The invisibles

The Academy, which consists of 33 federations, is the film industry’s largest representative body. Every year, it rewards the oldest member of each federation for, if nothing else, tenaciously hanging on a prayer, even though the money’s no good and there are no retirement benefits.

That might all change one day if Balbir Ward has anything to say about it. The 74-year-old president of the Costume, Make-Up and Hairdressers Association, and member of the advisory committee of the Cine Workers Welfare Fund is a woman on a mission. In the last two years as president, Balbir, who doesn’t look a day older than 60, has gone all the way to the Central labour minister demanding social security benefits for cine workers. ‘‘When they’ve declared Bollywood an industry, why shouldn’t we get the benefits of an industry? If a film technician loses a limb on the set, no one cares,’’ says the retired hairdresser.

There’s a reason why she’s so passionate. She spent 33 years teasing bangs, doing backcombs and stuffing bouffants; then two and a half years ago, work just dried up. ‘‘These days, everyone just leaves their hair open. The old mythologicals are gone,’’ she says.

Now every morning, Balbir takes a rickshaw to the bus stop, bus No 8 to Dadar TT, then hops in a taxi to her central Mumbai office. On days when she doesn’t have the money to make the trip, she asks her daughter. ‘‘I have no house, car, nothing. All I have is the respect I’ve gathered from the people around me.’’ And now a souvenir.

Bollywood wasn’t Ward’s original destination. But in 1968, the same year Anwari Khan lost her spouse, Balbir’s Irish engineer husband, Norman Charles Ward, a Tata employee, died of a heart attack at 58.

In the aftermath, Balbir, a feisty sardarni—‘‘only a sardarni will fight even men’’—collapsed. She refused to leave her bed, mourning her short-lived marriage and talking to Norman in her dreams. An orphan herself, it took months to get out of the reverie and look for work for the sake of her two children.

It was through a neighbour, director Babubhai Mistry, that she became a hairdresser for Rs 40 a day. From Dimple Kapadia’s hairdo in Bobby to Mala Sinha’s bouffants, Balbir was the queen of the backcomb. ‘‘They used to call me Mama. No one could do it like I could. I never broke a single strand of an actor’s hair,’’ she says.

Making others look good was also part of Anwari’s repertoire as a stunt double and junior artiste since 1955. But half a century and more than 100 films later, she doesn’t even have a decent place to live. ‘‘Sari zindagi ka mehnat ka ek prize mila,’’ says Anwari, 65, of her recent award. That career graph began with six rupees a day when she was just a teenager; by the time she was widowed at 28, Anwari was making Rs 13 as a member of the Junior Artistes Association. ‘‘Five people interviewed me before I was accepted as a member, these days it’s so easy,’’ she says.

Today, in the hierarchy of its 5,000 members, Anwari is only an A-Class artiste, making Rs 500 per day; the demand is for the Super-Class—PYTs. Still, every other morning of the week, Anwari makes a trip from her house in a rundown area of northern Mumbai to the office of the Mahila Kalakar Sangh. There, she waits for hours with tens of other women for the board book—a large board that contains details of the production houses’ daily requirement of artistes. These days it’s a mostly futile trip. Though, sometimes, movies like Page 3 come along. ‘‘There’s a hospital scene, after a bomb blast, in which I’m sitting right next to Konkona Sen Sharma.’’

In Gandhi, she played a villager caught in the Jallianwala Bagh firing, in Ardhangani, she doubled for Meena Kumari, and she was part of a crowd in Naya Daur. ‘‘They make serials and college love stories now, who needs an old woman? But, I can’t afford to stop working.’’

But then neither could Dadasaheb Phalke. He disappeared into oblivion after retiring from the industry he set up, then died unmarked and poor; the credits, the ‘father of the industry’ tag, and the prize inducted in his name all came posthumously—too late to help the man. At the Dadasaheb Academy awards, chief guest Sunil Dutt remarked that an industry, which has the capacity to gather millions for tsunami victims ought to do something for its own.

At 55, Hanumantrao Anandrao Patil is still waiting for the big time. ‘‘(Vilasrao) Deshmukhji will get me a new flat. He’s an acquaintance,” he says, indicating his MHADA-rehabilitated apartment. In the industry, the bombastic Patil is popularly known as Maharaj. The way he says it, it was on the sets of Parvarish that the cinema still photographer asked the Big B for a pose saying, ‘‘Aap jaise mahaan aadmi ko batane ki kya zaroorat hain?’’ Bachchan responded, ‘‘Agar main mahan hoon, to aap maharaj hain.’’

There’s no shortage of respect—all the actresses call him Maharajji and to actors Salman Khan, Ajay Devgan and Aamir Khan, it’s ‘‘Maharaj ki jai ho.’’ But the man who shot Karisma’s first picture when she was one, Kajol at two and three and Devgan on his eighth birthday, lives in a one-room apartment with his wife and three sons. There’s a crammed kitchen, a large bed, and since the past couple of weeks, a proud certificate and award addressed to the father of the house.

Patil’s latest project is a film called Benaam, with Devgan and Sameera Reddy. On the sets, Patil’s once eight-year-old subject is reluctant to take a picture with the photographer, maybe because for once, the story wasn’t about the superstar.

‘‘Budhape main kaise jee loonga pata nahin (I don’t know how I’ll live when I get old).’’ When there is work, Patil makes about Rs 3,000 per film, which, if the cheque doesn’t bounce, is little concession for tiring schedules and the lack of photo credits.

After 40 years in Bollywood, stunt director Mohamad Ali is a sea of anecdotes. The 65-year-old from Gujarat has done well for himself with a career that sprang from a childhood fascination with talwar baazi. The stunt director has worked on everything from Shaan and Apradh to a series of Wadia Movietone flicks and Alibaba Aur Chalees Chor.

He went to Afghanistan thrice before the country turned on its head in the ’70s. ‘‘I still remember the sheekh kababs and buzkashi tournaments in Kabul,’’ he says. Or the time they were shooting for Apradh in West Germany. Feroz Khan asked him to come to the sets every day in a car. When Ali said he didn’t have one, Khan gave him a Volkswagen.

The Movie Stunt Artistes’ Association is a comparatively small outfit, with just about 500 fighters; several folks like Akbar Bakshi, and fighter-director Tinnu Verma were Ali’s assistants. But Ali’s still not ready to store his sword.

‘‘You can never stop in this business because there’s nothing to fall back on,’’ says the father of six. He lives between the houses of his two sons, and echoes the same line that we’ve heard before, ‘‘I don’t have much money, but I’ve got respect.’’

But respect, like Patil says, ‘‘doesn’t feed the belly.’’