An evening with Naseeruddin Shah

I am an unabashed admirer of contemporary Iranian films and those Indian motion pictures that, for want of a better phrase, have been described as middle or parallel cinema or just art films. If a researcher undertook the considerable task of chronologically traversing half a century of the box office hits in Indian cinema, chances are that the films in which Naseeruddin Shah appeared would be relatively few. He doesn’t have Salman Khan’s physique and I don’t think he relishes the idea of taking off his shirt at least twice in every film. Nor does he have Aamir Khan’s limpid narcissistic looks delivered in a slightly plaintive minor key; or the perky insouciance of Shahrukh Khan. But he has an astonishing flair and aptitude for acting which is truly remarkable. There are a few others, of course, with Om Puri topping the list. But Naseeruddin Shah has that indefinable quality that makes so many people regard him as India’s finest and most talented and versatile theatre and film actor. He is also the only Indian actor who has bagged 24 awards and acted in a staggering number of films.

For quite a while I haven’t been able to sit through what are charmingly referred to as formula films, even if they had Katrina Kaif doing the flamenco in front of Harrods with Hrithik Roshan, clicking the castanets and shouting ole. Many of them are variations on the standard love triangle theme which was perfected during the days of Dev Anand, Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar. It went something like this. Man likes girl. Girl likes man. Man wants to marry girl but she is betrothed to some impotent twit with a nervous twitch whose father is the owner of a factory that employs thousands of the nation’s unwashed and whose mother has an inordinate fondness for the distilled essence of grain. In the good old days unrequited love was invariably met by man threatening to throw himself under a train, unless, of course, the girl he was in love with happened to be Waheeda Rehman in which case he would just bite the diamond off his finger and swallow it. Girl, on the other hand, after weighing her options would just take a heavy dose of rat poison stored in a biscuit tin, cunningly hidden among the lentils. In more modern times, after the invention of the mobile phone, the couple would just give their parents the ‘up-yours’ sign, elope and spend the rest of their lives dancing the bhangra in Ludhiana.



Mind you, in the midst of all the beautiful hipster saris and divine upholstery of female flesh, all the exotic rhythms and the acrobatic dances, all the corny plots about gangsters fudging their way through medical school or posing as income tax inspectors, all the welding together of old cliches in the hope that a bit of gravitas and intellect might rub off — there are still directors who have made motion pictures like Water, Mr and Mrs Iyer, Nobody killed Jessica and The Lunch Box. The four talented members of the Indian cinematic circus that I have always wanted to meet before I peg down from natural causes are Shekhar Kapur, Shyam Benegal, Deepa Mehta and Naseeruddin Shah. It was at a recent dinner hosted by the managing director of the Oxford University Press that my fourth wish was granted. I am sure many of his fans haven’t seen all his pictures. But those who have will recognise the fact that his very presence, even for a few minutes, can at times transform a sluggish, somewhat moribund narrative into an epic. He is… a one-man fantasia.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 1^st, 2015.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.