The Alkazi-Padamsee Family Memoir is history of theatre too

Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry

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I joined the National School of Drama in the mid-Seventies and Ebrahim Alkazi, the charismatic and adored teacher, challenged our limitations and pushed us into the unknown terrains of our own possibilities. Costumes for all the shows were designed by his wife, Roshen, a diminutive woman clad in a sari, with not a pleat out of place. She taught us about colour, texture and the intricacies of designing costumes for the stage. Her sister-in-law Pearl Padamsee was a close friend and neighbour and her home Bella Terrace became an extension of my home in Cuffe Parade, Bombay. Hence, the feeling of déjà vu while reading this book written by Feisal Alkazi, son of Roshen and Ebrahim Alkazi, was strong and sharp.

I have frequented Kulsum Terrace, the Padamsee family home, but unfortunately never noticed the horseshoe table from where, as the author provocatively says, English theatre in India was born. His uncle Sultan Padamsee (known as Bobby to all) made his cast of young actors read scripts around this table, followed by endless discussions, arguments and airing of creative ideas. Sultan’s alternative sexuality and tragic suicide at the age of 24 loomed like a dark shadow over both the families. In 1943, he was a modern-day guru to a legion of theatre artistes in Bombay, but unfortunately became the doomed Greek hero from one of his own plays.

‘Enter Stage Right’ is a first-person narrative, unravelling complex family histories, alliances, weaving incidents, moods, colours, tones and sounds with a compelling vividness, making you feel like a participant in this multi-generational chronicle. Wonderfully candid, it holds a magic mirror to the lives of both these families without euphemism or subterfuge. There is both heart and darkness in the writing. It requires courage to open sealed trunks of memories and spill out family histories, hurts and joys without sentimentality.

The archives from where these memories have been pulled out may ostensibly appear haphazard and fractured, but there is a luminous lucidity and clarity, having the ability to both bruise, sear and uplift.

What I found heartwarming is that it stops short of being judgmental or self-indulgent — a tone that could have crept in, given that this is a memoir from a son who saw his parents’ marriage fray at the edges. Despite the collapse of the relationship between his parents, it was sustained tenuously by their inextricable shared creative journey, linking them in ways that went beyond conventional silos.

“On a dark October evening while we were at dinner, my father’s cook answered a doorbell downstairs and came up to tell my father that there was a woman at the door asking to meet him. It was my mother looking sad and desolate with a small suitcase clutched in her hands. My parents and Uma disappeared together into one of the bedrooms for over three hours. Amal and I sat in the cold night wide awake below the bare tree trunk with which my father had decorated his living room. We were the two loneliest children in the world that night. We knew our fate was being decided in the next room, and we had no part to play in shaping it. We knew life would never be the same again.”

There is no deep freeze in the mind, where memories are stored intact. Memories are always interpretive, subjective and it is the power of the imagination that makes them come alive. The biographer is not obliged to tell the whole truth, he chooses what to edit and what to reveal from the accumulated stories that are gathered over a lifetime. The indiscretions, likes and dislikes, taboos and indulgences which could fill many ledgers, are choices made by the biographer. When the biographer happens to be connected to most of the main protagonists through blood, it’s like walking a tightrope with a vertiginous view.