Someone to my delight sent an anonymous poem ‘Bandra Meri Jann’ to me on WhatsApp. The amateurish poem took me on a trek to the Carter Road, the Linking Road, the Pali Hill and Bandstand of Bombay. It made me relish the soothing breeze blowing along the Carter Road, relive the experiences of the pageant of buzzing street Bazars, high profile designer boutiques, gaudy and stylish shoes and trendy fashion of the Linking Road, and glamour, romances and freedom of the Bandstand. Nonetheless, the poem also took me on an odyssey to the teenage days- full of fancies, fantasies, and dreams.
Truly, those were simple nevertheless beautiful days. The films were the ultimate thing we thought and talked about, and the big sin we committed was watching a film in a neighborhood cinema hall without permission from our mothers. Moreover, sticking pictures of film actors and actress cut from film magazine on the backside of the door of our reading rooms was another aberration that we indulged in, to the annoyance of our parents. The scenes, songs, and dialogues of the film lived with us for days, to the extent of fixation. Some friends got an overdose of films and started imagining getting to the stardom of the matinee world. Often, some films overawed a couple of my friends as if possessed by genies and no exorcist, as reputed as Razak Gour of Nowhatta could cast out the spirits of films from them. Looking into the mirror, posing before it and comparing to one or other film actor on a barbers shop at one of the roundabouts in our Mohalla had become the best pastime for many of us. For oiling his hair profusely with mustard oil to the level of oil driblets streaming down his face one of my friends was nicknamed as “Talwar-I-Teel.” Before leaving to school he at least visited barbers shop twice for looking in the mirror and combing his hair in Dilip Kumar or Dev Anand style – he would ask youngest of the three barbers to comment on his hairstyle- which one of the two stars it resembled. Sitting on a shopfront, like many other teenage cine-goers of the Mohalla, he often talked about trying his luck in Bombay. Those days one would often hear stories bout boys’ crossing over to Pakistan or fleeing to Bombay for trying their luck in films. Most of them months later returning home penniless and in tatters.
Those days, Shama, a film and literary magazine was very popular, many a boy read it as religiously as their textbooks and parroted addresses and date of births as good as their lessons. It was those days that I for the first time heard the words like Palli Hill and Bandra Bandstand. Then, in wildest of my dreams, I had not thought to get a posting in Bombay, knowing some top actors, producers, eminent film writers and meeting boys visiting the metropolitan with dreams of becoming actors- ending up in a lurch. Moreover, attending some errand jobs in these much sought after places. One winter, a group of legislators on tour to the Metropolitan wanted to visit some film studio for watching film shooting- the same was arranged at Ramanand Sagar’s studio. While conducting them to a film studio, one of the legislators, with child’s smile on his face asked me, if he did not resemble Raj Kumar – and if I could get a role for him in some film.
Stories of some boys dreaming of becoming film actors and ending up tatters continue to be part of my memory. One night, the chief executive rang me up, informed me that son of an MLA had ‘fled to Bombay, and asked me to search him out. Three to four days later Bombay police found him in bad shape at an ‘ugly place.’ One fine morning, in my Chicago building office at about 11 AM, a semi famished shabbily dressed boy from North Kashmir entered my chamber. Chasing his dream of becoming an actor, he had landed at the Bandra Bandstand—in changed demeanor seven years later he met me in Lal Chowk and told me he was looking after a Darasgah in North Kashmir.