IN recent months we have had memoirs by two Indian actors par excellence. The first was by Dilip Kumar, The Substance and the Shadows. Written by a man who always kept his personal life away from his highly successful public one, it makes interesting reading as far as Dilip Kumar’s earlier life is concerned. But the story after he had made it big in the world of Indian cinema seems to have been tampered with by his wife, Saira Bano, and the story of his romance with Kamini Kaushal and later with Madhubala heavily censored.

The book was written by a journalist friend of Bano’s, who merely seemed to have taken dictation. When the book was finalised, Dilip Kumar had crossed into his 90s and was not able to read or even speak.

In contrast, the second of the two books, Naseeruddin Shah’s And Then One Day: A Memoir is brutally frank and laced with tongue-in-cheek humour; in short, it is a page-turner.

Both actors came from middle-class Muslim families and both were close to their mothers but had uneasy relationships with their fathers. Shah’s interaction with his father runs through the entire narrative of And Then One Day.

Shah’s father never reconciled with his son’s aspirations to become an actor. Like most fathers of his time, he wanted his son to take up a ‘proper job’. But he did, however, send him money whenever the absconding son made a request. The father did most of the talking and the only time the younger Shah spoke uninterruptedly was when he was sitting beside his father’s grave. He had a captive audience for once.

Many people Shah writes about emerge like characters in a novel. The manner in which he narrates events shows his skills as a storyteller. He could have well made a successful career as a writer. An interesting incident recalled by him was one where he was summoned by a highly successful writer duo (not named, but quite obviously he was referring to Saleem-Javed) and offered an acting assignment. Their producer was itching to give him a cheque and the amount was much more than what Shah had been getting in the past. (Mind you, he was not paid all the time.)

Shah was sneered at when he informed them that he was already booked by the producer of a small budget movie and that he could not leave the filmmaker in the lurch. As fate would have it, the mega movie was never released while the modest project, Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyun Aata Hai, reinforced Shah’s reputation as a consummate actor.

A strange character that Shah talks about in detail is Jaspal, his close friend and a fellow student at the National School of Drama (NSD). A good-looking young man with a talent for singing, Jaspal hailed from a small town in Punjab. Jaspal envied Shah’s ability to speak English fluently and the relationship soured when Shah met with success. Jaspal had by that time started taking a mind-altering drug and on one occasion attacked Shah with a knife for what seemed like no rhyme or reason.

Then there was another fellow student, Om Puri, for whom Shah has nothing but undiluted praise as an actor as well as a human being.

During the course of the book, Shah expresses his admiration for many people, but perhaps the one he adulates the most is Geoffrey Kendal, who stewarded Shakespearana, the company which staged many of the Bard’s plays in India. Shah first met him when he was still a student and took his autograph, the only time he sought anyone to do so. Years later he met his idol again. This was the time when both were acting in the much acclaimed Shyam Benegal film, Junoon. Benegal was Shah’s benefactor for he gave the young man his first break in a movie called Nishant.

Naseeruddin Shah also praises Ebrahim Alkazi, his mentor at the NSD, for his immense talent as a director of plays and as one who was also a skilful teacher. Alkazi was not happy when Shah expressed his desire to major in acting rather than direction but he hit the ceiling when Shah told him that he was leaving the NSD to join the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune.

Among the characters pulsating with life in this book are some of Shah’s relatives, and that includes one of his aunts, Akabi, who never married. But of all the men and women, it is his mother that Shah writes about with great affection.

Shah’s days at the missionary school at the lovely hill station Nainital were instrumental in his developing interest in movies. The weekly show of an English movie was an occasion he looked forward to eagerly. But his academic performance was poor, to say the least. He managed to scrape through English language and literature but not science or maths, which he calls monstrosities.

Shah was moved to the Aligarh Muslim University by his disappointed father. At Aligarh he managed to perform on stage but his academic record left much to be desired, both by his teachers and his father.

Shah’s days in Mumbai were difficult. His father, who had taken up as the administrator of the shrine at Ajmer, knew Dilip Kumar’s eldest sister, Sakina. At his request she gave Shah refuge in her sprawling bungalow and he would often sneak into Dilip Kumar’s two-room cottage on the premises. He saw some priceless books on films and filmmaking and sometimes browsed through them when the owner was away. He also picked up the heavy Filmfare trophies lined on a shelf. Once he saw “Mr Dilip Kumar,” who told him sternly that “boys from good families should not join the film world.”

One day, Sakina apa gave him a railway ticket and enough money to last him on the journey to Meerut and then onwards to his hometown Sardhana by bus.

Earlier, in Aligarh, Shah had married a woman called Purveen. He was 19 while she was 34. He became a father soon after. He was not ready for parenthood and doesn’t forgive himself for being an irresponsible father. They were separated and Purveen migrated to Iran. More than a decade later, Shah got a letter from his daughter Heeba written in Persian, which he couldn’t read. She wished to visit him, which she did.

The book ends with Shah’s marriage to another stage enthusiast, Ratna Pathak, who brings some sanity to his life.

As one reaches the last page, one is confronted with a nagging question — ‘now what?’ In an interview Shah declared that he had no intention of writing a sequel. One would, however, like to tell him that while the book in hand took him 12 years to complete, the next instalment should take much less time.

And Then One Day

(MEMOIRS)

By Naseeruddin Shah

Penguin Books India

ISBN 9780670087648

316pp.