The Sahni brothers: Parikshit Sahni remembers father Balraj Sahni and uncle Bhisham Sahni

Balraj sahni and Bhisham Sahni were both extraordinary human beings in their own inimitable ways and were giants in their fields — my father in the film industry and Bhishamji in the domain of writing. They left their footprints on the sands of time, but both were very different from each other.

People admired Dad and he admired himself, being something of a narcissist. The public builds an image of an actor based on the type of roles he or she plays, which are often stereotyped. Yet, even the audience knows that these are mere roles, not a depiction of who they truly are. The personality attributed to Dad often was of a somber and mature man who loved his people. — Parikshit Sahni

Dad was 6 feet tall, fair, suave and slim, with thinning hair carefully groomed like that of his hero, Lord Gordon Byron. He was a handsome man with a Roman nose and sharp features, and had an endearing personality. Bhishamji, on the other hand, was on the shorter side, about 5 feet, 8 inches, stockily built, darkish in complexion, with a shock of thick, unkempt hair. He also had an aquiline nose. His eyes were like those of a hawk — piercing and penetrating.

People admired Dad and he admired himself, being something of a narcissist. The public builds an image of an actor based on the type of roles he or she plays, which are often stereotyped. Yet, even the audience knows that these are mere roles, not a depiction of who they truly are. The personality attributed to Dad often was of a somber, responsible and mature man who loved his people. Whether it was Shambu in ‘Do Bigha Zamin’ or Abdur Rahman Khan in ‘Kabuliwala’, one of the most significant traits Dad demonstrated both on the screen and in real life was dignity. This quality was deeply entrenched in his persona and he somehow managed to infuse it in his myriad roles, no matter how varied they were.

Dad had a roving eye. He thrived on the attention of women and was sorely disappointed if they ignored him. He needed people around him and loved to talk and be the centre of attention in any gathering. He had a flair for story-telling and loved cracking jokes and narrating anecdotes. He was not, like Bhishamji, of a contemplative bent of mind. He was an out and out extrovert.

Bhishamji was a man of few words. He was an introvert. He spoke either in monosyllables or short, pithy sentences. He always spoke to the point and was not prone to chit-chat. He chose his words carefully and what he said was full of wisdom. Like his older brother, whom I think he hero-worshipped to some extent, he was crystal clear, simple and transparent in his thinking and his dealings with others. Bhishamji was primarily a listener and, as he told me once, loved to ‘go deep into life and its manifestations’.

While Dad had a giant ego, Bhishamji was almost devoid of it. He was humble and unassuming, almost self-deprecatory. Many of his friends called him ‘Christ-like’. In a gathering, if he was called on to say something, he usually spoke softly, succinctly and to the point and then resumed his sphinx-like silence. As far as I know, Bhishamji had no eyes for anyone other than Sheilaji.

Dad’s openness left no room for speculation about his nature. As a friend of mine once said, ‘He never grew up.’ There was a childlike simplicity about him, an artless innocence about the way he viewed the world. He derived uncomplicated and unsullied joy from little things, and it was this uncontrived purity and humility and his ‘transparent sincerity’ (as Bhishamji called it) that made him great. This facet of his personality was projected strongly on the screen and this is what endeared him to his audience.

Anger did not run in the family. Grandpa was a quiet man. I never saw him losing his temper. I don’t remember anyone raising his or her voice in the entire family. It was considered uncultured and uncouth.

I can’t recall the two brothers ever losing their temper either, except twice. Dad raised his voice when during the shooting of ‘Deedar’, I was made to run around in a storm (to create which they used a huge fan) which he thought was very dangerous for me and callous of the director, and also once when on the very first day of the shooting of a film, he was made to sit all day long without a single shot being taken. He left the set in a huff without saying goodbye to the unit. And he arrived home livid. His face was red and he was fuming.

But Dad’s temper cooled off as quickly as it had risen. This was also true of Bhishamji. Even if he did get annoyed, he just grimaced, looked pensive for a while and then forgot all about it. When I was living with him at Patel Nagar in Delhi, I noticed a strange patch on a wall of the drawing room one day. I asked Sheilaji how it got there and she said, ‘I said something inadvertently while he was writing. It disturbed him. So he threw a banana at the wall to cool off. The banana was ruined — completely flattened!’ It seemed that throwing the banana at the wall had cooled off Bhishamji instantaneously.

Neither Dad nor Bhishamji ever let angry thoughts dwell in their minds for long! They had a stoicism that allowed them to accept calmly whatever transpired, without getting unduly upset or dismayed.

I think the two brothers inherited this quality of stoicism from their father.

If there is one thing I learnt from Bhishamji and Dad, it was their tenacity and will power. When the two made up their minds to do something, they went for it hammer and tongs. Dad became a consummate actor through sheer persistence and by dint of hard work. Bhishamji’s lingua franca was Punjabi and his initial work in Hindi was not taken seriously. But, through unrelenting study and practice, he mastered the language till he could write in it as fluently and efficiently as any Hindi writer. Within a few years, he had made a name for himself as a short story writer and novelist.

Dad was a fiery revolutionary and a non-conformist while Bhishamji was staid and conservative. He had been influenced by Dad’s Marxist and revolutionary views, no doubt, but not to the extent of throwing his past upbringing overboard. Bhishamji, for all his ‘progressive’ leanings, was not dogmatic in his outlook and kept his feet on the ground; he remained, till the end of his life, a pragmatist with a philosophic bent of mind.

Unlike Dad, he was not a man of extremes or towering passions. As I saw it, he followed the middle path. Tsetse said, ‘He is most wisely drunk who is half drunk.’ So, whereas Dad loved his tipple in the evening (often overdoing it), Bhishamji rarely drank. Both brothers loved the working class, the ‘proletariat’ as they called them, and considered them the backbone of any society. Both stayed close to the working classes, the peasants and farmers, but in their own different ways. Dad regularly visited the slums and helped the dwellers. In the evening, Bhishamji made it a point to go to the bazaar. He enjoyed chatting with shopkeepers and people, observing them closely and intermingling with the crowds. Like Dad, he was a people’s man.

Neither Bhishamji nor Sheilaji were egoists; I think the very concept was foreign to them. Bhishamji was by nature a very humble man and bereft of anger, resentment or hate. He was the living embodiment of the saying that ‘the branches of a tree laden with fruit bend low’. But this was not the case with Dad. He, like most actors, thrived on adulation. He was proud of his talent and resented it when it was not acknowledged. And justifiably so. He had striven hard to achieve his standing in the film industry.

As far as family life was concerned, Bhishamji was a conformist. His was an arranged marriage. He did not have an overtly romantic bent of mind. His bride was petite and very well educated, the daughter of a police officer. Although charming, some of the life of a police officer had rubbed off on Sheilaji. She could be strict when the occasion demanded and did not put up with any nonsense. And Bhishamji was an artiste, a writer and a professor, and a man of few words. Once in a while, she would come down hard on him, but he never retaliated. He was humble to the point of self-abnegation and loved Sheilaji for what she was.

The bedrock of their relationship was harmonious, strong and unshakeable. In spite of an occasional outburst from Sheilaji, the household was full of fun and laughter, with never any tension. There was an endearing informality between the two of them which one could not help but appreciate and admire, and this had a salutary effect on the children. There was peace, amity and cheerfulness in the house.

Dad and Mum, however, were formal with one other. He called her Toshji and she addressed him as ‘tussi’ or ‘aap’, unlike Sheilaji, who called her husband by his name or Bhisho, and Bhishamji called her by her name, Sheila, without the ji at the end.

Dad was voluble. He always needed company. He needed someone to second his opinions. Mummy, in contrast, was the strong and silent one. She spoke in monosyllables and to the point. She, like Bhishamji, was more of a listener.

Dad valued Mummy’s opinion the most. He himself was quite indecisive and always depended on her advice. He was the garrulous one, but she always had the final word.

In writing about the two brothers, I have realised how beneficial a sibling can be. Despite their different philosophies, their contrasting temperaments and their dissimilar personalities, Dad and Bhishamji were each other’s best friends.

Bhishamji was a heavyweight in his own right. Rather than being consumed by sibling rivalry and jealousy, he strongly supported Dad and took great pride in him; the two of them were incomplete without each other. And being only two years apart, they also shared the trauma of upheaval caused by Partition, which left an indelible mark on their psyche.

The itinerant life thrust on the family because of Partition was unsettling, to say the least. Barely had we got used to one place than we moved to another. It was Kashmir first, then for a short while Bombay, then Dharamsala and then Ambala. This was the cause of considerable insecurity and confusion.

When Dad married again (after Mom’s death at a young age), I looked forward to finally leading a ‘settled’ life. Bombay was where Dad was and that is where I belonged. And that is where, for the first time in my life, I faced stormy weather. Mummy was new to Bombay; Dad, far from having a regular job, was in jail for his revolutionary activities and the family was stone broke.

Dad took all the vicissitudes of life on the chin, for he loved stormy weather; he fought a hard battle and emerged victorious in the end. There was nothing of the pacifist in him. ‘Nothing risked, nothing gained’ was his motto. Mediocrity was an odious word for Dad. He wanted to excel in whatever he did. And excel he did.

Bhishamji’s life flowed placidly, like the Ganges — calmly and noiselessly. Dad led a stormy life. And yet, the two brothers, so totally different in appearance and attitudes, with such different lifestyles, were in complete harmony, like two sides of the same coin. 

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