Was Balraj Sahni Insecure? Delhi Show Reveals His Struggles

New Delhi: The name Balraj Sahni conjures up a mosaic of images in the spirit of the 21st century. A member of the Indian People’s Theatre Association, a committed communist, a great talent, Do Bigha Zamin, Garam Hawa, and of course that evergreen Wait song ‘Aye Meri Zohra Jbeen.

Whichever way you look at it, it’s a proud and formidable body of work. But a new performance in Delhi reveals a Balraj Sahni who was troubled, insecure, uncertain, an anxious actor – far removed from the effortless, natural talent that public memory has often projected.

Six seated actors in black kurtas read aloud and sang various passages from Sahni’s book, reliving his early life in Rawalpindi, his struggles in Mumbai, the arduous shoot in Kolkata Doing Big Zaminand the sexual exploitation of women in Bollywood.

“I couldn’t get any good shot. I was in a bad condition,” one of the actors read out lines from Balraj Sahni’s book about the shooting of Hum logbook (1951), a hit about the trials of a lower-middle-class family starring Nutan, who plays a tuberculosis patient. “The fear of the camera was like a mountain on my chest. I even wet my pants. I went home that day and cried to my wife. I will never be an actor, I said.”

And that is the central shock of the enactment. It turns the mythology surrounding legendary Bollywood actors on its head, myths that have been built up over time from Mumbai folklore, film magazines and fandom.

Also read: Balraj Sahni, the common man’s hero who told his story through cinema

‘Teach me, someone, whoever’

Balraj Sahni often wrote about his nerves, his throat going dry in front of the camera, and his legs going weak. He was especially intimidated by the task of memorizing long lines for his scenes. This led to what he feared most: multiple retakes that embarrassed him and further eroded his self-confidence.

Such reticence is illogical for a man who grew up obsessed with films in Rawalpindi, acted in IPTA plays and wrote the screenplay for the groundbreaking film Baazi (1951) directed by Guru Dutt and starring Dev Anand and Geeta Bali, lived with Chetan Anand and taught at Shantiniketan. But his struggle with acting was so great that he sought advice from everyone from David Abraham Cheulkar to Dilip Kumar. He was desperate to learn.

“Being in front of the camera was like standing in front of a noose. I broke out in a sweat. I felt people laughing at me. Everything went out of focus,” one actor read from his autobiography.

During the shooting of K Asif’s Hulchul (1951) with Dilip Kumar and Nargis, the panic attacks started again. He kept forgetting his lines. The film was loosely based on the novel Wild Heights. Sahni played the role of a jailer. Ironically, he was in jail when he was allowed to step out and shoot for the film.

“How do you work so effortlessly in front of the camera?” Sahni asked Dilip Kumar one day. “He replied, ‘I have learnt by watching others. And some friends have helped me.’ His answer disappointed me. I wanted to learn from him, but he waved me away airily.”

He had also asked the same question to actor David during the filming of Gunjan (1948) with co-star Nalini Jaywant: “How do you remember dialogues? What’s your process? You don’t do retakes.”

David told him that there was an image behind every line, and that Sahni just had to remember that image.

Also read: Balraj Sahni’s 1972 JNU speech: Today, men with power are more respected than men with talent

Documenting sexual exploitation

Sahni wrote extensively about the widespread sexual exploitation that female actors faced in the film industry. He noted that it was almost impossible to become a female star without pleasing male producers and directors.

Nargis’ brother, Anwar Hussain, narrated an incident to Sahni. It involved a 21-year-old Meena Kumari and a producer. On the first day of shooting, he started touching her inappropriately. Meena Kumari took him aside and told him to behave. Angry, he decided to take revenge by adding a scene at that moment in which the male actor, a popular hero of that time, slapped her.

“There were 31 retakes of that one slapshot. Thirty-one slaps. He was a popular actor. He knew what was going on. Still, he went along with the 31 retakes. Meena Kumari finished the shoot and went to her makeup room and cried quietly.”

Sahni also wrote about Helen, whom he first met on the set of Badnam (1952). She understood early that the film industry was full of sexual predators, he wrote. She became close to producer P. N. Arora, who was 27 years her senior, and eventually married him, which kept her safe and out of reach, Sahni wrote.

Also read: When my father Balraj Sahni showed me the ills of capitalism in Kashmir

The voice in Balraj Sahni’s head

Sahni’s best work came in Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin (1953), a groundbreaking film about an evil feudal landowner, debts and his migration to Kolkata to work as a rickshaw puller to reclaim his farmland. The film won national and international awards and was a pioneer in neorealist cinema. It included hits such as Apni Kahani Chod Jaa And Hariyala SawanTo prepare for his role, Sahni learnt how to drive a manual rickshaw in Kolkata and rode with real passengers while a hidden camera on a truck filmed him on the streets.

“I lifted the rickshaw and ran barefoot. My skin started peeling. I was out of breath, exhausted and begged Bimal Roy to stop shooting. Roy would say, ‘Just two more shots’.”

How Sahni landed the role is a story in itself. One day, while he was building sandcastles with his kids on the beach, he saw actor Asit Sen approaching him. “Bimal Roy is looking for you for a role,” he said.

“I couldn’t believe it. I dabbed on some face powder, ironed my suit from England and hurried. Roy stared at me and said, ‘My men have made a mistake. You’re not right for the part.’ I asked what the part was. An illiterate poor villager, he said. I wanted to turn and leave, but I heard a voice in my head saying that this opportunity would never come again.”

Sahni reminded him of an earlier film from 1946 about the Bengal famine called Dharti Ke Lalin which he played a skinny farmer who builds a Soviet-style communal farm. The film was directed by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas and co-produced by IPTA. The film was based on an IPTA play called Nabanna. The New York Times described it as “gritty realistic drama”. That did wonders and Sahni got the role in Do Bigha Zamin. Hrishikesh Mukherjee, who was an assistant on the set at the time, cried while narrating the story of the film to Sahni. He later found out that Bharat Bhushan and Ashok Kumar had also auditioned for the role.

Although he became famous through the film, he remained poor, Sahni wrote. He was unemployed for six months and took on the role of an alcoholic in Bazoo band (1954).

Roy was doubtful about his choice. How could he take this role, especially after making a film like Do Bhiga Zamin?

“I felt like I wanted to say to him, ‘But you didn’t even check on me once after the movie,’” Sahni wrote.

The timeless image

Another enduring image of Balraj Sahni comes from Yash Chopra’s 1965 film Wait—a star-studded intergenerational story of loss and reunion, featuring iconic songs like Aage Bhi Jaane Na You And Kaun Aaya KeBut Balraj Sahni’s Aye Meri Zohra Jabeam (sung by Manna Dey) has had the most shelf life. In the opening song, the middle-aged patriarch, played by Sahni, wears a pathani salwar and kurta and sings to his blushing wife at a family function.

He died in 1973 after completing the dubbing of MS Sathyu’s Garam Hawaa bleak film about the dilemma of an Indian Muslim family during the partition of India.

Just a year earlier, he had written in his autobiography that if he had not been a film actor, he would have become a writer or an Arya Samaj pracharak (campaigner).