Kavita’s note (27 December 2013): I remember the first time I met Farooque Sheikh. It was over a decade ago in Atlanta. I had been a big fan of his films, and his work in general.
He was on yet another tour of “Tumhari Amrita” with Shabana Azmi – a play that has become so popular that several encore tours have been done. I was going to see this play for the second time myself in many years.
I think he had had enough of the media. Farooque was too much of an intellectual and not the kind to do superficial, silly interviews. He was tired and jet lagged and told my close friend Mustafa Ajmeri, who was coordinating the interview, that he didn’t want to do any interviews.
Mustafa ji told me later laughing that he pleaded with Farooque Sheikh that I wasn’t the run of the mill journalists that he encountered in India and to just give me a chance, especially since I was already there at the hotel. Mustafa ji also mentioned that Farooque’s co-actor Shabana Azmi was a friend of my brother’s. So gentleman that he was, he reluctantly agreed.
I walked in and the first thing I said to him was “I heard you didn’t want to meet me, but I’ve been a fan so I was not going to take NO for an answer,” making the poor man blush.
Thankfully, the interview turned out to be so interesting for both of us that, over 3 hours later, it was still going on. He chose to drive with my friend Anita and I to dinner to finish it. At the restaurant, he went on to explain the intricacies of the style of cooking of basmati and other type of rice in various countries and so many things beyond films.
It was a start of a friendship that was based on mutual respect and appreciation. A few years later when I decided to do a multi-series tribute to the great film director Hrishikesh Mukherjee, it was Farooque Sheikh, along with the late lyricist Sachin Bhoumick, who was instrumental in getting me all the phone numbers and contact information for actors, singers and directors that I wanted to interview. Farooque’s own webcast interview was a highlight of the series:
So deep was his love and admiration for Hrishi da, Farooque had said to me that if I ever decided to write a book on Hrishi da he would contribute to it and support it in every way. In fact it was because of the interview that he did with me, that Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s daughter- in-law Swati got in touch with me. She was so moved that he had remembered her father-in-law in his interview. Hrishi da in his last years had thought the world had forgotten him.
I still remember my interview with AK Hangal, the late veteran actor (and what a lot of people don’t know, a former freedom fighter who worked with Shaheed Bhagat Singh). Hangal had lost all his money due to some bad choices on his part and was very hard up. He was living in a one room tenement and said to me, “Most of the film actors who have worked with me have forgotten me. There is only one young man who is stellar. He is a genuinely good human being. Farooque Sheikh.”
When I told Farooque that he was genuinely moved and saddened to hear how Hangal sahib was living and said he would go over and check on him immediately.
It was just not this thoughtfulness and empathy that made him such a special man. Farooque was extremely well read, and lent his support to so many causes. He was a true humanitarian, a real gentleman and incredibly humble.
Farooque Sheikh and I stayed mostly in touch over text messages and phone calls. He ran for dear life when it came to the internet. And he stayed away from emails. I would receive letters in the past and recently we would keep in touch through text messages.
I had been looking forward to what I thought would be a lovely reunion – he wanted to meet Ramses (our German shepherd) and told me they have a rescued dog too who rules over them.
I guess that meeting was not meant to be in the physical world. But I know I will receive some sign some message from him on New Year’s. How can it not be?
While I’m sad, it warms my heart to see the out pouring of love for him everywhere….but that was the kind of man he was. In a league of gentlemen, he was the very best.
He caught the ears of listeners with his ravishingly successful radio program Double or Quits, aced academically and went to law school, before going on to star in several artistic films under legendary directors like Satyajit Ray, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Basu Chatterjee, Muzzafar Ali, and Sai Paranjape to name a few. More recently Farooque Sheikh wowed the audience with his hit television series Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai and his long-running play Tumhari Amrita, co-starring old pal Shabana Azmi, which has taken him on a year long world wide tour.
An actor par excellence and a gentleman to the core, Farooque Sheikh sat down for an exclusive interview with me and shared his memories of the time when cinema was rich, brimming with talent and depth and how fortunate he was to be a part of the experience.
You came at a time when parallel cinema was just in its early stages and got to make some amazing films like Garam Hawa, Chasme Badoor, Shatranj Ke Khiladi, Bazaar, Katha, Umrao Jaan to name a few. So does the new cinema disappoint you?
We just struck a lucky patch with people who had a different sensibilty and a different intellectual approach to cinema. We became the instruments of their expression and because they were very talented people and had a unique kind of sensibilty to this art form, they managed to project us and actually managed to make people like me look better than what we were as actors. When I started with Garam Hawa, I had not the faintest notion of what one does in a film. But M.S. Sathyu was making an excellent film and the film turned out to be absolutely superlative so whoever had joined the bandwagon came out with varying degrees of accolades with Balraj Sahni scoring heads and shoulders above every one else.
Today, I think that technically we have improved substantially, but thematically we are not where we could be or should be. Cinema is basically story telling. You can have the greatest technological expertise, but if you cannot tell you story properly, it is of no consequence whether you dive from the sky or jump into the bottom of the earth. The film works only if the story is well told.
What did you learn from each director considering the classy lot you worked with?
Cinema is a narrative and different people narrate differently depending on their own sensibilities and also the resources available to them, so each one will give you a different style of narration. Muzzafar Ali for instance would embellish a lot, because he has a high sense of aesthetics, Satyajit Ray was very precise. He would plan his film like it was a mathematical equation, Sai Paranjpe would do it with a great eye for minute details — in Katha she created the chawl atmosphere so well. She does everything at the script stage itself and there is very little to do later in the shooting in terms of innovation, except for what the artist does.
Film making in the industry now has become so expensive. You make a film that costs you a prohibitive amount and if it doesn’t run or doesn’t get released you spend years paying off the debt. People are trying to make a risk free operation, but they take a greater risk trying to emulate some theme that did well in the recent past; but the remakes or copies seldom do as well.
I would love a revival of the kind of quality cinema I did. We have multiplexes now and you can show a quality film to a select audience of say 400, while a commercial multi-starrer can be showed in a bigger auditorium and both sets of people come out happy.
You always came across as so utterly natural. How much was it your own ability and how much did the director contribute?
A director is paramount. Without a good director if anything succeeds it’s a miracle. Very few actors can rise above their directors or their script potential. You can make acting effortless if it’s close to reality. I don’t like my work and there is no element of modesty involved in my saying this. When you view your work you always say I should have done it differently, because you view it a year after it’s done. Generally you have to do what the director thinks and very rarely do you find a director who is on the same wavelength as you.
Most of the directors gave us a long rope and a free hand, but then there were very clever directors like Satyajit Ray who made you do exactly what he wanted without you realizing that. If you have done a little this way or that way, he will very subtly bring you back to where he had conceived the scene before you started and then he will make you feel you did it so wonderfully right and that you are really good! Then there was somebody like Sagar Sarhadi with whom I did Bazaar. He is essentially a writer, but took up direction only to further what he wants to say in his writing. So he will give you complete freedom and let you loose. It is a tremendous responsibility on the actor. I still remember there was a very emotional scene in Bazaar and he had written two-and-a-half pages of dialogue and though I liked his writing very much, I told him I could make the point in a shorter time in one shot and he said okay cut it. So there is that kind of director who agreed that he wanted the sum and substance of the point that he was trying to make. He was okay with cutting through the fineries of histrionics or detailing of the technique and not let it be the predominant factor and bring out instead the emotion and the progression of the narrative.
So is it restrictive being considered an actor who has an image of acting only in parallel cinema. Perhaps Shabana Azmi was the only one to make a transition to commercial cinema successfully. Also Anil Kapoor says that the only reason he has been so successful is because he did not allow himself to be molded in an image like Amitabh did as the angry young man.
I don’t think Shabana made it big as a commercial heroine. She did successful films like Parvarish and Amar Akbar Anthony, but did not come away with any credit. The credit went to Amitabh Bachchan and Vinod Khanna. Shabana really came into her own only in parallel cinema when she did an Ankur or a Nishant, she was outstanding, but when she did Fakira she was really not at her best. I don’t think she attained any laurels on her own in commercial cinema. As for Anil Kapoor, he has lasted only because he has varied his roles. Otherwise what image would Anil Kapoor cast himself in? He is not going to score if he only limited himself to comedy. He has a puny physique, so he cannot be only an action hero. He is a very talented actor who puts in more than 100 percent in whatever he does and he is totally committed to his work. He has lasted for 20 years now and is still a success because he has tried so many different things.
You have acted in all three mediums, theatre, films and televisions. What is your favorite medium?
In theatre your contact with your audience is immediate and proximate. When you are doing television it’s not so unless you are doing a live show and the same applies to cinema. I think you just tone down the scale of histrionics. Personally I would opt for cinema any day, because it is very difficult to lie in front of that camera. I can cheat a little when I am doing theatre, because people are not so close to me to see my immediate or closest expression. I can do it on television also, because it’s a small screen, and people are watching it at home and there is an element of leisure. In cinema your face is about five feet and eyes are a foot long so you cannot lie. Elia Kazan once said cinema is like holding a candle to your soul, so you know the camera gets right into your face and you will be caught if you are not sincere. Cinema for me is the bigger challenge and therefore the most exciting medium.
So what do you think of the recent films like Devdas, Gadar and Lagaan?
Let me not single it out to Devdas. In my humble opinion in the early days big people used to make great films. Now moneyed people make costly films. You never had Bimal Roy or Guru Dutt or Mehboob or Shanta Ram taking us to Switzerland at the drop of the hat and changing 15 costumes in a span of three minutes. Now we go to Switzerland if we want to buy a paan and we dance at the paan shop, but by the time you come out of the film you have forgotten the paan shop, the costume, the location and even the song. The old classics have not lost their charm for decades now.
Gadar had an excellent love angle, but unfortunately got turned into a B grade action film. I am not interested in Sunny Deol punching somebody and sending him flying across the room. I have seen that enough. The very interesting angle was this young Muslim girl from this very traditional, very cocooned environment falling for this jat who was an uneducated truck driver and these were two people who were completely in love with each other thrown against huge, contrary circumstances which they didn’t cause, are not interested in and have nothing to contribute to. They just want to live together and had they pursued that it would have made a much more interesting film to watch. Instead it became a stunt film. I liked Lagaan, but I didn’t go over the moon with it. You can see the sincerity of the actors and director to do quality work and the meticulousness as well. I think it was a good precedent to set, in that if you don’t spare money or compromise on quality, you will make a good film.
Let’s come to Tumhari Amrita. It is a play that has had such a successful run for more than a decade. In spite of it being just two people reading letters to each other what makes it the success that it is?
Firstly because it has an excellent script and secondly after Javed Siddiqui, who wrote it, I have to give high marks to director Feroz Khan who spoke with the original director A.R. Gurney and he stuck to his guns when he said Gurney wants it to be done exactly as the original, limited to letter reading without any frills. Let there be no music, no sets, no change of costume or movement. As a matter of fact I never look at Shabana though she occasionally does at me. So it’s two people reading letters to each other who are supposed to be distant. That is a novelty that works apart from the script. Then the narrative itself is so engrossing and Javed Siddiui has put it into such an authentic milieu that all the characters mentioned are real characters, except for the two main characters Zulfikar Haider and Amrita Nigam. Then the Urdu language lends itself to floral emotions and expressions very well as opposed to say for example English and that causes you to hold the audience. There have been many occasions where Shabana or I have not been at our very best but the script still works. It is about two people who are so nice and so into each other, but at the same time cannot jell with each other on a day-to-day basis. They cannot live without and with each other and the attraction that exists between two people who are so opposite is what makes for the further excitement and electricity of the script. There is Amrita and a Zulfi in some semblance in everyone. In fact a lot of women identify with Amrita very strongly.
What makes your television series Jeena isi Ka Naam Hai so successful?
Apart from the fact that it stars celebrities, the spontaneity of the show. Even the celebrities do not know who is coming from among their family and friends and I have no script to speak from. It is all ex tempore. It’s the warmth that the episode generates and the fact that the guest feels that the anchor is not about to make me look small. It’s the guest’s show. Sunjay Dutt for instance had no idea his father Sunil Dutt Sahib and the family was coming. I said we won’t make you look anything other than what you are. I did say I was going to talk about his drug addiction and incarceration in jail and he said okay. I said we are not trying to run you down, but we don’t want to hide it and he came across as a very genuine person. I liked the format and the NDTV people very much. I have worked with them earlier in a TV serial called Ji Mantri ji and they are very nice people and committed to quality above the budget, which is a very rare occurrence in television in India. I was committed to this tour for a year and so I have done 30 episodes and Suresh Oberoi will do the remaining ones. Television is now as big as I thought it would be. It’s entertainment right in your home, for free, so it is bound to click.
Is there and director in the current genre you would love to work with?
I can’t think of anybody immediately because there has been nothing in the current crop of films that has excited me. But there is a very interesting aspect that is coming out that people of Asian origin are making good films abroad and are coming up with some very interesting and commendable subjects in sensible budgets and making films that are working and running. We need such films to revive quality cinema
I know you follow the Indian political scene very avidly. As a secular Muslim what do you think of the recent happenings in Gujarat. Lalit Mansingh said the government acted very quickly and efficiently or it could have been a holocaust?
Utter rubbish. I’m very sad that somebody of the stature of Mr. Lalit Mansingh has to lie through his teeth like that. Look at the promptness and the efficiency with which they reacted after the Akshardham incident. The army was out in less than 6 hours. The police was out at every hurdle spot where even 10 people were gathering and all troublemakers were given a strict warning that if they tried to create trouble they would not be tolerated. And look at the kind of idiotic and farcical excuses that were given out when 27th February occurred. Oh the army has to be called from the border and we have to decide who is to be called and when they will come it takes time. It was complete rubbish.
I think it is very bad for India. I have for instance, traveled and shot extensively in northeast India. They don’t look like us or talk like us or eat like us; their daily rituals or festivities are not like us, their pre 1947 history is not like us, their folklore and folk heroes are not like ours. When they see this kind of thing happening in the other half of India they too feel that if something happens they will face the same fate as the Sikhs in Delhi, and Muslims in Gujarat, and so why the hell would they want to stay with you and there is no Pakistan across that border.
To give you a very absurd analogy, it’s like turning the Taj Mahal into a public toilet. Of course you can make it a public toilet, but that is not what its potential was. India is an absolutely magnificent country that is going down the tube thanks to our politicians.
People like me are fundamentally responsible. You cannot put a tire on a sardar’s neck and burn him, but it happened and a woman was brutalized where her stomach was ripped open her baby taken out and both burnt, and that too happened. It is not our laws that are bad, it’s that the people implementing them are completely dishonest, incompetent and incapable. Look at every legislation that is in favor of the MPs. It passes so quickly, but ask them to pass the bill on women’s representation and it will fall on deaf ears because it is not in their interest.
I had a lot of expectations from and respect for Atal Bihari Vajpayee, but the day he became Prime Minister he forgot his agenda. I lost all respect for him. If you can forsake your fundamental principles for any reason then you are not the kind of person who can take the country forward. If he had had the guts to say we don’t have the required numbers but we still adhere to our principles and political agenda and we would rather sit in the opposition and wait for the next elections, which would have come very early people would have fallen at Vajpayee’s feet and said please rule the country. I was born in the late 1940s and I remember growing up what high hopes and exalted opinion we had of India’s future and its leaders.
I never thought that there will be a time when in the most populous and politically most aware state in India, the politicians will compromise and tell each other okay you rule for 6 months and I will do the same. Look at the status of women. Any society that denies 50 percent of its population the right to full participation is a society that is depriving itself of half its resources. Most of the ills in India today stem from the 40 plus years of Congress rule. It’s a sad but true statement.