Reading this wonderful memoir by Naseeruddin Shah, one can’t help but being pleasantly surprised by the candor of the man.  Usually the Indian luminaries in general and people from the movie world in particular are quite cagey about revealing themselves to the public.  Most of the time they would be either be evasive or resort to embellishing the important moments in their lives.  But not Naseer.  He has a produced a first rate memoir which gives a vivid account of the life of this very unremarkable man from a nondescript town who went on to become one of the finest actors this country has thrown up.

From his utter failure in academics and because of this, his uneasy relationship with his father with whom he could never reconcile, his roving eye for women, to his experiments with LSD not to mention discovering sex for the first time in the tent of a Gypsy woman!  It’s been one hell of a ride for him.  Until I read the book, I didn’t know that in the first flush of infatuation and a budding romance, he’d married a Pakistani woman with whom he also produced a baby girl. Of course when the novelty wore off and the grim reality of compatibility hit home and not least because the lady in question Purveen was fourteen years his senior.  He gets estranged from not only his wife but also his daughter who he would not see for another fourteen years.  What is remarkable is that he has not tried to  gloss over the complete indifference that he felt for the child.  There are some pithy but accurate observations on the Hindi film industry and its unique star system.  When you go through some illuminating passages about the craft of acting, you can sense that Naseer is not only a good actor but a highly intelligent man.  I liked it a lot when he describes how later in life he found his anchor and soul mate in Ratna Pathak, a decent actor in her own right and they have stayed in a happy and loving marriage for well  over thirty years.  He credits Ratna for re-establishing connection with his estranged daughter Heeba.

The one thing that really underpins the whole enterprise is his lifelong commitment and passion for acting and to that end, this memoir is a no holds barred attempt, sometimes moving, sometime darkly comic, totally self-deprecatory, to tell the story of the life of a seriously gifted actor of this generation.