Half a Rupee: Stories Read online

  Jaadu and Sahir: Sahir, as in Sahir Ludhianvi and Jaadu, as in Javed Akhtar.

  Their relationship was not your run-of-the-mill kind. The bonds that held them together were quite unique.

  Jaadu is Javed Akhtar’s nickname. Magnanimous to a fault, his inclination runs towards everything poetic. Poetry flows in his veins. And why shouldn’t it—he comes from an illustrious lineage of poets: Jaan Nisar Akhtar for a father, and Majaz for a maternal uncle. If that wasn’t enough, he later got Kaif Azmi for a father-in-law.

  But Jaadu could never bring himself to respect his father. An unrelenting anger against his father would be forever seething inside him. As long as his mother was alive, he bore with his father. But after her death, he began to find his father insufferable. Often, at the slightest provocation, he would barge out of his house and make a beeline for Sahir’s. Just one look at his face and Sahir would know that father and son had had another of their fracas. But he would never ever let Jaadu get even a whiff of his suspicion. Heaven forbid if he would even hint at it: Jaadu’s nostrils would first fare, then he would explode in anger, and finally, spent, disintegrate into tears. Sahir did not relish the prospect of being witness to any of these demonstrations. Sahir would just let Jaadu be, give him some space, and, after a brief interval, call out to him, ‘Jaadu! Come … grab some grub!’ And while munching on his food, Jaadu would crunch out his anger and pour his heart out to Sahir. He would spend the entire day at Sahir’s house, and tell him everything: Father did this … Father did that … The day would end but not Jaadu’s list of grievances against his father.

  But Sahir would not be able to indulge him like this every time. Some days, he would interrupt Jaadu’s litany of complaints against his father with a warning, ‘Akhtar’s coming over for lunch!’ Jaadu would arch his eyebrows and look at Sahir as if to say, ‘This father of mine! He can’t be happy till he chases me out of here too.’ If he could bring himself to say it in front of Sahir, he would have blurted out, ‘This blooming father of mine, must he be everywhere … every time? Must he?’ But he respected Sahir, and Akhtar was Sahir’s friend.

  Jaadu was Jaan Nisar Akhtar’s son but his temperament was like his uncle’s. Like Majaz, he was mercurial. Sahir raised him like a son, and indulged him like a friend. On the days Akhtar would be visiting, Sahir would say, ‘Jaadu … what a wonderful film at Eros yaar … whatsitsname … not to be missed … go watch it.’ And in this way Sahir would manage to avoid all possibilities of a face-off between father and son.

  Sahir and Jaadu. The bonds that held them together were quite unique.

  Once, Jaadu even gave up on Sahir, and walked out of his house. ‘You pamper my father too much. Make him feel too important! Unnecessarily!’ Jaadu had said. Sahir had laughed at his accusation. And that was it, the final straw. ‘You are like him … exactly like him … he too laughs at me … exactly like this.’ It was Jaadu’s et-tu-Brutus moment. ‘I don’t need anybody … not him, not you!’ he said, and walked out on Sahir.

  Jaadu stayed unreachable for a few days. He was a man of honour, and since he was young, his sense of self-respect was a little exaggerated. His nose was often in the air, and his attitude turned a notch higher. God alone knows what he ate, where he slept, how he managed to live during the days he was away.

  The story goes that he spent much of his time in a studio. Kamaal Amrohi’s production manager was a friend of Jaadu’s. Jaadu would while away the evenings with him on the studio floors and sleep the nights away in the production store which was filled to the brim with shooting props and paraphernalia. In that cramped storeroom he found the two Filmfare statuettes that Meena Kumari—Kamaal Sahib’s wife—had won. Every night after this discovery, he would prop himself in front of a life-size mirror and award himself the trophy. He would pretend to be the presenter and announce the award … then pretend to receive the award, gracefully bowing before an imagined audience … and then become the audience and applaud himself as well. He refused to think of this as make-believe; he preferred to call these performances his rehearsals. And he rehearsed religiously, every night without fail. He told this story to an interviewer after he had received many a Filmfare statuette (engraved with his own name) himself, many years later.

  When Jaadu was next seen at Sahir’s place, he looked careworn, pale and emaciated. Sahir called out to him affectionately but Jaadu’s anger had not evaporated yet.

  ‘I am here just for a bath,’ he said, ‘that is, if you have no objection.’

  ‘Sure,’ Sahir granted him the permission, and then said, ‘grab a bite as well!’

  ‘I’ll eat anywhere but here. I am not breaking bread with you.’

  When Jaadu came out from his bath, Sahir kept a hundred-rupee note on the dining table and begun to run the comb through his sparse hair, searching for words. He was wondering how to ask Jaadu to accept the money. He was afraid of bruising Jaadu’s pride. Somehow he did muster the courage to say, ‘Jaadu, pick up that hundred-rupee note … I’ll take it from you later.’

  In those days, a hundred rupees might not have been a king’s ransom, but it was certainly a princely sum. If you had a hundred-rupee note, you either went to a bank or a petrol pump to break it into smaller notes. Jaadu accepted the note as if he was doing Sahir a favour. ‘Fine … I will take it … but I’ll return it the day I get my first salary.’

  Javed soon found work as an assistant to Shankar Mukherjee. And it was while working with him that he met and teamed up with Salim Khan. He earned himself a fortune as a scriptwriter thereafter. He would drink like his uncle Majaz, and once drunk, would begin to blabber like Sahir. He would vent his anger, his frustrations against his father. But those hundred rupees he did not return to Sahir. He earned in thousands and then in tens of thousands but he would always tell Sahir, ‘I have eaten up your money. You’d better forget about it.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, son,’ Sahir would invariably retort, ‘I will find a way to squeeze it out of you!’

  It soon turned into playful banter. The two kept ribbing each other over those hundred rupees until the end, but their friendship stayed intact. Sahir did not have many friends, but was fiercely loyal to those who managed to find their way into his heart. But alcohol had a terrible effect on him; a few drinks and the cussing would begin. He would then strip most of the people bare.

  During those days Sahir used to live in Krishen Chander’s cottage at Juhu. Om Prakash Ashq, an old friend of his, was rooming with him. One day, in front of me, he asked Sahir in Punjabi, ‘Sahir, yaar, a few pegs down and you start abusing everybody … why, yaar?’

  Sahir replied in Punjabi, ‘Yaar … ab sharaab naal kuch chatpata tou hona chayinda hai, naa! Now one needs something spicy to munch on with alcohol.’

  There was one Dr Kapoor amongst Sahir’s friends. A heart patient himself, Dr Kapoor nonetheless was the one who monitored Sahir’s deteriorating health. Sahir would often quip, ‘Doctor, should I come to see you or should I come to show myself to you?’

  That fatal last evening too, when Sahir went to Dr Kapoor’s, it was both to see him and to show himself to him—as his well-wisher, concerned for his health, and as his patient, anxious about his own. Sahir now no longer lived at Krishen Chander’s place. He had finally constructed his own house and had christened it ‘Parchaiyaan’ (Shadows). Dr Kapoor was now in a bungalow in Versova. And Jaadu had now become a hugely successful and popular writer. Sahir had come to know that Dr Kapoor was not keeping well. A cardiologist, Dr Seth, was coming to check on him. Ramanand Sagar was there too. Sahir was trying to cheer Kapoor up and he called for a deck of playing cards. He shuffled the deck as he propped himself up on Kapoor’s bed. As he was dealing out the cards, Kapoor saw Sahir’s face stiffening. He was perhaps trying to suppress his pain. Kapoor called out to him, ‘Sahir!’

  And then and there Sahir collapsed on the bed. Dr Seth arrived at this moment. He tried his best to revive Sahir but there was nothing he could do. Sahir was long gone. Dr Ka
poor was scared witless. Finding him a bundle of nerves and worrying for his health, Ramanand Sagar took him away to his own house.

  Sahir’s driver Anwar came running in. He took charge of the lifeless body of his employer. Anwar first called up Yash Chopra’s house; Sahir and Yash Chopra were quite close. But Chopra was in faraway Srinagar. Anwar then called up Jaadu. Jaadu’s driver was not on duty so Jaadu hurried over in a taxi. And in that very taxi he brought Sahir’s body to his house, to Parchaiyaan. With Anwar and the taxi-wallah’s help he managed to haul Sahir’s mortal remains to the first floor where Sahir used to live.

  Jaadu did not say a word in the taxi, as if he was shocked into silence. But when he reached home, he simply broke down. He hugged Sahir and wept like he had probably not wept in his entire life. It was around one at night now. Where was he to go? Who all should he call up to break the tragic news to? In the end, Jaadu did nothing. He just sat by the lifeless form of his dear friend. By now, the neighbours had heard about Sahir’s death and had begun to trickle in. A neighbour said, ‘Place both his hands together on his chest, the body will soon start to stiffen, you will have a problem later.’ Jaadu kept crying and kept doing everyone’s bidding wordlessly.

  As the day broke and the news spread, people began to throng in to pay their last respects to the departed soul. Bedspreads had to be taken out for the people to sit on. Chairs had to be rearranged. Doors had to be opened. Jaadu kept sobbing like a child and running all the chores.

  When he came downstairs to make the funeral arrangements he found the taxi driver still there. ‘Uff! Why didn’t you ask me? How much do I owe you, now?’ he said petulantly.

  The taxi driver must have been a kindred soul. He folded his hands and said, ‘Saab … I … I didn’t stay back for the money. After all this, how could I have gone away into the night?’

  Jaadu took out his wallet from his pocket.

  The taxi driver shook his head, ‘Nahi saab … let it be!’

  Jaadu nearly screamed, ‘Take it! Take this hundred-rupee note … just keep it! He did find a way to squeeze out his hundred rupees … even in his death!’

  And Jaadu disintegrated into tears.

  All this happened before they hoisted Sahir’s mortal remains up on their shoulders and took him out on his last journey.

  Bhushan Banmali

  When the tea grew cold for the second time, Santoshji asked the khansama, ‘What happened? Bhushan hasn’t woken up yet?’

  ‘Not yet! I tried to wake him, though. Called out his name.’

  ‘You think calling out his name is enough? Even if you beat a drum next to his ear he is not going to wake up. Anyway, you brew a fresh cup of tea and lay it out on the lawns. I am going to go and wake him up.’

  Bhushan loved his wife Usha and his mother-in-law Santosh Bansal in the same fashion, and with equal intensity. If he was miffed with Usha, he would seek solace in Santoshji. And when he fought with Santoshji, he would shuttle back to Usha. But this time Usha was so upset with him that she had gone away to Madras—so he too went away, to his mother-in-law in Punjab.

  Bhushan had both a home and a hearth, but he was a nomad by nature. Neither could the home make him happy, nor could the hearth keep him tied. One day, he had picked up his jhola and left Delhi and come to me in Bombay. A few books, a few journals—that’s all he had in that cloth bag of his. Perhaps there were a few letters and a few photographs over which he had fought with Santosh. The two of them used to bring out a reputed Hindi magazine in Delhi that published poetry. It was called Nai Sadi, ‘the new century’. He wasn’t married to Usha then. Back in those days, Usha was still learning how to paint.

  Why he came to Bombay he never ever spoke about.

  ‘Where will you stay?’ I had asked him.

  ‘Here, with you,’ he had said with an impish grin. ‘When you throw me out, then I’ll think of where to go next.’

  I was effectively rendered speechless.

  ‘You will never go back to Delhi, is that it?’

  A long pause, and then he had said, ‘Did Krishna ever go back to Mathura once he had left it?’

  It wasn’t an answer I was expecting. How was I to know what or whom he had left behind in Mathura? All I knew was that he, along with Mrs Santosh Bansal, brought out a monthly magazine in which they had published a few of my poems. And when I was in Delhi, I had spent an afternoon in his office, guzzling beer. They had a huge circle of poet friends. That day, one by one they all kept dropping into his office. The bottles of beer too started popping open one by one. Empty beer bottles were soon all over the floor. A waiter kept serving fried fish and kebabs and vegetable fritters late into the afternoon, and we kept listening to each other’s poems in rapt attention. Bhushan wrote in Hindi under the pen name Bhushan Banmali but he read Urdu. He kept getting us all drunk, and kept reading out his poems. Santosh was a great fan of his poems—his personal eulogist. But all through the drinking and reading session, I did not see anybody taking out any money to pay for the beer or the snacks. They must be running a tab at the shop, like most poets do, I thought. Getting things on credit was a sacrilegious thing in my household but an honest and established ritual at Bhushan’s.

  That was my first meeting with Bhushan, the very first time I saw him. The next time was when he came to Bombay. One evening when I returned home, I found him sitting in my room, sipping beer. I walked in and asked my servant, ‘Where did the beer come from?’

  ‘Sahib gave me some money and asked me to fetch it.’

  I lived in a one-bedroom apartment. It was my home and my office too. I am hostage to a few non-poetic habits—I go to bed early, and am up very early as well. But Bhushan was in the habit of sleeping late into the day. Soon, this began to irk me. To make matters worse, he would often bolt the door from the inside. We would bang on the door, thump on it, do everything short of breaking the door down, but he just wouldn’t get up. Frustrated, I finally resorted to unscrewing all the bolts and all the locks from each and every door.

  One day, I finally did ask him, ‘What’s up with Nai Sadi?’

  ‘Passed away.’ He was as laconic as he could be.

  ‘What do you plan to do now?’

  ‘Whatever you say.’

  I was rendered speechless once again.

  Bhushan started working with me. Neither as an assistant, nor as an understudy—but as a partner, sort of. There would be debates over J. Krishnamurti. History would be read and then repeated. In one such expansive mood, we even scribbled a letter and mailed it to the Pope: now that science has proved that the earth revolves around the sun, shouldn’t he at least extend a papal pardon to Galileo? I don’t know whether the letter reached the Pope or whether he ever read it, but when some ten or fifteen years later the papacy issued a formal pardon to Galileo, Bhushan and I rang each other up in congratulatory celebrations.

  Then for a long time we ceased to be in touch—Bhushan had started to live on his own, and meanwhile I had got married. One day, Bhushan brought back Usha from Delhi as his lawfully wedded wife. Santosh too would often frequent his place, and it never went down well with Usha. Theirs was a pretty strange relationship—mother and daughter fought with each other over Bhushan. Each claimed him to be hers alone. Each thought the other had encroached upon her relationship with him. And Bhushan—he kept himself engrossed in his reading and writing. Whenever we met we would reminisce about the day we got bitten by wanderlust: ‘Bhai, remember that night at Joshimath?’

  Wandering through hills and valleys we had finally reached Rudraprayag—Bhushan, Taran Taaran and I. We did not have a driver; I was driving the car myself. We parked and went out for a stroll in the bazaar. When we saw fresh fruits, we bought some; then we saw fresh vegetables and bought some of those too.

  That made Taran ask, ‘What are we going to do with all this? And so much fruit—who’s going to eat all of it?’

  ‘Why don’t you just let us buy them first—we don’t necessarily have to eat them. Have
you ever seen such lush green vegetables and such fresh fruits in Bombay?’ Bhushan snapped, biting into a hot jalebi.

  ‘We will give them to the cook at the dak bungalow where we will stay the night.’

  In the upper reaches of the Himalayas, the dak bungalows were the only places to stay. Built by the British, you found these dak bungalows everywhere. Pity, nobody builds them any more.

  The evening was far away. We had time on our hands. We thought of venturing a little further than what we had planned—to Anandprayag. We knew of a dak bungalow there where we could spend the night. When we returned to our parked car, a Sardarji greeted us, ‘Where are you people going?’

  The roadworthiness of a travelling car cannot be hidden. And in the hills, it is not difficult to guess your destination—the direction in which the car is parked on the narrow winding roads is a dead giveaway. We told him that we were intending to drive up to Anandprayag.

  ‘If there’s space, will you give me a lift?’

  ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘Drop me at Anandprayag. My home’s there.’

  A man is forever in search of a co-traveller. We asked him to join us.

  The Sardarji had a very cheerful disposition. His name was Bhola Singh Sandhu, but he called himself B.S. Sandhu. He was from the army and was heading home. The bridge that would take us straight into Anandprayag was under repairs—we had to drive into the city via a drooping, fagging detour. Sandhu saab requested to be dropped there, and like a good Hindustani invited us over to his house. He kept insisting that we come home with him and have dinner: ‘You’ll not find an eatery here, the further up the road you go, the more difficult it will be to get anything to eat. Please have dinner with me and then go.’ But we excused ourselves. The sun had already crept behind the hills.

  By the time we reached the dak bungalow it was quite late at night. When we shouted for the caretaker, a chowkidar came out rubbing his eyes. He was in the habit of saying ‘no’ even before we asked him anything.