The Wooden actors

Welcome to Adamji Mahomedally, one of the oldest period furniture shops in Mumbai, which has the credit of lending character to sets of innumerable films produced in India since the 1940s. Every inch of the 5,000 square feet ground floor shop houses a slice of Hindi film memorabilia, in over 10,000 pieces of individual artefacts and film furniture 8212; from a rare Chippendale and a 100-year-old Oakwood cabinet made in UK to sturdy beds made of Burma teak, mahogany and sheesham. The shop8217;s furniture has been used in movies as diverse as Nishabd, 1942 A Love Story, Prem Rog, Chaudvin Ka Chand, Bandini and Awara.

Ask the shop8217;s third generation owner, Sarfaraz Ali, about the number of films that have sourced their furniture from the shop, and he smiles and says, 8220;Every other film made in Hindi since 1944 has taken furniture from us. So one way at arriving at a number would be to multiply half the number of movies released every year with the number of years since then8230;8221;

No wonder then that the shop8217;s clientele is a list of the best in the film business: Ram Gopal Verma, Mahesh Bhatt, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Yash Chopra, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Prakash Mehra, Manmohan Desai, Raj Kapoor, Shakti Samanta, Guru Dutt and Bimal Roy. The collection has international admirers as well: Richard Attenborough and David Lean. 8220;When he saw the range of furniture we had supplied for A Passage to India during a shoot in Hampi, Lean told art director Sudhendu Roy, 8216;Had I known so many period pieces were available in India, I would have shot the entire Lawrence of Arabia here,8221; says Sarfaraz with pride.

Makers of Indiana Jones, Octopussy, Gandhi and the recent A Mighty Heart, a movie based on journalist Daniel Pearl8217;s abduction and murder, have come to Adamji Mahomedally for an authentic Indian look.

If Sarfaraz is proud about his international links, he is passionate about Bollywood he worked as an assistant to Sudhendu Roy in two films and his family8217;s links with the greats of Indian film industry. His childhood memories are of directors Guru Dutt and Bimal Roy, all friends of father Saraf Ali, spending hours at the shop looking for the right piece of crafted wood.

But it8217;s obvious that his most cherished client was the Kapoor clan 8211; and the loyalty was reciprocated. 8220;During the shoot of Prem Rog, Raj Kapoor8217;s art director had used furniture from a shop closer the RK studio for the haveli set. When Rajji saw the stuff he threw a fit. 8216;Get all the furniture from Saraf Ali, only then will I shoot the film,8217; he roared,8221; recalls Sarfaraz.

No one knew better how to use period furniture to add to a scene than Raj Kapoor, says Sarfaraz. 8220;He would make a piece of furniture stand out on the set and have his artists move around it. Look at the way Rishi and Dimple hover around the bed in the Chabi kho jaaye song in Bobby. The bed is like a character in the song,8221; says Sarfaraz. 8220;That kind of involvement is missing with the directors today.8221;

One look at the shop8217;s collection of European beds, John Roberts, sofa sets, chandeliers and vintage clocks is enough to tell you that piecing together this immense collection needed the doggedness and passion of a collector. But making furniture for films wasn8217;t how the Ali family started out. 8220;In the 1920s and 30s, between April and November, the maharajahs of Kashmir, Baroda, Raj Pipla and other provinces would descend to Mumbai and convert their residences to summer palaces. They wanted the furniture their palaces had. That8217;s how we got into making such ornate period pieces,8221; he says. Furniture for films was a natural progression in the 1940s, when the movies were getting bigger than the budgets. 8220;Those days, they didn8217;t have the money to build huge sets. They depended on hired furniture to set the mood,8221; he says.

But do filmmakers need period furniture when most movies are firmly based in the contemporary world of 8212; in Sarfaraz8217;s words 8212; 8220;cold, straight lines8221;? 8220;Yash Chopra is a contemporary filmmaker, but he has a strong sense for period furniture and so is Ramu. He had my furniture transported to Munnar for Nishabd. Vidhu Vinod Chopra insisted on taking furniture from Mumbai to Jaipur for Eklavya; Pradeep Sarkar took our furniture to Kolkata for the haveli set in Parineeta. Most of the abroad interior shots in Salaam-e-Ishq were done with our furniture in sets in Mumbai,8221; he counters immediately.

Point made, Sarfaraz gets back to attending his daily work. It8217;s time to step out from the reel world. In the light of the dying sun, as the grand bedsteads give off a warm glow and the glint of the chandeliers catches your eye, you realise what Sarfaraz8217;s passion is about. You also realise that the next time you see stiff, clumsy acting, you won8217;t be able to compare the actor to a piece of wood.