BALRAJ IN BOMBAY
Bhisham Sahni
Balraj Sahni (1913–1973) is widely regarded as one of the greats of Indian cinema—a sensitive and politically engaged artist who inspired a generation of actors who came after him. He is best remembered for his performances in the classics Do Bigha Zameen, Seema, Kabuliwala and Garam Hawa.
Soon after his arrival in Bombay in 1944, Balraj learnt that the production of Chetan’s film was being delayed due to financial difficulties, that there was a danger that it might be indefinitely postponed or even shelved. Chetan was making desperate efforts to collect finance but was facing insuperable difficulties. Suddenly Balraj found himself alone in a strange, unfamiliar place, and called upon to fend for himself. It was one thing to dream of becoming a screen-actor; it was quite another to gain a foothold in the industry. Financially, too, Balraj’s position was not very sound. He had brought with him savings from his service in the BBC but they did not amount to much. Besides, he had no intention of asking Father—whom, he felt, he had annoyed, by coming away to Bombay in a nonchalant manner—for money. And his family was with him: Shabnam barely a year old and Parikshit, just five. Chetan stood by him like a true friend, despite the fact that his own resources were limited, and introduced him to a few of his contacts. But mainly, Balraj had to face it alone, and consequently a period of struggle began for him.
He was starting his film-career with quite a few serious handicaps, the biggest of these being that he was already thirty-four years of age; an age when he could not expect to be considered for the roles of young matinee heroes. During his stay in Bombay his health too deteriorated and he soon began to look drawn and haggard. Besides, there was the financial stringency and in his own words, ‘Bombay is not a town for such film-aspirants as have limited resources. The little money that I had brought from England was running out. I had no desire to get money from Father.’
He wrote in one of his letters years later, reminiscing about his early years in the film-world:
The real reason why I lost in health was financial worry and an irregular way of life. What did I not do in those days to get a little money. The manager of one of the branches of the Traders’ Bank had been an old class-fellow of mine. Now and then he would give me small loans from the bank; at one time there was an overdraft of two thousand rupees against my name. Suddenly one day, this friend of mine received transfer orders. He had to leave in a month’s time and it was my moral duty to pay back the loan before he left. To discharge this obligation, the efforts I made were like digging a well with my bare fingernails. I could do nothing more than to do some radio programmes or do some translation work. How much money could I expect from such work?
He met Bhawnani, who had once come and lived with us in Kashmir and had even offered a role to Balraj at that time. Now, in Bombay, Bhawnani invited him to dinner but did not mention the films even once. All that he said was that Balraj’s face resembled that of Gary Cooper which Balraj took as a compliment, but which was meant to convey that Balraj had grown too lean and thin for the role of a hero in Indian films; the Indian audiences preferred chubby and round-faced heroes. Similar was his experience with letters of recommendation, promises and assurances. It was not easy for him to gain a foothold in the film industry in those early days.
‘Seeking a role meant going up the stairs and down the stairs of producers’ offices and studios, umpteen times a day without any definite answer coming from anywhere,’ wrote Balraj, years later.
Sensing Balraj’s situation, Chetan quickly put in a word with Phani Majumdar, the well-known producer and director, to accommodate Balraj in some of his films. A film called ‘Justice’ was on Phani Majumdar’s schedule and he tried Balraj for it.
Balraj’s first experience of the film-world was a memorable one. He was sent to the make-up room where the ‘extras’ had their make-up done. In his own words:
I was led into a big room where quite a number of men were sitting and having their make-up done. I did not know that they were ‘extras’. Even if I had known, it would not have made any difference to me because till then I did not know what an ‘extra’ was … Soon enough I was chatting away with them. They had come in their best clothes because they had to appear in the scene of a tea-party. They treated me with regard and consideration when they learnt that I had only recently returned from England. From their talk it appeared that they were no ordinarily people. One of them told me that he had four furniture shops in the town; that he came to the studios sometime just for fun’s sake; that he was also thinking of producing a film himself one day in which he would give me the role of a villain, because from my face I looked exactly like an English villain.
Not only he, but everyone sitting there had some such project of making a film one day in his head. Everyone had a story up his sleeve which he had written himself, everyone would talk of his close and friendly relations with the famous film-stars, some of whom had agreed to act in his film … One of them, a Pathan, Aslam by name, talked in low, unassuming tones. Soon enough he began to talk ill of Phani Da. Phani Da, he said, had given him a small role in an earlier film, with the promise that in his next film he would give him a major role and that in the film after that, he would be given the hero’s role. According to these assurances, he should have been put into the hero’s role in the current film. But nothing of the kind happened. Instead, he had been made to hang around and was now huddled into this room with the ‘extras’. At this, tears came into Aslam’s eyes. I suddenly realized that an exactly similar promise had been given to me also by Phani Da.
Balraj continued to describe the events of that day:
During the rehearsal, I felt my jaws stiffening, like dry leather, and just refusing to relax. My voice too was low and almost inaudible. I thought Phani Da would express his dissatisfaction with my performance but instead, he exclaimed, ‘Very good shot, okay!’ at which some people clapped and whistled, some others came and shook hands with me and congratulated me, because this was my first ‘close-up’ in the films. Phani Da sent for rasgullas (sweetmeat) in my account and distributed them among the assemblage. Everyone was praising my performance. I was puzzled. I knew that it was false praise. But then, why were they indulging in false praise?
This is a secret of the world of showmanship which people outside can understand only gradually.
Yes. It was a false promise. In the world of the studio no one tells the truth to anyone. They all praise him on his face and talk ill of him when his back is turned. People outside would consider this as a mean act. But for people inside, this is a big booster. In the film world no one feels mentally secure. All live on deceptions. Everyone lives within the bubble of his dreams. No one wants to prick the bubble of another’s dreams. This is a kind of show of sympathy for one another. Suppose one of them had come and frankly told me what he thought of my performance, my self-confidence might have been shattered and I might not have been able to do any work the next day.
Later Balraj was to appear in a shot with Sneha Lata, the heroine of the film, who refused to have any rehearsal with the ‘new recruit’. ‘During the shot, she would converse with me but she would not look at me; she had her eyes on the camera all the time. All the time during the shot, she made me feel as though I was suffering from some foul disease, and that she must keep me at a distance,’ he said.
Reminiscing about this experience Balraj wrote:
I had thought that there was no walls of ‘high’ and ‘low’ in the film world. How sadly mistaken I was! In the filmindustry there were walls at every step. In other spheres of social life, these walls may be made of brick and mortar, but in the world of Hindi films these walls are made of granite.
He had not only had his first experience of the movie camera, he also had his first peep into the make-believe world of the film industry.
When Phani Majumdar’s Justice was completed, Balraj was invited to a private screening of the film. ‘When I saw my closeup on the screen I felt as though a big stone had fallen on my head. My face looked like that of a corpse. The make-up made it even worse. I never thought I would look so horrible,’ Balraj said.
Phani Majumdar, however, stuck to his word, and gave Balraj an important role in his next venture Door Chalen.
More difficult than securing roles, was facing the movie-camera. Balraj had had some stage experience and also very useful training as a BBC announcer. The art of ‘normal speech’ on the microphone with its pauses, stresses and intonations, which he had learnt in England, were to prove to be a great asset for Balraj. Similarly, his close familiarity with the realistic stage, both in India and in England, where each movement and each gesture on the stage were natural and authentic as opposed to the excessive gesticulation, flourishes and flares of the Parsi theatre and its sing-song, oratorical delivery of sentences, was also to play a very significant role in Balraj’s development as a film-artist. But the time had not yet come. The struggle to gain a foothold as also to acquaint himself with the technique of screen-acting was, for the next few years, to prove to be hard and painful.
Going before the camera appeared to me to be like going before the gallows. I would try hard to compose myself. Sometimes the rehearsals too would go off all right. Everyone would encourage me. But right in the middle of the shot, something would go wrong, and I would feel every limb in my body going stiff; my tongue going down my gullet. Thereafter, one retake would follow another. I would feel as though everyone standing around me was staring at me. I would try hard not to think about it but to concentrate on the role and my performance, but everything would go out of focus, and I would feel as though the doors of the art of acting had been closed on me for ever and ever.
This situation persisted for quite some time. Writing in the context of another film, a year so later, Balraj wrote with great candour:
I was in bad shape when Hum Log went on the sets … The fear of the camera, which had always been oppressive like a ‘mountain on my chest’, became unbearable. Anwar Hussain was playing with me. On seeing him act, my self-confidence would desert me, and I would lose my nerve altogether. What to talk of shots, I could not even rehearse properly. My situation can be understood by the fact that at one time, when I came out of the studio for a breath of fresh air and lay down on a bench, I wetted my pants.
After Justice, Door Chalen was the second film for which Balraj had signed with Phani Majumdar. It was an important side role, with Kamal Kapoor as the hero and Naseem Jr. as the heroine. Damyanti had also been given an important role in the film. It was during the shooting of this film that Balraj was drawn irresistibly into the vortex of IPTA activities.
Thereafter Balraj devoted most of his time and energy to the IPTA activities. Nevertheless, his struggle in the film industry continued. Door Chalen was followed by Gudiya, a film based on Ibsen’s famous play, A Doll’s House, which was produced by Rajni Kant Pandey and directed by Achyut Rao Ranade. Balraj and Damyanti were cast in the main roles.
Before this new film went on the sets, both Balraj and Dammo had had the experience of acting in the famous IPTA film Dharti ke Lal, written and directed by K.A. Abbas. Balraj was closely associated with its production also, which brought him into still closer contact with the technicalities of film-production. Dharti ke Lal had, despite its numerous drawbacks, set a new trend, which was later on developed by Bimal Roy and Satyajit Ray. Balraj’s own performance in the film had also been laudable. He was gradually shaking off his stiffness before the camera, but it was not easy. He continued to face the stark realities of the film-world and lived through its ups and downs, which on the one hand depressed and discouraged him and, on the other, hardened his determination to make good in the sphere into which he had drifted.
How did he get rid of his stiffness? He tried any number of devices to boost his morale. ‘These fellows do not know a thing,’ he would say to himself in the studio when he would feel shaky inside. ‘I will show them what good acting is.’ This was one way. Another was that he would ignore looking at anyone in the studio, and while facing the camera, would try to think of something very pleasant, like his little daughter’s face, or bed of flowers or a beautiful landscape, which would put him in a nice frame of mind. Sometimes he would work up a mood of religious indignation in himself; a kind of attitude of protest to bolster up his selfconfidence. He would closely watch the movements of other actors on the sets and try to find out the clue to ‘natural acting’.
Reminiscing about the shooting of Door Chalen, Balraj wrote:
I noticed that before the shot Agha would be talking to us in a normal way, but as soon as the camera would start he would begin to behave in a queer manner, like a crazy person. He would make all sorts of funny movements. I would dismiss these movements as a kind of silly show off. I would think that Agha was overacting, which is a big defect of Indian films. But when, after the shot, everyone would sing praises of his performance, I would feel irritated. I would think that I should be the one who should be praised because my acting was so restrained and natural … As soon as the shot would begin, Agha would ‘enter’ his role. And when the shot would be over, he would ‘come out’ of it and be Agha once again. I had read about this but had not comprehended that what I was doing before the camera, could hardly be given the name of acting.
In the context of another film, Hulchul in which he was performing with Dilip Kumar and Nargis, he wrote:
Right up till a few seconds before the shot Dilip and Nargis would be sitting and chatting away. But as soon as the shot would commence, they would ‘enter’ their respective roles, whereas I would be left outside my role. I too would try to act naturally, but I did not know that to be natural meant to enter one’s role and then be natural. And for entering the role, a mental act was required. I was unaware of this mental act. That is why I thought that I was being natural whereas Dilip and Nargis were being unnatural. The reality was just the opposite.
Balraj would seek the advice of other actors, a quality which only a real artist can possess. He once asked David, with whom he was acting in a film, how he remembered his lines whereas he himself was always forgetting them. David explained to me lovingly,
Behind every word in a sentence stands an image. In other words, if you visualize that sentence in your imagination you see a series of pictures. If while speaking you keep your mind on this series of pictures, you will not forget your lines.
It was not long after the completion of Gudiya that on 29th April 1947, Damyanti died; and the situation for Balraj changed radically.
He had arrived in Bombay in the summer of 1944. Barely three years had passed. But these were years of hectic activity: at one level, of intense enthusiasm and social involvement, rich in varied experience and, at another level, of privation, struggle and painful suffering.
Soon after Dammo’s death Balraj went to Rawalpindi and therefrom to Srinagar, taking both his children with him. The scene was no longer the same. Rawalpindi had been in the grip of terrible communal riots, and now presented a picture of desolation. More than two hundred villages of the district had been razed to the ground, the streets of Rawalpindi were filled with dazed refugees from these villages, and, slowly, caravans of refugees from all parts of the Punjab were streaming out of the province towards Amritsar and Delhi. Many a town in the Punjab was burning. The decision in principle, about the formation of Pakistan, had been taken. People were mostly bewildered and did not know if they would be able to stay on in their homes or would have to leave.
In Srinagar, the tension was much less, but a sense of uncertainty prevailed there also.
Balraj’s mental state was no better. Grief over Dammo’s loss was mixed with a painful sense of personal blame. With characteristic candour, Balraj wrote:
She had never wanted anything for herself. She was happy in her simple clothes, in her salwar and kameez, and she radiated joy wherever she went. Even though she was earning thousands as a budding screen-actress, she was giving away most of her earnings to social causes, and herself went about in buses.
It was my duty at that time to stand by her, to value her artistic talents and to spare her trivial household chores. But in my pettiness, I was almost envious of her fame and success. She would come home, tired from the studio and I would want her to get busy with household work. To assert my superiority as a man, I would take upon myself even unnecessary jobs of the IPTA. Without a word of complaint, Dammo had taken on herself a load of work which was too heavy for her to carry. It hurts me deeply to remember these things. Dammo was a precious jewel, bestowed upon an undeserving person, who did not know its value and did not feel grateful for it.
It was during his stay in Srinagar that Balraj received the offer of playing the leading role in a film called Gunjan, the story of which had been written by the noted Hindi writer, Amritlal Nagar. And so in July 1947, leaving his children in Srinagar, Balraj returned to Bombay.
He was cast in the film with Nalini Jaywant and Trilok Kapur, and the film was directed by Nalini Jaywant’s husband, Virendra Desai. When he arrived in Bombay he learnt that he did not exactly have the hero’s role in it, that the story had two heroes, and he was cast as one of them.
The film flopped. And it struck another severe blow to Balraj’s self-confidence.
There is a psychological side to character-portrayal of which I was ignorant, nor had it been necessary for me to know it. I had often lost my nerve before the camera and felt my limbs grow stiff. But my attitude was that of a patient who, instead of going to the doctor at the right time, keeps hiding his ailment, in the hope that it would be automatically cured one day.
Balraj’s involvement with the IPTA also continued unabated. But at this time, a radical change came in the assessment of the situation by the Communist Party and in its political line. The party adopted an attitude of confrontation against the Nehru government. This new policy affected the functioning of the IPTA to a considerable extent. Though the IPTA was not a communist organization, its membership comprised leftist and left-oriented democratic writers and artists, yet the initiative in its activities had been taken primarily by the Communist Party. The performances staged by the IPTA became more and more critical of the government, and, on the other side, the policy of the government too became more and more repressive. Many old activists of the IPTA differed with this approach and gradually withdrew from its activities. The inner core of the activists also became sectarian in outlook and did not desist from dismissing some of the functionaries on grounds of ‘right reformism’, from the organization. The strength of the IPTA squad was depleted, and they found it difficult to perform before the public also because the police was all the time dogging their footsteps. Balraj, however, remained closely associated with the activities of the IPTA right up to the time of his arrest in 1949.
In March 1949, nearly two years after Dammo’s death, Balraj married Santosh, our cousin. He had turned towards her in his loneliness and pain, and the attachment of younger days asserted itself. What had been termed ‘infatuation’ of his younger days, had, in reality, never completely died down. Even after his marriage with Dammo, it would, now and then, raise its head and cause a good deal of mental and emotional disturbance. But it would blow over because the fondness, the regard and the identity of outlook which had developed between Dammo and himself had continued to grow with each passing year of their marital life. But now both Balraj and Santosh were lonely and somewhat rudderless. Santosh was at that time in England, where she had gone after separation from S.H. Vatsyayana, her former husband, and was supporting herself with odd jobs and assignments from the BBC and other organizations. Marriage with Santosh, however, considerably embarrassed the elders in both the families, because among the Hindus, marriage with the first cousin is always frowned upon.
It was in those days that Balraj signed a contract with K. Asif for his film Hulchul in which the cast consisted of, besides, Balraj, Dilip Kumar and Nargis. In the film, Balraj had to play the role of a jailor who is the heroine’s husband. Ironically enough, the director, one day, took Balraj to the Arthur Road prison in Bombay to acquaint him with jail-life and the duties of the jailor. And soon after, Balraj was arrested while taking part in a demonstration and was sent to this very jail. The jailor, whom he had met with Asif, would often eye Balraj inquisitively in his prisoner’s uniform and remark, ‘I think I have seen you somewhere.’
The shooting schedule of the film was disturbed by Balraj’s imprisonment. Arrangements were, however, made that Balraj would be brought out on parole from the jail, during shooting days, to enable him to play his role.
Balraj had been arrested within a fortnight of his second marriage. Conditions at home were none too favourable. The family was living in Delhi, where Father had purchased a small house in a refugees’ colony. Balraj’s children were yet very small: Parikshit, nine years of age, and little Shabnam barely five. There was little in the house to fall back upon.
There was much to strain Balraj’s mind in those days. Though thrown among political workers, Balraj knew little about struggles on a purely political plane. There was much that baffled him. There was practically no news from home. Nargis’ mother would sometimes arrange to have Balraj’s wife in the studio when Balraj was shooting on parole so that both could meet each other. That was about the only contact Balraj had with his family. And his performance in the role of a jailor gave him little satisfaction.
After six months of jail, Balraj was released. He returned to a situation which was none too encouraging. The IPTA was on the rocks. His finances were low, and the struggle to gain a foothold in the film-industry was still as hard as it had been earlier. It would often appear to him as though he was starting once again from scratch. Was it worthwhile?
Why should I have returned to this cursed city of Bombay? Why should I not go back to the Punjab and live among my own people? What am I doing here? But then, what guarantee is there that things will be better there? I must become financially independent. I must gain proficiency in my work. I must work harder. I don’t feel happy doing film-work, but I must succeed as an actor. I must. The question of going back to the Punjab does not arise.
The lean condition of his finances is best illustrated by a touching episode. On the eve of the Diwali, when he came home, he overheard a brief conversation between his two children. Parikshit was saying to his sister, Shabnam, ‘What a silly thing crackers are! People waste money for nothing.’
The children had sensed the situation in the house. This piece of conversation overheard, touched Balraj to the quick so much that he retracted his steps, borrowed some money from a friend and brought crackers and sweets for his children.
To earn a living Balraj was doing odd jobs. He and Santosh dubbed a Russian film into Hindustani. He got a contract to write the screenplay and dialogues for Chetan Anand’s next film, which later on came to be known as Baazi. His little son Parikshit was also given a child’s role in Hulchul, portraying the hero’s childhood days. Parikshit was also offered another role in Nitin Bose’s Deedar—roles which were very reluctantly accepted for his little son by Balraj.
Soon after Hulchul he was given a role in Zia Sarhaddi’s film Hum Log, in which Balraj was to make his mark as an unemployed youth from a lower middle-class family. This was the first film in which Balraj to a certain extent came into his own, and shed his stiffness. He narrates this experience in his own words which is at once interesting and very revealing.
I was in a poor way when the shooting of Hum Log started. I could not act well in a single shot that day … In the evening while returning from the studio, I said to Zia, ‘I am not worthy of the confidence you have reposed in me. You have been able to secure the direction of the film with great difficulty. I won’t mind in the least if you take on someone else in my place.’ To this, Zia’s answer was, ‘Balraj, whether we sink or swim in this venture, we shall do so together,’ an answer which overwhelmed me by its sympathy and generosity.
On reaching home, when I met my wife, I burst out crying and struck my head against a wall. ‘I can never become an actor, never,’ I cried! Just then, Zia’s assistant, Nagarat, a youth of hardly nineteen years of age, happened to drop in. Seeing me in that state he began rebuking me at the top of his voice, ‘Coward! Calls himself a communist, when in reality his soul is grovelling at the feet of the moneyed people. You should be ashamed of yourself.’
Dumbfounded, I looked at him. Nagarat went on, in the same tone, ‘You can’t act! Nonsense! You can act much better than others. But not so long as your eyes are set on their cars and so long as you are overawed by their fame and money. Anwar is rich, he is Nargis’ brother. That is why you can’t breathe freely. Envy is eating you up from inside. Your eyes are not on art but on money! That is the biggest thing in your eyes …
Nagarat had seen me act in one of IPTA plays called ‘By the Roadside’ in which I had played the role of an unemployed, ailing youth. Throughout the play, the youth pours out venom against the capitalist system. I used to act in that role with great passion and in a very impressive manner. My role in Hum Log was also of the same kind. Then why was I striking my head against the wall?
Nagarat had hit the nail on the head. He had revealed to me the clue to my role—hate! Hatred towards everything! Hatred of life. Endless hatred.
I felt my frozen body relaxing. All night long I kept fanning the fire of hate within myself … The next day when I went to the studio I was in a frame of mind charged with this sense of hate towards an unjust and cruel system … I found to my surprise that I knew my lines by heart. During the rehearsal I uttered my sentences in a manner as though a hawk was swooping upon a sparrow. Zia hugged me to this heart …
I began to come up to his expectations. What I was doing was something rather absurd, but in the context of that role it was correct and to the point. My boat came out of the whirlpool. Luckily my dialogues too were oratorical and dramatic …
Hum Log clicked. Balraj’s performance made a powerful impact. Though Balraj had still some way to go before he could establish himself as an actor of quality, he had crossed the initial hurdles. Financially, too, he felt somewhat more secure, although he still had many ups and downs to face. Hum Log was followed by Badnam which failed miserably. He was given a contract to write and direct film Solah Ane which enthused him a great deal, but which did not come off. It was when he came to act in Do Bigha Zameen that his talent came into free play; the identification with the role became almost total and Balraj made his mark as a highly accomplished screen-actor.
Do Bigha Zameen
In Jogeshwari, a suburb of Bombay, there is a colony of milkmen from Uttar Pradesh. The day Balraj was chosen for Do Bigha Zameen he began visiting that colony. He would study the way the poor milkmen went about their work, the way they walked and sat and chatted. ‘The bhaiyas are very fond of tying a gamchha (cloth) round their heads, and each one of them does it in his own way. I too bought a gamchha and started practising with it. But I was not able to do it so well. My success in Do Bigha Zameen was largely due to to this close study of the life of these milkmen,’ Balraj wrote.
When he went to the sets, Balraj felt enthusiastic about the role, because it was in keeping with his heart’s desire.
Part of the shooting was to take place in Calcutta. Balraj made it a point to travel in the third-class railway compartment, so that he could feel his role, so that he could watch how the peasants got into a compartment or went out of it, how they lay down or talked. A similar scene was to be taken for the film also. In Calcutta he went to the office of the rickshaw-pullers’ union, and with their assistance, learnt the technique of rickshaw-pulling.
But again at one point, he lost his nerve, and felt that he could not do justice to the role.
In Balraj’s own words:
I was confused and bewildered. Actually depressed, I sat down in my rickshaw. Soon enough, a middle-aged rickshawpuller, who had been watching this tamasha (show) from a distance, came over to me. He very much resembled the bhaiyas of Jogeshwari, but was very weak in health, with shaky teeth protruding out of his mouth and face full of wrinkles …
‘What is going on here, Babu? he asked.
‘A film is being shot,’ I replied.
‘Are you taking part in the film?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is your part?’
Thinking that my mind would be diverted somewhat by talking to him, I started narrating the story of the film to him, as once Hrishikesh Mukherji had narrated it to me. He too had the same reaction. Tears flowed from his eyes. ‘This is my story, Babu, this is my story,’ he exclaimed!
He too had two bighas of land in a village in Bihar, which was mortgaged with the zamindar fifteen years earlier. To get the plot of land released, he had been plying the rickshaw on the roads of Calcutta for the last fifteen years. But he had no hope left of redeeming it. He kept standing near me for some time, heaving deep sighs, and then went away, saying again and again, ‘This is my story, Babu, this is my story.’
A voice rose within me. To hell with the art of acting! … Who is a more fortunate person than myself who has had the privilege of telling the world the story of a suffering, helpless man. I have been entrusted with this responsibility, irrespective of whether I am worthy or not carrying it out. Come what may, I must spend every ounce of my energy in discharging it. It will be cowardice, a sin, to turn my face away from my responsibility.
Then I, as it were, imbibed the soul of this middle-aged rickshaw-puller within me, and stopped thinking about the art of acting. I think the real secret of the unexpected success of my role lay in this. A basic rule of acting had come my way suddenly, not from any book but from life itself. The more completely the actor identifies himself with the role he has to play, the more successful he will be. When Arjun in the Mahabharata was going to shoot his arrow, he fixed his gaze only at the eye of the bird, which was his aim …
A film commentator of Amrit Bazaar Patrika, writing about my role, had said, ‘There is a touch of genius in Balraj Sahni’s acting.’ This touch of genius had been imparted to me by that middle-aged rickshaw-puller.
A film producer in the Soviet Union had remarked, ‘There is a whole world drawn on the face of Balraj Sahni.’ This world too was that of the rickshaw-puller. It is a shame that even twenty-five years after Independence, that world has not changed …
When, one day, I die, I shall have the satisfaction that I acted in Do Bigha Zameen.
Do Bigha Zameen hit the headlines. Balraj’s reputation was established. But some time had still to pass before he could have financial security. It was nearly six months after the release of Do Bigha Zameen that he was able to get another contract, in Ramanand Sagar’s film Bazuband.
It was nearly ten years after his arrival in Bombay that Balraj’s struggle to establish himself as a screen-actor was at last over. He was by then forty-one years of age. He began to be approached with new roles. He was sought after. It was in those days that he signed contracts for Aulad, Taksal, Akash, Rahi, and others. In the ten years between 1944 and 1954, he had acted in barely ten films, but in the next nineteen years of his life he was to act in no less than 120 films.
Ten years is a long time to struggle, and that too singlehandedly and in a principled manner, retaining one’s integrity, and holding one’s head high.
Leafing through my father’s old diaries, I came across a newspaper cutting, which he had pinned on one of the pages. It was a review of Aulad dated 24 April 1954. It said:
Balraj Sahni, who has marked out for himself the role of the suffering have-nots with a heart, fits into it with naturalness. That very humane quality which is subtly visible in his personality is his forte and charm. The farmer of Do Bigha Zameen is the servant of Aulad. In both he is cast as the affectionate husband and father fighting against the ravages of circumstances. Both have tragedy because both are realistic.
Father had now begun to take legitimate pride in Balraj’s achievements and kept such cuttings wherever he could get them. One after the other, Balraj’s performances impressed the spectators with their ease, naturalness and human sympathy.
During this long period of preparation before he could discover himself and come into his own, we have glimpses here and there of that process through which he was passing and of how ultimately he succeeded in overcoming his handicaps of stiffness and self-consciousness.
‘If your lip movement is relaxed, you will act naturally,’ he once said to me. At another time, he remarked, ‘Let your movements be tiny movements, not big movements.’ These and many more were the dictums by which he was teaching himself. At one time he would be reading Stanislavsky’s famous book, An Actor Prepares, which he regarded as his Bible; at another time he would be reading a book called Modern Acting, written by Clark Gable’s wife, which he later said proved disastrous for him, because he had read it prematurely.
How can an actor perform his role naturally if a thick layer of make-up is put on his face? I did not know then, that to reach the stage of natural acting an artist has not only to accept but also to adapt himself to many a constriction and limitation.
At another place, he wrote:
The life of an artist is full of contradictions and complexities. Sometimes the very weaknesses and limitations of his character helps in his artistic development.
He made this observation in the context of Charlie Chaplin in whose autobiography he noticed that Charlie Chaplin’s life-story was very absorbing as long as he was writing about the days of his poverty and obscurity; it became colourless and dull when the period of his success began, when he was lost in his personal affairs and kept the company of lords and ladies. ‘And yet,’ wrote Balraj, ‘it was in this very period that he gave to the world his finest films.’
To a certain extent this could be said of Balraj also. Success in the films was also accompanied by a sense of inner dissatisfaction both with the film-world and with himself, by a sense of guilt too at times that he was compromising with his conscience. Strange urges too had begun to assert themselves and his preoccupation with personal and domestic problems also had begun to increase, at the same time as fame and success had come his way. And yet it was in this very period that he too gave us his finest performances.
At another time Balraj spoke about ‘restraint and intensity’, the two requisites of good acting. He once talked in glowing terms about Lawrence Oliver’s performance in a war-film.
He is a guest artist in that film and has a very small role to play—that of an officer in charge of aviation. In one scene he telephones the Defence Ministry and asks for more war planes. ‘I want more aeroplanes’—this one sentence he uttered with such intensity and yet with such restraint that it sent a shiver down my spine; this one sentence makes the audience feel the awful situation facing the country.
Restraint and passion—these were perhaps the key principles which he valued. This was the ideal which he had set before himself as the hallmark of acting. Once, years earlier, he was talking to me about Shakespeare’s play, King Lear, and drew my attention to the two words which Lear utters in moments of terrible inner tension and agony—‘Unbutton here’. ‘These two words convey much more of Lear’s inner suffering than any rhetorical speeches might have done,’ Balraj said.
He also attached great importance to a powerful imagination and strong grasp of reality in an actor.
Anyone can become a good actor, but to become a great actor one must have an imagination which is at once strong and which can soar high.
Speaking about realism in art he said:
It is characteristic of realism that it gives a third dimension to art. In my work on the stage and on the screen I have tried to bring this third dimension into my roles. For an artist this is the most difficult path, and yet the one in which he really experiences the joy of creation. The actor should try to present the character so vividly that at every step a new facet of his personality appears before the spectators.
It is when, in keeping with the gestures and mannerisms in which most feelings of the character manifest themselves, that the portrayal becomes revealing. But mere mastery of these external gestures will not take an actor very far; it will not go beyond lending proficiency and slickness to his performance. In reality it is the soul of the character that has to be revealed and that is only possible if the artist is a humanist, if he identifies heart and soul with the character, if his sensibility comprehends instinctively the character’s inner being.
Balraj’s achievement lies in this that he was drawn heart and soul towards this fundamental aspect and thereby succeeded in portraying the character convincingly. The external gestures and mannerisms are important—they typify an individual’s behaviour in society—but there are some gestures which emanate from the inner being of a person; they are the gestures through which the soul cries out. The two simple words uttered by Lear with the attendant gestures convey all the agony that is in Lear’s heart. It is in such eloquent gestures that Balraj excelled as an actor, portraying the character. He did not neglect the mannerisms, the external behaviour. ‘Watch a person how he walks,’ he used to say, ‘that will give you the key to his character.’ He also spent hours and days studying the behaviour of a character, how he sat, how he talked. He spent days studying the way of life of Pathan moneylenders when Kabuliwala was being filmed, or how tongadrivers drove the tonga; such gesticulation lends authenticity to his performances. When you think of his portrayals you think of the characters and not of Balraj the actor. Each portrayal stands on its own; each is distinctly original and independent. Balraj merges his own identity with the identity of the character, and that he does because of his intense imaginative sympathy with the character that he is portraying.
‘Acting is not art alone, but science also,’ Balraj observed at one place. ‘Any person by studying and practising on scientific lines can become a good actor.’
For this, besides imaginative sympathy and identification with character, it was also of paramount importance to have a social perspective, to be able to place character in the broad social context. In this, Balraj asserted, Marxism was of great value.
Those people who have the knowledge of Marxism, consider it as a political doctrine. This is a big mistake. Marxism views every aspect of nature and life from a scientific angle. It removes many a misconception from our minds, and shows us the real situation. I think, the study of Marxism, in our times, is as useful for an artist, as it is for a sociologist or a politician.
Once, when Balraj and I were standing outside the Old Delhi Railway Station, a postal clerk came up to Balraj and said, ‘When will you make a film about us? Don’t we deserve any attention?’ It is very true that he had endeared himself specially to the poorer sections of our society, the lower middle-class people, the petty shop assistants, the railway employees, the clerks, teachers and the like. His deep imaginative sympathy helped no doubt, but more than that it was his social involvement and commitment, and his broad social perspective that brought out the inner pathos of the life of these people.
Balraj was a very hard-working artist. He believed that nothing helped an artist more than hard work and a sense of dedication towards his work. Besides hard work, Balraj had certain other remarkable qualities which helped him in his development as an artist. One was his extreme modesty. He was always learning from others. He was never jealous of anybody and had the artist’s genuine humility and wanted to learn whatever and from wherever he could. The film-world is full of petty jealousies, scandals, backbiting, gossip and the like. Balraj always had a hundred stories to tell. But it would often happen that while talking about some current scandal or story about a person, he would exclaim, almost ecstatically, ‘But you should have seen him play in that film. Great actor! Hats off to him!’ Whenever he saw art, he went into ecstasies over it. The person, his faults, his doings and misdoings, were all forgotten; his art alone shone out before Balraj’s eyes, and he gave him enthusiastic praise. Sometimes, perhaps, his praise was a bit over-enthusiastic and exaggerated. Nevertheless, he had the capacity to praise where he thought praise was due and that was a great quality. For hours he would watch Dilip Kumar act on the sets and try to learn the ease and grace of his performance. He would wax eloquent over the talent of Meena Kumari, Gita Bali and others:
A film-reviewer, writing about Balraj in 1954, observed:
The actor who was in Delhi recently slipped into the Odeon (theatre) at the premier of his film, towards the end of the show. Not many recognized him and he queued out with the crowds. The modesty of the man is apparently genuine.
What helped him retain his modesty was the fact that he was completely free from any illusions about the place and importance of the screen-actor in our social life. Once, he and I walked into a shop in Connaught Place to buy a cardigan jacket. As usually happened, he was soon spotted out, and when we came out of the shop, a small crowd of his fans had already gathered. Balraj was smiling and polite as the young people surrounded him to get his autograph on diaries, currency-notes and note-books, etc. He kept giving autographs, and also kept threading his way out of the crowd. By the time we reached the car, a big crowd had gathered. There as lot of cheering and hand-shaking. As we ultimately managed to drive off, I said, ‘Great, isn’t it? How they admire you!’
Balraj smiled softly and said, ‘You have only heard them cheer; you have not heard them boo. When an actor turns his back, they jeer and boo. Don’t be mistaken. I only enjoy the cheap popularity of a film-actor. The crowd gathers only out of idle curiosity.’
Whether it was genuine praise for is talent or mere idle curiosity, he never gave much importance to it. He never took it seriously. Of course, one day he said to me, ‘I wonder how it will be with me when I go back to live in obscurity. Perhaps I am so used to living in the limelight that I won’t be able to put up with obscurity.’ But he did not nurse any illusions about the nature of this limelight.
On another occasion he narrated to me an experience which was both touching and significant, and threw some light on how Balraj viewed an actor’s life.
‘Do you remember__?’ he asked me.
Of course, I did. She had been one of my favourite actresses. Balraj went on:
Well, one day and I were standing at a bus-stop. I had earlier called on her, and she had come to see me off, at the bus-stop. Some young fellows spotted me and came over to ask for my autograph. Not one of them took any notice of I__felt embarrassed. I told the boys who the lady was. I told them that she was the famous__the idol of millions. Even then, they did not bother to ask her for her autograph. That is what happens to an actor. One fine morning he may suddenly find himself a back number.
When I expressed disagreement with him, he got irritated a little. He told me about a number of one-time film-stars who were then living in privation and want and for whom no one cared. He said:
There are more broken lives in Bombay than there are in any other spheres of art and culture. There are persons who had made their mark in one film, but then, by some queer twist of fate, were pulled down the current, and for years waited for another such ‘break’, but it never came. There are those who begin their career with minor roles, and years pass, and still they are doing three-minute roles and continue to do so, clinging to the hope that one day they will have better roles to play. And there are hundreds of such persons. An air of uncertainty hangs over the film-world all the time. There is an appalling waste of talent; for one successful actor there are hundreds who knock from door to door. And all for what? To produce these commercial entertainers! And on the other hand, there is the hero, driving about in imported cars, living lavishly, his way of life not even remotely related to the conditions prevailing in the country, and inwardly even he is feeling insecure, conscious of the fact that the hobby-horse on which he is riding may throw him down any moment. It is more tragic in the case of women than in the case of men.
He was all the time conscious of a kind of unreality that hung over the life of an actor as much as it did over the film-world in which he lived.
We who make people laugh and cry, who transport them into a magic world, we ourselves begin to live in that world, render our own life into a film or a drama and thereby become all the more entertaining for our spectators.
On another occasion he said:
The phantoms that move about on the screen reflect the reality of the film-artist’s life.
Whenever Balraj spoke about his film-life, he spoke either apologetically or with a gnawing sense of guilt. Why was it so? Was it false modesty? I believe this was the natural reaction of a sensitive person to the conditions prevailing in the cultural sphere, his sense of dissatisfaction coupled with a strong desire to spend his energies in doing something worthwhile. Balraj had grown up in an atmosphere charged with idealism. In his childhood days there was the Arya Samajist atmosphere in the house where Father talked intensely of the necessity of social reforms. Later, during the freedom struggle, the atmosphere was filled with national urges and aspirations and the spirit of dedication. He had lived in close proximity to the two great idealists of our time—Gandhi and Tagore. And subsequently, when he became a convinced Marxist, his mind was again fired by a sense of commitment to the cause of suffering humanity. Such a person cannot easily reconcile himself to the sordid reality of a sphere where art it at a discount and money-values prevail. He very often felt himself part of a machine which was commercializing and debasing art. To grow rich and famous as part of this machine gave little personal satisfaction or any sense of fulfilment. Moreover, his first attempts at literary work had been very promising. The IPTA activity had also been satisfying because in it he had felt himself to be a part of that struggle for a better social order, imparting a certain awareness to his audiences. Both in writing and on the IPTA stage, the individual effort counted for something. But in the vast, amorphous film-world, he, as an individual, could do little. Hence, the occasional brooding that he was wasting his time, that he was not meant for that sphere.
Nevertheless, he was convinced of the power and influence of the film as an art medium. And in his own way, he took initiatives several times towards the production of wholesome, progressive films. It was on his initiative that the first film in the Kashmiri language, Mehjoor by name, was produced, dealing with the life of the famous Kashmiri poet of the same name. Balraj and his son, Parikshit, both acted in it; Parikshit playing the poet’s role. Similarly, Balraj helped in the production of Shri Rajendra Bhatia’s Pavitra Papi, a film based on the novel of the same name by the Punjabi writer, Nanak Singh. He was also keen that a film-studio should be set up in the Punjab, his home-state.
Balraj felt strongly about certain aspects of film production in India. The films, like literature, must be rooted in the life of the people, he used to say; the reason why good films are made in Bengal is that Bengal is a compact, homogenous, cultural entity, where the film-makers are from among the people of Bengal, where there is uniformity of language and culture, where writers and film-makers are closely linked. This cultural homogeneity is lacking in Hindi films. The Hindi films are produced in Bombay, there being no film-studio in the Hindi-speaking region of India … a heterogeneous mass of film-workers including actors and producers (mostly hailing from the Punjab), writers and technicians work together to manufacture films. The films do not emerge from the life of the people, but are to suit, in most cases, box-office requirements, and fitted into the framework of certain formulae. Hence, all the superficiality of these films. The cultural perspective is lacking among the film-makers. This is borne out also by the attitude of the film-makers, towards the scenario of a film.
The attitude towards the scenarios has been very mechanical in the Hindi films (in foreign films it is just the opposite). A scenario is looked upon as an exercise in filling in scenes with dialogues, after the outline of the story has been determined. Sometimes scenes and dialogues are not written down even till the day the film goes on the sets. It often happens that the cameraman, after adjusting the lighting, etc. is waiting to take the shot, when the dialogues are hurriedly scribbled …
In those days, Shashidhar Mukherji was regarded as the wizard of the box-office. None of his films ever failed. The formula he followed was simple—he kept the scenario deliberately weak. If the scenario is weak, the spectator would wait impatiently for the songs and dance sequences. If the spectator finds the scenario of absorbing interest, he would take less interest in songs and dances, which is not good from the box-office point of view, he would argue. There is only one dependable basis for the success of Hindi films—the songs.
I think it is a big mistake to write the scenes and dialogues separately. The scenario is like a plant, every part of it; the roots, the stalk, the branches, the leaves, all grow naturally in the natural order …
Balraj acted in about 135 films, establishing therein some memorable characters. If, despite all the superficiality and melodramatic nature of Hindi films, he was able to present authentic, highly moving and vivid portrayals, it was because he brought to the films, besides his sensitive, artistic temperament, a breadth of outlook and deep social awareness. There is a rich and varied gallery of these portrayals—the clerk (Garm Coat), the peasant (Do Bigha Zameen), the domestic servant (Aulad), the Pathan (Kabuliwala), the refugee (Waqt), the rich mill-owner (Ek Phool Do Mali), the Muslim businessman (Garm Hawa), to name but a few—in which Balraj merges his own identity into that of the character he is portraying. Because of his peculiar background and mental make-up and values, he often found himself a misfit in the film-world, and this in turn made his work all the more difficult and his struggle hard and painful. In a way, he was all the time swimming against the current, and at times it was hard going. Besides, he did not indulge in any of the ‘tricks of the trade’ to gain prominence; instead, he conducted himself with rare dignity and grace, and the pride of an artist. He was never involved in the politics of the film world. Knowing that a film-artist’s career in our country was precarious, also that everything was calculated to the box-office potentialities of the film, he still maintained throughout his integrity as an artist. Nor was he obsessed with the idea of blazing a new trail, as some romantic idealists are. He was detached and objective enough to know which little niche he had to occupy in the film-world, and strove hard to occupy it with credit. He seldom had any misunderstandings with a director or confrontations with any producer. All his struggle was with himself as an artist, and in this his humility, his receptive frame of mind, his objective understanding of reality went a long way to help him emerge successful, and thereby in his own way he blazed a new trail also.
Uptill [sic] now I have been working with honesty and selfrespect. If these are lost, I would go to the dogs myself … (letter dated 22 June 1954).
On another occasion when I wrote to him to put in a word for me with someone, he replied:
I have never approached anyone on my own behalf and now I feel I shall be doing you injustice if I did so on yours … There is a joy in plucking the fruit straight from the tree … I would not like to be deprived of that satisfaction (letter dated 11 July 1956).
This chapter is extracted from the biography Balraj: My Brother.