The saga of love and running around in circles continued for something like a year and a half. Then came a time when she did not return for a very, very long time. I forget the exact length of time. I was rather fed up of running around like this repeatedly. Even though my heart pined for her, I did not go to get her. The prolonged period turned into a silent break-up. I think nowadays they call it ‘ghosting’.
The loneliness was getting to me now. It was different earlier. Now, I had known love and the company of living together with someone I loved. I decided to settle for an arranged marriage. So I called Ammi one evening and told her that I would marry whoever she selected for me. The family was living in Dehradun those days. Ammi picked a lovely girl called Sheeba who hailed from Haldwani, which is near Nainital. I got married a few months before the shoot of Patang. Ahead of Haldwani, lie Bijnor, Najibabad, etc.; most of Sheeba’s family had settled in Haldwani and around it.
Anjali had disappeared for almost a year; there had been no word from her at all. I got married and went to shoot Patang in Ahmedabad, tagging Sheeba along. We lived together for nearly two months. The crew of Patang knows her well. Then she went home and I went on to shoot my next film.
Sheeba was a wonderful girl with a heart of gold but her brother was very intrusive. He interfered in our marriage constantly. Every now and then, he would call me up and ask me to come over because it was their paternal uncle’s son’s birthday or some such function in their extended family. I would politely tell him—and sometimes her other relatives as well—that I could not come because I had to go on a shoot. They knew about my work and how it involved endless travel. But he would keep calling. Soon enough, tension began to simmer between him and me. Added to his tower of complaints was the fact that Sheeba did not live with me in Mumbai. This was her complaint as well, which was fair. But the fact was I did not have a good enough house at the time to get Sheeba in. And naturally if she were there, then there would be many visits from her family members, so the house must be able to accommodate all of them, which it could not then. But my work was picking up. I had promised her that within a year at the most I should be able to afford a residence that was decent enough. In the meantime, I used to go to Dehradun every second month or so to visit her.
But then I had a burst of work which kept me so occupied that I could not visit her for three or four months. Her brother got hyperactive and shouted at me over the phone. All the pent-up tension came flowing through with the force of water after a dam burst.
‘Why can’t you come when we call you?’ he demanded angrily. ‘What kind of a marriage is this anyway!’
I tried to explain: ‘You know I am an actor. You knew my line of work and its lifestyle even before the marriage. Why is this coming as a surprise?’ He spiralled into a fit of rage, which infected me as well. I got so angry that I did not show up at Dehradun for three months more. Sheeba’s brother now began to issue threats that he knew a politician who could completely screw me up. I retorted, asking him to do whatever he wanted to do. Nearly a year, about eight months, passed this way in fights which had turned from sour to bitter to plain unbearable. The marriage decayed until its weight and its strength matched that of a single feather’s. It was only the brother’s fault and possibly mine, but not the girl’s. She was completely innocent.
Sheeba’s family filed a police report against me at the local court in Haldwani, under the infamous Section 409. We soon discovered that the police would be taking a seven-hour journey from Haldwani to Dehradun to raid us and then arrest me. We made a few phone calls immediately and found out that the cops were already on their way. We had to act fast. The entire family had to flee the scene. My brother revved up the car engine. It was comically strange. On one side of the route the police were driving, on the other we were. We were transporting Ammi, Almas’s wife, most of the women, the children and much of the family to a safe place while we dealt with the issue at hand.
You see what happens is that the police often undertake several raids and arrests on Friday. The court is closed throughout the weekend. So your very best chance of getting bail is on Monday. Meanwhile, you rot in jail for three horrible days, irrespective of whether you are innocent or guilty. This is why we had to act fast.
After tending to the safety of most of our family, Shamas and Faizi drove at top speed to Haldwani to file an application at the court there, before it closed. The idea being that if I—and anybody else along
