BALRAJ SAHNI LEARNT ACTING THE HARD WAY
Balraj Sahni had to undergo a lot of pain and trauma before he emerged as a veteran actor in the Bollywood. After arriving in Mumbai in 1944 he got his first break as an actor in a film called ‘Justice’ produced by Phani Majumdar. He recounts the treatment meted out to him by the film heroine Sneh Lata: “During the shot, she would converse with me but she would not look at me; she had her eyes on the camera all the time. All the time during the shot, she made me feel as though I was suffering from some foul disease, and that she must keep me at a distance.”
About this experience he later wrote: “I had thought that there were no walls of ‘high’ and ‘low’ in the film world. How sadly mistaken I was! In the film industry there were walls at every step. In the other spheres of social life, these walls may be made of brick and mortar, but in the world of Hindi film these walls are made of granite.”
He did not take to acting easily and the torment which he had to suffer while developing his ability as an actor was terrible. In his own words: “Going before the camera appeared to me to be like going before the gallows. I would try hard to compose myself. Sometimes the rehearsals too would go off all right. Everyone would encourage me. But right in the middle of the shot, something would go wrong, and I would feel every limb in my body going stiff; my tongue going down my gullet. Thereafter, one retake would follow another. I would feel as though everyone standing around me was staring at me. I would try hard not to think about it but to concentrate on the role and my performance, but everything would go out of focus, and I would feel as though the doors of the art of acting had been closed on me for ever and ever.”
This situation persisted for quite sometime and left him in low spirits. He describes his condition while making of another film: “I was in bad shape when ‘Hum Log’ went on the sets….The fear of the camera, which had always been oppressive like a ‘mountain on my chest’, became unbearable. Anwar Hussain was playing with me. On seeing him act, my self-confidence would desert me, and I would lose my nerve altogether. Not to talk of shots, I could not even rehearse properly. My situation can be understood by the fact that at one time, when I came out of the studio for a breath of fresh air and lay down on a bench, I wetted my pants.”
While shooting for the same film, one day he felt that he had not acted well even in a single shot. On reaching home when he saw his wife, he started crying and banged his head against a wall saying "I can never become an actor, never.”
Things continued like this for sometime. Then during the shooting of ‘Do Bigha Zameen’ he stumbled upon the real art of acting. He says: “A basic rule of acting had come my way suddenly, not from any book but from life itself. The more completely the actor identifies himself with the role he has to play, the more successful he will be. When Arjun in the Mahabharata was going to shoot his arrow, he fixed his gaze only at the eye of the bird, which was his aim…”
When this understanding dawned upon Balraj Sahni he started giving sterling performances. Among his best films are ‘Garm Coat’, ‘Do Bigha Zameen’, ‘Aulad’, ‘Kabuliwala’, ‘Waqt’, ‘Ek Phool Do Mali’, and ‘Garm Hawa’. In all these films he merged his identity with that of the character he was portraying and in the process was established as an actor in the Bombay film-industry.
Balraj Sahni had to undergo a lot of pain and trauma before he emerged as a veteran actor in the Bollywood. After arriving in Mumbai in 1944 he got his first break as an actor in a film called ‘Justice’ produced by Phani Majumdar. He recounts the treatment meted out to him by the film heroine Sneh Lata: “During the shot, she would converse with me but she would not look at me; she had her eyes on the camera all the time. All the time during the shot, she made me feel as though I was suffering from some foul disease, and that she must keep me at a distance.”
About this experience he later wrote: “I had thought that there were no walls of ‘high’ and ‘low’ in the film world. How sadly mistaken I was! In the film industry there were walls at every step. In the other spheres of social life, these walls may be made of brick and mortar, but in the world of Hindi film these walls are made of granite.”
He did not take to acting easily and the torment which he had to suffer while developing his ability as an actor was terrible. In his own words: “Going before the camera appeared to me to be like going before the gallows. I would try hard to compose myself. Sometimes the rehearsals too would go off all right. Everyone would encourage me. But right in the middle of the shot, something would go wrong, and I would feel every limb in my body going stiff; my tongue going down my gullet. Thereafter, one retake would follow another. I would feel as though everyone standing around me was staring at me. I would try hard not to think about it but to concentrate on the role and my performance, but everything would go out of focus, and I would feel as though the doors of the art of acting had been closed on me for ever and ever.”
This situation persisted for quite sometime and left him in low spirits. He describes his condition while making of another film: “I was in bad shape when ‘Hum Log’ went on the sets….The fear of the camera, which had always been oppressive like a ‘mountain on my chest’, became unbearable. Anwar Hussain was playing with me. On seeing him act, my self-confidence would desert me, and I would lose my nerve altogether. Not to talk of shots, I could not even rehearse properly. My situation can be understood by the fact that at one time, when I came out of the studio for a breath of fresh air and lay down on a bench, I wetted my pants.”
While shooting for the same film, one day he felt that he had not acted well even in a single shot. On reaching home when he saw his wife, he started crying and banged his head against a wall saying "I can never become an actor, never.”
Things continued like this for sometime. Then during the shooting of ‘Do Bigha Zameen’ he stumbled upon the real art of acting. He says: “A basic rule of acting had come my way suddenly, not from any book but from life itself. The more completely the actor identifies himself with the role he has to play, the more successful he will be. When Arjun in the Mahabharata was going to shoot his arrow, he fixed his gaze only at the eye of the bird, which was his aim…”
When this understanding dawned upon Balraj Sahni he started giving sterling performances. Among his best films are ‘Garm Coat’, ‘Do Bigha Zameen’, ‘Aulad’, ‘Kabuliwala’, ‘Waqt’, ‘Ek Phool Do Mali’, and ‘Garm Hawa’. In all these films he merged his identity with that of the character he was portraying and in the process was established as an actor in the Bombay film-industry.
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