Dilip Kumar: The Substance and the Shadow

by Dilip Kumar

  Bimalda had a silhouette of Madhumati in his mind when we were concluding our work on Devdas and he had vaguely mentioned it to me. Later, when he gave me his first narration along with Ritwik Ghatak, a talented film maker and script writer, I could sense his unflinching confidence in the subject. There were some people who told him it would be a risk to make a film that had metaphysical layers, which may not be easy for the viewer to absorb. There were others like Hrishikesh Mukherjee (or Hrishida),* I think, who encouraged and supported his belief in himself and egged him on to try a genre that offered splendid cinematic possibilities.

  With Hrishikesh Mukherjee.

  Bimalda and Dilip Gupta spent hours in conversation, often with paper and pencil, to sketch and visualize the atmosphere that had to be created for some of the scenes. Bimalda gave a patient hearing to anyone who had a suggestion.

  All the three films, Devdas, Madhumati and Yahudi (1958) that I did under Bimalda’s direction gave me the pleasure of knowing a man who believed in perfection and hard work as much as I did. He appreciated my style of working and the pains I took to endow life to the characters. Personally, I felt Madhumati was a clever and ingenious script. In the very first draft itself, I could see the possibilities the script offered. After Devdas I thought this picture would give us the much-needed relief especially since we would be shooting a sizable part of the film outdoors.

  It was never the role that was of paramount importance when I agreed to do a film; there were other factors. Every role I played had its distinct merits and provocations. In Madhumati the incentive was the construction of the narrative and the layers of unpredictability in it. It appeared rather tricky for me to be the pivot of a suspenseful narrative that alternated between the past and present and threw up gripping situations for the audience. None of my previous characters had to get connected to a life that was lived in a previous birth. That was tricky for me and more so since my character was the pivot of the film’s evolution and dramatic appeal.

  I have always enjoyed outdoor work. In Madhumati the outdoor work was to become the core of the film and that alone filled me with the excitement of a child who is promised a long vacation at a destination of his choice. To us – Pran, Johnny Walker, Bimalda, Hrishida and me – the time after ‘pack-up’ was very interesting. We got over the pressure of the day’s work by spending the evenings in cheerful conversation and poetic exchanges while the cooks in the unit readied our dinner. Pran and I got along famously talking in Punjabi while Bimalda and Hrishida tried to outdo us in Bengali with their conversation. It used to be a little awkward the following day when Pran had to brim with hostility as the negative character in the script. I must say he was amazingly true to the character of Ugranarayan.

  With Vyjayantimala in Madhumati (1958).

  I have never considered any particular film crucial to the progress of my career. Each film gave me the valuable experience of discovering my own potential and adding to my understanding of the advancing medium. As I have often said, we, who worked during the formative years of Hindi cinema, had to tread a difficult terrain. In the case of Madhumati, there was the latent fear that the audience may just not identify with a reincarnation concept. So we worked with a common purpose of taking the picture to the goal of box-office success. And we were suitably rewarded as the film turned out to be a success.

  The songs – penned by Shailendra and composed by Salil Chaudhury – and their picturization were a great success. Wherever one went those days, one heard the songs on radios and public speakers at community gatherings. It was an exhilarating experience for Bimalda I felt, though he remained as quiet and as unaffected as ever.

  People who tried to find fodder for gossip mills were actively seeking a liaison between me and Vyjayanti when I selected her to play Dhanno in Gunga Jumna (released in 1961) after working together in four well-received films prior to it. (The fourth film was S. S. Vasan’s Paigham, 1959.) The reality was that I had been observing her painstaking efforts to raise the scale and temperature of the emotions demanded by the challenging scenes she had to do with me for Devdas. She never complained about, or tired of, the umpteen rehearsals I asked for before we went for a take. I would particularly mention the scenes in which Devdas is deeply troubled and mortified by the irresistible attraction he feels for her and she, knowing it all with her feminine sixth sense, makes no bones about boldly unravelling her bruised feelings as the woman he needs but does not want to love. The complex ebb and flow of the responses we had to give each other, the modulation and timing of the pithy dialogue we were given to speak while keeping in mind the briefs given by Kamal Bose, the brilliant cameraman who used his expertise in lighting to heighten the temperature of such sensitive scenes, needed committed rehearsals. I noticed that she had the patience and the passion to achieve perfection. A virtue she had evidently acquired as a keen student of Bharata Natyam (a classical dance form that originated in South India) under fastidious teachers.

  As a co-star, she was very well mannered and spoke respectfully to the senior actors and unit members. She came to the sets with her grandmother (Yadugiri Devi) who doted on her and made sure she got star treatment from her producers. Following her grandmother’s instructions, no doubt, to assert her star status, she hardly lingered on the sets after the shooting and preferred to remain undisturbed in the make-up room and enjoy the vegetarian cuisine she brought along.

  Her aloofness suited me and other unit members. We were unable to fathom, though, how she used the litres and litres of milk her grandmother ordered each day first thing on her arrival at the shooting venue. Did she wallow and bathe in it like Cleopatra? We wondered. My brother Nasir, who liked to play pranks, once brought a milk-laden buffalo, while we were shooting outdoors for Gunga Jumna, and he wanted to tie it to a pole outside the special makeshift make-up room we had put up for Vyjayanti. I got to know of it in good time and I rebuked and stopped him, averting a perilous situation.

  By herself, Vyjayanti was not unsporting or unnecessarily orthodox. Nor was she given to believing or imagining that she was a bigger star than I was. She knew the facts but she simply agreed with her grandmother on all matters and, for practical reasons, never questioned her authority. Whenever we shot outdoors, she joined me and other members of the unit for a game of badminton while her grandmother watched her proudly. She was a fine player and she often gave us, the menfolk, tough competition with her nimble defences and serves.

  With Vyjayantimala in Paigham (1959).

  On one occasion, when we were filming Paigham, at Gemini Studios in Madras, Vyjayanti and her grandmother found it appropriate to join us at a table that was laid out for tiffin, which usually consisted of South Indian snacks like medu vadas (fried, disc-shaped savouries), upma (a semi-solid dish made from semolina) and chundal. The lastmentioned item always interested me. It was boiled chick peas garnished with finely chopped onions, curry leaves and mustard seeds that had crackled in the hot oil that was used. For Vyjayanti there was always seasonal fruits and of course milk. Her grandmother sat by her side on such occasions and urged her to eat the oranges she would peel for her while she talked about Madras and the great culture of the city. Vyjayanti spoke only when she managed to get a word in.

  One evening, seeing the flutter around the table arising from the news that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister of India, was going to visit the sets of Paigham a day or two later, before driving off to the airport after an engagement in the neighbourhood, Madam Yadugiri Devi chose to recall an event in Delhi where Panditji was the chief guest and Vyjayanti was centre-stage as the performer of the evening at a cultural gathering. That evening and the next evening all we heard was about Panditji and Papa (Papa, meaning baby in Tamil, was Vyjayanti’s pet name) and all the unit members listened to the Panditji–Papa story with curiosity.

  The big day arrived and S. S. Vasan Sahab, the founder of Gemini Studios, got us all together and told us how Panditji would be received and ushered to his office. He w
anted me to head the reception line-up but I told him that Panditji knew Vyjayanti and admired her, so I suggested that she should take my place. I was supported by all those who had heard the Panditji–Papa story and Vasan Sahab agreed. I took my position at the tail end of the line.

  Panditji arrived on schedule and, as is customary in Madras, he was welcomed with a rose garland and sprayed with fragrant water from a silver jar with a spout. He acknowledged it all with his wonderful simplicity. Vasan Sahab stood by his side and I think he was waiting for Panditji to greet Vyjayanti who was right there in front of his eyes. Suddenly, Panditji’s searching eyes caught a glimpse of me at the far end of the line. He walked briskly towards me, saying: ‘Yousuf, I heard you were here and I decided to drop in.’ Vasan Sahab hurried behind him and, in a second, Panditji had reached where I was standing, stretching his arm over my shoulder affectionately. I was least prepared for the recognition and it took an instant for me to realize that I was walking with the country’s most loved and admired leader.

  Panditji spent a quarter of an hour in the studio, talking mostly about the potential of the medium to awaken social introspection and the desire to change stagnant customs and conventions in society. He had little time to watch new films but he came to know a lot from people he met and interacted with in his personal circle. After that, we never heard the Panditji–Papa story from Vyjayanti’s grandmother.

  S. S. Vasan Sahab was a genial, unassuming gentleman. We liked each other and became friends in no time. He was the boss of the sprawling studio and was a respected figure in the South Indian film industry. He liked chatting with me and telling me tales that may or may not have had anything to do with his own life. He narrated to me the story of a little boy who spent his days on a railway platform with his mother who sold magazines and newspapers to passengers who alighted at the station to purchase them. He related to me how the boy carried magazines and newspapers and ran from one end of the platform to the other screaming out their names to sell them to passengers seated in the compartments. By the time the train belched out of the station – I think he said Chingelpat (now known as Chengalpattu, located in north-eastern Tamil Nadu) – the boy would have sold most of the material he had with him and the mother would have sold most of the rest. Between the arrival of the trains there used to be ample time for the boy to rest his agile feet and sometimes or most times his mother took a nap, resting her head on the bag she carried every day. The boy could never sleep, so he read the newspapers and magazines, often with difficulty because he did not possess a great Tamil vocabulary. He, nevertheless, absorbed enough to enhance his general knowledge. By the evening the mother and son would return the couple of unsold magazines to the agent, collect their commission, go to a vegetarian food stall and have a snack, which never quite filled the boy’s stomach.

  I do not know why the story was narrated to me in great detail. I remember listening to him in rapt attention because he was a great storyteller. If you ask me the most successful film makers in India or anywhere else in the world are men and women who know how to tell stories without letting the listener’s mind stray even for a split second. Vasan Sahab had great knowledge about everything and an imagination that came to the fore when we discussed scenes for Paigham.

  He took me with him everywhere he went and it was a great pleasure to be in his company because he had so much knowledge about Madras Presidency and the history of the temples we passed by when we drove around in the early hours of the day or in the evenings when the streets would be filled with working people returning home with their purchases for their households like vegetables, groceries and so on. Some of the streets were lined with flower stalls from where women purchased the flowers that adorned their hair. Vasan Sahab enjoyed talking and I enjoyed listening to him. We often spoke about the next day’s work and he used to ask me my opinion about a scene he had conceived and he would ask for my inputs unreservedly.

  I remember I was travelling with him by train to Madurai (about 460 km south of Madras, famous for its Meenakshi temple) where he was to inspect a printing press he wanted to buy. In the train he told me he was unsure of the development of the scene we were to shoot the next day for Paigham as it was a tricky one where the heroine would muster up all her feminine guile to find out the hero’s feelings for her. He said he had been applying his mind to create a humorous situation but it was just not happening.

  The train was speeding past fields where women in bright coloured saris were toiling to earn their day’s wages unmindful of the heat of the afternoon sun. We were in a nice first-class coupé and Vasan Sahab was looking at me expectantly while he poured out hot aromatic coffee into cups from a flask the train attendant had brought in a minute ago.

  I told him I had seen a foreign film in which the hero and heroine meet on the terrace of a building where they hope to share some quiet moments. The heroine asks the hero if he had dated any girls or desired anyone before he met and befriended her. He tells her he will not reveal all that because it will upset her. She tells him don’t be silly, we are grown-ups and there is no question of my getting upset. Her hair keeps falling over her face and he leans forward and moves the hair back to see her face clearly. Then he begins to tell her about a girl …. He sees the colour recede on her face and her eyes betray her anxiety. Finally he tells her: ‘See, I told you ….’ She is almost in tears. He then tells her that the girl he was describing and talking about was none other than the girl sitting in front of him.

  I suggested to Vasan Sahab we could do the scene a bit differently. The hero would do all the talking and the heroine would respond with expressions. He would go on telling her about the woman he is in love with and arouse her envy and curiosity. She would try hard to hide her reactions but the audience can see that she is getting edgy and jealous from the expressions that flit across her face involuntarily. ‘You think it can be managed?’ Vasan Sahab asked me. I assured him that we could do it.

  He was very excited when he described the scene to Vyjayanti the next day in the studio and I could see Vyjayanti’s helpless gaze turn to me because the lines were not written and she did not know what I was going to say. How was she to prepare her expressions if she did not know what I was going to speak?

  I then told Vasan Sahab: ‘Let’s do some rehearsals’. He was surprised that I had my lines ready. I told him that I had the lines in my mind in the train itself when we had discussed the scene and finalized it. I think Vasan Sahab couldn’t contain his happiness and excitement about the way the scene turned out. That day and for many days after that he was bursting with delight and, sure enough, the scene turned out to be one of the highlights in the film.

  Vasan Sahab had immense respect for writers and good writing. He was a writer himself and wrote short stories and novels. He was the chief editor of a Tamil magazine (Ananda Vikatan), which had a huge readership. It was thanks to him that I took a liking to Madras, where I desired to move and settle down in later years.

  It was during the making of Naya Daur that I noticed Vyjayanti’s ability to feign a rustic character’s mannerisms with conviction. When I was scripting Gunga Jumna, I felt she would fit the role of Dhanno if she took pains to render the Bhojpuri dialect (used in the film) with the right accent and inflexions.

  The making of Naya Daur is a small story by itself. When B. R. Chopra completed the story on paper, he took it to Mehboob Sahab to get an opinion. Those were the post-independence years and screen writers were brimming with national pride and were in the flush of a movement to give Indian cinema a platform at international film competitions by exploring plots that had universal relevance. Mehboob Sahab read the story and found no meat in it for entertainment. He told Chopra Sahab it could be made into a fine documentary on the doomsday awaiting the labour force in the country once machines replaced them but, as a feature film, it was not a great idea.

  With Daisy Irani and Vyjayantimala in Naya Daur (1957).

  Chopra Sahab listened to the senior fi
lm maker’s opinion respectfully, but he had made up his mind that he would make the film if I agreed to act in it. He told me this emphatically after he gave me the idea in a nutshell. I liked the idea except for the climax in which originally the bus was to be beaten by the tonga (a horse-drawn carriage) by some kind of manipulation. It did not seem logical to me. However, I kept the thought to myself since there was no chance of my accepting the film.

  Initially, it seemed as if Chopra Sahab and I were not destined to come together. When Chopra Sahab came to me with the Naya Daur script, I was committed to a film Gyan Mukherjee had specially written with me in mind. So I told Chopra Sahab that his project would have to wait till Gyan Mukherjee’s film went on the floors and he completed the shooting. I liked the basic premise of the Naya Daur story and the intent, but it was not possible for me to work on two scripts simultaneously because that would lead to overlapping of thoughts and ideas, which could affect the content of both the films adversely.

  I explained to him that it was for this very reason that I had not welcomed the idea of doing Pyaasa (when offered to me by producer-director Guru Dutt) because I was then involved in Devdas and, though the subject of Pyaasa was very inviting for a serious actor like me, I felt there was a similarity in the shades of the character of Devdas and the hero of Pyaasa. The logic was quite simple: if I had accepted Pyaasa unthinkingly it would have been released close on the heels of Devdas and one of them would have overshadowed the other. It made bad business sense to me. (Guru Dutt eventually played the hero in Pyaasa, which was released in 1957.)