by Dilip Kumar
Needless to say, there was utter commotion as the lid flew open and Noor Sahab’s secret dalliance came to light. The girl disappeared the next day and Noor Sahab was a picture of desolation. He was not annoyed with me because he knew I had not spoiled his romance intentionally. It was an innocent child’s confession and, as days went by, he resigned himself to the realization that real-life love stories don’t always end happily.
She was bundled off to Surat (now in Gujarat) where she married and settled down. Her parents continued to meet Aghaji and Amma cordially. And Noor Sahab left the past behind to everybody’s relief and began to look for new sources of excitement.
5
THE GROWING UP YEARS
I have gone into all this detailing [given later in this chapter] for a specific purpose. It is meant to inform those readers, who may have been misled into imagining that Raj Kapoor and I only professed friendship while a deep professional rivalry brewed between us, that ours was not merely a friendship of two individuals in the same profession but a bonding that grew from well-placed trust and respect.
AS AYUB SAHAB GREW UP, HE DEVELOPED A RESPIRATORY disorder, which necessitated our moving to Deolali (a hill station in Maharashtra, located about 180 km from Bombay). The fresh air in Deolali and the availability of medical care there made it the ideal location for his treatment and recovery.
Being an army station, Deolali had good educational institutions, and one of them was Barnes School where I was admitted. There were soldiers who didn’t seem to be of Indian origin at the army centres. I learned later that they were Turkish, who were captives of war.
Deolali is of significance in my life in more than one respect. First, it was at Deolali that I learned the English language and became quite proficient in it. Secondly, it was during our stay in Deolali that I began to take keen interest in soccer.
Aghaji visited us once a week from Mumbai. He loved my brother Ayub and was very concerned about his progress. He found me reading and writing English and that was also something that gladdened his heart. There was an English poem that I learned in school, which I recited before Aghaji one day and he was so happy that he made me recite it before all his distinguished English-speaking friends. The poem ran as follows:
I have two eyes.
And I can see the door
The ceiling, the wall
And the big blue sky
Bent over all.
During school vacations when we went to Peshawar to spend time with our Dada and Dadi, there used to be social gatherings to mark our visits. At each gathering I was made to stand on a platform and vigorously egged on to recite the poem. It gave Aghaji great pride to tell the world that his son was conversant with English and all his Pathan friends were equally joyous about the achievement. If there happened to be an English officer of some rank in the local administration in the gathering, it made the scenario even more thrilling. Each time I completed the recitation there would be encores. There would be cries of ‘shabash [well done] Yousuf’. Each time I had to start all over again.
The encores came again and I would straighten myself, take a deep breath and begin reciting the same poem once again.
The recitation went on endlessly till I was tired and just could not continue. For me, it was something I always tried to wriggle out of. As a shy, reticent youngster, public attention was the last thing I wanted. But I think Destiny had already begun to chart out the life I had to lead. I had to obey Aghaji’s orders on such occasions and, though it was difficult to recite the poem in the open air – no door, no wall, no ceiling – I think I was stimulated to perform by the applause and encores I received. It was as if I could see a door, a wall and a ceiling when I recited. I had my first brush with the make-believe world into which I was to make my fateful entry years later.
At Deolali, Ayub Sahab had no option but to spend his waking hours reading whatever Urdu literature he could lay his hands on. He always liked to read the latest novels and he devoured newspaper articles and short stories with great delight. To make him happy, as I grew up and progressed in my study of English, I read the short stories (in translation) of the nineteenth-century French writer, Guy de Maupassant, and narrated them to him. That was my first introduction to published literature from abroad and I was fascinated by the plot structure and storytelling ability of the author. In a latent sort of way, I was developing a keen narrative skill by reading the works of English and other European authors that I found in the library of Barnes School.
I can’t recall when exactly but Ayub Sahab suffered a spinal injury after he fell from a horse in Kashmir where Aghaji had taken him and Noor Sahab on one of his business trips. Fruits that were of typical Kashmir origin had interested Aghaji and he made quite a few trips in a year to negotiate and make arrangements for their transport to Bombay. As a result of the injury, Ayub Sahab had to stay in bed or just sit in a wheelchair for almost a year. Orthopaedic treatment was not as advanced as it is today and such injuries took time to be healed.
I remember how Aghaji used to sit by Ayub Sahab’s side and look at him with moist eyes that betrayed his pain within. Here was a son gifted with unusual intelligence and creative energy and he just couldn’t move from his chair. Relatives of my parents who visited us at Deolali were not many. Among them, I remember an uncle, Ghulam Mohammad, who seemed well acquainted with Urdu poetry and spent time with Ayub Sahab appreciating the Urdu verse that Ayub Sahab penned.
I had a classmate who was the school bully. He was twice my size and he made it a point to threaten me and my small circle of friends. On the way to school, there was a plateau where we played. I had a cycle, which I rode to school sometimes and, at other times, I just ran to school, taking off on my feet swiftly with the breeze as if one was being airlifted from the ground. It was an experience I really enjoyed.
To get back to the school bully, he was the local baker’s son. The bakery owned by his father was well known. One day while I was returning from school, he sprang on me and began punching me. I was alone and I took the beating without attempting to retaliate.
Days later, my friends and I cornered him and really gave it to him. It became a major talking point amongst the boys. What he did to me only I knew but what we – my friends and I – did to him became known to all.
His father was away at that time. So we knew that the news hadn’t reached the principal.
The same weekend, Aghaji was expected and I was sent by Amma to fetch him from the railway station. At the station my opponent, the bully, was waiting for his dad who was travelling by the same train.
When Aghaji alighted, the baker also stepped down. I walked silently behind Aghaji, a strapping six-footer with broad, heavy shoulders while the bully walked sheepishly behind his small-built father. The next morning, when I encountered him on my way to school, he seemed to be in a hurry to go out of my sight. He quickened his pace and started to run. He was behaving as if he was afraid of me. My friends who were walking with me noticed the change in him. That afternoon, as we made our way home, my friends and I found a place to hide at the foot of a hill. We waited for him. He had stayed back in the class pretending that he had something to do. After a few minutes of waiting we saw him coming. He was alone. As he came closer I could feel my heartbeat quickening. The next instant we surrounded him. There was the kind of fisticuffs that children have with their opponents at that age.
I returned home feeling triumphant but unusually silent. I heard Aghaji asking Amma what was wrong with me. ‘Why is he so quiet? Just feel his brow and see if he’s alright,’ I heard him saying after he passed my room and entered his room where Amma was frantically searching for something she had misplaced.
Amma, of course, knew better. ‘I hope you’ve not done something you want to hide from me,’ she said in her usual gentle voice. I simply shook my head, keeping my gaze on the floor till she left. As always, she had some work in the kitchen or the garden or the backyard to attend to.
I imagined wha
t would transpire in school the next day. The principal would get a complaint and I would be summoned along with my friends. I sincerely wished I hadn’t behaved as I did. My peace-loving conscience was in a turmoil. Moreover, the Pathan in me was rather uncomfortable about the way we caught him alone, unawares, and retaliated.
I reached school somewhat early the next day. I saw the baker and his son in the principal’s room. After an exchange of words, they came out and the boy was asked to go to his class. In a little while I saw Aghaji walking, straight and erect, rather briskly towards the principal’s office. He too exchanged a few words and came out. I waited breathlessly, wondering what had brought Aghaji to my school. To my surprise, the principal, too, came out and they were all talking and shaking hands. The boy’s father was all respect as he stood before Aghaji, listening to whatever Aghaji was saying. In the end, Aghaji patted the baker on his shoulder and they walked out of the school together.
I went to my classroom and took my seat in the first row. I looked at my friends and they seemed to be happy. I then looked at the boy and, to my surprise, he smiled at me. When school broke, he walked home with us, laughing and talking as if nothing had happened.
As a boy I was extremely happy in the green surroundings in Deolali. Having spent a free, spirited childhood in Peshawar, wandering gleefully in open spaces, breathing fresh air, stopping by the brooks and streams in the valleys, it was sheer delight to be in Deolali. When we had arrived there, I had this strange feeling that I may just relive my happy childhood in Peshawar. The earth, brown and red in parts, smelt as good as the earth back home and the hills, craggy and verdant in the monsoons, filled my boyish heart with nostalgia. The climate was perfect and we had flowers and fruits in the trees in our garden, which was tended to by a jovial maali and his wife who spoke a UP (then known as United Provinces and later called Uttar Pradesh) dialect, which fascinated me. Many years later, when I began to work on the dialogues of the film Gunga Jumna (released in 1961), it was this dialect that came to my mind and ears repeatedly.
Amma often sent me to the maali’s house to either summon him urgently or to deliver a portion of the goodies Aghaji would bring from Bombay for us. Amma was always generous towards those who served us. She always spoke gently and kindly. Even when she got annoyed and reprimanded them, she did so without hurting their self-esteem.
Deolali, as a picturesque place, figured prominently in my imagination when we got down to detailing locations in the screenplay of Gunga Jumna. The hills, the plains and the thick groves made up of all varieties of woodland trees lining the banks of the winding streams, sprang up before my eyes when I pictured the locations for Gunga Jumna in my mind. In retrospect, I feel Deolali provided as much impetus to my creative thoughts as the lands and forts, mountains and valleys of Peshawar when I sketched the rugged setting of Gunga Jumna’s core conflicts and dramatic scenes. I am inclined to subscribe to the belief that childhood images cling to the subconscious surreptitiously and they can emerge before your eyes quite unexpectedly like an unexpected visitor who sneaks in through the back door to give you a lovely surprise.
During our search for the outdoor locales of Gunga Jumna, I visited some of my childhood haunts and, though a great deal had changed in the environs, I felt extremely happy taking deep breaths of the familiar air.
The cantonment was unchanged. I instantly recalled how I used to gaze at the officers in their smart uniforms and sometimes wondered how they mounted the horses so quickly and rode them with such poise and confidence. I was fascinated by the houses of the English officers with their well-kept lawns, trimmed hedges, mango trees, wild raspberry and blackberry bushes. There were English flowering plants and the Indian hibiscus as also roses of various hues and sizes. Our own house was large and we had a flower garden in front and a kitchen garden in the rear. Like the English ladies who sat in the verandah of their houses with their knitting, Amma and the aunts who came visiting from Peshawar, too, sat in the verandah of our house enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun in the winter months doing embroidery or crisscrossing fine needles and producing beautiful lace.
Deolali and Poona (now Pune; located about 150 km from Bombay) are of special significance in my life. If Deolali restored the abandon of my early childhood in Peshawar with its plains and hills and valleys, Poona gave me a sense of self-assurance and the initial opportunity to develop my character.
When the doctors felt Ayub Sahab was doing better, Aghaji shifted us back to Bombay and we were back in our house near Crawford Market. Amma was once again cleaning up the big apartment though she had servants now to help her. There were additions to the family also. My younger brother Nasir was followed by Mumtaz. One by one my siblings arrived with gaps of a year or a year and a half. Amma was suffering from asthma and she had frightening bouts of breathlessness off and on.
It was not just for my education that Aghaji had to find resources. All my younger brothers and sisters had to be educated as well. The recession was setting in as I began attending high school and then Khalsa College at Matunga (a locality in central Bombay). It was easy to walk to Anjuman Islam from home but the only way to reach Khalsa College was by taking a tram ride. I do not remember now as to where I boarded the electric tram every day, perhaps it was at Crawford Market, but I have lovely memories of the tram journeys terminating at Dadar (another locality in central Bombay). I think it was operated by the BEST (Bombay Electric Supply and Transport), which also ran the bus services on the roads. I enjoyed a tram ride more than a bus ride for the leisurely way it meandered through its route and made a lot of noise when it picked up speed. I had friends in college who travelled by tram every day and somehow evaded the conductor who gave the tickets for the journey. They were very triumphant about it. The tram conductors, unlike the bus conductors, were usually laid back and conscientious commuters like me had to go to the conductor who could be dozing in his seat, wake him up, get an angry stare and buy a ticket to the destination. I therefore did not blame my friends who commuted ticketless. There were days when I ran on the road keeping pace with the tram, the wind beating against my face, for the mere fun and joy of it.
With my brothers. (L to R): Aslam, Noor Sahab and Ahsan.
When the decision to do away with the tram service in Bombay appeared in the newspapers, I was among the thousands of citizens who felt a pang in the heart. A large number of people reportedly lined the streets between Parel and Dadar (both localities in central Bombay) to bid farewell to the last tram on the fateful day (31 March 1964) it made its last journey. Had I not ceased to be the young Yousuf Khan, who travelled in the electric trams of Bombay, and become the star Dilip Kumar, I would have been one of the spectators of the tram service’s swan song.
For some reason Aghaji had great dreams for me. He wanted me to pursue my education and acquire impressive degrees. His ultimate desire was to see OBE (Order of the British Empire) attached to my name. (India was then ruled by the British.)
‘He is capable of much more than you think,’ I overheard him chiding my Amma once. ‘He should not be selling fruits. He should be studying law. He must go abroad and study there. He has the potential to become somebody.’
I was happy to know from Amma what Aghaji thought of me but it scared me, too. Will I be able to measure up to his expectations? I was industrious and diligent by nature. I was sure I could be a successful soccer player if given the encouragement and support to become one … but the OBE? How would I get that?
I was an avid reader. I enjoyed reading English and Urdu authors. I was shy and reserved by nature but I made friends easily with select college mates. At the Khalsa College I met Raj Kapoor after years. Raj’s grandfather, Dewan Basheshwarnath Kapoor, used to visit us in Peshawar, as noted earlier, and the two families met in Bombay as well with the lingering warmth and gusto that Pathans are famous for. The joy of speaking the same language, Pushtu, was itself something special for the two families. Aghaji had a flair for picking up languages, a fo
rte I have inherited and honed. He could speak Pushtu and the Punjabi spoken by the Punjabi residents of Lahore as also Persian and Urdu besides sufficient English to be understood by his anglophone friends. When we moved to Bombay, he became conversant with Hindustani and Gujarati which his Memon and Bohra friends spoke. (Memons and Bohras are ethnic Muslim communities in western India.)
With Amma.
Our residence in Bombay was like an open house for Aghaji’s and Amma’s friends. Close to the building where we lived on Nagdevi Street, there were the two-storeyed houses occupied by Memon and Bohra families. The ladies from those families were very friendly with Amma and my eldest sister Sakina. There was one Memon lady, Baisabi, who regularly visited us in the afternoons and carried on long, endless conversations with Amma, punctuated by interludes of hearty laughter. She was very fond of Amma and she embarrassed me frequently by complimenting me about my looks.
The fact is I could never get over my shyness even after I entered my twenties. I envied Raj who had by then become a friend as the families had once again become close, carrying forward the friendship of the Peshawar days. Raj was always at ease with the girls in the college and his extrovert nature and natural charm earned him considerable popularity. If there was anything impressive about me at that stage, it was my performance in sports and my acquaintance with English and Urdu literature.
On the field, while playing football or hockey, I was completely at ease and focused to the point of forgetting everything else. It was soccer that I loved and wanted to play seriously and professionally. I saved every rupee of my pocket money to buy expensive and comfortable sports shoes from a shop near Metro Cinema (in south Bombay). I used to walk to the grounds behind Metro where we played and also had our practice sessions. Aghaji did not mind if I went after college to watch a football game at the Cooperage grounds (also in south Bombay) or wherever there was a match being played and if I asked for extra money. He was happy with the thought that this son on whom he had pinned hopes of high education and the OBE was spending as much time in libraries and seldom missed lectures in college. He had made friends with lawyers, doctors and professors who visited his fruit shop and he felt proud when they came home and, when they spoke to me, I conversed freely and articulately with them. He would send me to their residences with choice fruits and their wives would drop in with home-made sweets, biriyani and other preparations. I never failed to notice the respect they had for Aghaji who was, indeed, more than a fruit merchant to them and to all those who came in his contact. Though he never had access to formal education, which was absent during his boyhood and youth in Peshawar, he was a man of native wisdom and culture. In poise, demeanour, refinement and prudence in speech and thought, he was equal to them. Though he was not a native of Bombay and, as such, was an outsider, hailing from a social milieu that had little in common with the urban sophistication and mores of that city, Aghaji was always confident and assured in the company of his friends from different walks of life. He stood out among them with his impressive appearance. He had a bodily presence and a gait with his head held high that commanded deference. He was also full of the Pathan robustness and charm that made him stand out among the local Muslims when we gathered at the Juma Masjid (near Crawford Market) for our Friday afternoon prayers. Since the building we stayed in had four floors, we could see the terraces of the two-storeyed buildings nearby as also the Juma Masjid, which was close by.
