More Salt Than Pepper

by Karan Thapar

  ‘He’s just being himself,’ Aveek added by way of explanation.

  I turned to watch Vikram on the stage but before long my mind started wandering again and I soon found myself tumbling back into the past. This time we were in the Rose Bowl rehearsing for the school’s annual play. It was Rattigan’s Winslow Boy. I was the brutish lawyer. Vikram was directing. The year was 1971. It was his year off between A levels and Oxbridge. It was my last year in school.

  Vikram had just explained how he wanted a particular scene done. It was partly description and partly enactment. Despite his lack of height he’s a talented actor. Then, with short quick steps and his head inclined downwards, he walked towards the audience stands to sit down and watch. He crossed his legs, cupped his chin in the palm of one hand and rested his elbow on his raised knee. His other hand held on to his foot.

  ‘Right. Let’s see how you do it’.

  I started. It was the scene where the lawyer cross-examines the young boy. Vikram wanted me to pretend to be angry. Yet the anger also had to sound genuine otherwise the cross-examination would not work. Only after it was over would the truth emerge.

  ‘Not bad. Not bad at all’, Vikram pronounced. He was not given to praise easily and I swelled with pride.

  Later, rehearsal over, as we walked back, the April night alight with stars but the air hot and heavy, he came back to the subject.

  ‘The funny thing about anger is that it’s not the shouting that communicates it. It comes from deeper inside. It’s like love and hate. You have to feel it to sense it.’ And then after a pause he added, ‘I suppose all emotions are the same.’

  I returned to the present to find Vikram reading a delicately written extract from his book. Helen is tipsy but excited. Her words are tumbling out. Michael, though detached, is not indifferent. His wit is a foil to her emotion. Their feelings emerge, they grow, they suffuse the context but rarely are they stated.

  I have to read this book, I said to myself. I bought it a couple of weeks ago. I like to buy new ones as soon as they are out. It’s a sort of one-upmanship I play with myself. But I can be very lazy about reading them. And Salman Rushdie’s new novel put me off Indian authors.

  A week later I’ve finished the book but the story, its characters and their world is still with me. Like memories of the Doon School, it will merge into a consciousness that will always be there. Vikram, the stories about him and now his book will fuse into one. I would not want it otherwise.

  If you haven’t, I recommend you read An Equal Music.

  3 May 1999

  Kapil da Jawab Nahin

  I first met Kapil Dev in 1983. It was the morning after the World Cup victory. The shock and the surprise had not yet dissipated. The joy and euphoria were only just setting in. The cricketing world was in a trance. Our winning team was on cloud nine.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ he said as I followed him down the hotel corridor. He was surrounded by interview-seeking journalists. I must have been one of fifty. His answer to each of them was equally encouraging and similarly reassuring.

  I wasn’t convinced he meant yes. Perhaps he was being polite or maybe he was trying to get rid of us. So I started telephoning to reconfirm. I rang the hotel, his room, the lobby, the dining room, his alleged friends. You name the number I must have rung it. Eventually, well past midnight, I got through.

  ‘Ha, yaar,’ he cheerfully replied. ‘It’s tomorrow morning at 9 but why don’t you let me get some sleep before that!’

  Kapil was on time and brought his vice captain, Mohinder Amarnath, as well. They were sleepy, perhaps a little hung-over, but happiness infused the interview. It was the first I handled as an associate producer. It wasn’t faultless but it was memorable.

  It was this easy helpfulness that struck me about Kapil. Stars can be prima donnas and often reluctant to assist lowly mortals. Not Kapil. This March I encountered the same quality again. We were scheduled to interview Sourav Ganguly. It was the day before the Faridabad one-day game with South Africa. Sourav had agreed, the time had been fixed but he was running late. The clock was ticking and I was beginning to fear the interview might not happen. With stars silly accidents sometimes disrupt the best-laid plans.

  ‘Hi, Karan,’ a voice crackled over my mobile phone. ‘Mein Kapil Dev bol raha hoon.’

  ‘Oh hi,’ I replied, stunned and somewhat speechless. Why was he ringing me?

  ‘Suno, Sourav is with me and if you want your interview pick him up from my office in the next ten minutes.’

  When I got there a beaming Kapil had Sourav ready, dressed and waiting. The look on my face must have suggested that I was perplexed. How had Kapil swung this? How did he even know about the proposed interview?

  ‘I heard your conversation with Sourav on the mobile, I realized you were panicky and I decided that this was the only way to do it,’ he explained. ‘Had Sourav returned to the hotel to change you would never have got him.’

  So Kapil took him to his office and made him shower, shave and dress there. The interview that followed was a gem but few people outside my circle of colleagues realized that Kapil had pulled it off.

  The third example of Kapil’s helpfulness was the interview that I hope you saw last week on Hardtalk India. When I met him on Thursday the 4th it was to discuss something quite different. The BBC had asked us to do a series of Face to Face interviews with great cricketers of today and legends of the past. These were to be personality pieces – soft, gentle, anecdotal. Kapil wasn’t very keen. Understandably he had other things on his mind. Yet the idea of an interview to the BBC was one he warmed to.

  ‘Suno, yaar,’ he said, as he poured me a cup of tea. ‘Let’s do a proper one. You ask what you want and let me answer the way I think I should.’

  It took me a few seconds to realize what Kapil was proposing. He was agreeing to be interviewed but not for a gentle personality series. He wanted to face the toughest questions possible on the charges he was accused of. He was, in fact, giving me a scoop.

  ‘When?’ I asked tentatively, apprehensive that fixing a date might clip the soaring hopes he had just created.

  ‘Tomorrow? Day after? The sooner the better.’

  And thus it was that last Saturday I got a chance to question him and the interview you saw was the result.

  Now it’s not for me to comment on the interview; that would be unethical and uncalled for. Yet I feel I can safely reply to one question I’ve been repeatedly asked.

  Why did he agree? Were those real tears?

  Let me start by assuming the emotion was put on. Theoretically it could have been but then Kapil would have to be an actor – not a simple Bollywood product but one of Shakespearean proportions. To cry as he did on demand is not easy. Most of our actors cannot or, at least, not convincingly.

  That leads me inexorably to the conclusion that the tears were genuine and the emotion real. I interpret them as the cry of an anguished soul, expressing both pain and helplessness. If you were in his position I think you would behave very similarly. But were they also tears of remorse? I don’t think so but, of course, they could have been.

  ‘Yeh dramebaaz nahin dukhi hein,’ Aru, my secretary, summed up, before softly adding, ‘magar samajh nahin aata ki galti kiski thi?’

  8 May 2000

  The Eyes that Spoke to Me

  It may sound middle-aged but it’s very difficult not to be smitten by Madhuri Dixit when you come face to face with her. I was.

  We met at Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad. She was there to complete Raj Kumar Santoshi’s film Lajja. I to interview her. As I approached her room I could feel a frisson of excitement course through my veins. There’s something about stars that quickens the flesh. Even past forty you are not immune to it.

  I knocked on her door. A man who looked like her dresser opened it. He had a sari neatly folded over his left hand, a bit like a French waiter with a serviette. I announced myself but he remained nonplussed. In his world there was no place for, leave aside
recognition of, people like me.

  ‘Madhuriji hein?’ I asked sounding needlessly tentative but I suppose that was inevitable.

  ‘Aap kaun?’

  I was about to answer when a voice from inside stopped me.

  ‘Hi,’ it trilled. There’s really no other word for it. It was cheerful and welcoming. ‘Come on in. I’ve been waiting for you.’

  Suddenly introduction seemed superfluous. She knew who I was and I could hardly pretend not to recognize her. As a result my well-planned opening gambit was instantly invalidated. I had intended to start with a ‘Hi, I’m Karan Thapar’ but now that would sound stupid. In its place all I could come up with was ‘Oh, you’re ready’ and without thinking I said so.

  ‘What did you expect?’ Madhuri replied, laughing as she did.

  To be honest, I hadn’t the faintest idea. I had not meant to say what I had and therefore, I had no idea how to continue. I was, you see, star-struck and a little tongue-tied. After all, what do you say if you come into contact with Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor or even Meryl Streep? If ‘Hi, I’m Karan Thapar’ is no longer necessary and there’s no point in asking, ‘Excuse me, are you Elizabeth Taylor?’, what do you say instead?

  Once again, Madhuri saved the situation. She spoke first and broke the silence.

  ‘I don’t know if I’m making a terrible mistake,’ she began with a warm but contradictory smile playing about her lips. And then she asked with mischief in her eyes: ‘Are you going to eat me up?’

  It wasn’t a question looking for an answer. She knew that too. I smiled a little sheepishly. In return she gave me the first of her famous looks.

  Over the next few hours I saw that look several times and on each occasion it was to beguile me. Even today I can see it clearly in my mind’s eye. It is, in fact, my memory of Madhuri. It’s also the secret of her charm. The reason why white-haired middle-aged men like me – who clearly should know better – end up hopelessly infatuated.

  The famous look is a combination of a smile with the simultaneous movement of her eyes. In fact, not just her eyes but her eyebrows too. The result is that long before Madhuri’s voice speaks her face communicates with you. Usually they say the same thing but just sometimes they can speak differently too.

  ‘As the baby of the family, were you spoilt?’ I asked. She smiled. Her face gave one answer. Her eyes flashed another. Her laugh conveyed it was the eyes I should go by.

  ‘Ummmm,’ her voice exclaimed when I asked if it was love at first sight with Shriram Nene. She was reluctant to answer verbally. Her eyes, however, were far more eloquent. They had a look that clearly suggested, ‘what do you think?’

  But it was when I asked if she was really an introvert that the answer from her eyes and that spoken by her mouth were most at odds with each other. ‘I am,’ her lips said. Her eyes laughed and twinkled with knowing mischievousness. The more her voice pleaded shyness, the more her eyes seemed to ask. ‘Do you really believe that?’

  The interview over, I realized I wasn’t the only one to be hypnotized by her eyes. An enormous crew of seventeen had crammed onto the little set to watch the interview. Each and every one of them had spent the time transfixed by Madhuri’s talking eyes.

  ‘Aankhe dekhi?’ I was asked by our cameraman. Later, most of the others were to ask similar questions too. The funny thing is each of us thought we had noticed something special. Something the next man had not discovered for himself. That’s the real magic of Madhuri’s eyes. They speak individually even when she is surrounded by a crowd.

  Mona Lisa has eyes like that. Look at any of her pictures from any angle and she seems to be looking back straight at you. But hers remain mysterious, even inscrutable, and ultimately silent. Madhuri’s are talkative and they speak volumes. I’d like to believe that last week they were talking to me.

  4 September 2000

  Chapter 12

  Cross-border Appeal

  ‘Yaar, aaj mein siraf cigarette hi pilaunga.’

  A General Lesson

  I have to admit, I’ve never come across someone like Pervez Musharraf. This is not necessarily a compliment. It’s simply a statement of fact. But think about it – he’s a former dictator who revels in free speech much like a dedicated democrat; he’s a general who is, amazingly enough, also a gripping orator; he’s a stern disciplinarian but he has a winning sense of humour; he projects a tough commando exterior but his clothes reveal a sharp sense of sartorial elegance. Indeed, he’s a man of so many apparent paradoxes, he’s impossible to define.

  Last Saturday, as he held the India Today Conclave spellbound for over two and a half hours, my mind jumped to our own politicians and I couldn’t help compare Musharraf to them. Would Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi or L.K. Advani and Prakash Karat willingly submit themselves to such hostile questioning from an Indian audience and emerge both unscathed and with their amour propre intact? The question answers itself. Yet Musharraf has done just that but with one critical difference. The audience – the lions,’ den – he faced was not his compatriots but Indians, who could be more accurately described as his enemies.

  In contrast, it’s not just impossible to picture Manmohan Singh or Sonia Gandhi addressing 500 Pakistanis in the banquet hall of the Marriot in Islamabad; the fact of the matter is they are not even prepared to visit the country. And I would hate to think what could happen if they were questioned the way Musharraf was. Perish the thought!

  However, the truth is Musharraf illustrates a deeper difference between India and Pakistan. Pakistanis make themselves accessible to us – be it phone-in interviews on television, formal addresses at conclaves and conferences or simply informal off-the-record chats. We, on the other hand, avoid such encounters like the plague.

  It’s not simply that Pakistani politicians don’t hesitate to give Indians interviews. It’s also the sheer number of them. Musharraf, alone, probably gave half a dozen. Prannoy Roy and I got two each. Both he and Asif Zardari have addressed large gatherings in India by live satellite whilst in office and Benazir Bhutto was a frequent visitor and a favourite of our news channels. I don’t think there is even one she said no to. In fact, on one particular occasion she gave Aaj Tak two on the same day because the interviewer lost the tapes within minutes of obtaining the first!

  In contrast, with the exception of L.K. Advani, I don’t think a single leading Indian politician has given the Pakistani media an interview. In fact, I’m prepared to bet that most would not even be prepared to meet them! Again, Advani is the exception.

  However, Musharraf exemplifies a further quality our politicians would do well to emulate. He’s prepared to face up to his critics, take their hostile questions and spend hours defending his position whilst attempting to change theirs. We may not agree with his arguments and often we disapprove of his tough language but it’s impossible not to admire his courage and be impressed by his performance. You may walk away from a Musharraf encounter put off by his personality but, despite that, you also know you’ve just met a very special man. That’s why Musharraf has fans in India and not just foes.

  Sadly, many of our politicians refuse to face their critics. Indeed, some can even run away from their friends! The problem is they’re not prepared to pit their arguments against challenges. So rarely, if ever, do we see them under pressure, fighting to prove their point, fending off counter-arguments and winning respect for standing their ground.

  Yet the paradox is politicians usually grow from such encounters. Musharraf did and still does. But if you shelter yourself from them you appear bonsai and shrunken. That’s why ours lose out.

  9 March 2009

  Two Faces of Pakistan

  If I ever needed proof that luck was essential for a television interviewer, this week I got it in abundance. Two interviewees I have pursued with diligence, but not much success, accepted and granted interviews within three days of each other. It turned out to be the right time to talk to both.

  The first thing that struck
me about Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif is how different they are. On screen he comes across as genial, even friendly; she seems stern, often forbidding. At times he fumbles, his arguments meander and you feel he’s crafting his answers as he replies. She’s always assured, her flow unstoppable, her answers planned and when she does expand it’s to stop you interrupting.

  Nawaz kept a large Pakistani flag by his side, Benazir a small photograph of her late father. His advisors and senior officials crammed into the room to witness the recording. She was on her own and when our cameraman told her staff they were in danger of creeping into the frame she asked them to leave.

  She kept her head covered though her dupatta kept slipping off. In his case I felt he wanted to show off the new head of hair he’s acquired. Every now and then he would lovingly pat it, no doubt to reassure himself it was still there.

  A stark difference was their attitude to Musharraf. Both referred to him as a dictator but thereafter the divergence was vast. Nawaz Sharif refused to accept anything Musharraf has done, including progress on the Kashmir front. Benazir made a point of saying she would not reverse good work even if done by a dictator. Nawaz said he would set up a Kargil Commission and it would be free to question, even try, Musharraf. ‘No one is above the law,’ he added. Benazir, on the other hand, whilst accepting the need for such a commission, forcefully added that it would not be ‘designed for revenge.’

  More significant were the differences in their attitude to Kashmir. Both saw it as the core issue – but whilst Nawaz seemed to stick to the UN resolutions as the basis for a solution, Benazir insisted that a solution of the Kashmir issue should not hold up progress in other areas. More importantly, Benazir agrees with the way India and Pakistan are inching towards joint consultative mechanisms. Nawaz, I suspect, either hasn’t made up his mind or doesn’t like the idea because it’s identified with Musharraf.