In 1972, my first wife, Sonu, enrolled in the NSD for the Direction course. I was teaching at Delhi Uni where my classes gave over in the morning, so when I drove my scooter back after classes I had to find something to do until it was time for Sonu to come home with me. More often than not she was in rehearsals at the NSD and I spent many evenings sitting somewhere at the back, watching Elk directing his troops.
It’s hard to convey what an avid mahaul for theatre Elk created in Delhi in the 1970s. It took time to build up, but by 1974 or so, there were queues around the block when a new NSD play was announced. Even the sweaty little studio productions on the third floor of Rabindra Bhavan were packed out. Everyone curried favour with Mr. Gandhi, the man at the counter who took advance bookings for NSD plays. Delhi had seen none of this mad-keen interest in theatre before.
I had the best seat of all - sitting quietly in the shadows during rehearsals, evening after evening. Naseerudin Shah, Om Puri, Jaspal Singh, Raghuvir Yadav, Rohini Hattangadi, Pankaj Kapoor… they were all there. ‘Chacha’, they called him behind his back, pronouncing it ‘chuh-chaa’ like a well-meaning insult. Chacha was the centre, the fulcrum, the presence they sometimes strained against, but all of them knew the extent to which he was their only window to excellence and high art. Without him they could hope at best for a modicum of didactic instruction.
From my place in the shadows, I watched Elk fret and fume and wave his arms about, occasionally pensive and slightly withdrawn as if he was working out how to solve a problem. I watched as plays slowly took shape from awkard, amorphous beginnings, almost magical in the way they ‘matured’ and settled into their final form. I remember Macbeth performed in Yakshagana style. And a Kabuki version of AndhaYug with Rohini Hattangadi uttering a long, wavering cry of anguish that must still echo in the walls of the Purana Qila.
Alkazi was particularly good at crowd scenes - crowds made up of all the ‘other students’ in the NSD from Set Design, Make-up and Script Writing, and sometimes the carpenters, too. It was magical to see how Elk gave shape to a crowd, weaving it into the fabric of a play so that it felt like an intrinsic character. Some of the plays he chose to enact were poorly written, and Elk had the ability - and the license - to rip and rework them until they soared. He was a genius at lighting and stage design, and this aspect alone could dignify a middling good play and lift it to great heights.
I forget when it was that Alkazi walked away from theatre. Was it 1981? It was whispered about like a giant sulk: ‘If you don’t appreciate me, I’m going’. But who knows what exactly happened in the background? Whatever it was that prompted Elk to walk away, Delhi’s theatre quickly collapsed into mediocrity and hasn’t recovered.
I don’t want to speculate about why he left. I met him in London in the winter of 1981, when he invited me to write a booklet about cinema for a Festival of India at Oxford’s MOMA. Elk had walked out of a government committee for the Festival of India in London and set up his own breakaway, alternate Festival at Oxford. He probably thought, ‘I’ll show them!’ but it didn’t turn out well. GOI used its clout to prevent all the films he wanted shown from leaving India’s shores, and MOMA’s India Festival fizzled into an inconsequential event that not even the great man could dignify.
This may have been the last time Elk had anything to do with government. I can imagine how frustrating it might have been. At the best of times Elk didn’t suffer fools gladly and he must have cut a lonely figure in sarkari committees. It was from here on that he went ahead with his photo archive work, never looking back.
Last year I wandered almost by accident into a small exhibition at Triveni celebrating Elk’s years as an artist in London in the late 1940s and ‘50s. It was called ‘Opening Lines’ and I was so excited I circled back again two days later. It was a powerful tribute to Elk’s individuality and exceptional talent.
I wonder if Elk made a big mistake in giving up his independent-artist-status to head the NSD? It was undoubtedly an act of big-hearted generosity and idealism on his part, and it must be said, also showed exceptional vision by the sarkari art establishment of the day - unthinkable in today’s vitiated scene. I don’t doubt how much Elk meant to theatre and gave to it in India, but purely from his individual standpoint, was it a colossal miscalculation on his part?
I don’t know the answer. What I do know is that they don't make them like him any more. Elk was an artist of the world, with an unshackling breadth and brilliance that is difficult to find in any of his contemporaries.
Goodbye, great Man!
Ebrahim Alkazi was born in 1925 and died in 2020.
The writer is the author of books about trees and has spent the last 15 years restoring degraded landscapes in the desert
Published - August 10, 2020 08:31 pm IST
