It wasn’t the first time that I had heard of Habib Tanvir, nor was it the first time that I had a chance to meet him, but it was definitely the first time that I spent time with his wife (Monica di as I called her later) and him alone as they waited for the Spic Macay volunteers to bring him some word of his and his troupe’s travel plans.
Before I go on to write
about this particular incident a word or two about how I thought of him and his
work in the theater. When I came to Delhi in 1991 and started evaluating the
work of theater groups and directors to decide whom to work with, I saw almost
all theater that was happening in the city (excepting
of course Amir Raza Hussain for whose plays I never had the money to buy
tickets)- ‘Suno re Kissa’ by Barry John was probably the first play that I
saw. It impressed me but I had no idea how to work with Barry who was very reclusive
(or so was said about Barry). I saw Ebrahim Alkazi’s work with the NSD
repertory- I thought the plays were very well designed but there was not much
for the actors to do. By the way, I do not wish to fall in the trap of taking
sides between two giants, Habib Tanvir and Alkazi, when I say I did not like
his theater when I saw it, by no means do I wish to belittle Alkazi. Someone
who gave great talents to Indian theater and cinema as a teacher of drama and
acting cannot but be counted as a great. In fact the stories that you hear
about him- his discipline, sense of dignity etc are legendary. However, the
shows that he directed which I got to see, did not impress me because I thought
they were too picture perfect, the actors seemed to lack spontaneity or if I go
further- life. The plays were far too wordy, adaptations/translations of
western plays, and they hardly touched me.This was much after his much
celebrated stint as the director of the National School of Drama- the school
had changed, the actors were different and I am sure he faced huge amount of
resistance. Whatever the reasons may have been, the fact remained that what I
saw of Alkazi’s theater and the NSD did not impress me hugely. There were
others who were quite active but none that I wanted to work with. (Although in this time I did theater with the
college theater club and another group called – Drama Tech with whom I really enjoyed
working, more on these two experiences later, this post is about Habib Tanvir
)
In 1992, at IP college
annual festival, the then college union invited Habib Tanvir to present one of
his plays and habib saab came with his best – Dekh Rahe Hain Nayan. It cast its
spell on me. The power of the story- the simplicity of acting- magical
transformations of space and characters that the actors brought about with so
much ease- minimal sets- Deepak Tiwary and Chait Ram setting the stage on fire
with their intensity- the amazing light design . I mean, one moment the space is
empty on stage- four actors walk in with simple props like a kettle, a basket
etc, sit down and convert that space into a market and sitting in the audience
you completely go with the illusion they create and then just as the scene ends,
the space shifts to a king’s palace- same actors- with minimal change in their
costume like say the person playing the king would just go to the wings – pick
up a crown and come back and sit on the chair that was placed there to create
the palace scene and you would believe that the same actor who was selling
‘chai’ a moment earlier is now the king.
Not just this, but the simplicity of the narrative and the questions/concerns
it brought to the fore and the artistry involved- evoking deep emotions- well,
I was in complete awe of the man after I saw this.
After this I saw ‘Sapna’,
‘ Mudrarakshas’ and some other plays by ‘Naya Theater’ and always came back
impressed. ( It was much later that I saw
Charandas chor and I had never seen Jis Lahore Nahi Dekhya, till the time after
Habib Saab passed away and the Manav Sangrahalaya (Bhopal)was doing a
retrospective, I was suddenly asked by Ramchandar to get into the crowd(when on
the previous night I had had an overdose of Mahua, which our tribal dancer
friends had got from Bastar and I had two glasses of it in Chait Ram style,
this story too I promise to give the
details in another post), I saw ‘Hirma ki Amar Kahani’ in one of the festivals,
another amazing production; ‘Ponga Pandit’ and ‘Sadak’ also I saw much later, ‘Gaon
ka naam sasural mor naam damaad’ I haven’t liked so much , ‘Agra Bazar’ I had
seen before as a class tenth student. (Understood
nothing then but later played a cameo in it)
So, this is about Habib Tanvir, now a little about SPICMACAY to set the context of the event I started with. SPICMACAY , in a hope to promote Indian Classical music and arts amongst the youth, draws upon young volunteers from schools and colleges and some senior people to get the best of Indian artists to perform at schools and colleges across the country thus making the best in Indian art accessible to young people. They are always hard pressed for financial resources and volunteers. There is a perennial attempt to cut costs.
A typical SPICMACAY event
will have some major crisis/lapses – either the tickets for the onward journey
would not be done, an accompanist for a musician would not be there, the sound
system would have some flaw, the food would not be ready, the transport would
not be available and so on and so forth- usual things when young people are
organizing something and just learning the ropes of handling something like
this. The artists surprisingly liked this because they got a lot of personal
warmth from the young kids organizing the event. Most artists reduce their fee when
they come for a SPICMACAY presentation (so
I believe).So, the artists are ready for the hiccups when they come for a
concert or a presentation for SPIC MACAY. Since there would be these hiccups
the artists would begin to trust a few volunteers who were more effective than
the others- who could at least solve their problems, they would then develop
personal rapport with these specific volunteers and they would want them in
front of their eyes to feel assured that no major faux pas is going to happen(small ones could be tolerated, but when the
small ones happened then it was incumbent on the artist to get upset, throw a
bit of a fit and the specific volunteer to go and pamper the artist- which in
fact was the need in the first place, I think this personal rapport goes
missing when the artists perform commercially, they get the respect, but this
kind of roosa roosi(getting angry and then being pampered) cannot be played
with the others. Some of the artists are truly absolutely other worldly. This
is a bit of a digression but Shalini, my wife and a former spearhead of
SPICMACAY, was learning sitar from another great though not too well known
outside the music circuit, Pandit Uma Shankar Mishra at Triveni in Delhi.Once
Shalini asked panditji if he drove, panditji replied by saying - I get so lost
in my music in my head while driving that I have already banged the car twice,
so I tore off my license, the hands who play sitar are not made to hold the
steering of a car)So, if Bismillah Khan Saheb had come from Benaras on a
train for a concert and he did not find Anshuman Pandey to receive him, he
would squat on the station and tell the volunteer who had gone to pick him up- ‘pehle
Anshuman ko bulao tab jaayengein’(first
call Anshuman Pandey , then I will move)- now it could be four in the
morning, in winters, and the volunteer would probably have been told to just go
there , pick him up and come back- a very functional task- but with Spic Macay,
it was never functional( I know by
experience, once I was made to do a similar task but it resulted in something
else, where Sumit Jamuar’s mother at IIT cooked paranthas for a troupe of
kathakali dancers- margis- sumit and I jumped gates of IIT and Aurobindo Ashram
in peak winters in Delhi, gave the dancers food, ruined Sumit’s mother’s prized
tea set which she had warned us not to- more on this later too)- the volunteer
would realize- she/he has a strange problem at hand- how to make this great
artist move as he decided to get on with his own dharna on the platform at a
train station-(I think I am over stating
the problem when I say ‘she’, for some strange reason it was always easier for
a ‘she’ to mollycoddle the artist into submission) in a weird way, the
human aspect did come into everything that SPIC MACAY did at that time and
created some touching moments but mostly situations were hilarious and if you
were doing something with SPIC MACAY , you could end up being a reason for other
people’s amusement. I doggedly kept away from the organisation, (or movement as the believers called it),
despite some very close friends closely associated with it. The primary reason
was that it always did lead to trouble whenever I allowed my friends to bully
me and do something for them.
So, now coming back to the first story, the situation that I began with, on this day too something similar happened. I was staying in Mayur Vihar at this point of time and at a college close by Habib Tanvir’s troupe was performing I think ‘Sapna’ in the evening. Shalini was informed. She decided to go. I heard it was a SPICMACAY sponsored show, so I tried my level best to try and exclude myself through an array of practiced excuses- I am tired, I don’t feel like it, I want to work, I have to meet a friend etc which were diffused in no time by Shalini- she is practiced in doing that. Soon I found myself driving her to the venue of the play- Maharaja Agrasen College.
The show started slightly
late- it got over say by about 10 pm. The same night the troupe was supposed to
take a train and reach Shahjahanpur by the morning and perform there the next
day. I thought things are going smoothly, hopeful that I could be home in
another hour, but as it happened time and again, SPICMACAY failed to disappoint
me, it rose to the occasion, came true to expectations- and gave me another
memorable experience. Pushan, now a friend but a young volunteer then walked up
to Shalini and told her that he has finally managed to get the concession forms
for the troupe’s travel done. (if you
travel as a group of artists in India, you can get a concession from the
ministry of railways for your travel which reduces the cost of travel by a
fairly large amount- almost 40% of the cost, Dr Kiran Seth, insisted upon this,
the volunteers almost always hard pressed for time for they had enough things
to do in very limited resources could almost never manage to do it- they would
then hear from Dr Seth- sometimes feel humiliated and decide that come what may
next time round the concession form would definitely be done). Pushan,
certain to have been blown up by Dr. Seth in the past regarding the concession
forms had taken a firm resolve to get the concession forms in his possession
this time round and he did, this must have taken him several bus rides from University
of Delhi, north campus (alas, there was
no metro then, if they did have it then, we could have done so much more as
students) to Rail Bhavan. Shalini
complimented Pushan on this rare feat, told him- well done, Pushan. Now give me
the tickets. Suddenly Pushan’s face fell- the reason is obvious- he got the concession form done but
he got so lost in getting this done that he quite forgot, that based on these
concession forms he also needed to get the tickets done to enable the troupe to
travel.
Suddenly, problems had
emerged. The troupe of about 30 people had nowhere to go for the night. No
arrangements had been made. No university guest house would take them in without
previous bookings. SPIC MACAY could not put them up at a hotel, they didn’t
have the budgets for that. Alternative arrangements for travel had to be made,
the organizers of the circuit needed to be informed about the delays, schedules
had to be adjusted – all this could be done with some difficulty but the most
important thing that had to be done was to inform Habib Saab about all of this.
While the SPIC MACAY volunteers went into action, parleying in the corners of
the space, Habib Saab had done with his two miniature helpings of Old Monk rum
which he carried with him if he had to travel through the night. I was made to
watch the two of them and respond in case they needed something in the time
Shalini and the rest of the gang sorted out the mess. Habib Saab knew that
something was amiss; after all he had run a travelling theater company for over
fifty years by then, made these arrangements all his life, who would know if
not him.
As I sat behind them they
started talking- Habib saab and Monica di. I think just to pass their time
before someone walked up to him and told him what was wrong. Monica di looked
at the SPIC MACAY logo – a vertical eye.
Monica di started this
dialogue where she began to ponder what this logo was all about. They pondered
over this for a while (I had thought
about putting the conversation here but now I am reluctant to do that,
sometimes a conversation like that can be misunderstood but just to quell your
curiosity – Monica di thought it was an image of human organs of procreation,
Habib saab contested that view and said that he could not imagine an
organisation which talked about Indian culture to go with that line of thought
when choosing its logo. Monica di countered but praying to fertility goddess is
a part of Indian culture and in any case what is wrong with procreation. Habib
saab countered it once or twice and then gave up.) Actually there is
nothing much to the conversation but for the fact that it was night, I was
imagining that Habib Saab could blow up any time, I was alone to handle the
situation which I knew was past handling and if he did blow up, I would not
have any answers.
I saw Shalini etc in the
distance, I walked up to them. Pushan was telling Shalini – shalini di , I will
make a sad face, go and apologise, Habib saab will be angry in the beginning
but then he will calm down. Soon we saw this drama being played out. As Pushan
went up to him, Habib Saab gave him a glance and then before Pushan could play
his act, Habib saab busted it by saying- tum aise bechare ki tarah khade ho
jaaoge to tumhein lagta hai ki mein naraaz nahin hoonga, mein tab bhi naraaz
hoonga. (you stand here with such a face
and you think I won’t be angry, I will still be angry) So, the line of
defense that Pushan was building was already gone. Now Shalini had to take over
and inform him, he asked about where the actors would be made to stay-what had
gone wrong- what about the travel. Shalini told him that they were working on
all of it. Habib saab was reasonable- he was always reasonable if you were
honest with him.
