| Ek Tha Jewel Thief By Deepak G. Shrivastav
Memories of the incomparable Ashok Kumar.
Aaiye
Meherban…
It was one of those rare chilly Mumbai mornings early
in December. The sun was still a good hour or more away,
sleeping cuddled in a quilt woven with promises the
coming day held. Hands burrowed in pockets, the yet
unlit cigarette held loosely in my lips, I walked to
the music of birdsong and the sound of my footsteps.
This was the favourite time of the day for me, this
slow walk first to the paperwalla and next to my chaiwalla.
A pleasant half-hour when it was almost possible to
believe that this wasn’t the hellish suburb of Andher,i
but someplace called home. That it was still possible
to dream in one’s mid-forties. That 9/11 was a cool
SMS way of saying “nau do gyarah”’ that OBL was some
character in Rowling’s latest book and that smart bombs,
like Santa Claus, loved little Afghani children and
spared them. The newspaper vendor held out my two papers
and paying him, I walked across the street to the tea
stall. Having seen me, the guy had already started brewing
the first cup of my very personal concoction. I reached
his ramshackle lean-to, promptly leaned against my usual
beam and opened the folded papers. And my soul went
numb.
The pleasures of solitude.
I pulled out my cell phone, punched 1, the speed-dial
for my friend, and pressed the dial button. She picked
it up after two rings and I heard her say “hello?” I
took her name and softly said”“Ek Tha Jewel Thief…”
There was a long pause, then “When?”‘ “Yesterday,” I
replied. Another long silence, then we hung up. No more
words were needed. Ashok Kumar was dead.
As we journey through our lives, we carry, sometimes
not even known to ourselves, small icons within us.
Icons that we pick up as we grow and keep collecting
until late into our twenties. These icons characterize
our world for us, define the realm of our souls. In
90-year old Kumudlal Ganguly, from a family of lawyers
in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh; born 1911 in Bhagalpur,
Bihar; a man “full of lust for life,” I had lost one
of the last few icons from my collection.
If we close our eyes, we lose contact with almost all
tangible manifestations of the world around us. But
if one can hear “naav chali, naani ki naav chali…””on
a distant radio or TV, one can reconnect and hear the
splash of oars against the waters of a river that has
long dried up. One can remember with photographic clarity
the toothless, paan-stained smile of a granny who is
no more and the nectar-like sweetness of mangoes from
her orchard now wilted with the blight of time. Icons
bring back our world to us, or rather, help us hold
on to it.
Make him an offer he can’t refuse!
Ashok Kumar came to my home long before I did. In fact,
he met my parents long before they met each other. The
thirties and the forties, the most tumultuous and exciting
times to be in India and be an Indian. He must have
made his acquaintance then, this lab technician/assistant
cameraman turned reluctant film star. Jeevan Naiya,
Achhut Kanya, Kismet, Kangan, Bandhan…the movies my
parents must have seen, not knowing each other yet connecting
through the dreams that he inspired.
To millions like me, aspiring to make a dent in the
audio-visual media, the story of Ashok Kumar’s life
seems almost as unbelievable as an Arabian Nights’ fantasy.
Especially to those willing to give an arm, a leg and
a soul for a walking part in an obscure production,
it would seem magical that a man standing meekly beside
the camera could be dragged by the producer to replace
the male lead opposite Devika Rani, a movie queen if
ever there was one. And this is not the incredible part
— the truly inconceivable fact is that this man didn’t
want the job and had to be persuaded very hard to accept
it! A few days after his death, a friend, and a friend
of his in spite of their 40-year difference in age,
told me Ashok Kumar was a person with whom one could
guffaw all day long and then spend the next whole day
in complete silence, not feeling the need for a single
spoken word. The companionable silence reached out as
warmly to you as the lively tales accompanied by boisterous
laughter did the day earlier.
I think this silence speaks most eloquently about the
kind of person Ashok Kumar was. As the editorial in
The Asian Age said, “..pretty ordinary but earnest-looking
young man who set limited goals and tried to achieve
them first before thinking of anything grand.” Quite
an antithesis of how people in this profession normally
conduct their lives and careers.
Fighting the battles of life with a smile.
He accepted each day that sunrise brought as a gift
from life. Like a child full of wonder and curiosity,
he opened the gift and sang the day away in joyous celebration.
In the process, quietly, subtly and effortlessly achieving
what takes others a lifetime to accomplish. I am not
qualified to rate his acting capabilities, but from
what I have heard and read of his life, his human qualities
and philosophy of life are certainly most under-rated
and least known. Long before copywriters coined cliches
like “The Complete Man,”“The New Age Man” or “The Millennium
Man,” he was all this and more, simply by the fact of”“being”
what he was.
So he was already living in my home when I came into
this world, a revered name taken in awe. He was one
of the first icons my parents and elder siblings gifted
me. Later, there were to be others — Shahid Bhagat Singh,
Abdul Hamid, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Dr. Harivanshrai Bachchan,
Krishan Chandar — son of an
Devika Rani and Ashok Kumar in Achhut Kanya: Love
across all barriers.
Army supplies officer with a salary of some 500 Rupees,
I was richer than Richie Rich.
Each icon that my family added to my collection embodied
something that our parents believed we should cherish
and try to emulate — human dignity, courage, faith,
values, integrity and grace. Their tales were our simple
Moral Science lessons, their value-systems the moulds
in which we had to try and pour our lives.
Films, and everything that came with it were not accepted
at face value by my parents. Guided by an intuitive
V-chip embedded in their parental concern, they unerringly
chose right. They chose not as prudes but as prudent
diamond dealers, for they knew that values were possibly
the only investment they could make for us. And their
instincts told them that in cinema, Ashok Kumar was
the Kohinoor.
Whatever part of the country we were stationed at —
Ferozepur, Burdwan, Udhampur, Ootacmund, Poona, Bangalore
— we heard Lata Mangeshkar’s repeated assertions on
the Murphy radio ——Aayega, aayega, aayega, aayega aanewala,
aayega. And when he came, Madhubala serenaded him with
Aaiye Meherban, Baithiye Jaanejan. He also came visiting
in the form of B&W stills in magazines like Madhuri
and Dharmyug (two more lost icons.)
I don’t remember which was the first film of his that
I saw as a young boy. Maybe it was Kanoon. Or, Gumraah,
or Bhai Bhai. Later on, it was Aashirwad, in which he
sang for me. I got to see Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi much
later. It was Jewel Thief that defined him for me, as
repeated viewings etched his every expression on my
psyche. Then, as a young man, I met him as the delightful
old rogue in Victoria No. 203.
Sumita Sanyal & Ashok Kumar in Aashirwad.
As an actor, I think he belonged to the same small club
of actors as Balraj Sahni and Motilal. Understated;
subtle emoting, eyes capable of changing from a mischievous
twinkle to a cold stare in a flash, the whole persona
effortlessly, like a chameleon, taking on the colors
of the character. After his early films, I don’t think
a director ever needed to “direct” him, brief him on
the nuances of a character or act out a scene for him.
One gave him the script and Ashok Kumar metamorphosed
into the sly, scheming and fiendishly clever”“Prince,”
plotting to brainwash a police officer into believing
that he indeed is”“Amar.”
I had a most wonderful collection of icons, each a bright,
beaming beacon, the very symbol of life for me. But
life’s cycle goes on, and sometimes one loses some of
them almost as soon as one gets them. By the time one
is into the thirties, the losses come more rapidly.
And by the time one has entered the forties, they are
almost all gone.
Ashok Kumar, Rekha & Dina Pathak in Khoobsurat:
The eternal ‘boyfriend."
At 43, I find that the writers of all my favourite books
are gone. As are the actors and directors of all the
movies I loved, singers, composers and lyricists of
all the songs I hummed. Their work is with me, and will
always be with me. But today, if I were to take a bus
to the suburb of Chembur where he lived, I won’t find
Ashok Kumar there. Maybe only his favourite chair’—
in place of my lost jewel, all I will get is a piece
of furniture.
Such is life, one can say. Last year, I read about some
new research that said a human being attains full maturity
or adulthood only at the age of 35! We get our driving
licenses at 15, we get the right to elect the least
evil of our politicians at 18, and at 21, we get our
marriage licenses. By 25, we have made almost all our
important life choices, education, career, and family.
With Abhi Bhattacharya: It’s been a long journey,
friend.
And then, by 35, when we have fumbled and stumbled through
the maze for almost half our life, life turns around
and plays the cruellest joke on us. “Sorry pal, for
all the mishaps that have left you bruised and traumatized.
You see, you were not mentally or emotionally equipped
to deal with me. But now, you are an adult, your growth
as a human being is complete. Go out and connect truly
and meaningfully with me. With all the people you love
and adore. With all the beauty in the world and all
the issues dear to you and all the conflicts that you
can now ably resolve.”
The irony in this is that it’s almost too late. One’s
people, one’s icons are almost all gone or going in
rapid succession. And one can’t connect with the dark
voids that they have left behind. How does one cope
with this new-found adulthood then? In the creative
media, if by 40 one has “made it,” it becomes easier
to bear the loss. By “made it,” I mean if you have already
created work that you are proud of, work that has been
appreciated and well-received. You are respected, emotionally
secure and surrounded by a small circle of well-bonded
relationships. The pain isn’t less, but the threshold
of bearing it and coping with it is higher.
Are you sure you’ve got the focus right?
But if you haven’t, if all your best stories are yet
untold, if the conflict with market forces has left
you brutalized, if constant living on the edge has left
you so deadbeat that you’d rather prefer the depths
of the canyon, then it becomes much more difficult to
cope. Without the icons, there is no anchor to root
you to reality, to life. But then again, such is life,
the slyest jewel thief of all.
My friend, the one with 1 as her speed-dial, is also
my creative partner. She and I had made 80 episodes
of a television series for a satellite channel. The
series was so popular that after completing its run,
it was rerun back to back, totalling a running span
of more than three years. The other friend, Ashok Kumar’s
silent companion, was its host. One evening around five
years ago, he was the emcee of a film and TV awards
function. As Ashok Kumar came on stage to receive or
present some award, he whispered to my friend’——“Yaar,
kya programme banate hain aap log, arre award to usko
milna chahiye.” That night, the Jewel Thief gifted us
one of our most cherished diamonds. A diamond no thief,
not even life, can steal.
Why should I tell you what it’s whispering in my
ears?
..-
End Of Article.....
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