Silent Revolutionary

It could perhaps be because Desai didn8217;t get the opportunity to really sit with Dilip Kumar and explore the man8217;s heart. At the very outset we are told that their 8216;8216;schedules did not quite match8217;8217;, and that led to this book which is 8220;half an exercise in nostalgia and half in social science8221;. He warns that those looking for gossip should look elsewhere. Fair enough. But surely as almost a borderline-obsessive lover of Hindi films, whose 8220;heart was in commercial cinema8221;, Desai must know the importance of bringing the very qualities he loved about Dilip Kumar8217;s films to his book? Those films of high drama and intensities, films which palpitated with longings and ideals, which nakedly portrayed the helplessness the hero felt and the hungry emotions he wrestled with, the causes he stood up for, and the social systems he fought against8212;all this communicated through beautifully spoken words, whether Urdu or Bhojpuri, or through burning silences that threatened to explode the screen8212;all this surely needed to be poured into the book with the same, deep feeling that the actor felt?

And when Desai does do that, every now and then, believe me, the words become immediately arresting. As when he talks about Dilip Kumar being the first male Muslim star of the country, who changed his name from Yusuf Khan because 8220;he feared his father would not approve of him appearing in films under the family name8221;. Or when the writer talks of the star being politically active, without ever holding political office at the national level; of him being a representative of the Muslims victimised in the 1992-93 riots in Mumbai and bravely giving them shelter and support. Or when, for a minor reason, Dilip Kumar was jailed overnight in 1942, and he refused to eat the toast, eggs and tea offered to him for breakfast because Gandhiji was fasting at the same time! Or when he talks of the raid on Dilip Kumar8217;s house after the police arrested 8220;a boy suspected of being a Pakistani spy, and in his diary they found Dilip Kumar8217;s name and address8221;. 8220;No one came to his aid, not even Nehru,8221; he writes. Or when Desai so intelligently concludes that a film like Mughal-e-Azam can 8220;never be made again not because of the cost or even the cast but because that confident Muslim culture of India which gave us the film has disappeared8221;.

It8217;s facts like these that bring the book to life. Although the analyses of the films are lucidly written, it8217;s the person behind the persona we8217;re most interested in. Yes, the new angle of Nehru8217;s politics that he says Dilip Kumar incorporated into his films is noteworthy, but it8217;s the depths of the fruit merchant8217;s son who had acted in 16 films by the age of twenty-eight that we8217;re dying to know about. What made his performance in Ganga Jamuna so near-perfect, and after so many years, what made him still break our hearts in Shakti? The man who during an interview had to stop talking about the communal riots because the talk was making him sick, what was this man all about? Although reader-friendly, I so wish Desai8217;s book could have taken a bigger leap of love.

There is one passage, however, at the end of the book which moved me deeply and I8217;d like to quote it at length: 8220;There has been no respite for Dilip Kumar since 1993. He is now a targeted man as far as the Shiv Sena is concerned. His one Pakistani award, the Nishan-e-Imtiaz, rekindled all the old animosities. That Morarji Desai and Atal Bihari Vajpayee have been also honoured by Pakistan does not count. They are Hindus; their loyalty is beyond doubt. He is a Muslim; for some that is a synonym for disloyalty. Having imaged the best of India in fantasy, it is Dilip Kumar8217;s fate to live its grim reality as Yusuf Khan.8221;

Tanuja Chandra
is a Mumbai-based film-maker