An Ordinary Life Read online

  And then I had to simultaneously go moonwalking and do difficult dance steps in Munna Michael. How opposite these two worlds were! It took a Herculean effort to pull myself out of one to enter the other. I relate so much to Manto. But there was a lot of fun in the dance film which I would have hated to miss out on. In the middle of all this, I struggled to make time for family, for Aaliya.

  17

  Shora, My Miracle

  Like life’s mysteries go, I don’t exactly know how or why or even when the hunch came to me that our child growing in Aaliya’s belly would be a girl. Just as mysteriously, I decided her name would be Shora. If destiny were to prove my prediction wrong and give us a son instead, then we would have been unprepared to greet him with a name right at birth. At that nursing home in Seven Bungalows, close to where we lived back then, Aaliya bravely battled excruciating labour pains all night. As is common these days, the doctor suggested to cut the hours of her agony short and settle for a caesarean section instead. She was in great distress so naturally she and I agreed with the doctor. But Ammi, who had experienced and seen several births, would have none of it. She was adamant that it be a natural birth since there were no complications. She stayed up all night at the hospital insisting that no matter what, Aaliya must not go the surgery route. Birth might be instant and relatively convenient with surgery but the healing for the mother takes a longer time with potential side effects on her health. A natural vaginal birth, on the other hand, means greater pain but mostly a quick recovery to normal health and activities. Ammi held Aaliya’s hand and did her best to encourage her to hold on for just a little bit longer. Time crawled like a heavy tortoise. Then, as it always does with tortoises or people, patience won, Ammi won, all of us won. Early morning at 8.35 on 10 December in 2010, a baby wailed its way into the world in a little nursing home at Seven Bungalows. She was a girl.

  We called her Shora.

  It was not just me but all of us, especially Ammi and Abbu, were elated that a girl had been born in the family. Barring my sisters, Shamiya and Saya, there are very few girls in our family, so deep down everybody was praying that a girl be born. We fell in love with her instantly. But she did not let us revel in her beauty. She set us to work almost immediately. Shamas and I undertook countless trips to the medical store next door. I realized for the very first time just how many things a newborn needs. These hours passed at the speed of a running cheetah, and evening came upon us. My heart felt heavy. The very day my firstborn arrived in this world, the shooting of Gangs of Wasseypur began. Words cannot express that melange of emotions I felt on that day: the sorrow of leaving my infant coupled with the excitement of my first big break.

  Ammi stayed on for almost a year to help Aaliya with all the nitty-gritty—feeding the baby, potty training and all that which comes with raising a baby. Shamas was there too, to help raise her in my absence. In fact, during those months that I was away on shoots, my baby girl bonded so deeply with Shamas that she thought of him as her father. Those were very interesting times in our household. On the one hand, we had Ammi with her expertise of many years and many children, and her old, tried-and-tested ways. On the other hand was my wife, inexperienced, but armed with the power of research and money and lured by shiny baby products for her first child. Ammi would stitch cloth nappies by hand. Aaliya would move them aside, refusing to use them, opting for the best-quality diapers sold in shops. Ammi was used to recycling products, making the best use of things. So she used her sewing skills to cut, stitch and hack ancient equivalents of baby mackintosh sheets, receiving blankets, swaddling blankets, burp cloths, and so on. Aaliya rejected those and, like most modern mums in cities, bought the latest of beautiful baby products available. Ammi used organic natural oils for the baby’s massage. Aaliya insisted on the latest baby creams in the market. Although this clash of cultures, of mindsets, of the old and the new, of the modern and the traditional, might be the story of most households, to me it was not mundane but a most amazing spectacle.

  A year later, Ammi left for Budhana. When Shora, and later, her brother Yani, would fall ill in the middle of the night—with typical ailments that affect little ones such as earache, teething issues, fever, coughing spells, cold, flu, tummy bugs, and so on—Aaliya was a helpless mother with nowhere to go. During those hours the chemists, the clinics and even her favourite doctor would not be at hand. At that hour, the only private helpline open was not a doctor’s but another mother’s. Ammi would prescribe all of her natural medicines which were simple and mostly already in the house, like clove oil and cumin. Many might dismiss these as quackery but these harmless natural nuskhe (prescriptions) worked every single time. The children would feel better almost instantly. However, when morning came, Aaliya would tell Ammi that now she could go to the doctor. So she would head off to Kokilaben Hospital, which has some of the grandeur of a five-star hotel, and given the fact that today we have the money to afford it, it feels nice to visit.

  Shora has always been very close to Shamas. So glued was she to him during her early years that when Shamas was away in Dehradun for two days for some urgent work, Aaliya sent him a video. In it, Shora was banging her head on the door, waiting for Shamas, howling for him. Because when he was there, as he was most of the time, he would walk in through the door and she’d tell him she wanted to meet Mau, which was the name she had given to the stray cat down the road, and off they’d go.

  When Gangs of Wasseypur released, Shora was about two. I was back in Mumbai, happily playing with my baby who had now become a naughty, hyper-energetic toddler. We were out on a drive in the car one day, she sitting on my lap, when she suddenly pointed to a spot on a wall outside, babbling excitedly, ‘Papa! Papa!’ My eyes traced her finger to see this object that had brought her such great joy. It turned out to be a poster of the film with me in it at the Infiniti Mall in Andheri. Naturally it was there as part of the promotions. But to a small child who was too little to understand what films were it was simply a blown-up picture of her father. ‘Papa! Papa! It is you! It is you!’ she screamed in excitement. The poster became an object of immense fascination for her. Every time we passed by the area, she looked out for it. At times, she especially demanded that we drive past it. She watched it with great joy, utterly enchanted. I watched her, her innocence.

  The life of films in theatres is short and therefore the lives of billboards and posters advertising them even shorter. Soon enough, another poster, that of Ek Tha Tiger starring Salman Khan, replaced Shora’s favourite. She, of course, was too little to fully comprehend what her father did, leave alone know about the shelf life of a film poster. In the pure innocence of childhood, she got very angry. In her eyes Salman Khan became this mean guy who had ripped off her father’s poster and replaced it with his own. She asked who he was and when she learnt it was a man named Salman Khan, she began to hate him instantly. Whenever she happened to spot a photograph of Salman Khan—which, given where we were living, was hard to avoid—she used to slap it with the full fury of a two-year-old. When I would ask her why, she would say, ‘He removed your poster, Papa! He is a bad guy! I hate him!’

  Eventually, Kick released. Towards the end of the film, Salman Khan picks me up, throws me across and beats me badly. Shora has inherited my short temper. So this enraged her immediately. ‘How dare this guy beat my papa!’ she fumed. She happens to be extremely protective about me, so much so that she cannot even bear it if her mum says anything against me or scolds me gently. She will shout right back, shielding me like a mother cat shielding her kitten against the minutest of threats. Then imagine how terribly irate she was to see a man beating her father up. And this was not just any man but the very man who had apparently torn her father’s poster and replaced it with his.

  Towards the end of the shooting of Bajrangi Bhaijaan, we shot a song. Shora had tagged along with me that day. I was in the make-up room at the YRF (Yash Raj Films) Studios when my driver, Ashok, took her to meet Salman Khan. She came face-to-face with her a
rch-enemy for the very first time. She was quiet but he came and hugged her. Shora’s mind changed instantly! She immediately became very fond of him and the hate she had harboured for such a long time evaporated, leaving no trace, as if it had never existed in the first place.

  ‘Papa! Papa!’ she came running to me soon after in the make-up room.

  ‘What happened, Shora?’ I asked, holding her in my lap.

  ‘Salman Khan is a lovely guy, Papa!’ she blurted out instantly.

  ‘But you hate him, right?’ I said in amusement.

  ‘No! Not at all! He is a wonderful guy. He even hugged me,’ she said.

  And so just like that, Shora joined the big fan club of little ones who love Salman Khan. Ask children who their favourite film star is and the most common answer you’ll get is Salman Khan. There is indeed something special about Salman—children are drawn to him by some inexplicable magical force.

  Shora is the real star in our family, right from the very day she was born. It is not because she excels in dramatics at her school. It is in the way she behaves, the way she is, perhaps the royal traits she has inherited from my grandfather. The wish of our little lovable queen is our—and by ‘our’ I don’t just mean Aaliya and me, but also all my brothers, Ammi and most of all, Shamas—command.

  * * *

  After having seen so much, little surprises me. But the innocence of my daughter never fails to astound me. I am sure this is the case with all children but the children I interact with the most happen to be my own. Hence, theirs is the innocence I see. During the premiere of Bajrangi Bhaijaan, I took her along. As it happens every time, we were mobbed by the paparazzi on the way back and we were making a narrow escape in our car. Shora sat on my lap in the front, as I waved and rolled the window half-way down. Many star children enjoy the limelight, the camera shutters, the bright flashlights—they are used to these. Not this one though, or at least she was not back then. We were crawling at a snail’s pace through the giant crowd that had gathered which included both the media and fans. My child, who had just stepped out of her toddler years and entered girlhood, lost her temper. Being perched like that gave her a view of exactly what was going on. She shouted back at the cameras, ‘Leave my dad alone! Go away!’ she screamed at them, again like a protective cat might to shield her kittens from potential danger. ‘Go away!’ However, the media found this utterly adorable and so instead of going away, the shutters clicked louder, the flashes flashed faster, blinding us.

  Shora has seen many stars, including Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Bhai. She is very aware of my line of work. The only time she was star-struck was when she saw the little child actor who played the role of a notorious chubster in Freaky Ali. She did the entire caricature of a swooning and fainting fan at the sight of her most beloved star. She invested all the might of her pestering superpower into asking me to bring him home. And so one day I invited the child and his parents over to our house for lunch. They happily accepted. I sighed in relief. When they came home, my little girl was hypnotically captivated. I had never seen her like that. She watched him and I watched her. It turned out to be a lovely afternoon as they played together, with Shora showing caution for the very first time as she dealt with the ‘star’.

  Ask my bodyguards, my assistants or the cat outside our office. All of them will agree that Shora is charmingly bossy. So imagine my distress when out of the blue, my tiny chatterbox shuts down and becomes withdrawn. Moreover, she began to visit the bathroom at an alarming frequency. I asked Aaliya what was wrong. Being too caught up with our second child, Yani, who was then an infant, as well as our firstborn, Aaliya had no mind space to register this as being odd. Exhaustedly, she passed it off as being perhaps another phase in a child’s growth. But I could not ignore it so easily. This oddness gnawed at me. Investigation revealed that her teacher used to scold her and had recently resorted to hitting her. I was shocked. This was not the sarkari school in Budhana. This was one of the best schools in Mumbai. It was not just my daughter, the teacher took out her temper on several children. So, we parents complained collectively to the principal. The matter was taken care of. Slowly, Shora emerged from her shell and was back to her old vivacious self, bossing everyone in sight. I cannot express how relieved I was to get my naughty Miss Bossypants back.

  I was especially cautious because there had been another brief period of time when she had become a withdrawn child. Aaliya and I had quarrelled once again over something petty and again she had left the house. We lived separately in Mumbai for about six months or so. Shora was approximately a year and a half old. I used to go visit my wife very often, especially for Shora. Whenever it was time for me to leave, she would stand at the door with her arms spread out barricading the door with her body as I wore my shoes. There was so much agony in her big, pleading eyes. There was so much sorrow on her baby face that it had shrunk and become like a tiny animal’s. It broke my heart. I made amends with Aaliya and begged her to return home because we could not do this to our daughter, we could not live separately and watch her wither due to our egos. She agreed.

  When she returned home, my little girl was back to her confident best almost overnight. She developed a deep sense of security which became obvious in her eyes, in her gait. She became the bossy Shora everybody knows today. What if Aaliya and I had not buried our differences? What if we had not come back together? I shudder to think about it. Then this hyper-confident daughter of ours would most likely have become a depressed, withdrawn child. The nature of a child’s mind is determined tremendously by her nurture, her environment. The foundations are laid during those early years and make their personality for life.

  Today Shora is a leader. She thinks she is special. The realization that she is a star’s child is slowly sinking into her. The privilege it brings is slowly dawning upon her. She sees everybody talking about her father. But I keep insisting that she lead a normal life. That she travel by bus or an autorickshaw or even walk instead of taking a luxurious car every time she needs to go somewhere. She should not be born into privilege. She must work hard and find her own place, just like we did. I keep telling her tales of Budhana where we hailed from of just how hard I have worked and how she too needs to work hard to carve a place for herself. Diligence is sacred, perhaps the most sacred thing in the world.

  Fortunately, she is very disciplined. Perhaps it helps that in our world where the norm is to rise late in the morning, all of us are early risers, welcoming the dawn at around six. Even on days when there is no shoot or school, we wake up very early. The habit that Ammi instilled in me which I passed on to my brothers is now being relayed to the next generation of Siddiquis. It sounds trivial but it makes a huge difference to the day, to one’s productivity. The best way to train your children is to become an example they can follow. Seeing how hard I work and how deeply disciplined I am about my work, is helping her to imbibe this quality.

  When she saw the film Dangal, like so many girls in India, she too was inspired. She wanted to become a wrestler and practised for hours on me. She fought me for hours, ensuring that no matter what, she would not let her back touch the ground (as she had learnt from the film) because it meant defeat. She is an extremely active child, a powerhouse of physical energy inherited from her mother’s tireless, resilient physical vigour and sporty genes. For up to four hours, Shora used to wrestle with me in the name of honing her craft. My nicotine-filled lungs have stained my own history of pehelwani. So I would get exhausted but she would not.

  I don’t want Shora to grow up in the air of Bollywood. Our home has no whiff of it. There are no posters, no talk of films. I want her to grow up just like any other child, and with a lot of options to choose whichever field she is drawn towards. For instance, these days she is absorbed in all things outer space: planets, stars, the moon, the sun. When Shamas asks her what stories she wants to listen to, she wants to know about the wonders and the mysteries above. She is still too young to appreciate a professional telescope, yet S
hamas got her one, to fuel her enthusiasm. I will actually try my best to dissuade her from Bollywood. But whatever she chooses, I want her to work hard with full fervour, with 100 per cent honesty and utilize 100 per cent of her mind and 100 per cent of her heart. If she lives in Mumbai though, it is going to be extremely hard to escape the world of movies. And this is why when she is some years older, say, around twelve years old, I’d like her to be away from this atmosphere and in a boarding school. Once she is fully grown up, she can choose her own path. Even if she does opt for Bollywood, I’d insist that she then put in all of her heart, mind and soul into that.

  Strangely, Shora has the wisdom of a grandmother. She can gauge a person’s nature within minutes of meeting them. The kind of things she talks about, the kind of unsolicited advice she gives is well beyond her six years of age. Her sensibility, her sense of discernment—along with her temper—come from our side. She is quite a mix that way of athleticism and erudition.

  Recently she asked me, ‘Papa, if you were not my papa, would you still love me so much?’

  ‘Yes, of course!’ I said, taken a little aback by the nature of the question.