In his most famous movie role, he sat on a big rock with a gun in his hand and replied to his master's calls of "Arre O Sambha". It was a small part, but so iconic that his profile was used as the sole image on a "minimal Bollywood poster" designed by a website, and everyone instantly knew that the film was Sholay. Yet what did the actor MacMohan feel about being defined and shadowed by that tiny role for the rest of his career?
I ask because a few weeks ago I caught a glimpse of an alternate future for the man, via a song from a 1964 film titled Aao Pyaar Karein. In the sequence (which you can and must see on YouTube here: bit.ly/Y3OF1m), the young MacMohan dances - daintily play-acting as a woman - with the movie's leading man Joy Mukherjee, while their friends sit around clapping and generally being baboons. Minus the distinctive beard and the streak of white hair, dressed in a formal suit with a bow-tie, filmed in black-and-white, MacMohan is unrecognisable from the screen persona he would eventually inhabit. His movements are lithe and graceful even during a strip-tease that ends with him in vest and striped shorts; with the always-affable Mukherjee giving him company, it doesn't seem in poor taste.
Watching little Mac here is a reminder that a performer with disparate talents might get so pigeonholed that it becomes impossible to imagine him doing anything else. At this point in his career he was probably a young actor hoping for a big break, and on this evidence he might have had a future as a reliable supporting player: as a hero's foil or a genial comedian. If he had been more personable and good-looking (whatever those words might mean in the context of the dubious physiognomic history of the Hindi-movie leading man), he may even have hoped for something bigger.
Something else that's amusing about the Aao Pyaar Karein scene: clowning about on the periphery of things - as one of the other buddies - is the young Sanjeev Kumar, years before his movie fame. In other words, here are two bit-part actors on level ground, long before their respective destinies in Hindi cinema were fixed, and a decade before they found themselves on opposite sides of the law - and at opposite ends of the fame continuum - as Sambha and Thakur Baldev Singh.
It is fitting in a sense that one of MacMohan's last screen appearances - 45 years after he danced with Joy Mukherjee - was in Zoya Akhtar's Luck by Chance, a film that knows a good deal about the serendipitous moment; about the combination of events - a chance encounter, a portfolio that happens to make its way to the right person at the right time - that can make the difference between good fortune and continuing struggle. The film gave MacMohan a cameo part as himself, visiting an acting workshop, where he is asked by enthusiastic students to speak the line that made him famous. Mac looks down, pauses for a moment, then looks up and says "Poore pacchaas hazaar".
It's a touching moment, a view of a career summarised in - and frozen by - three words. The cynical might look at his worn expression and say this is a case of a man being invited to participate in self-mockery. But you can also see a performer making an effort to "act" for the two seconds or so it takes him to say the line. In its understanding of dignity of labour, the scene reminds me of Satyajit Ray's short story "Patol Babu, Film Star", in which a middle-aged man hired to play a part in a film discovers that all he is required to say is "Oh", but then gets over his disappointment by uncovering the possibilities contained in the word. ("Why had he felt so disheartened when this single word contained a golden mine of meaning? The true actor could make a mark with this one syllable.") I wonder if MacMohan, in his post-Sholay life, quietly muttered "Poore pacchaas hazaar" to himself and reflected on the strange nature of his fame.
Jai Arjun Singh is a Delhi-based writer
jaiarjun@gmail.com
