In the end, neem leaves would be fed. If the person had neem leaves and found them bitter, then you knew he had been cured. If he was able to eat them up easily—because obviously the bitterness was not potent enough—then that meant that there was still a lot more work to be done. We called this mildly exorcist process jhadna. Saap ka kaata jhadna—loosely translated as sweeping off the snakebite.
Once we travelled to Delhi with my mother’s brother, my mama, for a relative’s wedding, near Jama Masjid in Daryaganj. Mamu also took me to a popular movie theatre called Regal in Connaught Place which closed down recently. That was the first time for me in a movie theatre, the first time I was watching a film. I fail to recall my exact age, I think I was about six or seven years old. Though I cannot remember its name, the film itself is etched in my mind. After all, you never forget your first film. It starred Shatrughan Sinha and his character was called Jaggu Dada. I was completely mesmerized by him! In this particular film, Sinha had an odd way of running, which stuck with me. I did not know then that I would imitate it soon after, and would continue to do so for years to come.
During the interval, a vendor walked in between the hall’s chairs—as was normal in movie theatres back then—selling Campa Cola. At that tender age, I simply assumed it was for free and ran up to him and asked for a bottle of the precious, elixir-like black bubbles. Naturally, the seller asked me for money. I was surprised. It was the very first time in my life that I figured out the concept of money, that it was a form of exchange. You had to give it to get whatever goods you wanted.
It was a life-changing moment but I did not have the bandwidth to mull over it any longer because the interval was over and the film reel rolled again and I got sucked right back into the world of Jaggu Dada. Without realizing it, I mugged up the character’s dance steps.
There was a strange myth in our area that Shatrughan Sinha was a kasai, and that his famous scars came from his days of being a butcher. Obviously this is not true, but it shows the reach the star had even in remote areas; his impact was legendary enough for rumours and myths to be conjured up and believed in full fervour as facts.
Many years later, Sinha Saheb happened to watch Manjhi: The Mountain Man and said that I not only represented the essence of his home state Bihar beautifully, but was also ‘the discovery of the century’. I cannot describe the ecstasy of this full circle for me. I have met him a few times and he is very fond of me but he has absolutely no idea that the first film I ever watched properly in a theatre was one of his films. Or that his famous film Kalicharan too had left a great impression on me and my childhood. Sinha Saheb sowed seeds of acting in me, before I even knew that I wanted to be an actor.
* * *
During that wedding in Delhi, I noticed what a huge deal shaadi bands were and the enormous impact they had. Right at the very front of the wedding band was often a lead singer belting out popular songs. An assortment of instrumentalists followed him. Around him, people swayed to the rhythms of this song and other people loved watching the dancers. There was this certain ‘wow’ factor, this certain earthy magic to these dancers that was compelling viewing.
Later when I returned to Budhana and performed the same steps that Sinha Saheb did as Jaggu Dada in the film, again I noticed that people loved to watch others dancing. It left a deep mark on me; it was as if I was unconsciously taking mental notes at that tender age when one does not even know what identity is.
I gravitated towards dancing. Whenever I heard a dhol play at weddings or functions, I’d show up with some other kids and we would start dancing. It did not matter whose wedding or function it was. What mattered was that there would be money thrown and I had become a champion at picking up the little piles of rupees that were being dropped all over the place like confetti.
* * *
Another person who left a deep impact on me was the local dafliwala. He walked through all the lanes of the mohalla playing his dafli, a tambourine-like instrument, and singing in his beautiful voice and later asking for money from passers-by. The girls kept watching him. And I kept watching the girls. Seeing how mesmerized they were by his performance, I realized that this humble-looking, gentle and slightly effeminate performer had some X factor in him, something that touched people and made them go ‘wow’. At that point in my childhood—I was about five or six years old—there was no one more fascinating to me in all of Budhana than the dafliwala. I followed him everywhere, right to the outskirts, where he lived. I became so good at following him that I became a sort of GPS and using parameters like tracing his voice and the distance the voice came from, the side it came from, I could literally trace his exact location.
In my eyes, he had achieved so much! It was from those days of stalking him that I knew I wanted to be a performer, just like him.
* * *
When I was about seven, the huge house right next to ours was let out for rent. The new tenant had four or five daughters, all of whom were exquisitely beautiful, with very fair complexion. They were evenly spaced out in age. One of them was about sixteen or seventeen, another a couple of
