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Vignettes from the life of Balwant Gargi
As the Balwant Gargi (1916-2003) centenary year draws to a close, actor-writer Amrik Gill is in the city for a dramatic reading of his bio-fiction on his teacher and mentor titled ‘Gargi the Great’. Not only was Amrik a student of Gargi but also his companion living with him in Delhi while he was a student at the National School of Drama.
As the Balwant Gargi (1916-2003) centenary year draws to a close, actor-writer Amrik Gill is in the city for a dramatic reading of his bio-fiction on his teacher and mentor titled ‘Gargi the Great’. Not only was Amrik a student of Gargi but also his companion living with him in Delhi while he was a student at the National School of Drama.
Amrik, an award-winning dialogue writer for the Sanjay Leela Bhansali directorial ‘Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam’ and several others, has remained a popular theatre figure known for his wit and penchant for comedy since the mid-70s when he was a student. His take on the colourful Gargi has been enacted to rapturous audience home and abroad but he says in an interview: “I have updated the text of Gargi the Great and added many innovations.” He is making the centenary presentation in the city on the invitation of the Chandigarh Sangeet Natak Akademi at Punjab Kala Bhawan on Sunday morning.
How did he think of writing this appreciative ode to Gargi laced with humour? Amrik replies, “Some years ago Satinder Singh Noor asked be for a long biographical story on Gargi for the Samdarshi, a Punjabi magazine, he edited. I had written several stories published in leading Punjabi journals in my younger days. However, I discussed this project with director Shyam Benegal who said this genre was gaining popularity in Italy and France. It had to be based on the life of a personality and experiences with her/him but techniques of fiction writing are added to it. I took care to see that even when I related humorous encounters, the dignity of our mentor.”
The text has some remarkable episodes as Amrik was an insider living with Gargi on a stipend and writing out his books in Punjabi as Gargi was not good at written Gurmukhi. A time came when Gargi’s payments from publishers were delayed and the two of them had to survive on sugarless tea for two long days. “The third evening I remembered that Gargi received an invitation from a female student for her wedding but Gargi said he had thrown it in the big garbage heap on the road outside his Curzon Road annexe so we went to retrieve it,” says Amrik. The rest is some wonderful writing right from fishing out pieces of the card, attending the wedding dinner with alcohol and chicken aplenty and returning home dancing on the deserted streets. “A Haryanvi policeman stopped us and screamed at Gargi for behaving like a teenager and admonished me for endangering an old man’s life by letting him roam the roads on a winter’s night.”
In a sneak peek, Amrik tells: “It was Gargi’s will in which he asked his friends and students to celebrate his death, eat, drink and be merry and cast his ashes in a canal close to Bathinda which was his hometown.” And there is an episode in which old-woman-death takes him away only to be united to Marilyn Monroe whom Gargi greatly admired!
(nirudutt@gmail.com)
