Actors Acting Action

Actors Acting Action - c s Gopalkrishna Gandhi N a t io n a l In st it u t e o f A d v a n c ed St u d ies Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bangalore - 560 012, India Actors, Acting and Action Second Annual Mohandas Moses Memorial Lecture Gopalkrishna Gandhi Governor of West Bengal, Kolkata N IA S LEC T U R E L3 - 07 N a t io n a l Institute o f A d v a n c e d Studies Indian Institute of Science Campus Bangalore - 560 012, India © National Institute o f Advanced Studies 2007 Published by National Institute o f Advanced Studies Indian Institute o f Science Campus Bangalore - 560 012 Price: Rs. 65/- Copies of this report can be ordered from: The Head, Administration National Institute o f Advanced Studies Indian Institute o f Science Campus Bangalore - 560 012 Phone: 080-2218 5000 Fax: 080-2218 5028 E-mail: [email protected] ISBN 81-87663-72-3 lypeset & Printed by Aditi Enterprises #17/6, 22nd Cross, Bhuvaneshwari Nagar Magadi Road, Bangalore - 560 023 Mob: 92434 05168 Actors, Acting and Action’ Gopalkrishna Gandhi I thank the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Dr. Kasturirangan and Smt. Achala Mohandas Moses for their gracious invitation to me. I did not know Mohandas Moses personally. One does not have to know a man or woman of action to feel the impact of their work. I offer his memory my tribute; I offer his example my salutation. But I do so as chaff might, to grain. Mohandas Moses’ life-work justified the choice of his first name; mine fails the chance of my surname. He brought to every office he held a vision of what he could do from it, of what he could make of that opportunity to serve the ‘larger good’. The Food Corporation of India must run profitably. Mohandas Moses saw that it could also serve the cause o f food security. Today, when circumstances are obliging us to import wheat. *This is the Second Mohandas Moses Memorial Lecture given by His Excellency Sri Gopalkrishna Gandhi on 'Actors, Acting and Action' on December 18, 2006 during IX UGC Course for University and College Teachers at J.R.D. Tata Auditorium, NIAS. 1 Gopalkrishna Gandhi which we exported not too long ago, Mohandas Moses’ is more than a memory to honour. It is an example to learn from. As I pondered over a suitable subject for this talk, the word ‘action’ kept coming unbidden to mind - only natural in Mohandas Moses’ context. As did the word ‘acting’ - only natural in the context of a Governor who has become adept at quick dress-changes - kurta without jacket, kurta with jacket, bandgala to dhoti, dhoti to achkan, achkan to lounge-suit depending on the stage he is on and the speech he is to make. I am reminded o f what Orhavan Veli o f Turkey said once : “What have we not done for our country! Some of us gave our lives, some of us gave speeches!” And with that let me enter straightaway the theme of this lecture - Actors, Acting and Action. We are all, consciously or unconsciously, actors. For we do, at the very minimum have a sense of ‘appearance’. If we can afford to, we often dress to make a statement. Even the most enHghtened and enlightening of us. Michael Krohnen gives an account of a lunch with the extraordinary philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti : An Indian actor and actress came to see Krishnamurti and were invited to take lunch. She was fairly tall, 2 Actors, Acting and Action with stunning, classical Indian features and lustrous dark hair falling below her shoulders. Dressed in an exquisite sari, with gold threads running through the azure silk, she moved with elegant poise, A crimson bindi dot between her eyes embellished her exotic beauty. During lunch the lady, a beauty queen turned movie star, said that both of them were on their way to Hollywood - she to make her US debut in a major science fiction film, he to play the hero in an adventure film for television. She went on to tell us that her role required her to shave off her luxuriant hair. Seeing it cascading down to her shoulders, it was hard for me to imagine that she would actually go through with it and for a moment I thought she was just telling a tall story. As the conversation idly flowed around films, acting and actors, Krishnamurti remarked quite generally, “Actors are terribly vain” . At this, the actress stopped chewing her food and her dark eyes flashed, perhaps because she took his remarks as being directed against her. Composing herself, she retorted without anger but with a somewhat cool intonation, “But, Krishnaji, aren’t you also a little vain? After all, you comb your hair to conceal the bald spot on your forehead.” 3 Gopalkrishna Gandhi Her matter-of-fact, calm delivery softened the forthright statement and resulted in a minuscule silence around the table. I, for one, was taken by surprise, both by her acute observation and by the fact that until then I simply hadn’t noticed that he did have a large bald spot which was covered by an adventurous sweep of hair. Krishnamurti didn’t react at all. For a breathless second he quietly looked at her, not batting an eyelid, nor uttering a word. With a tiny smile around his lips, he brought the fork to his mouth to take food. The conversation continued amiably. After lunch, Krishnamurti took the couple on a walk through the Oak Grove, lush-green after recent rains. Months later, I went to see the film in which the lady starred. Star Trek One. At first I had some difficulty recognizing her with a shaved head. Despite baldness, or perhaps because of it, she came across as stunningly beautiful. It would be instructive to recall that in the 1920s, Hollywood had offered Krishnamurti who was a sensationally good-looking youth, one million dollars to play the role of the Buddha for a feature film. Needless to say, 4 Actors, Acting and Action this Renouncer o f Renouncers declined the offer - a loss to Hollywood but what a gain to philosophy! So, it may be said that w e are all part-time actors. But, if we are part-time actors, let us also be clear that we do not thereby become part-time hypocrites. We practice what may be called a form of natural cosmetics, not to disguise or to deceive but just to protect or enhance our dignity. There is nothing wrong in that. The wearing of clothes is o f course the most basic o f this form. Even the psychologically challenged, unless they suffer a total breakdown of mental controls, we know, retain the human instinct of covering the body. They are certainly not acting, not deceiving. Before Gandhi’s family joined him in South Africa he took great care about the way they should be attired. He got his w ife to wear a sari in the Parsi style so as to fit in with the section of society they were to relate to in South Africa, and he got his children to wear socks and shoes even on the long humid journey across the Arabian Sea. But in 1914, when the large Gandhi family was returning to India, he asked his nephew to arrange a totally different sartorial appearance for the various children: ...I want every child to land in India with Indian- style clothes on. The very young should have a lungi, 5 Gopalkrishna Gandhi a shirt and a cap like the round one of velvet we have and the others should have a dhoti, a shirt and a cap. The grown-ups like you should wear a safa and a long coat... I see no need for the boys to have shoes. However, if they have sandals they may keep them. I think new ones should not be made.... Emma Tarlo, who has written highly regarded books on clothes and clothing says : By the time he left South Africa in 1914, Gandhi had already learned to weave hand-loom cloth and had already made public appearances dressed in simple Indian styles of white cotton dress as a means of political protest and identification with oppressed peoples. When he arrived back in India the following year, he staged a dramatic appearance dressed in a white turban, tunic and dhoti, an adaptation of Kathiawadi peasant dress which visually challenged the well established hierarchies that elevated Western over Indian, urban over rural and elite over popular. It is easy to underestimate just how radical Gandhi’s appearance and clothing policies were. Not only did he challenge long established hierarchies through his own dress but he also proposed a complete re-clothing of the nation as well as a full scale reorganization of the textile industry. 6 Actors, Acting and Action This was not ‘acting’ in the ordinary sense but it was about appearing in a certain way, to make a statement and a very big one at that. Tarlo adds : ...Gandhi’s decision to adopt a short dhoti or loincloth in 1921 was partly... (because) he had been preaching that it were better for people to reduce their clothing to a mere loincloth made of khadi than to wear more ample garments made from foreign cloth but he felt that his words did not hold weight as long as he himself was fully dressed. It was the plight of the poor combined with what he considered the failure of the khadi campaign that finally drove him to reduce his own clothing, initially on a temporary basis “as a sign of mourning” that swaraj was still far off and as means of “making the way clear” for those who could only afford a minimum quantity of khadi..

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