Dilip Kumar: The Substance and the Shadow Page 5

  I had such a wonderful time being an unobtrusive little observer of all the gaiety in that quarter of the sprawling house exclusively occupied by the women who had come to attend the wedding as well as the daughters and daughters-in-law of the house. It was a sharp contrast to the dictatorship I was familiar with in the house I had come from. My Nani and Nana (maternal grandmother and grandfather) were anything but severe and, for the first time, I was seeing Amma being attended to and given the rightful position at the table during meal times. It gave me great happiness to see Amma laughing and being very much a part of the merriment that was going on continuously till it was time to hit the beds covered with silk quilts.

  How I wished Amma could get the same carefree life back at the house she returned to as soon as the festivities of the wedding were over. I returned with all the black streaks on my forehead much to Dadi’s pleasure and triumph that her orders had been obeyed. Without a murmur or even the slightest sign of resentment, Amma resumed her chores in the kitchen.

  I went back to school and neither Aghaji nor Amma noticed that I was becoming an introvert. I was filled with a deep sense of unworthiness and loneliness. I waited to get back home where I took refuge in the security of Amma’s gentle, comforting presence. In retrospect, I feel there was a divine purpose in the episode of Dadi blindly believing the fakir and giving me the ugly appearance that made me the butt of unpleasant remarks in school. It was the pain I endured as the alienated child in school that surfaced from my subconscious when I was playing the early tragic roles in my career and I had to express the deep mental agony of those characters.

  The human mind, I have come to understand, has the fascinating capacity to store experiences and fertilize the imagination with those stored experiences when an occasion demands it. As I attained manhood, I learned to voluntarily keep my mind open to thoughts and experiences that I thought should be kept in the inner recesses of the mind for recollection at a later day. I also learned to pull down the shutters when I did not want to add thoughts or experiences that would only augment the burden of the mind and serve no purpose whatsoever. It is a feat that can be achieved only when one’s mind has matured with education and learning from the school of life. But, as a child, however, I could not do anything about experiences, good and bad, finding their way into my subconscious and staying there.

  3

  ESCAPADES AND ADVENTURES

  I have little doubt that my sense of storytelling was ignited during my childhood years in Peshawar …. Every evening I held Aghaji’s finger and walked with him to the square to listen to the unfolding of a narrative by one of the maulanas … I enjoyed the narrative and my fertile imagination conjured up the characters and situations in my mind so graphically that I went home and tried enacting the characters with the lines spoken by the maulana … who could have foreseen that several years later I would be participating in storytelling exercises for a medium called cinema!

  I WAS NOT AN EXCEPTIONALLY STUDIOUS CHILD BUT I WAS A curious and observant one. Being an introvert, I liked being alone, left to my own devices. I left my cousins and other children alone, not wanting to get into senseless arguments with them. I remember I used to ask Dada why the brook near the house flowed ceaselessly and where all the water came from and where it all went. He used to laugh and hoist me on his broad shoulders and walk to the brook and stand and stare at the water. I waited for an answer but it never came. I realized he had no answer for me. I once overheard him tell Aghaji that I asked him questions that were difficult for him to answer and that he wished he had some answers. He also jovially mentioned to Aghaji that I was not like the other boys in the family who never wondered or asked difficult questions.

  I took keen pleasure in roaming around the open spaces in the afternoons on hot summer days when Dadi, after a sumptuous meal, rested in her room. There were no electric fans those days. There were only manually operated pankhas made from thick canvas with feather-lined cloth wrapped over them, which the servants of the house knew how to loosen from the clasps on the walls. When they tugged the strings, the pankhas moved to and fro to create the movement of air. It was a strenuous exercise but the men who were given the task were quite fit to do it. All of us children of the family were made to sleep in the afternoons as it was not advisable to go out and wander in the lonely streets. I always pretended to sleep and, at times, when I saw the pankhawalas and the others in the room sleeping soundly, I stepped out stealthily into the streets.

  The streets were narrow and some of them were cobbled. I used to make my way through them into the open spaces where there were trees with berries that no one ate. We were always told that the berries were no good and they should be left for the birds and insects to feed upon. Being the curious one, I once climbed one of the trees and began to pluck the berries. I had just begun to shove the berries I had plucked into the pocket of my kurta, when I heard the voices of men and one of them was chasing the other. I recognized the one who was chasing while I held my breath and sat quietly on the branch I was perched on. The man I recognized was Ghani who was the caretaker of the orchards my family owned. He was a man of incredible physical strength and height. From the way they were arguing, it seemed that Ghani had caught the man snooping around one of the godowns where the dry fruits were stored.

  I was scared that if Ghani looked up at the tree and saw me, he would report my escapade to Aghaji. Fortunately, the two parted amicably after the man apologized to Ghani profusely. I heaved a sigh of relief and scampered home, happy that I had had a lucky escape.

  My cousins and I were frightened of Ghani. Most times when I met him in the orchard, he was friendly and he liked lifting me and keeping me on one shoulder while a huge basket of freshly plucked badams (almonds) and grapes occupied the other shoulder. The grapes were sent by Dadi in baskets to the Kissa Khwani Bazaar market square to be given away to the poor and needy who came asking for food. There was an interesting way the grapes were given as food to the poor. The men who rolled out rotis and naans (Indian bread) used to make pouches within the large naans by slitting them neatly with a sharp knife and they stuffed handfuls of grapes inside and slammed the slits deftly to close them. Each such naan made a substantial and nutritious meal for a poor, hungry man.

  Ghani used to stride towards our house with ease and unload me and the basket gleefully at the door. Dadi was kind to him and she always gave him money and offered him food. The frightening thing about him was not his demonic appearance but the mental condition he suffered from. He was in the habit of going into a trance and howling like a wolf on full moon nights while dutifully keeping vigil at the orchard. He could not be quietened by anyone and had to be chained and locked in a room all night. Some nights when he could not be quietened by anybody and had to be chained and locked in a room all night, someone else kept vigil at the orchard. Sometimes, he became all right by the morning and went about his work as if nothing had happened and, sometimes, the seizure lasted for a couple of days. Since he could get violent on such occasions, no one went near him.

  Ghani had everybody’s sympathy and there were all kinds of interpretations about his condition. Some said he had a spirit visiting him on full moon nights and the spirit could be chased away by someone who practised exorcism. Others said he was mad and needed treatment. Whatever it was, nobody did anything to rid him of his strange behaviour on full moon nights and it went on unabated till he became very ill and died suddenly on the bed he was chained to.

  After he died, people living around the orchard said they saw him moving like a shadow in the night, especially on full moon nights. It was frightening even though absurd. The stories did not scare me because my surreptitious outings were in the afternoons and now that Ghani was not going to catch me, I felt free to continue with my exploration of the plains.

  One afternoon I set out and my first halt was at the godown from where I grabbed handfuls of badams and pistachios and filled my pockets with them. Hardly had I taken my hand out of
the pockets, when I saw a gun carriage approaching the godown. I immediately pulled the shutter down and crouched on the ground watching the carriage from a slit in the shutter. I was inside and the action was right outside, so close to the godown, that I began to get nervous. There were volleys being fired from the carriage and I saw some tribals falling prey to the bullets.

  The men in the gun carriage were English soldiers and they were yelling and challenging other tribals, who were hiding near the godown, to come out. Their guns were pointed in the direction of the godown and there I was hopelessly caught in yet another perilous situation. After some time, the men got tired of waiting for the tribals of the hills to come out and they turned the carriage to go back. Now my fear was how to face the tribals if they were really hiding there and if they saw me. I was sensible enough to know that the hill tribes were a dangerous lot and they were outlaws who came to loot and plunder.

  The daylight outside was waning and I had to return home soon. The spirit in me even at that tender age egged me on to take a risk. I briskly raised the shutter and ran out, sprinting at a speed that surprised me when I reached the doorstep of our house. Breathless and exhausted, I just ran into Amma’s arms. She and Dadi had been praying and a search party had been sent to find me. Amma held me close and I could hear her murmur prayers of gratitude to Allah for having brought her son home without a scratch. The news of the firing near the godown had reached the house and its neighbourhood when Amma realized that I was not inside.

  I told them what I had seen from the crack in the shutter. There was anger at first when Aghaji and Dada heard what I had narrated, but the fact that I was safe diluted the anger.

  Aghaji was tall, broad shouldered and handsome. He had an impressive moustache. He and Dada were both hairy and that explains my hairiness. Aghaji walked erect and he wore his Pathan pyjamas and kurtas well. They were made of good cotton and stitched by expert tailors. He preferred pastel shades and was fond of white.

  He loved Amma very much but he seldom demonstrated his affection in front of the family members. When he bought something for Amma, he gave it to her quietly in the room they occupied in the upper floor. Since I was always hovering round Amma, I used to see him take out a dupatta or an English talcum powder and give it to her quietly. She would take it matter-of-factly from him, put it away in the almirah and steal out of the room quickly, lest she be seen alone with her miyan by Dadi.

  Amma was frail, fair and petite. By the time I was two, my younger brother Nasir had arrived and, by the time I was four, she was expecting my sister Taj. I was awestruck each time a sister or brother joined the line-up and it irked me somewhat to see Amma all wrapped up with each new arrival, almost forgetting the elder ones who became passé, so to say, for everybody in the family. I did not quit following her under any circumstance and it remained my prerogative to find space by her side when we slept at night. At times, in the summer months on moon-lit nights we slept on chattais (mats) on the terrace and I would be stunned by the serene beauty of my Amma’s face as the light of the moon fell on her. She would be sound asleep, tired after all the toil during the day. My unmarried phoopis (father’s sisters) would also be sleeping there as also the healthy Persian cats, which were kept as pets largely because they were needed to warm the beds on winter nights.

  Winter nights assured great fun for the children of the house. The family members frequently gathered on the large terrace with a bonfire lit inside a large sigdi (brazier) placed in the centre. All of us would sit around the sigdi, which provided sufficient warmth to keep the night young and spirited. Quilts were brought along by each member to cover the body from the legs right up to the waist. It was customary for every member to tell a story or to sing a song. If it was a story it had to be one with a moral and not anything with adult content because the children were listening.

  Dadi was indeed the first censor I came across in my life. She could abruptly curtail a story if she felt it was not good enough to be told in the presence of the women and children. One of my khalas (maternal aunts) was married to a man who had a penchant for telling stories that could have made Dada Khondke* feel awkward. When he tried unleashing one of his stories, he was instantly told by Dadi to go and sleep in his own room and not come up again on the terrace. It was a ban for a lifetime.

  Dadi welcomed the narration of stories of valour and nobility and did not mind a wee bit of romance thrown in. If it was an evening of songs, the melodies had to be of clean folk verses or ghazals of eminent Persian poets. It was like the antakshari** of today except that the continuity depended on content. If the theme for the evening was love, then it had to be love all through the night or if it was a spiritual theme it had to continue to be so all night. I was not one to sit quietly on one lap all night. If it was an interesting story, I listened with rapt attention, if not, I moved from one lap to another till I fell asleep quite unknowingly as children do. I would wake up the next morning on my warm soft bed and rub my eyes and wonder who got me there. While the singing and storytelling went on, the Persian cats would be made to sleep on the beds to keep the beds warm for the occupants. That was something peculiar to Peshawar.

  I have little doubt that my sense of storytelling was ignited during my childhood years in Peshawar. It was not just the winter nights on the terrace that stimulated my imagination. The main market square in Kissa Khwani Bazaar was known those days for the gathering of traders and shop keepers after the Maghrib prayers in the quadrangle of the square for some austere entertainment. Every evening I held Aghaji’s finger and walked with him to the square to listen to the unfolding of a narrative by one of the maulanas, men known for their piety and religious knowledge. The stories were interesting and were told with appropriate pauses and voice modulations by the narrators. The voice would rise to a high pitch when the story took a dramatic turn and it would fall to an audible low note when the narrative moved on to something tender and tearful. I enjoyed the narrative and my fertile imagination conjured up the characters and situations in my mind so graphically that I went home and tried enacting the characters with the lines spoken by the maulana. I would be alone by myself in some corner of the house where no one would come looking for me. I feel amused now when I reflect on those wonderful evenings when I sat with open-mouthed wonder by Aghaji’s or Dadi’s side in the bazaar absorbing the twists and turns in the stories. Who could have foreseen that several years later I would be participating in storytelling exercises for a medium called cinema!

  Yet another pastime I indulged in solitude was imitating the ladies and men who came visiting my parents. Amma caught me at it one day and chided me gently, saying it was not good to make fun of elders. I was mimicking Khala Mariam when she came in unexpectedly and saw what I was up to. I did not tell Amma that I was not making fun of Khala Mariam but I was trying to be Khala Mariam for a few moments because she was such an intriguing character. May be unconsciously I was preparing for what was in store for me in the years to come.

  Khala Mariam was the nightingale of the family. She had a good voice for singing and all of us grew up from infancy listening to the lullabies she sang to put us to sleep. She was married to a man who was a dandy and dressed up flamboyantly and colourfully. He was the man Dadi had banned from her terrace when he began telling a story that had a naughty slant. He was very different from the other men in the family in that he had scant regard for the decorum and etiquette the other members observed and he brought cigars from somewhere and smoked them while all the other men smoked hookas. He argued with Dada that it made no difference what you smoked. Khala Mariam was quite good looking and she too smoked cigarettes held in a holder. She and her husband had many differences between them and they spoke to each other only to get into a squabble. He had a chest of drawers in the room, which was his prized possession and he protected it zealously. She often mocked him saying: ‘You sit on that chest of money and treasures like a cobra with its hood unfurled … take it with you to your grave.’ He l
aughed a wicked laugh whenever she said that.

  It was nothing but entertainment for me at that age when they locked horns. The real drama occurred when Khala Mariam was confined to an isolated room on certain days because she would get possessed by a spirit. I hid myself in the room one day and I heard her voice change into that of a man as she raved about something I could make nothing of. She stood up and tore her hair and looked completely different from what she was otherwise. I remember Amma coming rushing into the room to take me away when she realized I was up to my usual exploration of the unknown and was in the room. Khala Mariam suddenly turned soft and gentle and said: ‘Don’t hurt the child, let him be.’ Amma muttered something and quickly whisked me away.

  By the next day, she was normal and behaved as if nothing happened. She was close to Amma and confided in her about her husband’s wanton ways.

  On Fridays the ladies went out to the market and I remember Amma always waiting for Khala Mariam who took longer to dress up. Amma wore simple salwars and kameezes that were long and loose. Her head was always covered and when she stepped outside she was so completely in purdah that I would have had difficulty in identifying her if it weren’t for her small build and her petite stature that made her stand out among the sturdy, almost masculine Pathan women who swarmed the shops selling women’s garments and burkhas. There was something she kept chewing, an elaichi (cardamom) perhaps.