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BALRAJ SAHNI WAS one of the best actors Indian cinema ever produced. If he hasn't got his rightful place in the pantheon of stars, it is because he was always an actor and a gentleman, and unfortunately, he passed away before the celebrity-worshipping culture came into being. After a stint at teaching and radio broadcasting, Sahni started his acting career with the Indian People's Theatre Association (in plays like 'The Inspector General' and 'Doll's House') and like the rest of his IPTA comrades, he was politically conscious and Left-leaning (he was also arrested in the Communist witchhunt of the early fifties). His debut film in a lead role, 'Dharti Ke Lai' (1946) by K.A. Abbas, was about the Bengal famine and though it got much appreciation for its portrayal of the bitter truth, it did not get Sahni — who played a starving peasant — immediate attention. Apparently, he stayed hungry for several days to get that look of deprivation on his face. The film also featured his wife Damyanti in a lead role.
A little later, films like 'Humlog', 'Do Bigha Zameen' and 'Kabuliwala' got the handsome actor the much-deserved acclaim. In 'Do Bigha Zameen', Bimal Roy's classic about rural poverty and dispossession, Sahni played the role of a rickshaw puller, and so committed he was to his work, that he actually pulled a rickshaw on the streets of Calcutta for several days to give the character full justice. For his role of the Pathan in 'Kabuliwala', he stayed with some Afghans in Mumbai to get their speech and mannerisms right. At a time when method acting was not in vogue, this was ! a measure of Sahni's dedication to his craft. Hindi cinema could hardly offer him enough roles that were worthy of his prodigious talent. But he was brilliant in films like 'Garam Coat', 'Seema', 'Anuradha', 'Kathputli' and 'Sone Ki Chidiya'. Even when he did character roles in films like 'Waqt' (his "Aye meri zohrajabeen" number is unforgettable), 'Duniya', 'Hamraaz', 'EkPhoolDoMali', 'MereHumsafar' and 'Jawani Deewani, he brought such dignity and compassion to the men he played, that he shone effortlessly in a crowd of bigger stars. Some of his best work — 'Haqeeqat', 'Hanste Zakhm', 'Hindustan Ki Kasam' — was with IPTA colleague Chetan Anand, who incidentally, was instrumental in getting him to films. The pinnacle of his career, however, came with M.S. Sathyu's masterpiece 'Garam Hawa' in which he played the head of a Muslim family, that is torn apart by the Partition of India. In spite of the communal riots, the suicide of his daughter and the exodus of Muslims to Pakistan, he makes the decision to stay on in India.
But in spite of so many magnificent performances, which inspired the generation of actors (like Sanjeev Kumar and Naseeruddin Shah) after him, Balraj Sahni never won any major awards. But he was not bitter or angry. Before he died in 1973, he is supposed to have said to his doctor, "I have had a wonderful life and also received an abundance of love. I have no regrets. I thank my countrymen and salute them." |
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