Eventually, Shamas swapped the fickleness of films for the relative stability of television. Sure, the steady flow of income we were so desperate for arrived and improved our lives dramatically, but Shamas also had to work round the clock to the non-stop pace of TV. He worked as an AD for several shows, including a very popular series, Crime Patrol. After working extremely hard for about a year and a half, he finally became a director, directing an endless string of shows for various channels. We moved to a flat in MHADA, Malad, which had one bedroom and a kitchen. Those days, he was shooting at Kanjurmarg which is near the Hiranandani area in Powai. It took him two and a half hours to reach there by bus from our new house.
Our schedule was simple. Driven by childhood habits, I remain an early riser. I would wake up, do the dishes and cook. Shamas would take care of the cleaning, ensuring that the place was spotless. The obsession with hygiene that Ammi had drilled into all of us somehow eluded me a bit (my ashtrays would be filled to the brim and there would also be cigarette ash on the floor; I’d comb my hair anywhere; I’d carelessly walk on a wet floor that was still being mopped, leaving apathetic footprints everywhere . . .). But Shamas followed Ammi’s ways with full fervour.
Shamas would eat and leave for his shoots. My schedule was erratic, depending on auditions. Then I would do the laundry. Since I loved to borrow from his wardrobe, both Shamas and I were essentially wearing his clothes, and so the laundry had to do pretty much with his garments only. I’d fill up a big tub with water, generously sprinkle a tonne of Surf into it and then let the dirty clothes soak in the suds really, really well—so well that the clothes remained soaked for six to eight days. By the end of those days, the white shirt would have become yellow, the yellow shirt would have red marks on it and the red shirt would have faded into a pretty shade of pink. Honestly, it did not matter to me at all. I happily wore these ruined garments everywhere. I did not care what I was wearing so long as I was wearing clean clothes. But Shamas, who loved being well dressed, would obviously be furious even though he was too busy to figure things out. During the little free time he had, which was late at night, he would call up Ammi and complain to her about how Nawaz Bhai had ruined all of his clothes. In fact, this awful habit of mine stopped only around 2010, when I was finally getting married.
In one corner of our MHADA flat was a flimsy mattress, so thin that it was uncomfortable for anybody to sit on. But I loved it. I have never been a sucker for comfort. You see, with comfort comes the danger of complacence; discomfort keeps you on your toes. Lying on it had become a habit, even when it was falling apart at the corners and split in the middle. Shamas knew how priceless it was. To us it was ‘historic’, it had seen our struggles. He kept it lovingly as a memento for a long time until two years ago when somebody—I don’t know who—mistook it for trash and threw it out.
One day I urgently needed some money and called Shamas, who was about twenty kilometres away shooting in Kanjurmarg. I was at Infiniti Mall, Andheri. (Later, we moved into an apartment there.) There was no way he could have made it there before a couple of hours. Immediately, he called his friend Veeru and asked him to go from wherever he was to meet me. Within minutes, Veeru appeared and handed me Rs 1500.
In 2007 came a film called Aaja Nachle starring Madhuri Dixit in the lead. I had a reasonably large part in it, but it got edited out and became a small part in the final cut. Black Friday too had come out by then and I was beginning to get some work. The heavy fog of relentless desperation was finally thinning. Even though it was in modest amounts, money was beginning to trickle in. I had also finished a short film, for which I got Rs 75,000; with it, I bought a second-hand Maruti Esteem.
One monsoon day, I returned exhausted from the shoot of Aaja Nachle in Film City, parked my car in the basement and went upstairs and straight to bed. I wanted to make the most of the few precious hours I had to take rest. Early next day I had to go on another shoot for a film made by folks from the United Kingdom called Meridian Lines, which also starred Irrfan Khan.
At 1.30 a.m., I called Shamas. He was at a friend’s house in Oshiwara.
‘Shamas, the car is not there.’
‘What, Bhaijaan?’ he asked in incomprehension.
‘I had parked the car in the basement as always. But the Esteem, it’s gone,’ I explained.
Shamas could not believe it.
‘Let’s do one thing, Bhaijaan. Take an auto to the police station. I will come there by bike. Let’s meet there itself.’
The police was not interested. A second-hand, cheap car was nothing to break a sweat about. It was a 1992 model which I had bought in 2007. While I had paid Rs 75,000 for it, its market value turned out to be Rs 60,000. This was truly too trivial for the police when brand-new Mercedes cars were being stolen. But for me it was a humongous deal. It was the first big thing that I had bought with
