The Hindu Business Line : From Achhe Lal to <I>Iqbal </I>

ONE was surprised when the smiling autorickshaw driver hailed me with a "Saab, pahchante nahin kya (Can you recognise me)." It took a while for me to place him and then the memory pad clicked. It was Achhe Lal.

On a rainy day, walking wet from Borivili station last month, one spotted Achhe Lal with his auto sipping tea. "Bhaijan, Yogi Nagar awoge (Will you drop me at Yogi Nagar)," one asked him when he offered me a free cup of tea and dropped me home. Rama and myself started on a Sunday afternoon for the Hub, a mall with six (or is it seven theatres?), in Goregaon to see Nagesh Kuknoor's Iqbal and that was when Rama called for the auto with Achhe Lal at the wheels.

"Saab, halat kaisa hai (How are things)," one asked him to which he replied, "Siya Ramji ke krupa se sab kuch theek hai (Everything is okay by the grace of Siyaramji)", and then got on to a 40-minute talk on Hinduism and Tulsidas Ramayan.

While keeping a close watch on passing vehicles, Achhe Lal deliberated on atman, paramatman and the world being just maya. "Hamare hath mein kuch nahin hai (Nothing is in our hands)," he said quoting Kabir and Rahim. We had never come across anyone more polite and erudite than Achhe Lal. "Nirankari baba mere guru hain (Nirankari baba is my guru)", he said and advised us to offer prayers to the Lord above (why not below, one wondered) at least five minutes daily.

Rama sat amused as the auto thumped over roads and flyovers roughed up by rains and left unrepaired. She could not accept the fact that I could take Achhe Lal's pravachan on Hinduism. Achhe Lal comes from Benares and has settled down in Kandivili with his family. He has a daughter and a son at school and plans to go back to Benares and Ganga mayya when they are settled in life. At the Hub he dropped us and gave his mobile number for future reference (which one has lost).

Driving away he ended up with "Saab, ye films sab moh-maya hai." One did not like the parting yet wished him the best before walking into the air-conditioned mall. There was no queue at the counter for the afternoon show of Iqbal with the tickets costing Rs 80 each. The best thing about the Hub is that the loos are clean, do not smell and come free. Thankfully there was no national anthem and the two-hour film started on time.

After Achhe Lal, Iqbal was a pleasure. Unlike an overly stretched Lagaan, Iqbal is a finely edited tale of a village boy bagging his dream to wear the blue colours of the Indian cricket team. This year one has seen Black, Sarkar and a few other films with Iqbal being the best. Years of standing in front of the cameras might have turned Amitabh a tad predictable while Naseerudin Shah is still fresh.

For Shweta Prasad, the young girl from Makdee, acting seems to be as natural as going to bed. "I was not brought up in a village but the village scenes did speak," admitted my friend Veena while Rama wished she could make a tour of Iqbal's village. The humour is not put up; it has to be so; the sight of buffaloes named Dravid, Pathan and Kapil Dev do make one smile, being something new.

If Kuknoor is asked how he came on the pleasant idea, he may remark like John Ford, the American director: "Aw, I don't know, it just came to me." This writer suggests that Kuknoor make a sequel with the cricketer doing well with the bat and ball while becoming a character, off and on the cricket field. There are no characters left in world cricket except for Shane Warne. Sachin is great but is not sufficiently unorthodox to be termed a character.

Satyaji Ray in Speaking of Films says: "A film is pictures, a film is words, a film is movement, a film is drama, a film is music, a film is a story, a film is a thousand expressive aural and visual details. These days one must also add film is colour." Iqbal has all this making it a joyous commercial event. We rushed home to watch the fourth day of the Ashes series at Trent Bridge. As a kid, one followed the famed West Indies-Australia Test match at Brisbane over the radio. West Indies led by Frank Worrell and Australia by Benaud tied the match.

"It's a tie," the Australian commentator yelled and one did not know then what a tie meant. Then came the India-Australia series in India with wins at Kolkata and Chennai and the first India-Pakistan series in Pakistan. But the best for this writer is the on-going Ashes series. Being an Aussie fan, one stared in awe at the spin repertoire of Warne and pace of Lee on the fourth day. That Sunday, the red cherry seemed an object at the end of a string yo-yoed by Warne at will giving the Englishmen no break. They could not read him; that credit goes only to Sachin. Has spin bowling been any better at any time in cricket history? A Ha! for Iqbal and a Phew! for Warne and cricket.

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