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ife went on apace, new Dilip Kumar films now appeared only once every few years instead of annually, much-loved Jawaharlal Nehru died, youthful John Kennedy got shot and Cassius Claybecame King of the World by destroying mean old Sonny Liston. All this while my stock in the school was growing. I began to be known as ‘that actor’. People were actually taking the initiative to
befriend me. I played a few cricket matches (actual ones) on the school team without doing anything spectacular. I started finding a leggy athlete from St Mary’s very attractive, she began smiling at me and we exchanged letters. Word quickly spread ‘Shah has a girlfriend yaar!’ I had not so much as brushed her hand with the back of mine but I was well and truly on the way to acquiring the ‘cat’
status I had so long yearned for.
Debating was another field in which I found I could participate, and mostly bullshit my way through. My speeches, peppered with quotes from Shakespeare, were well memorized, thoroughly rehearsed and delivered with all the panache I had acquired at the feet of Mr Kendal. I invariably blustered my way to some prize or other but seldom did I know what I was talking about. Far from taking on the opponents over what they had said and providing a rebuttal I would just wittily, so I thought, mock ‘the worthy gentlemen on the other side’. While it all obviously went down very well with the judges because it made them laugh, it was not debate, it was elocution. This served me
extremely well at the school, and later college, level but I was finally caught out a few years later in a national level debate at Baroda where, representing Aligarh University, I came away empty-handed despite having had the audience eating out of my hand. Neither acting nor debating would I have discovered had I stayed on in Sem. What a fortuitous coming together of energies this was: in a
school founded in the memory of an eleventh-century monk who opposed William Rufus in Britain, in a town blessed by a Sufi saint from Iran, I was shown the right path by an Indian Jesuit priest who later quit the order. Before the year was out, Rev. Cedric had also done The Bishop’s Candlesticks in which I played the convict and a Christmas pageant where I was Pontius Pilate. I attempted coaxing him to try Julius Caesar next. He was reluctant.
Even my relationship with the parents was somewhat on an even keel. Ammi, in any case, was always unconditionally supportive. She regarded me with a kind of detached amusement, making no attempt to get into my head apart from occasionally enquiring what was going on inside it. She never criticized, never chastised, I think that deep down somewhere she instinctively understood. Baba thought I was applying myself better, when all that had happened was that I was at last doing that which made sense to me. The tutors kept coming and going and receiving some credit for their efforts though all I remember of them was one smelt of horses, another had huge muscles and one had his name tattooed on his forearm.
These were radio days. The Philips two-band Baba had bought in 1955 continued to serve him till
his death, and on it he would listen to the news on the BBC or the Voice of America. He seemed to abhor music and wouldn’t tolerate any of us, except Babar Mamu who he doted on and had
practically adopted, tuning in to Radio Ceylon or Vividh Bharati. Cricket commentaries were
permitted but within tolerable limits. So of course, the moment he pedalled off to work at 8. 30 a. m.
on the dot, wearing his hat (a sola topi for summers and a brown trilby for winters), I, already in school uniform and breakfasted, would wallow in film songs for the next half hour till it was time to go to school. Ammi never reacted to this infringement of the rules on my part, nor did she ever tell on me, maybe she secretly enjoyed the music too. Only once did I feel I was testing her patience when she caught me practising my dialogue in front of the mirror.
I began to feel that it might be possible to be a professional actor. In spite of the face I had, why not I reasoned. If I was good at it why should it be a lottery any more than going into the army or studying medicine would be a lottery? If my peers could decide what they were going to do, and many of them had and were readying themselves, what was there to prevent me from deciding what I wanted to do and prepare for it as well? The only hitch being I hadn’t a clue what an actor does to prepare, and there was no one to seek guidance from. The only confidants, my brothers, were both bemused at the idea, but the elder Z did actively encourage me to dream the impossible dream and even showed me how Shylock should be played. Both were, however, sceptical about my chances. They had by this time embarked on the course of their future lives, and were well on the way to doing the family proud.
The elder Z, among the toppers in his Senior Cambridge class, had been admitted to an Indian Institute of Technology. The younger Z, somewhat wilder, a prefect, athletics champ and all-round Cool-Cat in school, went into the National Defence Academy and straightened himself out. As for me, having nowhere to go for the time being, I kept my dreams for the future to myself, trying to not
aggravate the ulcer that later was to take Baba’s life.
The only thing that interested me about life, I remember, was watching how people behaved. If I had been blessed with any ‘gift’ at all, it was an ear for the spoken word. I can still actually recall the grains in a voice I have heard fifty years ago. Oblivious to the strides I was taking in learning to be happy in my own skin, Baba would think up an alternative profession for me nearly every week. He and I both saw quite clearly by now that I hadn’t the brains to study engineering or medicine, I wasn’t gritty enough for the armed forces, nor well informed enough for the Administrative Service. That exhausted almost every possibility that then existed for a young man to plan his future around. In desperation Baba would then talk of the Foreign Service or law (‘you are a good debater so...’) then the police (Shah Mamu had recently become a cop), the tea gardens, then an agricultural college, a polytechnic institute. I suppose I shouldn’t blame him that no kind of training in the arts ever occurred to him; I don’t suppose he knew that such a thing existed. None of his ideas worked for me. I was set on what I wanted to do but the screws had begun to be tightened. Baba’s tenure in Ajmer was coming to an end and I would be back in a hostel from Class 10. They would be moving to Sardhana to try to reclaim Baba’s father’s portion of the old house from the relatives who had squatted in it for ages and made it their own, never expecting us to need it. It was the only place Baba and Ammi could afford to now live in, and rather than settle in an alien town or in Ajmer which was beyond their means, they settled for the known devil.
The section of the house that was Baba’s share was the centre portion of a haveli built by his
grandfather Nawab Bahadur Shah. The old Nawab probably left no clear will when he passed, and the haveli was apportioned off to the various claimants, and divided even further by succeeding generations. Baba’s father being one of the original claimants, it was accepted that his portion
belonged to us, though Baba had so far shown no interest at all in it. It was in the charge of his cousin and the section of it that was not being used as a buffalo-shed was in ruins. There was a large section of the courtyard however, with two cavernous rooms on either side. The meeting to take back
ownership was stirring stuff: emotional cards were played with great dexterity on both sides, a
‘certain amount’ was finally agreed upon, a wall was marked out, and began to be built. Another once grand haveli was being further partitioned.
The struggle to build and maintain that home in Sardhana cost both my parents heavily but they embarked on it with a zeal I never thought they had, grappling with family politics, greedy
contractors, lazy workers, grasping relatives, even burglars who practically cleaned out Ammi’s modest jewellery collection, but they slugged it out. Baba was to live most of his remaining life there, Ammi with one of the three of us for the rest of hers. No forebodings crossed their minds when they made the move. All they wanted was a place to rest their ageing bones, but their stay in Sardhana was by turns peaceful and turbulent, marked by a major falling-out between Babar and Khalid Mamu over (what else) property, a quarrel in which my parents naturally sided with the former, thus antagonizing the other. What exactly it was all about I have some idea, but do not wish to speculate upon it further.
It forever soured relations between Khalid Mamu and us, and it hurt Ammi terribly that her brothers were at war with each other.
Everything was packed for the move, Baba typically giving away all he didn’t need or couldn’t transport: a large dining table, an ancient Afghan rug, the two leopard skins. His complete detachment from non-essentials was the one thing that always affected me, no matter how bad the equation
between us may at that time have been. He would give away stuff on impulse. He had practically gifted away the only car we ever had to Ammi’s brother, sold his guns for a pittance to his own, gave away books, clothes, whatever money he could afford and once, to my great dismay, a beautiful
antique pocket watch I’d had my eye on. He consistently refused the official car the Dargah kept offering him, choosing to cycle to work. He finally consented to be given what was then known as an auto cycle (a mo-ped) which he never used, and on which we were infrequently allowed to zip
around. When it ran out of petrol, rare because it covered about a hundred miles to the gallon, you could even pedal the thing home.