In conversation with theatre and film actor, director and producer Nagesh Bhonsle about how his relationships with fictitious characters, how tamaasha theatre acts as a school for spontaneity, a children’s story narrated by an Urdu poet that serves as his guiding light, and the extraordinary human histories he unearthed in his early years in Bombay.
On how actors sometimes need to become playwrights
Let us say I need to play 70 year old character. I have seen my great mentor and educator Urdu poet Turfa Qureshi, Dubeyji (late theatre director Satyadev Dubey), and several others – is my old fellow one of these men? Or do I create a persona which is an amalgamation of all the old men I know? This is a pretty calculated approach and I don’t do any of this, instead letting the character come before me – a character I don’t know too much about – before beginning to find out things about him.
I learn about where he was born, that he has two wives, that he had a child who committed suicide in his youth. I learn that he had a bypass operation at the age of forty, discover that one of his eyes is from a goat! This is his life – he isn’t anything like the other old men I’ve known and observed! What is his life’s philosophy? He’s had an unhappy life, but he’s learned to be happy – this is a philosophy I have created for the man, of course – because he believes that “Jeevan mein bade dukh hai bhaiyya, par humein khush rehna hai.” (There are many sorrows in life, brother, but we must remain happy) Or at least show people that you are happy, so that they will remain so.” Now, this old fellow will talk very jovially; he will flirt harmlessly with young girls, and do nothing at all about it!
Now I have an essence of the man, an entirely created man. Turns out, the lesser I know about him, the easier it is to conjure up a creature made of flesh and bones! The more I know about his past and the more concrete he is, the harder I have to work to become this ready made character. This is why my Sakharam Binder in S*x, M*rality and Cens*rship was a hard character to play, because Tendulkar had already fleshed him out with great complexity.
Either way, now it is time to perform as him.
What tamaasha has to do with the cultivation of a good sense of humour
Loknatya came from tamaasha – an entertaining medium of theatre which includes naach (dance), gaana (song), and laavani. It is made up of gann (invocation of the lord), gauran (the gopis come in and perform, and there is banter) and batauni (an act in which comic stock characters like Tatarao and Bapurao come on stage and joke), before the vagnatya after which the loknatya begins.
This tradition started from entertaining soldiers, and later went on to be associated with immorality and vice; that is its journey. The most interesting thing that used to happen in tamaasha was the depiction of current political and social events; an event of significance occurring today would find its way into tonight’s performance, and so the play changed daily! It was about the sheer timing of it, the spontaneity, the improvisation – you needed great presence of mind to pull it off! You talk and the actor across you responds wittily and you must reply. We were writers and debaters on stage – anything could happen! This immediacy is how one’s sense of humour develops. I believe that everybody with a good sense of humour is intelligent because, without intelligence, good humour doesn’t come!
Turfa Qureshi’s story that is one of Nagesh’s strongest memories from his childhood
“Once upon a time, there was a king and a singer. The singer, despite his widespread popularity and his stature, never sang for royalty in palaces. He sang among the commoners, and was famous for it.
One day, word reached the king that the singer had arrived in a village close to his palace. The king’s general was sent to receive the singer, and the latter had no choice but to present himself in court. Relenting, he agreed to sing for His Highness, but on one condition – if any listener in the audience was spotted nodding or shaking his head appreciatively, or delightedly saying wah!, they would be beheaded.
The king accepted his condition. Trumpets were sounded and announcements of the performance made in the village –accompanied by the warning. If anybody appreciatively nodded or made any gesture in response to the singer’s music, they’d be take to the gallows and executed. Who had the courage to attend this concert, having heard of this maestro’s ability to bewitch and move his audiences?
Despite the warning and with their lives on the line, two hundred people showed up on the night of the performance to hear the minstrel. Everybody realized that they might be moved to shake their head at some point, but were completely convinced that they had to be there. The concert began, and unsurprisingly, not one person listened to the music! Everybody too busy concentrating on maintaining a fixed posture, watched closely by the king’s guards.
Hindustani classical music has chaar prahar – subah ka, dopahar ka, shyam ka, raat ka (the morning’s section, the afternoon’s, the evening’s, the night’s). The singer started with shyam ka prahar. Nobody heard him, but he wasn’t at all bothered. Then began the raat ka prahar, and nothing changed. In the morning prahar, unable to stop themselves, some people nodded in appreciation, as did a few more in the fourth prahar.
Soon after, the performance ended and the king’s guards rounded up the offenders. The king encouraged them to beat the offenders, and was giving orders for them to be escorted to the gallows when the singer came up to him.
“Rajan, those you condemn as being offenders are the true listeners. Nobody else even heard the songs.”
“Should we kill the others, then?” The king was confused. The singer smiled and shook his head. “Leave the pretenders because they risked their lives to come to the concert. And leave the ‘offenders’ because they were so immersed in the music that they forgot about their imminent deaths. Death is man’s biggest fear. It is the hardest thing to forget about one’s mortality, and these few did just that. Leave them.”
After telling me this story, Qureshiji said that whenever one is doing any sort of work, it should be done so fully and intensely that death is forgotten. This story has pretty much shaped the way I look at my life and my art. Have you ever heard a great classical singer perform? Bhimsen Joshi, Amjad Ali Khan – the stalwarts? After a point in their performance, they don’t merely play. They create. It comes from a sort of sacred space. There are times when I am performing when I completely forget who I am, dressed in another’s skin and histories. That is how I make out whether my art is honest, is true.
On how stories happen to children when they are left alone
One of my biggest frustrations and regrets is not being able to remember several years of my childhood, filled with incredible instances. The truth of the matter is that a lot of things happen to you when you are alone, when you are not in safe hands. Stories get created with you, by you, around you. With parents, there are no stories! I have stories, quite dramatic and filmi – quite like the old Manmohan Desai films!
When I came to Mumbai from Nagpur at the age of 19, I had no money. I was staying at railway stations and in gallis when a fellow brought me to the Bombay Lodge in Dadar. For Rs.160 per month you were given a blanket and a pillow, and the freedom to pick an impermanent spot in a large room to rest your head for the night. After getting home every night, three to four hours would be devoted to beating out the khatmal (bedbugs) inside the pillow. Come morning, you had to run off so that the sweepers could come in, and it ceased to be your home till nightfall. Every night was a new adventure because you had to find a new corner to sleep!
A Mr. Joshi who lived there had one of the few khatiyas (cots), which was a more permanent bed under which he kept his belongings. This Mr. Joshi woke me up at 4.30 am one day, with something in a white cloth. He asked me to hurriedly go brush my teeth. You see, he had returned that night from his gaon (village), and brought upma with him. I hadn’t eaten in three – four days, and I gratefully ate it up. Thus began a routine. He was a big believer in eating hot food immediately within 40 minutes of it being cooked, saying that after that it turned into poison. The kind of man who prepared and consumed his breakfast before 5 am, he used to say that there works a “jatthar agni” (internal heat) in our bodies that helps digest food. This agni is most powerful in the morning, and its power wanes by nighttime – which was why he barely ate after the sun set. This breakfast routine of ours went on for about 6 months, and his breakfast would sustain me for the day.
One day, I needed Rs. 300 for rent and other things, and asked Joshi kaka if he could loan it to me. He gave me Rs. 500. After a while, I got a job in Dombivali and earned Rs. 800 in the first week. I hadn’t gone home to the lodge all week, and was extremely happy that I could finally return Joshi kaka’s money. The weekend came, and I took a train to Dadar at about 7.30 am in the morning. When I reached the lodge and went to the cot, I found it inhabited by somebody else.
When I went downstairs to the lodge owner Kumar and asked after kaka’s whereabouts, he told me that Joshi kaka had died the day before. Kumar said, “He has left something for you.” He had left me a box, with Rs. 500 and a letter in it. Maybe he’d known he was going to die, he was such a different man. The letter said that he thought I was a nice boy, and that I would do well. He added – “In Saaswad (a town near Pune) lives my cousin sister. Go there, and tell her that I forgive her.”
I didn’t understand, and was very upset. I set off for Saaswad. There, I was told the whole story. I found out that this man came from a respectable home, plenty of land, and a good lifestyle – and he had left it all. Thirty years ago in Saaswad, Joshi kaka’s cousin sister had gone to him at night. He had refused her advances. The next morning, she’d told everybody that he had forced himself on her. Immediately after, Joshi kaka left; he left his home and his life over a falsehood, and came to Bombay where he lived for years on a khatiya in a public lodge.
It makes you marvel, and yet – these are all human stories.
Interviewed and translated by Tanvi Shah.
junoontheatre.wordpress.com 