Fragments that hold you in thrall

 

The UK-based writer Farrukh Dhondy has written an absorbing autobiography

By Shevlin Sebastian

When I first read the title, ‘Fragments Against my Ruin’, I could not understand it. But a Google check revealed it is a line from TS Eliot’s poem, ‘The Waste Land’. Just wondering whether the title will be a put-off for would-be buyers.

The cover is predominantly black, but the voice of Farrukh throughout the book is upbeat.

But these are minor quibbles. This has been one of the easiest reads in recent times. That’s how smooth the writing is thanks to Farrukh’s story-telling gift.

It is a story of a Parsi boy who grew up in an upper-middle-class household in Pune and went to London to do his degree in natural sciences from Cambridge. Thereafter, he settled in England and had a successful career as a journalist, writer, activist, teacher, TV commissioning editor and scriptwriter.

It is a book rife with many anecdotes of Farrukh’s encounters with the famous and the distinguished like TV personality Oprah Winfrey, serial killer Charles Sobhraj, activist Coretta King, actor Malcolm McDowell, singer Cat Stevens, documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan and the Bollywood director Subhash Ghai. He also had an unexpected friendship with the Nobel Laureate VS Naipaul, the writer.

His analysis of Naipaul’s writing style is perceptive. “Vidia’s works are in windowpane prose,” he said. “You are invited to see through it to the object or emotion beyond. The contrast is with writers who use stained-glass prose, where the picture in the glass is the proffered object of attention rather than what one can see through it.”

One memory took me back to my late teens.

As Channel 4 Commissioning Editor, Farrukh had commissioned a documentary series on blacks called ‘Black Bag’. He had appointed an experienced white producer Bernard Clark to supervise a group of inexperienced black filmmakers.

Alkarim Jivani, a journalist at Time Out Magazine, came to interview Farrukh.

One question he asked was: “What would you say to someone who said you were acting like a colonial despot, putting a white man in charge of blacks?”

A phrase from his Poona days came to Farrukh’s mind.

“‘I’d say, ‘Kiss my cock and call me Charlie’,” said Farrukh.

This was, wrote Farrukh, a rude expression passed on from British troops of the Raj.

I had to laugh aloud. This was a sentence we used often in my college days in Calcutta.

The situation becomes even more hilarious.

Farrukh writes: ‘Two hours later, Eva [Farrukh’s secretary] said that the director of Programmes, Liz Forgan, wanted to see me. I went down to her office on the second floor. John Willis, the programme controller, and my direct boss was seated in the office. Liz asked me to take a seat.

“Did you tell Alkarim Jivani to kiss your cock and call you Charlie?” she asked with an absolute straight face.

‘No, I didn’t!” I replied and told them both he had asked me what I would say to someone who accused me of behaving like a colonial despot, and I had replied that’s what I would say. I repeated the riposte with an equally poker face.

John burst into laughter. He couldn’t hold it. He nearly fell off the chair.

Liz broke into a huge and alluring grin, as she often did. “Please, Farrukh, don’t say these things to journalists,” she pleaded.

Every time I passed him in the corridors of the channel, John would, sometimes quite solemnly, repeat the phrase.’

Despite the flippancy, Farrukh had a sharp nose and intuition to know what ideas would work and what would not. So, when his ex-wife Mala Sen wrote a book called ‘India’s Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi’, Farrukh felt it would make an excellent film.

One day, he invited the director Shekhar Kapoor and the producer Bobby Bedi to a pub. He asked Shekhar whether he would direct the Phoolan Devi film. Shekhar replied he could only decide after seeing the script.

Farrukh was under pressure. His boss, Michael Grade, had allotted 1 million pounds for the film, and he had to show the script and the director was in place. But the script had not yet been written.

Farrukh told Shekhar he would write the script.

He said, “By the time I drain this beer, Shekhar, please say yes or no, so I can start phoning other directors in India. But, of course, you are my first choice.”

Shekhar bit his lip and stayed silent till Farrukh’s pint of beer was down to its last inch.

“Ok, I’ll do it,” said Shekhar.

The film was made. But before it could be released Phoolan Devi made a hue and cry about the depiction of rape. After several weeks of protests, Farrukh flew down to India, met Phoolan’s husband Umed Singh and gave him a cheque of 40,000 pounds. Phoolan immediately withdrew the case and said she was fine with the film.

When it was released, the film made an impact. It won the National Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi, and the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Movie and Best Direction. It premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section of the 1994 Cannes Film Festival and was screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival.

The film earned ₹221 million worldwide.

This is one of many absorbing anecdotes in the narrative. Overall, this is an interesting book about an interesting man.