Certain lives just warrant books. And when these lives have millions of tales spun around them – a popular movie star, for instance – books become an opportunity to not just relive the glory but also to set the record straight. What excites fans or admirers is the opportunity that a book might offer a chance to hear a living legend for the first time.
Two such examples: a Waheeda Rehman, who is known to be a recluse, or the iconic Dilip Kumar. Considering that biographies in general can be tedious and more so when it comes to film-stars, their increasing numbers suggests that the subjects areprobably as keen to talk as readers are to read.
Waheeda Rehman
In the opening pages of Conversations With Waheeda Rehman, Nasreen Munni Kabir recalls the first time she pitched the idea of a book to Waheeda Rehman. The famously reclusive actress smilingly said no. Even though she had spoken to Munni Kabir on a few occasions across a decade and a half on the writer’s other projects, Waheeda Rehman revealed later to the author that she had a habit of saying no at first to just about everything.
It took Munni Kabir almost seven years to convince Waheeda Rehman. Based on interviews conducted over twenty-five sessions spanning two years, the result is fascinating insight into not just one of Indian cinema’s all-time greats but also an era that could arguably be called the greatest period of Hindi cinema.
Dilip Kumar
While there has been only a single book focussed on Waheeda Rehman, there have been more than a handful on Dilip Kumar. In fact, one of the reasons that the thespian decided to write his memoirs, The Substance and The Shadow, was that he was tired of reading accounts of his life written by people who claimed to have known him.
Dilip Kumar took a few years to narrate his story to Udaya Tara Nayar, a family friend and journalist. Most biographies of Dilip Kumar tend to concentrate on his life after he became a star, as accessibility to the icon is limited, keeping events from his early life – before his first film – out of reach.
Dilip Kumar’s impact on Hindi cinema is too formidable to not take the lion’s share of a book about him. In his autobiography, however, the portions where he talks about his early days in Peshawar, the time he spent in Deolali, a small town near Nasik, and even his friendship with Raj Kapoor, who happened to be a classmate, stand out.
Despite some criticism of the selectiveness with which The Shadow and The Substance looks at certain portions of his life, especially those with Saira Banu, Dilip Kumar’s stature makes even a imperfect tale from the horse’s mouth invaluable.
Naseeruddin Shah
Upon reading Naseeruddin Shah’s recent autobiography, And Then One Day, a critic noted that the shifting, and even unreliable, narrator isn’t limited to fiction anymore. Shah, too, is selective while narrating the account of his life. He choses to concentrate more on personal aspects rather than on reliving the trials of being an actor in an industry that operates more on looks and marketability than on talent.
It’s interesting that both Dilip Kumar and Shah simply refuse to delve into things that stand out in public memory - such as the former’s real life romances – with Madhubala or Kamini Kaushal, and even his second marriage, and the latter’s cold war with Dilip Kumar during Karma.
Shah is known to speak his mind and therefore it is hard to imagine a ghost writer filling in. Given his disdain for many things, including, for some strange reason, a major body of his own work, it would be difficult to imagine the interview format as in the case of Wahdeeda Rehman or Mani Ratnam (Conversations with Mani Ratnam, by Baradwaj Rangan). Like Rangan, who has been writing on cinema for a long time, Munni Kabir, too, isn’t unfamiliar with the trappings of the interview format. While it can be a great tool, long-drawn-out interviews also run the risk of being arduously perfunctory.
Who wants to know?
Munni Kabir’s repertoire includes extended conversations with some of the most illuminating minds in Hindi cinema, but while Gulzar or Javed Akhtar are natural conversationalists, someone like Waheeda Rehman is hardly known to talk about herself or even her craft. In fact, one of the reasons for the legendary actress’s hesitation about a book was her doubt over whether her story would interest anyone in the first place.
There’s very little that today’s Hindi cinema fan is likely to know about someone like Whaeeda Rehman’s background and life before becoming an actor. Rehman vividly recalls growing up in Andhra when it was still a part of the Madras Presidency, where her father served as a district commissioner. Her father died when she was very young and Waheeda’s mother struggled to make ends meet.
So when a producer friend of her father’s offered the 15-year old a dancing role in a Telugu film she couldn’t say no. Although her mother wasn’t too keen initially, she accompanied Waheeda to Madras, where the film was being made. It was the song Eruvaka sagaro ranno chinnannaa from Rojulu Marayi (1955) that made the young Waheeda a star.
Even though Guru Dutt was a well-established name before Waheeda started working for his company, she wasn’t enamored of either his stature or the film industry. From the beginning she negotiated the terms of her contract with Dutt like a pro. She didn’t allow Raj Khosla, a close friend and associate of Guru Dutt’s, to bully her into wearing a costume for CID, and much to the chagrin of all and sundry, told Guru Dutt that a song featuring her was killing the pace of Pyaasa.
What conversations reveal
While the term “greatest” is used rather liberally today, Waheeda Rehman has undoubtedly been associated with some of the Hindi cinema’s greatest films and Conversations With Waheeda Rehman offers a ringside view of their making. Books based on extended conversations often reveal as much about the interviewer as the subject. Sometimes the format reveals how they spar with each other, as in the case of David Frost and Richard Nixon, who shadowboxed over days.
In the case of Francois Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock, it was about how two diverse minds had the same thoughts. And here it’s about the comfort that Munni Kabir allows Waheeda Rehman to revisit the past. Although she shares a great deal in the course of the 210-pages conversation, Waheeda barely ponders on those aspects of the past that could leave her rufescent. So, this book is also about what is left unsaid.
The manner in which the actor talks about Guru Dutt’s non-filmmaking facets might not shed the kind of light that would put their off-screen association in perspective, but it still reveals a lot about the kind of man Dutt was. The terse sentences in which the actress talks about his general reticence reveal a doomed personality. In an interview to a film glossy in the early 1990s, Waheeda Rehman expressed her shock at the manner in which the then "young girls" Smita Patil and Shabana Azmi discussed their personal life in public. Now, even after decades, she continues to talk in layers when it come to things beyond her craft.
Most recent books where the subject is an icon offer accessibility, a readiness to converse and a certain amount of candour. Yet, there seems to be something missing from the stories of Dilip Kumar, Naseeruddin Shah and Waheeda Rehman. But considering that Waheeda has never spoken about her life and might never again, that Dilip Kumar is unlikely to take another walk down memory lane, and that Shah may have nothing more to talk about (for And Then One Day almost reveals his reluctance to talk further) these limited accounts are as good as gets.
Gautam Chintamani is the author of Dark Star: The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna.
We welcome your comments at
letters@scroll.in.
Two such examples: a Waheeda Rehman, who is known to be a recluse, or the iconic Dilip Kumar. Considering that biographies in general can be tedious and more so when it comes to film-stars, their increasing numbers suggests that the subjects areprobably as keen to talk as readers are to read.
Waheeda Rehman
In the opening pages of Conversations With Waheeda Rehman, Nasreen Munni Kabir recalls the first time she pitched the idea of a book to Waheeda Rehman. The famously reclusive actress smilingly said no. Even though she had spoken to Munni Kabir on a few occasions across a decade and a half on the writer’s other projects, Waheeda Rehman revealed later to the author that she had a habit of saying no at first to just about everything.
It took Munni Kabir almost seven years to convince Waheeda Rehman. Based on interviews conducted over twenty-five sessions spanning two years, the result is fascinating insight into not just one of Indian cinema’s all-time greats but also an era that could arguably be called the greatest period of Hindi cinema.
Dilip Kumar
While there has been only a single book focussed on Waheeda Rehman, there have been more than a handful on Dilip Kumar. In fact, one of the reasons that the thespian decided to write his memoirs, The Substance and The Shadow, was that he was tired of reading accounts of his life written by people who claimed to have known him.
Dilip Kumar took a few years to narrate his story to Udaya Tara Nayar, a family friend and journalist. Most biographies of Dilip Kumar tend to concentrate on his life after he became a star, as accessibility to the icon is limited, keeping events from his early life – before his first film – out of reach.
Dilip Kumar’s impact on Hindi cinema is too formidable to not take the lion’s share of a book about him. In his autobiography, however, the portions where he talks about his early days in Peshawar, the time he spent in Deolali, a small town near Nasik, and even his friendship with Raj Kapoor, who happened to be a classmate, stand out.
Despite some criticism of the selectiveness with which The Shadow and The Substance looks at certain portions of his life, especially those with Saira Banu, Dilip Kumar’s stature makes even a imperfect tale from the horse’s mouth invaluable.
Naseeruddin Shah
Upon reading Naseeruddin Shah’s recent autobiography, And Then One Day, a critic noted that the shifting, and even unreliable, narrator isn’t limited to fiction anymore. Shah, too, is selective while narrating the account of his life. He choses to concentrate more on personal aspects rather than on reliving the trials of being an actor in an industry that operates more on looks and marketability than on talent.
It’s interesting that both Dilip Kumar and Shah simply refuse to delve into things that stand out in public memory - such as the former’s real life romances – with Madhubala or Kamini Kaushal, and even his second marriage, and the latter’s cold war with Dilip Kumar during Karma.
Shah is known to speak his mind and therefore it is hard to imagine a ghost writer filling in. Given his disdain for many things, including, for some strange reason, a major body of his own work, it would be difficult to imagine the interview format as in the case of Wahdeeda Rehman or Mani Ratnam (Conversations with Mani Ratnam, by Baradwaj Rangan). Like Rangan, who has been writing on cinema for a long time, Munni Kabir, too, isn’t unfamiliar with the trappings of the interview format. While it can be a great tool, long-drawn-out interviews also run the risk of being arduously perfunctory.
Who wants to know?
Munni Kabir’s repertoire includes extended conversations with some of the most illuminating minds in Hindi cinema, but while Gulzar or Javed Akhtar are natural conversationalists, someone like Waheeda Rehman is hardly known to talk about herself or even her craft. In fact, one of the reasons for the legendary actress’s hesitation about a book was her doubt over whether her story would interest anyone in the first place.
There’s very little that today’s Hindi cinema fan is likely to know about someone like Whaeeda Rehman’s background and life before becoming an actor. Rehman vividly recalls growing up in Andhra when it was still a part of the Madras Presidency, where her father served as a district commissioner. Her father died when she was very young and Waheeda’s mother struggled to make ends meet.
So when a producer friend of her father’s offered the 15-year old a dancing role in a Telugu film she couldn’t say no. Although her mother wasn’t too keen initially, she accompanied Waheeda to Madras, where the film was being made. It was the song Eruvaka sagaro ranno chinnannaa from Rojulu Marayi (1955) that made the young Waheeda a star.
Even though Guru Dutt was a well-established name before Waheeda started working for his company, she wasn’t enamored of either his stature or the film industry. From the beginning she negotiated the terms of her contract with Dutt like a pro. She didn’t allow Raj Khosla, a close friend and associate of Guru Dutt’s, to bully her into wearing a costume for CID, and much to the chagrin of all and sundry, told Guru Dutt that a song featuring her was killing the pace of Pyaasa.
What conversations reveal
While the term “greatest” is used rather liberally today, Waheeda Rehman has undoubtedly been associated with some of the Hindi cinema’s greatest films and Conversations With Waheeda Rehman offers a ringside view of their making. Books based on extended conversations often reveal as much about the interviewer as the subject. Sometimes the format reveals how they spar with each other, as in the case of David Frost and Richard Nixon, who shadowboxed over days.
In the case of Francois Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock, it was about how two diverse minds had the same thoughts. And here it’s about the comfort that Munni Kabir allows Waheeda Rehman to revisit the past. Although she shares a great deal in the course of the 210-pages conversation, Waheeda barely ponders on those aspects of the past that could leave her rufescent. So, this book is also about what is left unsaid.
The manner in which the actor talks about Guru Dutt’s non-filmmaking facets might not shed the kind of light that would put their off-screen association in perspective, but it still reveals a lot about the kind of man Dutt was. The terse sentences in which the actress talks about his general reticence reveal a doomed personality. In an interview to a film glossy in the early 1990s, Waheeda Rehman expressed her shock at the manner in which the then "young girls" Smita Patil and Shabana Azmi discussed their personal life in public. Now, even after decades, she continues to talk in layers when it come to things beyond her craft.
Most recent books where the subject is an icon offer accessibility, a readiness to converse and a certain amount of candour. Yet, there seems to be something missing from the stories of Dilip Kumar, Naseeruddin Shah and Waheeda Rehman. But considering that Waheeda has never spoken about her life and might never again, that Dilip Kumar is unlikely to take another walk down memory lane, and that Shah may have nothing more to talk about (for And Then One Day almost reveals his reluctance to talk further) these limited accounts are as good as gets.
Gautam Chintamani is the author of Dark Star: The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna.