And Then One Day: A Memoir (36 page)

T
here were two strong motivations for saying yes to a big budget Hollywood film in the year 2002. They were: a) I would get to meet Sean Connery, who I had long adored, and b) I was promised an amount of money which if not totally obscene was definitely pretty vulgar. So vulgar in fact that with a couple of weeks’ per diem I purchased a laptop and hired a man to teach me how to switch it on.

Through a bone-wrenchingly boring six-month shoot, not knowing what else to do with the machine I started typing, ‘I was born in...’ and so forth and continued for about twenty-five pages. There are many reasons, not the least being indolence and self-doubt, why the final thing emerges a dozen or so years after I started on it. I got bored of it, abandoned it, re-engaged with it a year or so later, and then again a year or so later and so on.

Most of it was written during shootings, sitting in a trailer awaiting the next shot, then transferring it on to a pen drive, more than once losing the pen drive and having to start all over again. Ergo the travails I endured have nothing whatsoever to do with writer’s block or anything of the sort, granted that some passages proved tough to write about and my threshold of boredom is rather low I am told; it all had to do with the question of the intrinsic worth of such a book. I felt very much like writing it but not at all sure I wanted anyone to read it. I decided, for my own amusement, to write about incidents I could recall and I need hardly testify I really took my time over it, double-checking facts with my two brothers—the only reliable witnesses. I was also pretty certain that some of my contemporaries’ versions of later incidents would vary drastically from mine, but as I said, it was great fun comprehensively reliving those days. I never thought anyone would read about them though.

Then one day I handed over about half the final manuscript to Ramachandra Guha, of whom I had by then sufficiently overcome my awe to consider a friend. His exhortation to me to finish the job I never thought I would is why I must thank him first of all. His positive response to my output and insistence on ridding the text of superfluities, slang, swear words and exclamation marks (which crept in nonetheless, sorry Ram!) galvanized me into finishing the rest of it in one-twelfth the time it had taken me to write the rest.

What this book will mean to anyone I have no clue but I had to get it out of my system, and for helping me do that, warm thanks go to David Godwin of Godwin Associates, Chiki Sarkar, the head of Penguin India publications, and the wonderful Nandini Mehta and Jaishree Ram Mohan, who edited the manuscript. Their encouragement and support were invaluable even though my dearest wish that anyone proving that he/she consistently came last in class be given a free copy of the book did not find much merit in their eyes. Many thanks to my favourite performers for generously providing me the photos I needed, and the associates who helped me get through to them.

A warm hug to the teachers and friends I have been fortunate to encounter—all the remarkable men and women who had so much they wished to share and unstintingly did.

And lastly a big fat slobbery kiss to the jewel of my existence, Ratna, queen of her species, who while doing so much else has also steadfastly, through thick and thin, better and worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health held my hand and propped me up for well-nigh forty years. May her tribe increase.

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First published in Hamish Hamilton by Penguin Books India 2014

www.penguinbooksindia.com

Copyright © Naseeruddin Shah 2014

Words and music from ‘Time’ © Pink Floyd Music Publishers Ltd administered by Imagem (UK) Ltd.

The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by him which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

ISBN: 978-0-670-08764-8

This digital edition published in 2014.
e-ISBN: 978-9-351-18840-7

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