The stuff dreams are made of

The first Hindi film I saw was Mughal-e-Azam in a re-run that played somewhat shakily in a musty cinema hall in Madras. I like to think my extraordinary run of luck with Hindi cinema started right there.

However, my love affair with Hindi cinema truly kicked off in the best Bollywood tradition when, on a holiday in Mumbai, my sister and I bumped into Dharmendra at the Sun-n-Sand hotel. Dharam was then in his prime — and what a prime it was. He was the most jaw-droppingly magnificent physical specimen I’d ever seen and his smile could melt steel. Stars were not hemmed in by bodyguards those days; just sleazy, usually drunk chamchas . So we gawked and gushed and chatted unhindered with a blushing Garam Dharam. There have been taller, better looking, better-built leading men, but none as physically magnetic as Dharmendra. Garam is reserved only for Dharam; the others are merely hot.

Interestingly enough, his wife Hema Malini was the first Hindi film heroine I interviewed — at her most gorgeous, too. Hema made me understand, for the first time, the English phrase ‘a face that can light up a room’, and the Hindi one, ‘ chand ka tukda ’ (literally, a piece of the moon). What makes her even more special is how down-to-earth, unadulterated and unpretentious she is. Once you get over the initial shock, it’s such a delicious juxtaposition: a goddess who behaves like everywoman.

The Dharam-Hema blitz turned out to be a harbinger of the wonderful times to come. Film legends, immortal names, Khans and other mega stars, some of our most beautiful faces, great directors, fascinating conversations, unforgettable moments — they’ve all fallen into my lap (figuratively, of course, though I wouldn’t have minded some of them literally as well).

I think of it as pure luck because I never set out to be a film journalist and have not dedicated my worklife to the movies as so many far more knowledgeable, committed film scribes have. I did not dream of schmoozing with the stars or becoming editor of the country’s leading film magazine or even a film reviewer (I refuse to use the term ‘critic’ in India). I was a journalist and film buff who just slipped serendipitously into film journalism.

I was sent off to do that first interview with Hema Malini when I was with Savvy magazine because my editor Ingrid Albuquerque (who earlier edited Stardust ) ordered me with irrefutable logic: “You’ve just been married and you speak Tamil. Just like Hema. Go meet her.”

That one worked out so well that she commanded me to cover another love triangle: Salim Khan and his wives Salma and Helen. The trio agreed to do a photoshoot together at the Khan house in Galaxy Apartments and it was a mildly historic filmi moment because it was the first time they’d agreed to be interviewed together and Helen was stepping into the Khan house for the first time after her marriage.

Ingrid had directed me to take along a newly-bought Scrabble board for reasons soon to be clear. As I set it up for the photo shoot and hesitantly spelt out l-o-v-e, Salim Khan smiled wryly and added: “Triangle?”

I had to leave the Scrabble board behind because the Khan children, including Salman (then in his twenties), started playing a game and I felt churlish to ask for it back (the Savvy accountant couldn’t understand why, though). I’ve bumped into Salman a few times after that (once, bare-bodied in the afternoon sun — a story for another day) but I’ve never got around to reminding him about that board. Not even when he threatened to sue me and Filmfare , the magazine I edited from 2002 to 2006.

Why? Because we’d published a publicity still (not a private photograph, mind you) of him and Katrina Kaif on our cover at a time both were denying the relationship. But after having survived an earlier threat by Kareena Kapoor to break my legs, Salman was kid stuff.

My stint at Filmfare was, once again, an opportunity that came unsought. It wasn’t a job I’d even considered till media guru Pradeep Guha dropped it into my dupatta . Did I want the job? I was not sure. Could I do the job? I was even more uncertain. But when the man who revolutionised Indian publishing thought I could, I did.

Now it was films 24/7, non-stop stars and Bollywood (I’ve made my peace with the term now). And I was the (rather overgrown) kid in the cinema candy store. I was enormously privileged to be part of one of the most exciting periods of Hindi cinema and get up close and very personal with some of its most fascinating figures.

So many memories come streaming in, it’s difficult to choose… or stop.

One sunset on the lawns of Mannat with Shah Rukh Khan talking softly about the death of his loved ones, his eyes filled with the vulnerability that floats just below the surface but which he rarely shows.

Aamir Khan at a photo shoot, with no changing room close by. “No problem, I’ll change here,” he said calmly as he took off his shirt in front of us. He’s fussy only when he (rightly) needs to be.

A just-recovering Amitabh Bachchan sitting patiently on a chair just offstage at the 2006 Filmfare Awards, waiting to go on for his first public appearance after a major abdominal operation in 2005. “… Amitabh Bachchan!” announced the loudspeakers and he was a man transformed as he strode up to the stage. The 7,000-strong crowd rose as one in spontaneous salute; this actor commands the kind of respect that no other does.

A wind-swept monsoon evening with Rekha in her tiny office. Dressed in all white, with little jewellery and no makeup except for her trademark lipstick, she looked out at the grey sea and whispered, “Every day is beautiful.” She believes it and she lives it; trust me on this one.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali, basking in the success of Devdas , refusing to answer our all-important question: Did or did not Dev and Paro have sex in his version? He simply laughed away all our off-colour wheedling. He’s passionately possessive about his films but, no, he’s not always the brooding maverick.

Aishwarya Rai at her home, her face lit by a shaft of diffused sunlight, hair simply left loose, looking more beautiful than L’Oreal could ever make her. Ash, Dimple Kapadia and Kareena Kapoor are three women whose beauty no makeup or camera could do justice to - in their prime.

Then there are three of my favourite men in the film industry: Javed Akhtar, Gulzar and the late Yash Chopra. All three poets with healthy egos but incredible graciousness, a wonderful sense of humour and an irresistible old-world charm. Talking to Javed Akhtar and Gulzarsaab is an education in itself, the most pleasurable and entertaining kind. The humour is so clever and subtle you can only marvel at their intellect even as you wonder how legends can be so approachable and how you got so lucky with them.

However, there were two people who influenced me deeply on a personal level — without ever meaning to. The first was Vinod Khanna, who I interviewed in the early 90s, soon after his tryst with Osho. Vinod, who had recently been divorced, was a man tormented by existential questions and talked at length about how all human behaviour, including love, is essentially selfish, that what we think of as ‘selfless love’ and behaviour, only has subtler and unacknowledged motives. By the time I left, he had largely convinced me. (It helped that I was young and he was devastatingly attractive at the time!)

The second was Mahesh Bhatt, who, in the course of a meandering interview, told me dramatically, “You should not sleep on the floor because you’re scared of falling off the bed!” A deceptively mundane metaphor that always comes to mind when fear of failure hits me. When I met him again many years later, I told him about the incident and thanked him, but he was unmoved and nodded perfunctorily. Like his guru U. G. Krishnamurti, Bhatt believes in scattering his thoughts and moving on. One more learning for me. The movies can teach you about life in so many ways.

shashibaliga@gmail.com

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