Bollywood’s bad breath

There was a kind of hush. No one would enter the room, the ambulance was awaited. As a rookie reporter, I was assigned to cover the passing away of the silent era superstar Master Nissar. That was some three decades ago. The address was a micro-room in a chawl in the midst of a vegetable market on Dhobi Talao. A tin plate, a cracked cup of tea and a football-sized bundle of clothes were all that he owned.

Neighbours confirmed that yes, Nissarbhai was a hotshot in his heyday, he specialised in swashbuckling action films during the silent era. The titles of his films, no one knew. Neither could they be ever sourced.
Master Nissar died in abject poverty, his skeletal frame was buried in the nearby kabristan. To date, I haven’t been able to trace the names of Master Nissar’s films or what led to his fade-out.
In fact, any form of chronicling of Indian cinema and its personalities is still extremely inadequate. Slick tomes on the superstars, a tell-all autobiography (think Dev Anand) and an occasional study of a celebrated director do fly off the shelves.
Publishers aren’t willing to touch anyone or any subject related to cinema that isn’t marketable. A sale of 5,000 copies, preceded by a celebrity-in-attendance book launch, is a must-do. The Pune Film Institute has published some monographs but these are mostly inaccessible.
Simultaneously, over the decades thousands of films have turned into junk. Efforts to rescue them have been sporadic, if not frustratingly futile. All that remains of Alam Ara (1931), India’s first talkie film, are a few stills edited together. Black-and-white films of the Thirties and Forties are in such poor shape that all you can see of K.L. Saigal in Street Singer (1938) often are smudgy shadows. Indeed, if Mumbai’s film industry doesn’t understand the necessity of preserving cinema for posterity, in the distant future even badnaam Munni and jawaan Sheila will look like something of the Twilight series.
As lamentably, superb entertainers who brought joy to countless viewers in the dark of the auditorium have been erased from the memory files. If the GenTeen has heard of some of them at all, it’s mostly from their grandpops tripping on nostalgia lanes. By contrast, Hollywood greats are permanently catalogued. Take the case of the dancing wonder Fred Astaire. His Singin’ in the Rain (1952) continues to be celebrated globally. At home though, Bhagwan Dada, Mumbai’s version of the tap-dancer was forgotten even when he was alive.
His moves to the song Shola jo bhadke in Albela (1951) would entice the audience to dance with him, beg the projectionist for an encore, throw coins at the screen and generally go delirious with excitement. Bhagwan Dada’s body rhythm and steps were picked up by Amitabh Bachchan (he admits it too). Senior choreographers agree that there was no one quite like the Albela man, his steps being matched by the lively Geeta Bali. As it happened, Dada’s subsequent films didn’t evoke the same fervour. Plus, given to whisky, horseracing and gambling, Bhagwan Dada was on a self-destructive spree, aided by his secretaries and business partners. Once an owner of a fleet of Cadillacs and Buicks, he went bankrupt.
Dada moved to a pocket-sized room in a Dadar chawl. He would make ends meet by doing bit roles (he’d pop up for half a minute in the midst of a dance, performing his signature step). I met him, circa 2002 — when he was ailing and he couldn’t move from his mattress on the floor. He wondered why anyone would want to interview him. Looking at my pair of spectacles, he laughed, “Ae chashmish, you don’t have any other work or what?”
Bhagwan Dada, over a glass of rum, spoke bitterly about how his contemporaries had avoided him “as if I’m stinking or have bad breath… maybe I do.” Dilip Kumar and Ashok Kumar would drop once in a while, he recalled, his eyes misting, “These are asli men, they come over, leave some money quietly by my pillow. They pretend that I haven’t seen the money. I’m a good actor, I also pretend that I haven’t seen the money. I wouldn’t be able to accept it otherwise.”
The instances of Bhagwan Dada and Bharat Bhusan (the gentle-mannered hero of Baiju Bawra) — both of whom went on skid row — are often cited by the senior generation of B-town.
Yet, these actors are never ever chronicled or saluted for their artistry. Similarly, hundreds of marvellous films of yore are rusting away in the studio vaults. When they are beyond repair they are sold as “junk”, often retreaded into bangles.
Film heritage perishes, the great entertainers vanish into anonymity. And I just hope that there isn’t another rookie reporter out there somewhere, dealing with the end of another Master Nissar.

Khalid Mohamed is a journalist, film critic and film director