May your car never stall in the street.

Having just written about the pedal powered scooters, cars and bikes of my childhood, it's time to tell you about a hilarious song Suraiya http://tinyurl.com/5urtpx & http://tinyurl.com/5t6cxx sang for the movie, Moti Mahal (1952), in which her co-star was Ajit of the much later Loin fame. What's wonderful about the song is the verve and comic timing with which she sang it. This is remarkable because she was known for her sad songs. I've translated this wonderfully happy song into English staying as faithful to the original text and true to the English idiomatic usage as possible.

May your car never stall in the street.
May you never have to stand helpless in the street.
May your car never stall in the street.

Clothes dirtied, face blackened
Never mind whether you're Suraiya (ahem!) or Madhubala (tra-la-la!)
The mightiest become the butt of a joke in the street.
May your car never stall in the street.

You crank the handle again and again.
Push the car again and again till you're light-headed.
She's virtually made mincemeat of you in the street.
May your car never stall in the street.

You feed her oil, top her water level.
To no avail, because the shrew's stone-hearted!
Cry your eyes out, remember all your forefathers in the street.
May your car never stall in the street.

The world is absolutely right.
Only she who runs deserves to be called a car.
A car with a puncture is akin to a bullock cart, no less.
May your car never stall in the street.

May your car never stall in the street.
May you never have to stand helpless in the street.
May your car never stall in the street.

I'm sure my rendering is nowhere close to the original Hindustani lyrics spraklingly penned by Mulkraj Bhakri and set to foot-tapping music by Hansraj Behl. The text I followed is on p.35 of Hit Filmi Geet, Suraiya compiled and edited by Ganga Prasad Sharma for Manoj Publications, Delhi.

I would like to end this post with a bit of Hindi film trivia. Suraiya and Madhubala were obviously big names by 1952. (This was the year I passed my SSC examination, by the way.) Suraiya was obviously the bigger of the two (she mock-coughed while singing her own name in the song in the second stanza). Mahal (1949) had already boosted Madhubala's popularity and star value. Coincidentally, Madhubala was to star six years later in Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi, the hit comedy that got its name from a line in the song above (the second line in the fifth stanza: "Only she who runs deserves to be called a car"). The back page blurb of the song book I mentioned earlier informs me that Suraiya used to do her daily riyaz with the help of a gramophone or phonograph. She would play a 78 rpm record and sing along. Suraiya acted with Prithviraj Kapoor http://tinyurl.com/44dzbz & http://tinyurl.com/6boovk in Ishaara (1943) when she was 18. Later, she also acted with his sons Raj Kapoor in Daastan (1950) and Shammi Kapoor in Shama Parwana (1954). I was surprised to find out from the same source that she knew Marathi apart from Hindi, Urdu and Farsi. Like Noor Jahan, Suraiya could team up with any hero and still make a success of the film she had starred in. Phenomenal!

Gruelling test.

I’m impressed, bro. Watching the kids going through a punishing regimen year after year to pass the Secondary School Certificate examination with flying colours is a truly humbling experience. In my times, I had neither such single-minded focus nor such persistence and stamina for studies. What’s more, I don’t remembering a rigorously planned study schedule. I vaguely remember, however, the shocking pink cover of a paperback book I had picked up around six months before my coming ordeal. That one was supposed to advice me on the best way to study, if memory serves. I guess I didn’t pay serious heed to its wise counsel and went about my studies haphazardedly and sporadically. I wasn’t a brilliant student by any manner of means. I managed to scrape my way through with a 70 per cent score and a school prize in English, though. In contrast, I see today’s kids – some of whom Ujwal tutors in English and Marathi – cheerfully slaving their lives in studies and in tuitions. In spite of having little free time for themselves, they are so well informed on what’s going on around them: the latest movies, the latest hits, the latest video releases, the latest restaurants and pizza parlours, the latest malls, the latest multiplexes, the latest cricket scores, the latest Bollywood gossip. When I was their age, I was hardly as knowledgeable. I must confess, though, that around the time I passed high school, there was not much happening except maybe Radio Ceylon, Binaca Hit Parade, Raj Kapoor and Nargis, Nat King Cole, The Platters, Gene Kelly and Lana Turner in The Three Musketeers and stuff like that. Being hip then was probably wearing jeans and reading comics and nibbling hot dogs and sipping coffee in the garden cafeteria of the Excelsior Cinema. How times have changed, bro?

Role model.

Believe it or not (sorry, Ripley), my role model once upon a time happened to be an actor. I somehow instinctively started to admire him. He was a theatre and film actor and a Communist. He used to visit the Red Flag Hall on the first floor of 233 Khetwadi Main Road off and on. http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/07/morgue.html. This morning, I happened to notice an excerpt from his autobiography translated into Marathi in a Sunday supplement. He writes in this segment (‘My first turn in prison’) about his early days in the Hindi film industry. In it, he mentions about how he used to be escorted from the Arthur Road Jail back in 1949 in order to fulfill his commitment to act in K Asif’s Hulchul. He had been arrested for participating in a morcha or protest march that had a rather bang-up climax in Parel. He recalls how his fellow inmates used to ask him to bring back signed photographs of Dilip Kumar and Nargis, bidis, specific brands of cigarettes, tea powder and so on. K Asif who had arranged for his daily trip to the Rooptara Studio used to obligingly instruct one of his assistants to do the shopping. Our first-time jailbird also recalls how Sahir Ludhianavi, a poet and fellow traveller under police surveillance, who dropped on the sets because he heard he was shooting for Hulchul, beat a hasty retreat when he saw our man dressed as a policeman (his role as jailor required it). He also writes about a totally self-absorbed Raj Kapoor dropping in one morning and talking only about himself and the film he was then shooting, Barsaat, without ever bothering to enquire about his friend’s predicament. What I admire about our guy is that he describes the incidence without any rancour or accusation – as a mere witness in the true Advaita sense. Every time I watched him on the screen I got that certain feeling about him that here was one human being who was sincere, simple, honest, forthright, humble and decent to the core. Even that biggest liar in the whole wide world – the movie camera – could not hide the truth about Balraj Sahani.

The family car.

The first Mankar family car, a maroon and black Wolseley Wasp http://www.users.bigpond.com/jimjarron/car_pictures_files/wolseley_wasp.jpg used to be parked in the porch in the front part of the compound of 233 Khetwadi Main Road when I was, I’m guessing, five or so. So, it must have been purchased a few years earlier. I remember going for long evening drives with my mother up the Walkeshwar Road to the Malabar Hill Gardens, down the Marine Drive to the Chowpatty Sea Face and sometimes as far away as Cuffe Parade where now the Taj President stands. There used to be a raised pedestrian promenade along the Cuffe Parade Sea Face very similar to what you can still find at the Worli Sea Face. The other outings included visits to my two maternal uncles, my mother’s sister, two of her friends and a couple of shops where my mother used to shop regularly for sarees and silverware. The elder uncle used to reside on the ground floor of the house still extant opposite the Roxy Cinema on the Queen’s Road within walking distance of Royal Opera House, the cinema theatre of choice for V Shantaram and Raj Kapoor, that also used to double as a playhouse for Prithviraj Kapoor’s stage plays. (By the way, I was born in the Roxy-facing flat on a rain-drenched Janmashtami midnight in August.) Somewhere around 1948, the Wolseley made way for a brand new red Renault 4CV. This French car had just come into the market http://www.geocities.com/richardirl/oandd.html and had the distinction of being one of the few cars to reach the 1 million production mark in Europe. It was reputed to be the French retort to the German Volkswagen Beetle. It seemed more like flattery to me because it resembled the latter quite a bit. (That’s how I probably got infected with the Beetle bug. One of my youthful ambitions was to possess one.) I learned driving on the Renault and turned out to be an atrocious learner. I could just barely start and steer the vehicle but was very slovenly at parking. I once got a ticket for turning left at the traffic signal near the Church Gate Station from no less an officer than the Deputy Police Commissioner of Bombay (this was probably in 1954 or 1955). That worthy was under the impression that there was a traffic signal there. Fortunately for me, it was a free turn. I got acquitted in the Esplanade Court near the Victoria Terminus with my father defending me. My brush with the law was responsible, I guess, for the police putting a proper traffic signal at the Church Gate junction immediately afterwards. My father sold off the Renault around 1960 when it became almost impossible to maintain. Genuine spare parts were hard to come by. Also, I suspect, my father was not doing so well by then. Although I had a job in 1960, my salary could not have paid for a month’s petrol bill. The third family car which I bought came much later in the early 1980s. It was from the very first batch of Maruti Suzukis, s green and air conditioned Maruti 800. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki. Ashu and Abhi used to chauffer us around in it all over Mumbai and sometimes to Pune. Of the two, Abhi was the car connoisseur and really knew how to look after it well. (He had learned it, I reckon, taking care of the grey Fiat which his granny owned.) The Maruti was sold off around 1987 when Abhi went to the US for higher studies. Since then, the Mankar family car happens to be whichever black and yellow cab, mostly Fiat, I hail to go wherever I’m going at the time.

Not my best friend's wedding.

Imagine this, boys and girls. I’m sitting in the front row of the Scout Pavilion auditorium on a Saturday morning. The stage is set for a Pathare Prabhu wedding under the watchful gaze of Sir Robert Baden-Powell, aka the ‘Chief Scout of the World’, and his sister, Agnes. (The Pathare or Pratihara Prabhus, in case you didn’t know, are said to be the progeny of Rajput and Koli or fisher folk confluence. They came to Mumbai probably circa the 12th or 13th century and did their bit for the city. They built the Mahalaxmi Temple, for instance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathare_prabhu.) The groom is a Brahmin, though. This marriage is made in the heaven called the US of A. Only the nuptials are held in India. The rituals on the stage absorb me no end. Equally fascinating is the spectacle of the men folk from the bride’s side dressed like their ancestors in silken achkans and gold-bordered dhotis toting red pagdis (turbans) from Pune and cell phones and video cams from god knows where. But soon my attention wanders as a parallel play debuts without warning around me. Characters from my past hail me and start reminiscing animatedly. Some of them I recognize. Some I don’t. Not my intention to hurt anyone, mind you. It’s just my selective memory’s mischief. One cousin asks me if I remember her. A bit, I say. She questions the ‘bit’ bit. I smile and change the subject. Thank my lucky stars she doesn’t insist on knowing my remembered ‘bit’. My vivid memory of her is overhearing her gossip session with her elder sister and a cousin. They were drooling over Raj Kapoor and lamenting Nargis’s “good fortune”, by the way. P.S.: I found a lot of interesting stuff about the Pathare Prabhus whose number is now said to have been whittled down to 15000 or thereabouts. To know a bit about the marriage (‘lagna’) rituals, do visit http://www.pathareprabhu.org/traditions/lagna.htm.