Parikshat Sahni - Strange Encounters: Adventures of a Curious Life

STRANGE ENCOUNTERS

STRANGE
ENCOUNTERS

Adventures of a Curious Life

PARIKSHAT SAHNI

For Aruna Who Has Left Behind A Vacuum Which Is Impossible To Fill

Then you write for who you love whether she can read or write or not and whether she is alive or dead.

Ernest Hemingway

PROLOGUE

At the launch of my first book The Nonconformist, Mr Anil Dharkar had asked me a loaded question: Were you a spoilt brat? I gave the question serious thought, remembered my childhood and youth and concluded that the answer had to be Yes. I was a thoroughly spoilt brat, as this book in your hands will undoubtedly prove.

This book is a hybrid of essays, memories, reminiscences and commentaries. These are stray incidents that made an impression on me during my travels through life and I noted them down as they occurred, with the intention of writing about them someday. The process went on for many decades. I tried to pen them down in detail time and again, but could not do so because of two main reasons: first, because I am an infernally lazy person, and second, because I was busy strutting and fretting my hour upon the stage to make ends meet. A majority of these reminiscences will prove that Mr Dharkar was rightthat, in more ways than one, I was a spoilt brat.

Im not so sure if I fall into that category now that I am nearing the autumn of my time and the knocks of life have taught me a lesson or two.

I read somewhere long ago that one must be an expert forgetter, because it is of no use for a man to carry the burden of the past on his shoulders as he moves through life. I have tried as much as possible to live in the present and never delved much into the past. Just as well, because much of that past has not been a good one. It was unpleasant because of my own warped nature. Being the son of a celebrity, I was an egoist and was pathologically self-centered. But as one gets on in years, whether one likes it or not, one begins to become more preoccupied with the past than the future. Inadvertently, one begins to brood about the years gone by and the foolish things one has done.

However, this is not, nor can be, an autobiography. To write an autobiography, one has to either have had an exceptionally interesting life like Nirad Chowdhury or Jean Jacques Rousseau or Mahatma Gandhi, or to have been a man of great repute like my father, Mr Balraj Sahni, in whose life the public would be keenly interested.

Dads autobiography makes for very interesting reading. He writes in great detail and with disarming frankness about the difficulties he faced while learning his craft and the enormous mistakes he made in the bargain. Of the two books that Dad wrote, the one which I like the most was My Unsentimental Diarya collection of random memories that speak volumes about the man and his sensitivity. This particular book of mine has been inspired almost entirely by it. Its a format after my own heart.

Dev Sahebs autobiography is a colossal book and eminently readable, almost as voluminous as Tolstoys War and Peace, and yet once I had picked it up I couldnt put it down. Dev Saheb was a very passionate man. Once he got excited about a project, he was like a man possessed. I have just started reading Naseeruddin Shahs autobiography and find it extremely well-written and lively. He is a great actor and has written a great book. But I am personally averse to writing an autobiography. It is a huge affair and I dont have the patience to write it. This book, therefore, consists of snippets of stray memories and conversations with friends, lovers, and mountains.

Sir Laurence Olivier once said that the best prerequisite for being a great actor is to have had an unhappy childhood. Although one of the greatest actors of all time, he was sorely mistaken on this point. As far as Dad, Dev Saheb and Amitabh Bachchan are concerned, to the best of my knowledge, they had very happy childhoods. I, on the other hand, was dubiously blessed with a pretty chaotic and disturbing childhood, but this did not help me in any way in becoming a gifted actor.

Depression or, as Gayatri Prabhu, whose books I admire very much, has called it so accurately, the vortex of darkness, hit me in early childhood and has dogged me intermittently right through youth and into old age. It could be genetic, though neither my parents nor grandparents ever showed signs of it. Maybe it is because of the sights I saw when I was still a child, during the Partitionkillings, arson and rapes in broad daylight. But then many of my contemporariespeople my own agesaw similar sights and were not affected by them overmuch. In any case, I have never felt the need to go to a shrink (nor do I intend to) so I do not know what the cause really is.

The only person I confided in was Dad and he, I think, didnt understand what I was talking about because he was totally unfamiliar with the vortex of darkness. But his advice was sage. He told me to give myself entirely to work and forget all else, which is what I did and which helped me considerably. I made it a point early on to plan and keep planning and, ignoring all else, keep moving single-mindedly towards goals and targets which I set for myself. In spite of that, and what the elders told me, for a long time my refrain in life has almost always been: Vanity of vanities; all is vanity. (Ecclesiastes)

This, then, is an untangling of random memories from my youth to my older years, put together as they came to me in my contemplative moments, arranged in some mad design; emotions recollected in tranquility, as Wordsworth put it.

I hope you find them interesting.

RUSSIA

Encounter with the Vietnamese

The one thing that I have learnt from experience is to never take anything at face value. Appearances are deceptive and life is full of ironies. I was made aware of this for the first time when I went to Russia. Dad sent me to what was then considered one of the best film institutes in the worldthe VGIK, The All-State Government Institute of Cinema in Moscow. And indeed, it was, at the time, the top place to go to for learning all about films. But I was in for many surprises. The institute was famous all over the world, no doubt, but it was also quite infamous for some other reasons.

Not long after I had landed in Moscow, the Russian wife of one of Bhishamjis (the renowned writer Bhisham Sahni, I should add, also my uncle) Indian friends approached me at a party and asked me if I had joined the film institute. I replied in the affirmative.

It is a good institute! One of the best in the world, they say. I believe you will soon be shifting to the hostel? she asked.

Yes, I replied. I am looking forward to that.

Be careful, she said, offhandedly. You look like a decent fellow. The hostel is a notorious fornicatorium. So be careful! Just concentrate on your studies.

I didnt know what she was talking about and thought she was joking, but, as I found out later, she was right. Girls and boys lived on the same floor in separate but adjacent rooms and there was no bar on moving in and out of one anothers rooms at any time of the day or night. There was promiscuity the likes of which I had never seen before. The hostel was indeed a fornicatorium of colossal proportions.

The USSR was quite a country in those days, and the VGIK was quite an institute and ours, to top it all, was quite a class! Half of the class comprised Russiansamong them many girls, budding actresses who, I daresay, were very prettyand the other half foreign students, some of whom became my close friends.