnificent Mughal reign, the British raj, the catastrophic 1984 riots, the economic liberalization, which are juxtaposed with eye-opening personal accounts of those who inhabit this enigmatic city from varying economic strata.

In the light of the book recently making it to the Crossword Book Award shortlist, I revisited an interview I had done with him not too long ago.

With two award-winning novels behind you, what prompted you to write about Delhi, its people and its history?

I would say that two things prompted me. One is that, not much has been written about contemporary Delhi. Through books, we know a lot about early-independence Delhi and we know a lot about Mughal Delhi—these are Delhis that appear again and again in literature. Even contemporary writers, who write about Delhi, find themselves constantly going back to the Mughal period because that’s what is ‘literary’, in a way. But I felt that the city I was living in on a day-today basis, what I was reading about in the papers, what I was seeing on the streets, needed to also be described and recorded, because it is a very intense reality. It is a reality that all of us in our lives try to understand and discuss why things are the way they are. And I thought that this was a book-length project. It required you to go back to the traumas of partition and even pre-partition history to understand that. The other thing was that in Indian history, the rise of Delhi in the last 20 years marks a new kind of period. What happened to us in the post 1991 period is that we saw a new kind of Indian commerce where big businesses were attached to Indian politics. There was a drift of the business people to Delhi from all over the country and outside, to knock on the doors of politics— to network and do deals with politicians. So I thought it was important to describe and document this as well.

What informed your decision to take a journalistic route while writing about Delhi? 

By the time I started writing the book on Delhi, I had been living here for a decade. I felt that it had been a very extraordinary decade, not just in my life, but in the life of the city. And this needed to be written about. I always felt that it needed to be written about in non-fiction terms, because I just thought it was more extraordinary than to make up. I mean, I don’t know what you felt about the stories that you read, but these personalities cannot be persons who could be made up, and that’s the whole point. 

In one of your essays, you describe Delhi as ‘an impenetrable, wary city.’ How did you get an impenetrable city to open up to you? 

Well, I think, it’s like a club. I mean, it’s a club kind of a city, which is to say that it is impenetrable to the outsider, but when you have lived here for a while, then a lot of those doors open because you start to have your own networks and you begin to know people. So like a club, if you have the right introduction to somebody then the people are quite open. So as I have said in the book, people are amazingly open when their friend says, ‘Speak to this guy.’ I spent about 18 months just being passed from one person to another, asking people for their stories. I also think that people really like to talk. One of the things that is common to all the characters that appear in this book—some of them are rich, some of them are poor, some of them are intellectual, some of them are not—is that all of them have a very, very intense inner life. They are conscious that things are changing every day. So when I actually sat them down, they told me about how their family functioned or how they made money. There was a lot for them to say since they had been having this inner monologue a lot. So it became an ambiguous kind of a relationship, almost like a therapist, where it wasn’t clear anymore who was driving the conversation or who was getting the most value out of it. Also, I was a mere outsider to these people. I didn’t go to school with them, so they knew I wouldn’t judge them in the same way the people who knew them personally would. I was kind of an empty figure, which made it easier for them to talk about intimate things.

Delhi has been described as a very cold city. A lot of the voices that you bring in from different pockets of Delhi are extremely bitter. Were you conscious of this? 

I am aware that I have written a very dark book about Delhi, but it’s probably because it does strike me as a very dark city. What I think is that there is a difference between the intimate and collective. What I find in the city is that the intimate space can be very warm. People are very good at maintaining friendships in the city; they take a lot of care of their family and friends. At home, guests are hosted extravagantly. And this is married to a deep wariness of what is outside the home. And I think that fear and suspicion is related to the very violent history of the city, where every generation has seen the collective rise up in insane ways. I mean, of course 1947 was the most traumatic of those moments, and again so was 1984. So when one talks about the city, it’s important to talk about the collective experiences, which is where I find a lot of darkness, a lot of fear, a lot of bitterness. And therefore, I think one of the reasons why the desire for money is so big in the city is because with money comes some kind of insulation from the city. You can employ people, you can live in guarded neighbourhoods and you can basically not feel the worst effects of this kind of fear and apprehension.

{delhi, books, non-fiction, crossword book award shortlist, rana dasgupta, author, writing, literature}

Unhooking the Bra

When I turned twelve, I was expected to wear a bra. It was an unceremonious introduction into the grim world of what I thought was adulthood. The rite of passage was defined by the act of being held by the hand and led discreetly into a lingerie shop. It did bother me that while my brother casually sat half-naked on the bed watching television at home, I had been removed from the playground where I played ball with the boys, to accompany my mother to the shop.

The first ten minutes were spent observing her deliberate upon which cup-size would best suit me. She then gestured the woman behind the counter to come forth and take measurements. The lady scribbled some numbers on paper, nodded a confident “hmm” and turned around to dislodge a few boxes that towered behind her. She pulled out an assortment of bras and swiftly arranged them with the deftness of a Blackjack dealer.

I paused, my cheeks beginning to take colour. My knees buckled. I didn’t know what make of this momentary paralysis. So I stood and stared, wide-eyed, biting my lip, my fingers reaching out to crunch the hem of my skirt. I glanced vacantly at my mother who was now looking at me. It felt as though she had become a head taller and I had just bit into the pill prescribed to Alice.

“What maa?” I whined with a pitch of bored irritation that masked confusion.

“What, what?” she twittered. “Pick up the ones you like and try them on.”  

 “Buutt…” I whined again, this time more nasal. 

“You want me to come with you? Chalo, I will come with you. Where is the trial room? There? Accha. Let’s go.”

And off we went, carrying five bras in tow. By now my cheeks had turned crimson. I walked to the trial room looking down, avoiding the eyes of the male staff that followed me.

That evening, I was gifted my first bra. Well, bras. “We’ll buy two,” my mother had informed the woman, before slanting her head sideways to say, “that way, you can wear one every alternative day. For starters.”

It wasn’t the idea of wearing the bra that bothered me, it was the idea of getting used to it. I didn’t like the faint pink marks the straps left on my shoulders, at times mimicking a zigzag pattern or a simple thin line, depending on the cut of the strap. I didn’t see the point in strapping on an extra piece of clothing, especially in the unforgiving heat of summer.

One day, I returned home fuming. I forced the door shut loudly behind me and marched in to see my mother. Ma was working in the kitchen. She was whipping an egg with a strange determination not to stop.

“Ma,” I mumbled, half surprised and disappointed by the tone I had chosen. Words seemed to collect like rough pebbles in my throat. I could hear my heart pick up pace. Ma looked up, the whites of her eyes flecked with red. She had complained of not sleeping well the last two nights. “What?” she asked, still whisking, the fork scraping and keening against the steel bowl. “See this…” I turned around to show her my back and then turned again to face her. She looked at me and blinked. The whisking hadn’t stopped. A few moments later, she bunched up her brows and said, “I’m sorry, what is it that you want me to see?”

I was flipping now. “This!” I cried, turning around again. Sweat had plastered my shirt to my back. “Can’t you see? All the boys are laughing!”

Ma narrowed her eyes and leaned over to inspect what the fuss was all about. Then she trotted off to the other corner of the kitchen and returned with a shapely onion.

“I’m listening,” she said, rolling her fingers over the vegetable, the filmy purple skin crackling under.

“They noticed it today. It was just so hot. I couldn’t help it. And they noticed it.”

Ma was now slicing the onion, thin ovals of white collapsing haplessly onto the chopping board. “And,” I continued, desperately, “Arjun pulled his t-shirt to his chest and put it behind his stupid large head and said, ‘Boys and girls are not the same! So you cannot play with us!’ And I said, ‘Of course I am same!’ So he said, ‘then do what I have done!’”

Ma pursed her lips and turned towards me. Her eyes were looking directly at me now, not distracted or shifting like they were a few minutes ago to estimate how much kitchen work remained. Her voice was calm when she spoke, “Did you do it?”

“No,” I said coldly.

She responded with a succinct “hmm!” and then picked up the knife, pinched the flimsy slices together and progressed to dice them with deliberate focus.

Something inside me sagged. “Maa,” I whined, making one last attempt to draw out some sort of attention from her. She finally placed the knife on the granite and turned towards me. Her fingers traced the contours of my chin and then affectionately nudged it upwards. “I know how you feel. I had a tougher time getting used to it when I was your age, but this is a part of growing up. You will just have to accept it.”

“Buutt...” I began to reason while sliding a finger underneath my bra to attend to an itch. “It’s not fair. Why don’t boys wear this stupid thing?”—I called it “this stupid thing” till my 16^th birthday; I was too embarrassed to call it anything else—“Why can’t I pull my t-shirt over my head and jump around like that monkey Arjun?”

In my head, these questions seemed logical, and they were. Ma agreed, lending a nod or two to the conversation, before eventually sighing and reiterating, “It’s just a matter of getting used to.” Hers was an upbringing dictated by social conditioning and now, she was transmitting it to me. “After a certain age girls are expected to wear bras. People talk otherwise,” she said. Who were these people and why did they care? And why was it okay for boys to parade about shirtless, while while girls had to be relatively dressed conservatively?

Years later, Lisa Esco asked the same questions through her film, Free The Nipple. The popularity of the film, possibly for its controversial content, was undeniable, but it led to the emergence of a greater, more powerful movement called #FreeTheNipple that is now making headlines, breaking ground and well, unhooking bras. Have a look and follow it if you’re not a part of the movement already.

{gender, growing up, non-fiction, jabber, notes from a forgotten diary, #freethenipple}

A Salon that empowers Acid Attack Survivors

Masarrat Misbah was attending to a client at her beauty salon in an elite part of Lahore, when a woman, hiding behind her veil, stumbled in. There was a frantic energy in her body, a certain degree of pronounced nervousness. The woman asked whether she could speak to Masarrat in private and was led discreetly into another room. 

"When she lifted her veil, I had to sit down," Masarrat recounts. "In front of me was a woman with no face," she says. The bridge of her nose had collapsed, one of the eyes had sunken in and her chin merged indistinguishably into the folds of her neck. "I could not believe what I was looking at," Masarrat says. "Acid had been thrown on her face and body."

The woman, Masarrat recalls, had one plea: to be made beautiful again. "When I got a grip of myself, I told her that no beauty products could do any good. It would be a job of a surgeon. I asked her to come next day." But the woman refused to budge. Shunned by her own family and thrown onto the streets, she had trekked from another city to seek refuge in Masarrat’s parlour. Masarrat opened her doors, arranged for an extra bed and the next day, began calling doctors and friends for help. That was the beginning of the Depilex Smileagain Foundation.

Women working at the salon

Since 2003, over six-hundred acid attack survivors who have been turned away from their homes have found a new threshold at the Depilex Smileagain Foundation. Masarrat has been carefully gathering the survivors and helping them regain their footing in the world. The women receive reconstructive surgery, psychiatric support and are trained to fend for themselves. At the parlour, they earn a livelihood by working as beauticians. 

Bushra Shafi has been working as a hairstylist and a masseuse at Masarrat’s salon for a few years. She came across the Smileagain Foundation when she saw their advertisement in the newspaper. "I remember calling them immediately…I was married to a very greedy man," Bushra confides. "My in-laws physically tortured me because I didn't bring enough dowry after my marriage. One day they asked me to bring money from my parents, but I refused. That day they tied me up and threw acid on my face. My mother-in-law and my husband held me, pulled my tongue out and poured acid on it. They wanted to make everyone believe that I was suicidal, so they hanged me from the ceiling fan and set my room on fire. My neighbours saw the flames and rushed me to hospital." When Bushra joined the Smileagain family, she was greeted by forty other survivors who were willing to share her suffering and lay her inhibitions to rest. "It gave me comfort in realizing that I wasn’t alone."

Bushra attending to a client

Whether on busy streets or behind bolted doors, acid attacks have become an everyday episode in countries like India and Pakistan. The product is readily available in local stores where a 750 ml of acid bottle can be purchased for a meager sum of thirty rupees. The motivations for the attacks are extraordinary and illogical in range. ‘Dishonoured’ families, jilted lovers, inadequate dowries, lack of a male heir, failure to adhere to an appropriate dress code—are few grounds why women are subjected to violence. In 2014, there were 160 acid attack cases that were reported in Pakistan. There is however, an astounding discrepancy between the cases registered and the actual number of incidents that occured in the country. Human Rights organizations claim that most of the complaints go unregistered because the victims are too afraid to speak up, fearing a subsequent assault. The silence, however, reverberates through the country and is almost deafening.

Beauty and confidence form the currencies of the world. To be stripped of these then, to be denied a voice, to be robbed of an identity, is the most debilitating form of existence. The consequence is world shattering. While some drift to the peripheries with their stories silently brushed into darkness, the coterie at Smileagain Foundation is like a relentless tide slowly gaining momentum. Rather than relying on men for their financial means, they have transformed into confident, independent women who are working effortlessly to make their own living. 

Masarrat (right) with two survivors

There is an irony however, in acknowledging that though physically disfigured, the survivors work day and night assisting others towards looking beautiful. Has this ever psychologically affected the survivors? "They are human too," Masarrat responds. "I have seen it in their eyes—the urge to look beautiful when they are dressing the brides, but the supporting staff makes sure that the survivors feel positive about themselves. Our survivors are beautiful from the inside and are lucky to make others look so beautiful."

Refusing to retreat, the survivors consider their disfiguration to be a crutch, not an impediment. Their vigour and ardent will to survive stand as indisputable testimonies to that. Take the example of Sabra who met Masarrat in 2003. It was a minor domestic feud that prompted Sabra’s husband to pick up a bottle of kerosene and set her ablaze. Within a few moments, her entire world had collapsed. Two months pregnant at the time, she lost her child and spent months recovering in the hospital. "Sabra came to me as a victim over 10 years ago," says Masarrat. "Since 2003, she has undergone more than 35 surgeries and has never given up. At Smileagain, she works as our patient coordinator. She accompanies the survivors from the time they arrive at the hospital to the time they are operated. She also stays with them till they leave the hospital. Back home, Sabra has an ailing mother of whom she takes care. She is the bravest individual I know. She is my hero!"

Depilex Smileagain Foundation

For Sabra and the other six-hundred odd survivors however, Masarrat is their hero, their anchor. "It is a mammoth responsibility," Masarrat accepts, slightly overwhelmed by the task. "However, since I’m chosen to do this, I am doing it to the best of my means and abilities." Of course, she has encountered dissent, of course she has been threatened by families who are involved in the cases–they bully her to step back so that she cannot help the survivors scrounge for attorneys. But Masarrat is relentless in her mission; there is an irrepressible need to weed out the insidious culture of acid attacks once and for all. "When I look back now, I know that my only regret in life is that I didn’t start this earlier," she says. "It was happening long before I started my career as a beautician. I hope God gives me enough life and strength so that this abuse and crime can be eradicated. Only then will I sleep peacefully."

{strength, hope, inspiration, acid attack survivors, empowerment, women, combating gender violence, Pakistan}
Images courtesy: Depilex Smileagain Foundation

And Then One Day

In Conversation with Naseeruddin Shah:

Naseeruddin Shah is something of an enigma—the coiffed silver hair, the measured drawl, the charming wit and the overpowering intensity with which he holds you, is something else. And Then One Day {Penguin Random House, India} is a beautiful memoir and a remarkable debut for the 64-year-old, who was recently in New Delhi for the book’s launch and subsequent publicity. 

In the book, Naseeruddin lays it all bare. As he waltzes with the past, he uses the pages to map his journey into cinema and reveals with nuanced detail, the achingly painful roadblocks and the triumphant milestones. He speaks about his fractured relationship with his father and how he ‘disappointed’ him with his Icarus-like fervour to become an actor. He also tries to reassess his complex relationships: the impetuous first marriage to Purveen, a woman almost twice his age, his ineptitude as a parent towards his first child {Heeba}, and how the release of his first film Nishant wasn’t as exhilarating thanks to a love affair {with the mysteriously named, R} that'd gone sour. As he sifts through three decades of memories, he talks about the friends he meets on the way and the undoing of a friend named Jaspal, who at one time was an inseparable companion.

It’s a book that has an equal measure of poignancy and levity. And Then One Day is cunning, confessional, witty and wistful. It’s also conversational. He denies you the role of a mere reader or of a spectator who is privy to the events in his life. Rather, you feel like an old friend listening to him over a cup of coffee in the comfort of your home. 

On an early Friday morning, I had the opportunity to speaking to Naseeruddin Shah at the Oberoi Hotel, New Delhi where he spoke to me about his experience while writing the book, how he was able to come to terms with his past, and the hopeful probability of a film on his life. 

With And Then One Day, you explore a new realm that is, writing an autobiography, which strangely, took you over a decade to write. What was the experience like?
Oh thrilling! Absolutely thrilling. Much more than the release of my first movie, Nishant, I have to say that.

Really, how so?

Because there was a great deal of anxiety attached to that first movie when it released in 1975, and I was terribly anxious because on it depended my future prospects—whether I would be able to feed myself or not, because theatre could not do it in those days…it probably still can’t, which is what determined my move from the National School of Drama to the Film and Television Institute of India. And as I have written, I went to the Film Institute with a very condescending attitude, but to my surprise, it really opened up my mind being in that place. I suppose there was a terrible urge within me to learn, which is why there were 22 others in my class to whom the classes meant nothing. Only two students made it: Shakti Kapoor and me.

And I was very wary of the kind of roles I would be offered in Hindi movies. I was sure I didn’t want to play the doctor who has one line, though you know, I had somewhere resigned myself to the idea that these are the roles I’m going to get, and as it happened, I got absolutely nothing after Nishant. I didn’t enjoy the release of Nishant—even though it was a success, it was acclaimed and my performance was praised, but the anxiety just consumed me. Also, I was going through a very bad time personally as I have written in the book. So, the release of Nishant didn’t mean that much to me, really. But this [the response to the book] is something else. It’s a reaction I had never expected. I was of course, very curious to know how people would respond to this and whether my writing would be engaging or not, and my heart is completely overwhelmed by the positive response.

So now that you’ve got a positive response, do you consider writing another book after this?

I’m sure, though, I will be judged much more harshly {laughs}. I’m pretty sure because since this is my first time, they are saying, “Ah, first time” and all that. But unless the next book turns out to be as engaging as this one, I’ll be crucified I know that. So I’m not so keen to write another book {laughs}. Although, I have enjoyed writing this one, I have to say. When it was over, I felt kind of lost. Like how one feels after the rehearsals of a play; when the play gets done and the next day there are no rehearsals, then you wonder, “Now what?” There is a kind of empty feeling. So I’m searching desperately what to write, but I haven’t found it yet.

You’ve spoken about some very trying situations in your life. We learn about your first marriage, about your indifference towards your first child, Heeba, about how you were betrayed by your best friend, Jaspal, and so on. How challenging was it to excavate memories and pour them onto paper?

Not very, because I didn’t write it for anybody’s consumption; I was writing it for my own enjoyment. I started writing because I just wanted to wallow in memories a bit. I was getting very bored in Prague; I had no friends there and the film was a huge bore. I used to spend hours and hours waiting for the next shot, because there was so much blue screen work that they used to take up one whole day to set up a single shot sometimes. So I just started writing it to amuse myself, really. And as I kept on writing, it started grabbing me more. And it took a long time; it’s not been written in one flow as I wish I could claim it was. It was written painstakingly over 12 years; bits were written at a time—2 pages, 3 pages, 4 pages—I don’t think I’ve ever written more than 10 pages at a stretch. 

And I revised things, went back on it, deleted  things which I thought were a little too vehement, and I was advised by a very good writer, Ramchandra Guha who pointed out things which he felt were extraneous. Like there was an incident about a school friend’s dad who tried to bugger me, which I wrote about and he said, ‘Eliminate this because this has no connection to the rest of the story.’ But he said that it was a very interesting incident and that I should save it for another book.  Then there was another incident where my pocket got picked, which was a completely fascinating event, which I have to film someday because it’s quite unbelievable the way it happened, but again he said, ‘Don’t have this because there is no connection.’ He said, ‘Just follow the thread of your development.’ So that’s what I did. And the thought did occur to me that so-and-so might feel offended if I write this, but that was not as much consequence as the obligation to put it down, with as much clarity and straight forwardness as possible. Because if I wasn’t going to be straight forward about it then what was the point of writing it?

And was the process cathartic?

Very. Extremely. I was able to come to terms with finally with my dad, with Purveen, with the other girl, R. And I could look at their point of view also, and I tried very hard not to wear my heart on my sleeve. And I’m impressed by myself and the self-control I’ve been able to exercise.

But there are certain situations where you can really feel the anger.
Ah yeah, particularly the description of the Film and Television Institute?

Yes.

That is something that will just not go away, and I’ll tell you why, because that event created a complete isolation for the acting students. Now the acting course was closed after that because the actors caused too much trouble. This was the excuse. After the acting course was closed, you know…and this is for the record…there was a strike every year. There was strike in the institute every year. The institute was paralysed after that. There were no actors causing any trouble; it was only the direction students who were getting more and more demanding. First it was only, “We must cast who we please.” Then it became, “We must film whatever we please.” Then it became, “We should be allowed to take as much time as we like.” So what’s happened today is that the students of direction stay on for 5 or 6 years in the hostel, without paying hostel charges.

Are they allowed to do so?

Yes, because they’re all geniuses! The moment a student walks into the Film Institute having been admitted into the Direction course, he starts growing his beard and his hair, starts wearing a khadi kurta and starts scratching his beard. So he becomes a genius!

You’re being cynical.

I’m not, it’s the truth! Immediately he feels he’s transformed into Federico Fellini. And the films they make, you would get a headache sitting through any of them! They are so atrociously bad. And all those filmmakers of the ‘70s who were students at that time, who were protesting against what we were asking for, time is witness to the kind of films they are making today. All of them. Whether it is Ketan Mehta, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Kundan Shah or Saeed Mirza—all of them! They are all making pot-boilers with song and dance and they are all bowing and scraping to the star system, and casting the star who they are told to cast.

So it’s destroyed a generation of filmmakers, I believe, because none of those guys have made anything worth watching over the last 10 years. So I feel that it has affected the future. The whole ‘70s movement started by Shyam Benegal and Mrinal Sen, Basu Chatterjee and people like that, would not be carried forward by these shams. I cannot think of a better word for them.

You talk about your strained relationship with your father in great detail and how he considered you to be a disappointment, how he hadn’t supported your dreams or your choice of profession. Do you believe that if your father at the time did support you, you would have still gone out with the same degree of vengeance to become an actor? 

I can’t answer that question because I don’t know. I’ve often felt that facing resistance is perhaps a good thing for a young actor because he then learns to fight for what he wants. I think it would have made life much easier if my dad had a wider worldview and if it had occurred to him that this could be pursued as a profession. He would instead employ tutors who would bore the life out of me! And they would try to teach me Physics and Biology, and I wouldn’t listen to a word those tutors would say {smirks triumphantly}. So it might have been easier…but the thing is that he, despite protesting vehemently, never forbade me. I think perhaps he knew that I wouldn’t listen. But he didn’t try to obstruct me in any way, that much credit I will give him.

And he was going according to his beliefs. He was from a time where you did not show affection to your children, where your children did not speak up in front of you, they could not crack jokes in front of you; they kept their mouth shut unless they were spoken to. His own father, that is my grandfather, was one hard creature whom my own dad could not meet without an appointment. He had to address him as ‘sarkar’, not as ‘abba’ or ‘baba’. So my dad came from that tradition. So he may have considered himself to be a very cool guy, for all you know.

For the longest time, you grappled with your sense of self image and felt you never looked like a ‘hero’. You’ve mentioned how you felt “discriminated against by nature” and how you had a “strong attack of resentment at nature” for not having a face like Rajesh Khanna. There is an underlining sense of under-confidence that is evident in your early years. When do you think you finally overcame that? Or did you ever overcome that?

{Laughs}. Yes, I did, because time was short and I knew I had to get cracking on fulfilling my dream. So this was more or less in school that I came to terms with it. In school, my reflection in the mirror disturbed me a great deal, and when I saw myself on screen for the first time in the Film Institute screen test, I was shattered. But by searching for any vestiges of handsomeness of myself in the mirror, I stumbled upon the fact that, okay I may not be Gary Cooper, but I could be Jerry Lewis. I have a malleable face; I have a face that I can change. Because I used to observe myself after getting a haircut, for example, and I noticed how different the face looked. With women of course, it’s even more startling; if they get a haircut the entire framing of the face changes, but for men it’s not so extreme, but still. Any guy who’s had a haircut looks like a plucked chicken for a couple of days! So I would ask myself, "How would I look with hair down to my shoulders? Would I look like Jesus? Would I look like the Wild Men of Borneo?" And I imagined myself in these disguises, and I think I stumbled upon my strength. Which is that I have a face that is a) expressive; b) capable of change—and those have been my strengths. So the fact that I didn’t look like Shammi Kapoor didn’t hurt because I realized that it’s not that important to look like him; it’s more important to be able to do what he did…or something approximating that. 

With Nishant, Manthan, Sparsh, you became a part of the New Wave and were heralded as ‘an exciting new talent’. If the streak to Art-house films hadn’t hit at the time, what route do you think your career would have taken? Do you think you would have made an extra effort to find your niche in mainstream cinema then?  

I did make a big effort to be a part of mainstream cinema—little as I enjoyed it, but I certainly wanted to be a popular actor. I can’t deny the thought of being a hero. You know, the thought of beating up the baddies, wooing the heroine and so on. I don’t know what turn my life would have taken had Shyam [Benegal] not entered my life. But I think the universe conspires, and that’s what happened. And if this meeting with Shyam had not happened, something else probably would have. I needed it so badly, I wanted it so badly, that I deserved it. Shyam would have found me, I feel, even if it had not been for Girish’s [Karnad] intervention and recommendation, because apparently he was looking for the “right actor” for many months and he had turned down many, because they were too good-looking {winks}. There you are! They were too good-looking and I got the role because I looked like a funny gunk and he would have found me, you know? 

I think my life would have been more or less the same…If it hadn’t been for Nishant, it would have been for Manthan, because if I wouldn’t have done Nishant, I would have camped at Shyam Benegal’s doorstep and would have got his next film! So people say it was ‘good luck’ that I met Shyam and all, but I feel good luck is a combination of factors that you create for yourself. So yes, it was good luck, but Shyam cast me because I deserved to be cast. He wasn’t taking pity on me and casting me, you know?

Your memoir inhabits all the essential elements required for a Hindi movie. You have drama—literally and figuratively. You have a string of disappointments balanced with an equal measure of success. You have a strained relationship with your father, initiation into manhood at 14 by a prostitute, a series of love affairs and heartbreaks, and you have a best friend {Jaspal} who stabs you in the back, literally. If you were approached one day to have your autobiography made into a cinematic biopic, would you allow it? 

Tell me where the song and dance will come in! {laughs} Well, I have kept the filming rights to myself because I don’t want anybody to just stand up and acquire them and start making some rubbish, where Brother Burke {a character from his school days} sings a song to me or something. I really don’t know…I’m not a filmmaker by temperament; I do not have a visual sense. I can’t tell a story through pictures, I can tell it through words better. So I don’t know. I will be very, very careful if a filmmaker approaches me to film this because it can so easily go wrong. It can be misconstrued and presented cornily. I wish someone like Victorio de Sica was still around, then I would let him film it without a question, but if Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra comes to me, I’ll send him away!

What about Raju Hirani? You seem to admire him a lot. 

Yes, Raju Hirani! But I don’t think that the form Raju Hirani uses would be right for a story like this. Raju makes wonderful movies. I love his films. And I’m dying to work with him and I know I never will…He likes Aamir Khan for some reason!

But what if he got Aamir to portray you?

Oh, I would nix it immediately! The actor who would play me needs to look like a rabbit badly in need of a meal, as I have written in my book…a frightened rabbit badly in need of a meal. Aamir Khan looks like he’s just had a huge meal! 

And Then One Day is available on stands. The story appeared on 6th October for Platform Magazine, India. 
Photography by: Hansika Lohani.