Kishore Sahu take two

So we felt rather strange when the Boss told the technicians in advance, 8216;8216;Look here, I am getting a new director for this film. He is a terrible stickler for punctuality. I do not want him to complain to me about any of you.8217;8217;

Actually, if the Boss had to be concerned about anything, punctuality should not have featured in his list. Shooting meant pick-ups and drops for all staff except those falling under the Factories Act. Then, food came from New Woodlands which, even today, is one of the best restaurants in Chennai. So the warning was really for those responsible for the transport management. I was the unacknowledged transport manager.

Sahu must have been quite puzzled at the excessive officiousness of the whole crew. Nature had given him a puzzled countenance and Gemini Studios made him look even more puzzled. Probably to ensure his own punctuality, the Kohinoor was readied for his residence.

Kohinoor is a two-storied building connected to the main studio lot by a narrow pathway. It was bought from a neighbour who must have designed the place as a very private one and so allowed very little ventilation to any part of the structure. There were a number of small rooms and for Sahu, each was furnished and fitted with an over-sized ceiling fan. The result was when Sahu and his family had all the fans switched on, the Kohinoor gave out a drone of a magnitude that made conversation as a kind of shouting match.

Sahu might have been unknown to most Gemini staff but I had seen two of his films, Kalighata and Mayurpank. Both seemed a bit narcissistic. Baburao Patel of Filmindia always ridiculed him and Dev Anand indirectly fed fodder to that critic by making Sahu act in his film. So when Sahu sent word to me, I was worried about my inability to forget what Patel said of Sahu and even if I did that, I could not forget Sahu in The Guide. In my initial meeting with Sahu, I really had a difficult time trying to stifle my paroxysms.

THE fact is, Sahu had aspirations beyond the celluloid realm. He had studied literature for his degree, had written fiction. When I met him in 1963, he had three published books in Hindi. He wanted his stories to be rendered in English and Tamil when he mentioned this to our own Gemini panditji, Melattur Viswanathan, I became the candidate for the English language effort. Sahu8217;s target in English was to get at least one story published in The Illustrated Weekly of India, which until 1970 was closest to winning the Nobel Prize. I had won my 8216;Nobel8217; in 1961.

In 1963, when Sahu came to Madras to direct Gemini8217;s Grihasti, he was nearing 50. His wife and daughters were a picture of refinement and Sahu never raised his voice.

I believe he had a broken first marriage and maybe that had an effect on his voice. I had difficulty following him not because of his voice but because of the numerous long pauses whenever he spoke.

My reading ability of Hindi was very limited and matched Sahu8217;s articulation. So Vishwanathan and I sat together and I managed to get five of Sahu8217;s stories in English. They were quite good, but nothing came out of them. If the successors of Sahu rummaged his old papers, they are sure to find Grazia, Siraj Sahranpur and On the Telephone in my handwriting. Sahu had said he would get them typed in Bombay and would personally take them to the editor of The Illustrated Weekly.

Grihasti progressed slowly and steadily. It had far too many characters needing to speak and Boss had to get actors from Bombay by the dozen. The children were the most difficult part. And it turned out the censors did not like the children. They objected to the children discussing their parents as in a mock parliament.

As the film progressed, the punctuality factor became a casualty and so was Sahu8217;s hold on the film. Very likely, Vasan played a joke on us about Sahu being a stickler for punctuality. Invariably, the shooting ended around two in the morning and so Sahu would be the only one awake at 7 am, the official hour of the start of the next day8217;s call-sheet.

Despite being deposited in the Kohinoor building close to six months and enduring 8216;home-cooking8217; by a cousin of one of Gemini8217;s drivers, Sahu continued his association with Vasan. He had been long enough in films to know that producers were compulsive backseat drivers. He didn8217;t get to direct another Gemini film but scripted two and wrote the dialogues.

I left Gemini Studios soon after. I am not sure I was paid for my translation work. Sahu would have certainly compensated for my efforts if only the editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India had published at least one piece of his. Nobel prizes are hard to come by.