An Ordinary Life Read online

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘Because you are so lovable. You are so disciplined. How can anybody not love you?’ I replied with a smile. But she was serious.

  ‘Okay, then why don’t you love other kids as much too?’ she persisted.

  ‘Of course, I love other children too!’ I said.

  ‘Yes, of course. But do you love them as much as you love me?’ she quizzed.

  Our conversation went on. I was awestruck. From where did this thought wander into her little mind? But she talks like this all the time. In this particular instance, I assume she was trying to teach me that I must love all children equally. She constantly teaches me lessons, constantly surprises me with her thought process. Her solid memory power leaves me just as baffled. She remembers my scenes faster than I can. Like the chaddi rant from Freaky Ali: she heard it just once but she learnt it by heart instantly, and it is not an easy bunch of words to remember right away.

  Compared to her, her baby brother, Yani, is a very simple-minded little boy. Many may look down on Shora as being tez (shrewd). But I am very confident about her. I know that she is headed in the right direction. It is crucial for girls in our country to be tez, shrewdly aware, so that they can survive anywhere, so that nobody can take them for a ride. Most fathers would worry about their daughters, but I am not at all worried about mine. She is quite street-smart.

  These days she has a bizarre habit of collecting all kinds of tiny things and locking them up in a safe place in her room. Nobody dares to touch them, not even her harmless little brother, who, by the way, of all the things in the world is only interested in his bossy big sister’s stuff. We keep trying to explain to her that he is your own brother and he is a baby. But that is the rare time when she ceases to be charming and becomes borderline rude. Uncannily enough, my Nani was the same. She had a reputation for collecting all kinds of trinkets which she would not let anybody even see, let alone touch. It was only after her death that we could access her secret collection. We found handkerchiefs, letters, money, so many clothes which nobody could wear, notes, ribbons . . . For us, it was the equivalent of excavating Tutankhamun’s treasures.

  I did not know how much of an impact having a daughter would have on my perspective. Due to the very fact that Shora is a girl, many changes have come in me. I have begun to view women in a new light, as human beings with countless characteristics. Before that, given my village background, I had a bumpkin’s attitude. My hopelessly shallow outlook about women confined them to merely the sum total of their roles, that’s it. Some of these roles were not even their choices, they were simply assigned to them. A woman could be a wife. A woman could be a mother. A woman could be a sister. Or she could be a maid. How awfully foolish I had been! It is shameful. Today I know that she has countless forms. Each woman is a person in her own right with myriad characteristics. She can be a friend. Simply by the act of being born a girl, my daughter dispelled my narrow-mindedness.

  Now for the very first time in my life, I have female friends. I can talk to them for hours, I can listen to them for hours. It is no different from having male friends. Before having a daughter, I used to be awkward around women. I could talk with them for a few minutes, limited mostly to greetings and other formalities. This new-found comfort with women is amazing. It is liberating, it has added a new dimension to life altogether. And I am deeply grateful, indebted actually, to my baby girl for giving me this gift.

  PART IV

  ACTING

  18

  Anurag Kashyap

  Awkward. That’s the word which seems to define the flow of my life. Yes, that’s it. However, coming to think of it now, in retrospect, it does not seem awkward at all, that I first met Anurag, my mentor-to-be (but I did not know that then, did I? Or maybe I did.) at one of the platforms of Andheri railway station. It was bang in the middle of our infamous rainy season. As if it were a dandy unable to make up its mind about which colour to wear, the light kept changing its colours whimsically, from various undocumented shades of grey to ebony, to grey again. It sounds gorgeously romantic, which it was, while simultaneously being bleak. The gloomy, all-pervasive, cumbersome cloudiness implied that it no longer mattered if it was day or night, you could barely tell the difference. The curtain of showers too, commuted between layers of transparency and opaqueness, sometimes thinning to a drizzle but like emotions, never quite leaving you.

  This is how the Mumbai monsoons are: they take over every centimetre of the city and every living and dying pore of its beings. I could not have asked for a better accessory than this weather. The gloom outside matched the gloom inside me perfectly. If my struggle to find work was akin to a mountain, then it wasn’t the Everest or even the one Dashrath Manjhi, the Mountain Man, had fought, but the one that Sisyphus had battled against. Or at least that was how it felt then. To put it mildly, I was down in the dumps.

  We were three of us—Ashraful Haque, Rajpal Yadav and me—all friends, all actors, all united in the same quest as everyone in Mumbai: chasing the elusive rainbow, pursuing our slippery dreams, in order to become successful actors. Anurag Kashyap knew Ashraf quite well. But he was actually there to counsel Rajpal Yadav, who was fed up of waiting for that elusive Godot we call success and had decided to leave Mumbai. Anurag was telling him: ‘Don’t worry. We will figure something out.’ I had actually been chasing Anurag for work. In fact, I was chasing anybody who could give me work. Those were endless, anxious days of desperation. But even in that brief meeting of a few minutes, there was something in Anurag’s eyes, something about his demeanour, that struck me. I don’t quite know to this day what it was, but kuch tha (something was there)! It was that something which told me that this guy here in front of you, Nawaz, will give you work one day. Pukka!

  As always, Anurag wore many hats, which then included that of a casting director’s—that meant knowing actors, something he knows anyway. He kind of knew me, as part of the NSD crowd. He had seen my scene from Sarfarosh—where I play a wretch who gets beaten up by cops, led by Aamir Khan, during an interrogation in a police station and pleads in vain for mercy. But what he had no idea about was that this character was played by me. In fact, he was certain that the casting guys had brought in a real-life criminal, a petty thief perhaps, to play that role. So imagine his shock when a fellow NSD actor informed him that this tiny role was actually played by a junior artiste called Nawaz.

  What had blown Anurag away, as he later told me, was the fact that I had no screen presence at all. Zero! And therefore, it was only the character that could be seen on the screen, not the actor playing it. He could not believe such realism, which is why he had simply assumed that a small-time criminal, perhaps a petty real thief, had probably been cast as a junior artiste in Sarfarosh.

  Anurag promised to cast me someday.

  ‘But why someday, why not now? Why not today?’ I begged. Remember I was desperate, capital letters DESPERATE!

  He was actually casting for Shool then. And there was this teeny role of a junior artiste as a waiter taking orders from the characters played by Manoj Bajpai and Raveena Tandon. Anurag insisted that I not do the role. He believed in my acting more than I did and tried really hard to convince me. But my desperation had become a part of me, like a leg it propelled me forward.

  I badly needed money, and any work, really, just about any work. The hunger of the soul and the hunger of the belly were both driving me mad. My madness pushed him into casting me, even as he was saying all the while, ‘Nawaz, mat kar, yaar! Nawaz, mat kar, yaar!’ (Nawaz, buddy, don’t do this! Don’t do this!)

  Struggle—in our industry, this one simple word sums up lifetimes so simply, so nonchalantly, as if it’s just another word, just another thing. Like, say, a table, a wall or a biscuit. Those days, Anurag too was a struggler in the sense that he was struggling to make his own type of cinema. Yet, I continued to try to impress him, win him over, woo him, almost as if courting a prospective lover.

  There was this famous play
running those days called Tughlaq by the eminent playwright Girish Karnad. It had several powerful dialogues in it, which I learnt by heart. I asked Shamas to come with a tape recorder where we had recorded some dramatic music, timed perfectly to play in the background and amplify the impact of the speeches as I delivered them live. I had prepared this act especially for Anurag. I called him to an empty space in Juhu and delivered the speeches. And each time, Shamas—inconspicuous behind a door—would press play on the tape recorder for the music, or pause so that silence could play out, thereby magnifying the emotion being portrayed. It was not a normal audition; it was like a real performance, like you might see in a film that has been edited and is complete. It worked! Anurag was completely dazzled!

  But it was only some years later that I finally got a role in one of Anurag’s movies. Gautam Kishanchandani cast me in Anurag’s Black Friday—the controversial film on the Bombay riots—in a major role. I was delighted and very impressed with the role. Anurag said that Aparna, the wife of his friend Pawan Malhotra, saw it and told him, ‘Kitni khoobsoorat aankhein hain iski!’ (What beautiful eyes he has!) And apparently, all the women on the set were gushing about ‘is bande ki aankhein’ (this guy’s eyes). It was hilarious! We were most amused, as you must be, because, to put it mildly, I’m not exactly known for my looks, am I? We had a good laugh about it. In fact, we laugh about it till today.

  Of course, he did not give it any thought then. Much, much later, during the shoot of Black Friday, when he was completely absorbed in the monitor scrutinizing the scenes, he agreed that it was really so. That my eyes were indeed beautiful. Sometime over the years, he began saying, ‘Tu toh meri item girl hai!’ (You’re my item girl!), and he continues to tease me thus, till today. ‘Badi zabardast shaadi hoti hamari!’ (We would have had a great marriage!) We keep clowning around, but seriously, if either one of us was a girl, we would have married each other. I am his muse, he says, and he is mine, I tell him.

  I had always taken the ‘item girl’ tag in jest. I had no idea that the bugger had plans of casting me in an ‘item number’ from the very first time he met me. But then, that’s Anurag. The predictable thing about him is his unpredictability of thought. He always thinks differently. Look at all the roles he has made me do. Every single one of them is not only novel in Indian cinema, but also challenging enough to make me push my boundaries as an actor, again and again.

  With Raman Raghav 2.0, we especially had enormous freedom to do this, because it was financed by Anurag’s Phantom Films, so we did not have to meet any financier’s or producer’s needs. For a film-maker, this is like winning the jackpot of creative expression, which is why we decided we would not repeat ourselves. We would do something we have not done before.

  We had about three weeks of extremely intense shooting for Raman Raghav 2.0. Without realizing it, I pushed my boundaries to such extremes that I, who claim to not know fear, began to be afraid of myself. While doing such a character, you cannot help but lose yourself in multiple labyrinths and fall into abysses in your mind blacker than black holes that you did not even know existed. How else do you play such a dark, deranged psychopathic serial killer who will murder, just like that, at any time, with something as guiltless, legitimate and mundane as a steel rod? Who will murder his own chubby-cheeked, wide-eyed, cute-as-a-button nephew and inform him shortly before hitting him that he will call him ‘pocket’ for being so tiny? ‘Koi poochega kahe ko maara tujhe, toh main bolega maine toh pocket mara, bas.’ (If somebody asks me why I killed you, I’ll say I just picked a pocket, that’s all.) But he also has a drop of the innocent angst of a child—like losing his cool over a guy who was unaware that Ramanna, while walking on the road, was following the black-and-white square tiles, drawing a strict pattern of them in his mind, and he stepped on the black one. Many of us have felt that tiny frustration as a child but, of course, that never merits violence, leave alone brutal murder, like the levels this lunatic takes it to.

  There were times when Anurag would get quite angry during the shoot. I was running a very high fever and did not tell the team. My reality had blurred so much with this manic murderer’s character that I was barely even aware of my own existence. During the shoot, I had hurt my leg while doing a scene at a rocky site and so the limp you see Sindhi Dalwai (Ramanna) portray on screen is real. Then I fell so sick that I was hospitalized; I was hallucinating in my unconscious state as I was still very much inside the character. The emotional turmoil Ramanna created within me I had never experienced before. I wanted to finish the shoot as soon as possible and get this lunatic out of my system. Aaliya was unaware of this intensity and so naturally, she completely freaked out when she heard me mutter softly things like eating my own skin while lying unconscious on the hospital bed. She immediately called up Anurag, equally petrified and angry at what he was doing to her husband. ‘Kya film bana rahe hain aap log?’ (What kind of a film are you guys making?)

  I don’t think I’ll go the Ramanna route again.

  Coming to think of it now, Faisal Khan was so much easier. Many think that I delivered an astounding performance in Gangs of Wasseypur. But the truth is that I had almost ruined the character of Faisal Khan—by trying too hard, way too hard to exude power, because, well, isn’t a gangster supposed to be powerful? Should he not display power to invoke fear wherever he goes? ‘No way, Nawaz!’ Anurag quipped. ‘Just calm down. You are a gangster. They are already afraid of you, dude. You don’t need to do anything.’ Those were simple words; simple words are often the most powerful. I was so perplexed that I was unable to do the one thing I knew how to do—I could not sleep for two nights. Then, the next evening in Benares, I made myself some green tea and as I sipped it silently, I sipped in his words as well. It took a while but finally I could sink into the skin of Faisal, and that is how I delivered those lines, which later went on to become legendary: ‘Ma ka, Baap ka, sab ka badla lega tera Faisal.’ (Mother’s, Father’s, your Faisal shall take revenge for everyone.) I said it with total mildness, utter calm, no drama. Anurag was like, ‘Yes! That’s it!’

  Many elements of Anurag’s cinema are so lifelike because they are drawn from the realities around him and those of the crew. There is this famous scene between Huma (Qureshi) and me in Wasseypur, the ‘permissun’ scene—it is based completely on a true event in my life, the memory of which popped up during the workshop.

  Slightly ahead of Mandi House is a little park, one of those small neighbourhood parks cosily tucked inside a colony, surrounded by houses. This girl was my junior from NSD, studying in the first year while I was in the third year. By then, everybody around me had a girlfriend. I was already about twenty-two and had never had a serious relationship in my life. So I was feeling super depressed. I was friends with her and asked her to come to the park with me. She agreed. There we were, with nothing to say to each other, while my young male mind was racing, wanting to hold her and kiss her. We sat in complete silence for a long time. Nothing happened.

  ‘Yaar, bore ho gayee tere saath, Nawaz (Nawaz, you are making me bored),’ she suddenly said, breaking the silence as quietly as a cat might have.

  I was taken aback. Then I thought she wanted me to do something. My mind, ruled by hormones and desires, mistook her complaint of boredom for something else altogether. Without thinking I placed my hand on hers, with a lot of love and respect. She reacted as if hit by a powerful jolt of electric current and immediately removed her hand. ‘What is this!’ she demanded. I was so shocked myself but trying to play it cool, I smiled and said, ‘Kuch nahin. Haath hai mera.’ (Nothing! It is just my hand.)

  ‘But it is illegal!’ she said.

  The moment she uttered the word ‘illegal’, I stopped breathing. Her reaction shocked me like a gunshot in a silent fog. I went into a state of pure panic. What if she filed an FIR at the police station against me? What if? After all, I had done something ‘illegal’, but of course, I did not know it was illegal. Otherwise obviously, I would not have done it. F
ear soared out of my orifices like smoke gushing out of a factory’s chimney. And I began to cry like a child, afraid of something he had done but did not understand.

  There were other incidents too, though a little less childish and more corrupt. Later in Mumbai, and still without girls by the way, I told a former batchmate, ‘Main aapke saath sex karna chahta hoon.’ (I want to have sex with you.) I’m lucky she did not kick me in the balls. Today, of course, I am ashamed, but you see, we came from the village and we had no tameez (etiquette) about how to talk to girls. All of this freedom we saw of the modern women was scandalous and our narrow minds would think, ‘Oh, if this girl smokes, uske saath kuch bhi kiya ja sakta hai’ (you can do anything with her). Of course, it was utterly wrong and awful! But I did not know that then; it was only later that I learnt to respect women and their freedom.

  Anurag found these incidents hilarious but he was also touched by their pure innocence. And so he translated the park episode of my life into the famous ‘permissun’ scene in Wasseypur.

  I’m quite light on my feet, or so Anurag says. But during the fight scene in Wasseypur, even he did not want me to remove the protective wire from around my body. But it was hindering me and so I removed it and climbed all over freely, as freely as a cat, as the real Faisal might have done. How did I get that kind of confidence? I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s from this aura around Anurag. Whenever I’m around him, I’m flooded with an enormous sense of confidence.

  We are warriors, fighting this battle together, to make a certain type of cinema, staying as true to our craft as possible. So for Gangs of Wasseypur II, Anurag wanted to shoot on the streets because it’s so much more alive, bustling and real compared to a studio set. But to shoot on the streets, you cannot shoot with stars—people would get star-struck and the flow of the shooting would stop. So he took the risk of shooting with unknown faces, which was a quite a gutsy decision because financiers obviously prefer to back movies with big stars. So UTV backed out but Anurag didn’t back out from his decision.