My first-ever attempt at writing on Bollywood. The edited version was published in Open Magazine.
Chinki Sinha
Bombay
“For if a lover's face survives emblazoned on your heart, the world is still your home.” Gabriel Garcia Marquez'
Scene 1
There is a board with the shooting schedules, a television, and an ipad. And there is a star in the making.
He is waiting. The stage is set. There are the aviators. I wear them as a tribute to Faisal Khan in Gangs of Wasseypur, the Anurag Kashyap film, which has pitched Nawazuddin Siddiqui as the new anti-hero, the dark, lean man, a struggler with no pedigree, a commoner, against the starlets, the men with biceps, and bungalows, and women.
He smiles. We decide to get coffee. He tells me he is trying to build his body for his next role.
Then, a few minutes later, when he is reciting the stories of his days as a watchman, a struggler, he tells me he will never build his body, for he, the method actor from a nondescript village in Uttar Pradesh, is everything that a Bollywood hero isn't. He is an actor.
At the Yari Road seaside cafe, he must have met other reporters, too. At his house, he must have greeted the scribes who came looking for the story of the “dark knight rises”, a story of what dreams are made of. Nawazuddin wants to sell dreams, too.
“I want my roles to be what men would dream of,” he says.
“I want to be a gangster,” I say, because in the first encounter, I am smitten. The story is sold to me.
And like others, I hang on to every word, every detail of what he says. Because there is a rebuttal of
status quo, and there is a validation and celebration of daring fate.
The man, with the cigarette dangling from his dark, chapped lips, begins the tale, only the examples are different. Rejection, and then redemption, and then celebration.
In love and life, he had to learn to dare the mirror. He learned to make the most out of what stared back him him – a brooding man, with features that weren't striking. The rebel.
But if you looked long enough, things started to lose their meaning. In his case, he started to like what he saw. Or like the director who promised him one day he would cast him in a role that would redeem him.
When Kashyap saw him through the lens, and he looked long enough, he knew there was magic in the man.
“If you look at him long enough, you find him beautiful,” he said. “The French women went nuts after him at Cannes.”
“He is the invisible man, and that's his beauty,” he added.
I fell for the invisible man, and his stories of love and loss. Rehearsed, and recited. Real, and unreal. Saleable. Yes. But if you heard or saw for long, they started to change their meaning.
Because he occupies the middle ground. The stardom he rejects, and yet he his own PR machine, rejecting stereotypes, and surging ahead with stories of deprivation.
Scene 2
Past, and the Present
The girl in the doorway wouldn't remember and he couldn't provide any triggers to her memory of a
thin dark-skinned school boy walking past her house, sneaking looks at her.
He eventually lost her to television.
Many long years have passed since that encounter in an alley in his village Budhana as she rushed to watch a television serial at a neighbor's house that the first and only television set in the village.
He has carried her in his memory for too long and with much clarity.
She was fair, with large black eyes that followed him around, encouraging him, making him nervous, and he would try to read meaning in her glances. Twice, the eyes greeted him. At 10 am and again at 4:30 pm, and this continued for six months until he decided it was time to speak with her.
One night, he blocked her path as she hurried to watch television.
“I want to speak to you.”
“I am getting late for the television serial.”
“One day you will see me on television. I promise.”
A hurt lover returned to his house, frustrated and dejected.
But he kept his promise.
Eight years later, he called his friend Javed in the village.
“Please find her and tell her to watch television at 9 pm tonight.”
“The girl is now the third wife of a fanatic. There are many children in the house. Seven by second wife. Five or six by her. He doesn't let her watch television,” Javed told him over the phone.
In the little village in Muzzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh, his face has been plastered on the walls. Faisal Khan of Gangs of Wasseypur I. His parents went to the film theater in the nearest town 40 kms away to watch him perform. But he is hopeful the lover would come across his face on one of the walls, and remember the promise.
On his facebook page, the year of birth is 1974. When I ask, he says it is 36. But those are just numbers. Consistency is a virtue of more exalted things. Everything contradicts itself, so I stick to 36.
Girls giggle when they see him in coffee shops, and men congratulate him.
“Wah brother, what acting. Kamaal kar diya tumne,” an astrologer walked up to him at a cafe in Versova, where the actor lives in a small apartment that he shares with his brother Shamas NAwab, a director, and a friend.
“Your stars are aligned. Universe is conspiring for your success,” the man, who said he predicted future only for NRIs, said.
“For you, no charge,” he added, and lit a cigarette.
Nawazuddin Siddiqui puffed away at his. He continued the narrative.
“But I never saw her again,” he said. “It was only her that I remembered when I got my first little break..”
The astrologer smiled.
“He is a real man,” he said.
Not the kind of love in the metros. Coffee dates, and holding hands. And then, everything else. Like the blinking dots on the digital watch.
Those years, when love was like the old dial on an old watch, were from a different world. Like the hands of the clock, it moved slowly. You'd watch, and you'd watch, and it wouldn't move. And then, in what seemed like a lifetime, it moved just a little. Just so that the hope was rekindled, he said.
A different love story. Real, and remote. Like him. Unlike Bollywood. He has pitched himself as against formula. So his story has been edited to fit the narrative.
For years after he left his village in 1990, Nawazuddin kept chasing the idea of love, he said.
“Of course I know that kind of love. I grew up in Bihar,” I said.
Not the kind of simmering love where one wrote letters for a year, and for fear of getting caught, got a friend to copy them in his handwriting, and wait with baited breath for a sign of acceptance. In his case, he wrote the letters, translated the sighs for his friends on paper and in legible language.
Got caught, got thrashed, and quit the love business. As a party, and as a facilitator.
That love existed in that world he left behind. Memory of things that weren't. Here's where rejection theme is woven through the narrative.
He was dark, and short, and lean. He was awkward, and confused. He was unsuccessful, and likely to remain so.
Love wanted more.
For a short time in 2002, he was dating a girl in Bombay.
For months, they'd meet, and speak over the phone. One night he texted her.
“Hum kafi dino se dost hai. I think we must marry now.”
No reply. For days he tried her number and there was no response. Finally, when she answered she said they shouldn't speak to each other.
On the walls of his apartment he shared with his friends, she had scribbled her name entwined in his. In his rage, and loneliness, he tried erasing those. But like the memory of his lover, the ink marks persisted.
Finally, he put a fresh coat of paint on the walls.
Those were the years of struggle, of doped out evenings, of a state of suspension between hope and dejection. Like a play.
He was the struggler. He would keep at it. In love, and in career.
He once asked a junior at NSD if she would like to go out with him.
“Ghumne chalogi mere saath?,” I asked.
The two of them went to a park in the CR Park area in Delhi, and sat on a bench.
They sat in silence waiting for the other to say something.
“I had never touched a girl before,” he said.
Evening was upon them. Some of the tension that he felt in his body was dissolved. His heart, he had suspected, was about to leap.
He looked around, and then slyly kept his hand over the girl's.
“Yeh kya hai,” the girl asked.
“Bas rakh diya,” he said.
“Kahin bhi rakh doge? Permission toh leni chahiye,” she answered.
In Gangs of Wasseypur I, Faisal Khan, the younger son of Sardar Khan, smitten by Mohsina, played by Huma Querishi, he revisits the scene.
“Anurag loved the idea. He wanted it in the film,” he said.
When he gingerly places his hand on Mohsina's while they sat on the banks of a river, the girl dares him to take “permission” first. The theatres resounded with laughter laced with nostalgia for the innocent and adventurous dating of small towns in those days.
“It is a slice of life from the past. I apologised, said I had committed crime and cried. She said if you want something, you must ask for permission,” he said.
“All my friends had girlfriends,” he said. “I also wanted one.”
He came to Mumbai 14 years ago. Struggle, and drudgery, and dreams and dope. Smoke billowing out of his mouth, his eyes.
In 2004, which was one of the worst years of his struggle, he couldn't pay rent so he asked a senior from NSD if he could stay with him. The senior said if Nawazuddin was willing to cook him two meals, he would let him share the apartment in Goregaon.
“It was such a sad time,” he said.
But except for small roles, he didn't land a “meaty enough role.” Such stories are scattered through the profiles of the actor, who has become media's darling.
“What's new? Tell me something that others don't know?” I said.
“Here it is,” he said.
He used to like a batch mate of his, another struggling actor, who lived in Goregaon East.
Her boyfriend was out of town. This our actor knew. Already, he had discovered the powers of marijuana and hash. Only if his mind was numbed enough, he could pull it off.
So he smoked hashish, and went to her house.
“Bharo, maang meri bharo ... karo, pyar mujhe karo,” Mamta Kulkarni, the former sex symbol, was on her fours, and urging a hesitant Akshay Kumar to love her in the famous song from Sabse Bada Khiladi. In her skimpy chiffon outfit, she heaved, and was the ultimate seductress. A celebration of Bollywood on television.
“It is a very sensuous song, isn't it?” the girl said.
“Tum bhi toh sensuous ho,” he said. “Can I ask for something? You won't mind, right?”
“I want to have sex with you,” egged on by the potency of hashish running in his veins, and head, he said.
The girl chased him out of the apartment.
We laughed.
He would turn away his face when he used to bump into her.
“And you convinced Anurag to incorporate this as well,” I asked.
“He liked it when I told him,” he said.
In GoW 2, Faisal climbs up the window to Mohsina's room. Same song. Mamta gyrating to the beats.
Mohsina is glued to the screen. Faisal tries to sneak a peek at her cleavage. Awkwardness. But hero is high strung on ganja.
He asks for “permission” for a question.
“I want to have sex with you.”
She looks at him, and says “Joota khaoge?”
She chases him out.
“Maybe the batch mate has seen the film. Maybe she will remember,” he said.
Scene 3
“Look nahi hai.” the non-conformist.
This he heard many times over.
For hours then he would stand in front of the mirror and study his face.
“Mera aisa face kyun hai?” he would ask.
Antithesis of the quintessential Bollywood hero.
Years went by. He was noticed. In Kahaani, he played an enigmatic cop, and women started texting him. But he was not used to the attention so when a girl kept messaging “I think I am falling in love with you” he decided to meet her. They fixed a time. When he arrived at Seven Bungalows, he called her phone. An attractive woman picked up, and he introduced himself.
“She didn't recognize me. I wasn't the macho police official. She had fallen in love with the character. Here I was, wearing chappals. No moustache. She looked as if she wanted to leave,” he said. “I have learned to take attention from women not so seriously.”
Scene 4
The 75 paise movie days and the crumbling house of memories.
Bharat Talkies. That's where he watched films in his village Budhana in Muzzaffarnagar district in UP.
An old tin shed that doubled up as a theatre.
He recalled living in a crumbling mud house that leaked during rains and through the nights, there would be the song of rain, and with it the melancholy, and the helplessness of poverty.
On those nights, he promised himself he would build a waterproof roof if he were to make money.
He later did. He sent me photos of the house. Neat.
His father is a farmer, and he had seven other siblings, including two sisters. He is the eldest.
The river flowed past the village. On mornings and evenings, he would take the cows and buffaloes to the banks. They'd get inside the water, and he would, too.
Idyllic. Or a life that had not known better. He was happy except when the raindrops danced on the floor of his house.
The world beyond was an unknown space.
The lone cinema theatre in the village – Bharat Talkies – used to play old Joginder movies.
He still swears by the C grade movies made by Joginder Shelly who directed and produced films like Ranga Khush and Bindiya aur Bandook.
In the tin shed by the river that showed such films for 75 paise and where they sat on bricks, he was first enthralled by the power of cinema. Cattle walked though the tin shed as they returned home, but Nawazuddin stayed put in his place.
Years later, in the early 2000s, he acted in a Joginder film called Bindiya Maange Bandook, a sequel. But the director passed away.
“The film never released,” he said. “I did it for free.”
In fact, his film Miss Lovely where he plays a C grade film director made it to the Cannes Film Festival, and is due to be released early next year. The two brothers fall for the same girl, he said.
“I can't tell more,” he said.
After his intermediate, he left for Haridwar where he studied at the Gurukul Kangri University, and then moved to Baroda to work as the chief chemist. A year passed. His heart was not in it.
Someone told him he should head to Delhi, and try theater. He trained at National School of Drama and joined street theater groups. On bus stops and railway stations and busy corners, they performed, trying to get messages across. Skits, he said. But performances nonetheless. But cinema lured him.
Then, Bombay.
Aamir Khan's Sarfarosh was his first break ever. That was in 1999. After that, he would hang out at
the studios, and at shootings, but got roles that were stereotypical. He was dark, had hollow cheeks, and lean. Fit the profile of a poor man. He was the dhobi, the watchman, the extra on the sets.
During his Delhi days, he worked as a watchman. In Bombay, when he came, life was tough. For a small blink-and-miss role, he would get around Rs. 1,000.
He was always in debt.
“Became negative. I was angry with the struggle. I was so angry with everything.”
There was a year when he had no money. He'd eat if someone offered food, or slept on an empty stomach. He'd travel in the local train without ticket, walk for hours, shared cigarettes. It was like he had walked over to the edge of the cliff.
“That gave me confidence that one can live without money. I had nothing to lose,” he said.
Scene 5
“Baap ka, dada ka, sabka badla lega re tera Phaijal.”
The younger son, who saw his mother in a weak moment, and ran away. The son, who was
struggling with inner demons, and found ganja to cope with life.
Always high strung on marijuana, he was the son who avenged his father's death by pelting dozens of bullets into the enemy as he sat helpless on a toilet seat. There he was, Faizal pumping bullets, with a smile of satisfaction lacing his face.
That's his favorite scene in the film, too. It was liberating.
“I guess it was all this pent up frustration. It all came out – 15 years of struggle. In most other roles,
I was the one beaten up. It was like my life. Down and out. But here, I was the one with the gun.
The smile was real,” he said.
As the blood and flesh oozed out of the enemy's body, the theatres resounded with applauses, and
whistles.
He was a man speaking to men.
When he used to say he would like to do lead roles, his friends dismissed him as “you are not hero material.”
“What is hero material?” he shot back, hurt, and angry.
“Take me and a hero in a frame. Ask us both to perform. I promise I will entertain you,” he told his friends.
“There is a universe within me, and I want to search within. Acting for me is that,” Nawazuddin said. “They won't accept me as a hero.”
Up a small flight of stairs, which are chipping away, the door on the extreme left leads into the small, seemingly uncomplicated world of our actor.
A mattress on the floor, a table against the wall.
Zohra Nagar on Yari Road. Across the alley, a beyond a wall of apartment buildings, the sea lashes
against the rocks.
“I want to be the highest paid actor in Bollywood. Not because I love money but because actors aren't paid well,” he said.
It is part of the act. This he insisted should be part of the story. Confrontation, challenge. The rise of the underdog.
Scene 6
“I am the leading man.”
Pointed patent leather shoes, a not-so-ironed shirt and flat front pants. A little grease paint on face.
At a busy Matunga East signal, the crew is busy shooting for Dabba or Lunchbox, a film he is doing with Irrfan Khan. They had acted together in Bypass, a short silent film.
Nawazuddin stands in a corner, smoking, while the actress, who plays the romantic lead against Irrfan Khan, adjusts her hair and makeup in an oval shaped wooden mirror held by a man, whose waist is girdled with a bag with brushes, and powder, and lipsticks and mascara.
A teenager walks up to him.
“Autograph, please,” he says, thrusting his notebook at him.
He obliges.
A bunch of college girls walk by. They steal glances at him. He is awkward.
For the umpteenth time, he rides the scooter adorned with roses, which by now have wilted. They had been shooting since 6 am. A man walks around with a thermos and pours milky sugary tea in small plastic cups. There's vada pav for those that are hungry. He knows it would take hours before they could get a shot without someone peering into the camera. Filming on streets is a difficult deal, he says.
The scene has him dropping actress Nimrat Kaur and a little girl to a taxi stand in Matunga. He learned how to ride the scooty in the morning and looked at ease.
Dabba or Lunchbox, an Anurag Kashyap co-production, is a film on everyday life in Mumbai.
Someone calls him junior artist. But he doesn't let it affect him.
“I am the leading man, Irrfan and Nimrat are the other leading roles,” he says.
He has paid his dues. He is no more the junior artist.
Ketan Mehta has signed on the actor to play the iconic Dashrath Manjhi, who chiseled away at a mountain for more than two decades so his village could access school, and other amenities with ease. Else, they would have to walk for 10 kms to get to a nearby school.
“Manjhi, who is so inspiring. It is also in many ways a story of my life. I am prepared to go through it all again,” he says.
For the method actor, it is important that he goes to the village, and stay there for a few days until he gets the character.
Perhaps he is the first Indian actor to have two films that went to Cannes Film Festival this year –
Miss Lovely (directed by Ashim Ahluwalia) was selected in the competitive Un Certain Regard section) and GoW. In the upcoming movies – Patang, Talaash, Dabba, etc. - he has played different kinds of characters.
“If I had been successful in love, I wouldn't have become an actor. It takes up too much of time,” he says. “I am all for exploring. I have no desires except that I want to address the issue of honour killing and dacoity in my village.”
Cause and effect. I tell him this is awesome.
He tells me black is back.
When he walks towards Huma Querishi aka Mohsina in the second part of the film, with a pager hanging from his belt, a handkerchief tied in his neck, wearing a striped shirt with dog collars, and hairstyle fashioned after Amitabh Bachchan in Trishul, which celebrated the underdog, he smiles a sarcastic smile.
“Kaala rey ... Saiyaan kaala rey
Tann kaala rey, mann kaala rey
Kaali
jabaan ki kaali gaari
Kaale din ki, kaali shaamein ... Kaali mitti kutta kaala
Kaala bilkul surme waala
... Kaala badal girne wala
Kaala moti girne wala
...” the background score plays.
He flips a cigarette, misses it, pops another one and lights it. Walks toward the glamourous Mohsina.
In the theater, a dark skinned man rises, and claps.
“This is the celebration of blackness,” Nawazuddin said.
Except that in this role reversal, he is acting out his part. Of the anti-hero. But with precision. In the same Yari Road cafe and apartment. The stage is set, and the actor plays his part.
Except that this a dangerous territory.
“An actor should never believe in the myth of himself,” Anurag Kashyap said. “That Nawazuddin never finds perfect is what is good for him.”
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