Strange Encounters by Parikshat Sahni

Author:Parikshat Sahni
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: S&S India
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Encounter with the Hangman

I used to be a very volatile sort of person in the good old days, till a doctor friend instilled in me a great fear of being unduly sensitive and easily riled up because, as he said, it caused one’s adrenaline levels to rise. He explained at length that adrenaline causes the heart to beat faster, cholesterol levels to go up and arteries to clog and lead to heart-attacks. He said that one must therefore always keep cool. He quoted the Bhagavad Gita which advised a man under all circumstances to be “even-minded”.

I, being an inveterate hypochondriac, was completely rattled and decided to heed his advice and stay cool and never get inordinately upset by events, come what may.

I thought I had mastered the art of being even-minded till I signed this film called Agni Pareeksha, being produced by B.R. FILMS in the mid-eighties. It was a remake of a very big hit Bengali film that had starred Uttam Kumar and I was offered the role played by him. I was thrilled. The story was well-crafted and, in the end, there was a great climax in which the hero is sent to the gallows. I had done the gallows routine before in an earlier film called Udham Singh (based on the man who pursued and shot Sir Michael O’Dwyer—the perpetrator of the Jalianwala Bagh massacre—in Caxton Hall while he was giving a speech). Udham Singh is supposed to have declared before being hanged: “I am married to the gallows” or something to that effect. I enacted the gallows scene with my chest out and my stomach in and with a smile on my lips. That is what the director had wanted and that is what I had delivered.

In Hindi cinema in our days, a hero was a Hero and was expected to be unflappable, tough, brave and stoic. I was shown the original Bengali version of the film and Uttamda, one of the finest actors that India has ever known, enacted the scene in which he faces the noose and imminent death with superlative self-control and dignity. I was asked to emulate him in all the scenes and particularly in the scene of the gallows. I was sure it would not be a big deal.

The gallows were usually put up on the set and bore no resemblance to the real thing so I thought doing another gallows scene would be no hassle. Staying cool, calm and collected, thanks to my doctor friend, had become second nature to me. I was sure nothing could rattle me anymore.

But I was mistaken. For this version of the film the director had chosen to shoot not on a film set but on real location, in Yerwada Central Jail, Pune—one of the oldest prisons in India. It was there that I saw real gallows for the first time in my life. I had never imagined the real thing would be what it turned out to be when I was asked to shoot there.

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