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.