Table Of ContentNAWAZUDDIN SIDDIQUI
an ordinary life
A Memoir
with Rituparna Chatterjee
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
PART I: BUDHANA
1. Teetar Pehelwan
2. Patta Prodigy
3. Abbu
4. Ammi
5. My Colourful Childhood
6. Schooldays
7. Of Love Letters and Kites
8. Nani ka Ghar
9. The Chemist Incident
10. The Haunting Dream
PART II: YOUTH
11. Accidental Meanderings into Chemistry, Theatre and BNA
12. Adventures at the National School of Drama
PART III: MUMBAI
13. The Dark Night
14. Relationships
15. Shamas, My Guardian Angel
16. Aaliya
17. Shora, My Miracle
PART IV: ACTING
18. Anurag Kashyap
19. ‘The Drama King of India’
20. Success
Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
PART I
BUDHANA
1
Teetar Pehelwan
W
hat if the sun caught fire?
Would the physical world turn into smoke? Would all the oceans of the galaxy
empty themselves to put out this celestial fire? Or would it matter at all,
considering that it is a ball of fire in the first place, anyway?
In my village in western Uttar Pradesh, the summer months were often a daze
of burning, soul-sucking days. On some of those days, you were almost certain
that the sun had caught fire. Its heat was barely any different from a flame’s
scalding slap. And the 19th of May 1974 especially was one such epic horror. On
that unnaturally smouldering day, our kaccha mud house was only a few degrees
shy of becoming a tandoor oven. Abbu nervously hurled buckets after buckets of
water on the boiling walls of the bedroom where Ammi battled excruciating
labour pains; he was doing the best he could to make her a teeny bit more
comfortable. Steam rolled off the searing walls, on to their roasting bodies where
it distilled itself into beads of perspiration.
They were anxious, apparently nervous like you would expect any new
parents to be. Like trees shaking in a violent storm, in spite of roots that ran deep
and strong. They were especially jittery because they had been here before: it
was a nerve-rattling déjà vu. Terror wrung their hearts, like a dhobi mercilessly
wringing his laundry, squeezing the life out of them. Because they had lived that
fine line, which was of the thickness of a strand of hair, between love and loss,
between Heaven and Hell, between life and death.
Because, you see, I, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, the oldest of the nine Siddiqui
children, was not their firstborn.
Shamsuddin was. I would hear of him for the first time when I was about two
or three years old. My older brother, whom I have known closely, as one knows
fictional characters one grows up reading in stories, had been the light of their
lives. They had named him the ‘sparkling one’. But soon, after only a few
months, he, a frail little baby could not cope with this world and left it,
abandoning them, leaving them in darkness.
Ammi’s fight luckily lasted for only a couple of hours and finally at about two
in the afternoon, I wailed my way into this world, about two months before
expected. Like my ghost brother, I too was born punctually premature and with
red eyes—which remain bloodshot to this day—but unlike him I survived to tell
my story. No wonder my parents named me Nawaz in gratitude. It means
blessing, uparwale ki rehmat, by the grace of God.
I always remained a feeble-looking child. They kept nurturing and nurturing; I
remained physically weak. This worry, amplified routinely by Shamsuddin
Bhaijaan’s loss, gnawed at my parents’ minds and fired their fears constantly. No
matter how many glasses of salubrious buffalo milk I downed, I remained frail,
physically puny. Those days there was none of our modern-day squeamishness
about milk being unhealthy, bad for the heart, etc. This is all present-day
nonsense, which baffles me. Our reaction to milk was the opposite of today’s
times: we revered milk. It was organic, pure, natural and wholesome fuel.
Buffalo milk was given to build up body and was a favourite amongst
bodybuilders, weightlifters and the like. We milked our own buffaloes and often
while milking, we lapped up some delicious sprays of milk, directly from their
udders. Later in our homes, we would down freshly squeezed buffalo milk in
tall, thick glasses made of steel or brass.
However, the legendary nutritional value of buffalo milk seemed to bypass me
altogether, choosing to float past me like a feather instead of coating my bones
with some healthy and much-needed fat. So when I was about seven to eight
years old, Abbu decided enough was enough and put me into pehelwani,
wrestling. It might not seem a conventional choice in today’s urban India but
back then, enrolling your child in kushti lessons was a rather common choice for
parents.
And that’s how I was introduced to my mentor, Mullah Pehelwan. Famous for
his strength, and renowned in the area for his prowess in the sport, this ace
wrestler ran an akhara in Budhana. He was the epitome of health—in fact, he
died just recently, at the tender age of 105. Many muscular wrestlers, who
looked like doppelgängers of Hercules and Bhim, used to wrestle in his akhara.
And like most little boys, I was awestruck by their strength. They were our local
superheroes. I used to love watching wrestling tournaments. Luckily, for me,
many matches were held in Budhana itself.
I began frequenting the akhara. Mullah Pehelwan looked me up and down.
‘You will do 100 uthak-baithak in the morning. And then another 100 in the
evening.’
Uthak-baithak, translated loosely as squats, is a favourite warm-up routine of
wrestlers. I dare anybody to do hundreds of them daily, let alone a child. Of
course, that was just the beginning. Like a doctor’s handwritten prescription that
often fills the entire page, Mullah Pehelwan’s prescription of exercises filled my
days: there were the endless dand push-ups, sit-ups, weightlifting exercises with
dumb-bells, core-building workouts, stretches so intensely deep that they
stretched every fibre of one’s being . . . When you visit an akhara, you will see
that pehelwans easily take an hour or longer to warm their bodies up. The kushti
match itself rarely lasts as long as the exercises to build bodies and warm the
blood.
Few fragrances can match the saundhi smell of the akhara! Most holy places
have a beautiful, unforgettable aroma, like, say, that of incense. The akhara is
sacred to pehelwans and so it is no different. The pit is made up of a combination
of special mud and clay, hand-picked lovingly and carefully to be as soft as a
mattress—so that you never get hurt when you fall on it. They revere this little
patch of land like devotees. And like devotees worshipping at the altar, the
pehelwans too, lovingly performed their own rituals of worship. A mixture of
fragrances would fill the air as they sprinkled water on this sacred patch of earth.
I got some langots stitched as the thrill of wrestling gripped me. As did my
friend Vakil. Barely a couple of years older than me, about nine or ten years old,
Vakil and I used to watch and practise pehelwani together. Moves in wrestling
are called daav. We used to try daav with each other. For instance, kabhi dhobi
pachad ka daav laga diya. This is a classic move where you toss your opponent
over their back in the vein of a dhobi dealing with his washing. There were also
countless other moves like kasauta, baharli and machli gota.
‘Nawaz is a great wrestler,’ Mullah Pehelwan used to tell Abbu but before
Abbu could bask in pride, he would quickly add, ‘but he is rather weak.’
This oxymoron was completely true. In spite of the disciplined diet and
exercise regimen, I remained weak. But the incredible thing was that I used to
beat my opponent using my mind rather than my muscle. Therefore, I often
performed a certain daav before anybody could anticipate it. Given my cunning,
quick wit and my frail structure, I soon came to be known as Teetar Pehelwan.
Teetar is a tiny bird which doesn’t have much stamina. I was no different. I
couldn’t wrestle for too long. Typical wrestling matches lasted for at least half an
hour but not the ones I fought. Mera ek hi baar mein chit-pat ho jata tha. Either
the opponent would defeat me or I would defeat him, all within a minute.
Naturally, nobody could put me in a tournament. I was too risky. So I came to be
known as Risky Pehelwan as well.
My performance was so bloody unpredictable that nobody, not just lay people
and spectators but also experts, and even the mighty Mullah Pehelwan himself,
could predict if this Teetar Pehelwan would win or lose. They could not even
hazard a guess. Sometimes, I would perform a wonder and leave everybody
silent in awe. People never expected that a frail, skinny little chap like me could
defeat a hefty, muscular wrestler.
Once there was a tournament for seniors who were mostly a bunch of
youngsters aged between eighteen and twenty years. People came from all the
surrounding villages to watch it. Among the champions the spectators were
rooting for was this one particular muscle powerhouse called Qamaruddin who
was from my akhara. To us fledglings, he was our local champ. In fact, he lived
quite close to my house. Unlike the bodybuilders you see sweating in today’s
gyms, guys like Qamaruddin had real stamina and unparalleled strength.
Qamaruddin was a strange chap. Renowned for his Herculean strength, he could
single-handedly beat up a dozen guys to a pulp. And yet, he never won a single
match. That day, this puny little me ended up defeating him. Imagine! Just like
that, in a daav he never anticipated. The spectators were obviously upset. Not
because their beloved champion had lost or anything like that. But because you
need to build up a tempo in a match; however, here in true Risky Pehelwan style,
the whole bout was over in a few minutes, before they could even sink
themselves into the fight!
This Qamaruddin, he was a classic character of Budhana. Every time I hear
the popular idiom ‘akal badi ki bhains’ (all brawn and no brain), I can’t help but
think of him. In fact, he lived with many buffaloes. Bhainso ke saath reh, reh kar
woh khud bhi bhains ban gaya tha. We become the company we keep and
