And Then One Day by Naseeruddin Shah

And Then One Day by Naseeruddin Shah (Penguin Publishers). 

In which the actor talks of the theatre gods, his surreal experience at a Jerzy Grotowski workshop in Wroclaw, his abiding insecurities, how he can never quite face down all his demons; fearlessly disses his fellow actors (flakes, he calls them once) directors and producers (mountebanks, he calls them once), turns a clear and unusually hard gaze upon his own father, reveals his instant dislike for people who come seeking autographs at inconvenient moments, his intense hunger to act, how he believes that the only magic that happens in this world happens on the stage(films take you captive..but theatre takes you into a world where your imagination is stimulated), how film awards are akin to an orgy of mutual jerking off, relates the sheer addiction of performing to please an audience, looks back at life back when there was no relentless TV coverage of every fart, burp, nose-pick by actors; terms some of the films he has done pure cat vomit, the farce that auditioning for `Gandhi` turned out to be, how he was able to take at the flood the arthouse cinema movement, and a whole host of related matters.

This is totally Naseeruddin Shah`s voice, and to that end, there is very adept editing work involved. It is an irascible, intelligent, ambitious and almost always dissatisfied voice. He employs wry humour to start with, like when he mentions the `utterly unmemorable` films he has done, and how a director mutters about his `lack of face,` how he had to fiddle with the drawstring of Hema Malini`s blouse for a scene immediately after meeting her for the first time, how he felt that if Edward G Robinson and Mel Ferrer could succeed without being handsome, so could he; how he just can’t dance around a tree because a tree can’t make its partner look good.

The equable nature of that humour evaporates soon enough and a distinct note of contempt creeps in but doesn’t turn malevolent.

There is such a fluidity of language, of expression, the reader just has to rejoice. He describes a heart jiving joyously, the wonderment of being onstage (akin to being inside a mother`s womb, warm, safe, comfortable), an acting workshop in an obscure jungle in Poland, as also a paean to what he says is the best thing to have happened to him, his wife Ratna Pathak Shah.

Somewhere in the book, Shah describes himself as unremarkable, unattractive, unintelligent, unfriendly. Not true at all but conforming to the self-deprecatory tone he has adopted all through.

This is a man who has been disappointed by many things, by many people in his life, by all the times he has not landed the roles he aimed for, and he covers that disappointment with sardonic cockiness. Also, it takes guts to portray oneself warts and all, especially when the overall picture could well turn out to be that of a less than likeable man.

Do read this book, it`s a fun read, a fun ride. Let`s hope Shah gets down to writing the sequel sometime in life.