The first trip to a new place is never easy. This sentence that I had read in a high school textbook remains etched in my memory to this day. Several seasoned journalists I have interacted closely with or worked with, have admitted to being a little shy of their first few by-lines, some even bracketing them as somewhat trifle. Ditto with me.
I distinctly remember a colleague on a national daily (a sub-editor then and quite a veteran now) gently admonishing me one fine day for being “wayward”, “unfocused”, “uninspiring”, as he went hammer and tongs on how he had to fine-tune my copy so as to straighten it into a clean, readable story. In other words, I got hammered for writing a “lazy piece”.
This story that I am referring to is about an interview I had done of late Bollywood actor Farooq Sheikh. It was circa 1995. This was my maiden interview of a celebrity, and that too as a trainee journalist!
Forget about the finesse or the way with words. All that mattered to me at that time was how well Farooq Sheikh had treated me; how he had wanted a copy of the newspaper carrying his interview the next day; and how, when I went to hand him the newspaper at the Patna airport, he — despite being mobbed by a motley crowd — made that extra effort to collect the copy from me with a courteous “thank you so much”.
There was that distinct aura of simplicity about the man. He would never let you feel he was Farooq Sheikh.
He passed away in Dubai on 28 December 2013 while on a holiday trip with family. Memories come back haunting of that social event in Patna where Farooq was a guest speaker. Jostling with some others from the same tribe, I had asked him for a quote. And he offered me a full-fledged interview. I was completely taken aback by his modesty when he offered me a lift to the hotel he was staying in, saying, “Come, we’ll have a detailed chat there”.
“By sheer accident,” was his reply when I asked him how he got his first break in Bollywood considering he came from a typically traditional, trading family. He narrated to me in detail how it was sheer fate and chance that kick-started his career in filmdom. As the interview picked up pace there was one thing I could perceptibly notice: There wasn’t an iota of pretense about him, attired in his trademark white kurta-pyjama, as he insisted on making tea for me.
Farooq told me he had decided to sponsor the education of a few girl children and would continue doing so in the years to come. If every capable person can sponsor the education of even one girl child, it will become a completely different world, I remember the veteran actor telling me.
Having started his Bollywood career in the year 1973 with the classic Garm Hawa, he tasted big success with Noorie, a 1979 love story produced by Yash Chopra. He told me he was flooded with similar roles but chose not to join the rat race. And while he excelled in both parallel and mainstream cinema, Farooq was not one to be awed by the grammar of the showbiz.
The actor who lent his skills to such meaningful and classic films as Bazaar, Saath Saath, Umrao Jaan, Shatranj Ke Khiladi, and the unforgettable comedy Chashme Buddoor among others, died at a relatively young age of 65, the same year his Club 60 released.
Bazaar remains an all-time favorite for this scribe. What a performance he dished out – looking every inch of the tragic character he essayed on screen. Whenever I watch this classic – and I often do – I think of that very interview I did of him as not-so-mature-a-scribe. I always had this feeling that Farooq saheb could have given me a few tips about how that story could have been churned out in a better way. And I had always wanted to interview him a second time. Alas, that desire remains unfulfilled!
[Top/Featured picture of Farooq Sheikh courtesy www.farooq-sheikh.tributes.in]
Farooq Shaikh left us to soon. A fine actor. Along with his favourite co-star Deepti Naval, and comic actors Rakesh Bedi, Ravi Baswani and Saeed Jaffrey (both late) and many actors like Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, among others, have given memorable performances in successful films, that broke away from formula films in the 1970s and 1980s. Sheikh was part of many art films like Garam Hawa, Umrao Jaan, Noorie, Chasme Buddoor that proved stars and big budget were not a prerequisite for success. I had watched Shaikh’s rise to prominence from his humble start as Doordarshan anchor of programmes such as Yuvadarshan and Young World. Actors like Shaikh have added quality and depth to Mumbai’s parallel cinema.