Thinkers
make cinema, actors get the attention. When thinker and actor are the
same, cinema rises high: Orson Welles in Hollywood, Guru Dutt in
Bollywood. Or, at one remove, Paul Muni there, Balraj Sahni here.
Balraj
did not direct movies. Like Muni, he portrayed characters. But the
mastery with which he did it made the movies as much his as the
director's. The Kabuliwala Tagore visualised was a remarkable
character, but it was Balraj who gave it flesh and blood. M. S.
Sathyu's Garam Hawa
was a classic; its pathos moved audiences when Balraj gave rare
authenticity to the angst of an Agra Muslim who just couldn't see why
he should give up his house and his friends because Pakistan had come
into being.
Balraj could
pack his portrayals with power because he was a complete artiste who
heeded the call of destiny. Restlessness made him leave the family
business, leave Shantiniketan, leave the Gandhi ashram in Wardha, and
leave the BBC in London. He found fulfilment only when he plunged
into fulltime stage-and-screen activity in Bombay.
It was a
wonderful Bombay. Bal Thackeray luckily was still drawing cartoons
for a living. Dance-drama troupes thought nothing of loading stage
props on to a bullock cart in Andheri and “driving” to Grant Road
six hours away (if the bullocks were in a good mood); some of the
artistes would sit on top of the stuff, singing. Balraj was always on
the road because he was the only one with a motorbike. Half of Bombay
rode pillion with him, from P.C. Joshi, the famed General Secretary
of the Communist Party, to lowly journalists. They felt betrayed when
Balraj eventually promoted himself to a Vauxhaul car.
It was the
level of commitment he showed to theatre, cinema, public causes and
politics that made Balraj Sahni different. There were some others
like him. But they have disappeared behind the curtain of time thanks
to our national habit of not maintaining records. Fortunately, Balraj
had written a couple of autobiographical books. Now a small (just 98
pages) booklet has been published by Sahmat in Delhi.
But
this is a valuable book because it is written by two privileged
authors, Kalpana Sahni and P.C.Joshi. Kalpana, professor of Russian
Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, is the daughter of
Bhisham Sahni, Balraj's brother who too devoted his life to theatre.
Hence the title of the book, Balraj and
Bhisham Sahni, Brothers in Political Theatre.
P. C. Joshi was a lifelong comrade of Balraj. Naturally the book is
full of fascinating insights.
The basic
point that comes through is that 1950s-1960s was creative India's Age
of Excellence. In filmdom, only talent mattered, not abdominal
muscles or item numbers. They didn't think twice about living commune
style. In a small house in Bandra, the newly arrived Balraj, his wife
and two small children joined Chetan Anand, Dev Anand and Hamid Butt
and their respective families – 12 souls in all. In that chaos they
found space for rehearsals too. K. A. Abbas lived in a two-room flat
where associates and their families would descend to stay overnight,
the Sahni family included. No one thought of inconveniences, because
everyone thought of cameraderie.
The Indian
People's Theatre Association, more than cinema, was their bond. Those
were IPTA's glory days with everyone who was anyone in theatre,
dance and music being an active participant – Prithviraj Kapoor and
Zora Sehgal, Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan. This little book sheds
light on a mystery topic – how IPTA collapsed. P.C.Joshi had made
it a part of everyday life, even staging plays in communally
disturbed areas at considerable risk to its members. But the B.T.
Ranadive line pushed Joshi aside in 1948 and suddenly all who were
not party-approved communists were declared enemies. IPTA was all
expense and no income, they said – and that was that.
History takes revenge on
the short-sighted. Ranadive is a footnote today; P.C.Joshi is a
chapter. IPTA is a remembered treasure. And Balraj Sahni lives.