In the end I did everything for my father. Subconsciously, at some point during my late teens or my early twenties, I had decided that someday I would make all of his false tales of grandeur come true. If Abbu were alive today, he would never have believed that I was really working with Amitabh Bachchan. He would have assumed right away that his son was lying, because he himself had lied about Bachchan. Some years before he died, Abbu asked me for some money, close to a crore. I asked him why. Very sheepishly he mumbled something about getting his land back. I told him to relax and set my brothers to work. Slowly but steadily, we bought back all of the land that was always supposed to be his. Being able to make my broken dad’s dreams come true, for me that is success.
When random passers-by give me their dua, for me that is success. Outside the airport at Pune, I had snuck into a corner, seeking inconspicuousness, for a quick smoke. Soon after managing this feat, as I was getting into the vehicle provided by the production company a random man came up to me and said, ‘We love to see you shine. May Allah bless you. May Allah take you to even greater heights!’ He held my hands in his, blessed me and disappeared into the crowd, melting my heart and making me feel like a million bucks with his love. That is success.
One of the pitfalls is a continuous pitter-patter of shady offers. Like some months ago, a guy approached me in Delhi: ‘Saheb, I can get you a Padma Shri,’ said the sly stranger. ‘Really?’ I asked in amusement. ‘Yes, sir, guaranteed. All you have to do is act in a film I’m producing. Here it is . . .’ And before I could say anything, he proceeded to narrate the script of what turned out, unsurprisingly, to be an awful film. So bad that had I agreed to do it—irrespective of the creepy offer—it could have derailed my entire career. And that’s the thing about being a star. Strugglers would kill for this kind of affluence, of being spoilt for choice. But stars cannot be careful enough, one wrong choice and your entire career that you worked so hard to establish, could get ruined.
Speaking of stars and success, a friend gave me the best advice ever: ‘Don’t stay separate from the crowd,’ he said. ‘Stay in the crowd and stay separate.’ That means to stay objective enough to be able to gauge the current of the crowd and yet not get carried away in it.
Even after all these years, Bennewitz’s Galileo still stays with me. Emotions are sold for cheap here in our industry. You make the audience cry and make them go ‘wah, wah’. You deliver a punchline to make people laugh and say ‘wah, wah’. And the film is a hit. People praise your performance. But apart from these basics, we touch very little of the vast gamut of emotions life has to offer, in our movies. I have tried to recreate this magic and failed. But perhaps if I get the right script, I could try again: a role in which people neither feel the need to break into peals of laughter nor burst into sobs. A role that entails nothing but a matter-of-fact performance, a thoroughly dry performance, like in Galileo, the man and the character. That’s what I’d love to do. Because, after all, what is a star? It’s an image. It’s easy to be that created image. It’s hard to be an actor.
I want to do all kinds of experiments, I want to stretch all boundaries, I want to go where no actor has gone before, I want to do every role possible, I want to live as many lives through my acting as there are grains of sand on a beach, or stars in the patch of the night sky above my terrace. After all, we have only one life, one tiny life to live. And one lifetime is way too short to do all of this. I will do as much as I can. I will pack in as many people, as many lives, as many roles, as many shades as I can into this one lifetime as an actor.
I grew up as an insightful child amidst a huge joint family of farmers with my nine siblings, seven brothers and two sisters, in Budhana, a small town in Muzaffarnagar district in Uttar Pradesh. (Nawaz—first row, extreme right—with Ammi, Faiz, Almas, Ayaz and sister Shamiya.)
When I was growing up in the 1970s, there was no television. The only source of entertainment used to be the village carnivals and folk performances. I remember, as a child, I was so deeply enchanted with the sheer energy of those performers that I always wanted to be like one of them. (Nawaz—above and facing page—at the age of twelve at a mela in Budhana.)
As the local saying goes, Budhana is the land of gehu, ganna aur gun (wheat, sugar cane and gun). (Twelve-year-old Nawaz with his younger sister Shamiya flaunting an airgun.)
Nawaz (third from right, third row from top) in DAV College after a mock parliament
Graduation days in Gurukula Kangri Vishwavidyalaya, Haridwar
At the age of twenty-one
In Manali, immediately after graduation
My aim was only to try and find myself through the characters, through the films and through the theatre that I have been part of. (Nawaz—fourth from left—as Kans in the play Kans directed by him.)
Struggling days
