I had chanced to meet well-known actor Tom Alter, who left us in 2017, in November of 2012, when he had come across to Calcutta from Mumbai as a delegate at the Kolkata International Film Festival. I had approached Alter and requested him for an interview. Self-effacing, humble and ever-accommodating as Tom always was, he agreed to sit with me for a while and chat despite his tight schedule over the next couple of days for which he had come by for the festival. What was tipped to be a fleeting exchange of thoughts, finally ended up as a near two-hour conversation. Over this protracted interaction, Tom had reminisced about soaking in his rendezvous with movie maestro Satyajit Ray and his never-before experiences while shooting for Ray’s Urdu-Hindi film classic, Shatranj Ke Khilari (The Chess Players) as Captain Weston, back in 1976-77 at the Indrapuri Studio, in Tollygunge, Calcutta’s movie production hub in those days, and his unforgettable relationship which flowered with Ray.
Satyajit Ray’s casting Tom Alter in Shatranj Ke Khilari is the most captivating story of them all. “You see, I studied at the film institute in Pune and passed out in 1974. We had our convocation in October of 1974 and our guest speaker was Manikda (Satyajit Ray’s nickname),” Tom had recalled. “I happened to win the gold medal in acting. Manikda gave the most marvellous talk. After the speech was over and he was walking away, he stopped where I was standing by the aisle, bent over and said, ‘Tom, we’ll be working together very soon.’ And, then, continued walking. When you wish something to happen, it does without actually happening. So, I thought he hadn’t actually said that. About two years later, I received a message that (producer) Suresh Jindal wanted to meet me at the President Hotel in Mumbai and they gave me the room number. It was 307,” Tom still remembered without batting an eyelid.
Over the two years that had ensued in between, there was no communication between Satyajit Ray and Tom Alter. “Nothing at all. They said Manikda was going to be there. I had no idea, then, that this was his pet name. So, I went by train, and bus and walked to President Hotel and entered the room. And, he said, “Now, you will believe Tom that I haven’t forgotten,” Manikda drove home. “I replied, Sir, I am stunned.” He replied, “By the way, I’m Manikda,” he said. “Interestingly, Manikda was considering either George Baker or me for the role of Captain Weston. He told me this. But, he was casting me because of my knowledge of Urdu and closeness with Muslim culture. The pivot of the movie, after all, was Avadh and Nawab Wajid Ali Shah. In end-1976, Manikda sent me Shatranj’s script through (journalist) Anil Dharker who had visited him in Kolkata. Those days, there was no courier or email. I started reading the script. At that time, in the beginning of 1977, I was in Delhi shooting for the Nazir Hussain film, Hum Kisi Se Kum Nahin. Amjad Khan, who was also acting in that film, had also received his copy of the script from Manikda. So, we used to compare notes,” Tom had said.
On his return from the shoot, Tom received a letter from Manikda, asking him to send his latest photograph. Those years, Alter had long hair, a moustache and sidelocks. In the next week or two, Ray sent the photograph back to Tom, increasing his moustache and locks by pencil. And, added a note inquiring whether Alter could grow these himself. “However,” he said, “if you are stuck in different films, cut some hair from the top of your head and send it back to me. I’ll get them done. This was because he wanted the texture and colour of my hair absolutely right.” This was Satyajit Ray’s perfectionism at its astonishing best.
Ray also asked Tom to record one of the passages from the script on a cassette and send it back to him. Alter read out the first scene with Sir Richard (Attenborough) and mailed it to Satyajit Ray by ‘registered A/D’ post. “It’s fantastic,” Manikda had replied. “Just keep it that way.” “I was overwhelmed by the confidence Manikda instilled in a young artiste like me months before the shooting. I had, of course, memorised the entire script. Even Amjad (Khan) asked me to do that.” And, then, gloom descended. Shooting was delayed. Amjad met with a near-fatal accident, probably in the beginning of 1977. “We were supposed to start shooting in January. Amazingly, Manikda waited for six months for Amjad to recover. Shooting finally began around June 1977. The shoot itself was a phenomenal experience. Manikda asked me if I could come to Kolkata one day in advance. I arrived as he wanted me to and was picked up at the airport by his production manager.”
Tom arrived on the first day at the Indrapuri Studio in Tollygunge. Sir Richard Attenborough was there. It was very hot. There was just one airconditioned make-up room at the studio exclusively used by Bengal’s late megastar Uttam Kumar. “We were given this great honour and that make-room was opened up for us. Of course, it was more in Manikda’s honour. And, that became our adda (chat sessions) room where we rehearsed our scenes, all clad in our costumes. It was sweltering. In fact, in one scene, Attenborough says, “It’s the 22nd of January.” So, in the movie, it’s meant to be the 22nd of January in Lucknow. There’s something Tom learnt from Ray and Sir Richard when it came to his close-ups. “Despite not being in the frame, and perspiring away, Sir Richard insisted on standing or sitting in front of me and giving me the cues. I would tell him, ‘Sir, you don’t need to take the trouble.’ But, his response was, ‘No Tom, I’m a paid actor and it is part of my job to give you my cues.’ Tom had learnt this from two great British actors – Sir Richard Attenborough and Peter O’Toole. “It’s a great thing to do even when you are not in the camera. I’ve hardly seen our Indian actors do this,” Tom had rued.
When the movie was released abroad, Literature Laureate VS Naipaul expressed that the first scene between Sir Richard and Alter was like a symphony played by an orchestra, Tom had recounted. “More than our acting, that was a tremendous tribute to Manikda in the manner in which he conceptualised the scene. Then, we come to the scene where we meet Wajid Ali Shah, the Nawab of Avadh. This is very interesting. Wajid says, ‘Hum taz de sakte hai. Lekin, dastakhat nahin denge. ’ (I can give you the throne, but I won’t sign the treaty). Attenborough’s character, General Outram, is flummoxed and looks to me for help, because I’m supposed to be the local expert in Urdu. I’m caught on the horns of a dilemma because I love Wajid. Manikda asks me to show this conflicting emotion. I tried something in the first take, but Manikda cut and said, ‘Tom, just come here. It’s simple....Look thoughtful, look down and look back up. You’ve done it.’ You see it on film, and you think it’s such a great performance. I had done nothing. That was Manikda.... He made things so simple. A German friend from school saw Shatranj in Germany in 1978. She wrote to me mentioning only that scene and said she wept seeing it. So, this is what I mean. It was how the shot was conceived. These are the memories of Manikda.....”
While dwelling on the master film director, memories had come streaming to Tom Alter. He was shooting for a film in Bihar in 1979, about a year and a half after he had worked in Shatranj. Tom soon realised that the film was being made by a bunch of thugs. On the heels of this film, he was also scheduled to go to Udaipur to shoot for Manoj Kumar’s Kranti. “I was supposed to shoot for just one day in this film. I was acting in the jungles of Bhagalpur in Bihar. They wouldn’t let me go even after three days. Meantime, Manoj Kumar was panicking. So, in the end, I decided to just drop the film and began walking from the jungles to the nearest railway station which was a mile away. They ran after me, but I threatened them with dire consequences. I had no money, but somehow made it in a train to Calcutta. Those days, there weren’t any ATMs. So, if you ran out of money, you were lost,” Tom had expressed, desperation writ on his forehead.
It was nine at night when Tom arrived at Ray’s house on Bishop Lefroy Road, south of Calcutta. He was, as usual, extremely gracious and inquired what the matter was. He said, “Tom, you’ve something on your mind.” I replied, “Manikda, I’m stuck.” “I told him everything and said I was out of pocket and needed around five-hundred rupees to take a train to reach my parents in Delhi. Manikda said I would need more money than that and gave me Rs 2,000. A train ticket to Delhi would have cost not more than Rs 300-400 then. So, that was the other side of this man.
“Then, he asked, “Who’s this producer.” I said, “Manikda.....” “Before I could finish, he responded, “No, no, Tom, if he’s treating you like this, he deserves to be punished.” “Manikda, he’s too small a man. It’s not worth your time and effort in punishing him,” I urged him. “I returned the money after I got to Delhi. But, he was the man out of nowhere that night,” Tom had said emotionally.
Satyajit Ray passed away in April 1992. Tom arrived for a shoot in Kolkata the very next day after Ray had left us. The first thing Alter did was to visit Ray’s house. Sandip (Ray’son) was there....And, the Oscar trophy was there. “Mrs (Bijoya) Ray....What a woman.....God bless her. She said, “Tom, come here. Pick up the trophy and we’ll take a picture. You don’t know how much Manik would want this. He really loved you like a son.” And, I replied, “Ma’am, it’s a great honour for me.”
That evening at Technicians’ Studio (in Tollygunge), there was a tribute to Satyajit Ray. And, since Tom was in town, the organisers approached Alter to speak on behalf of the Hindi film industry. “I readily agreed and reached Technicians’ in the evening. There’s an incident that happened here that is not directly related to Manikda, but in a way it is. The renowned Kanan Devi was sitting onstage. I was supposed to sit next to her. When I sat down, she got up and left. I was clueless about what happened. When everything was over, I found her signalling to me. She was looking very apologetic and raised both her hands in a gesture of namaste. Then, she said in Bengali (which was translated by someone standing with us): “Tom, I’m extremely sorry to have left the stage. Actually, if I sit next to someone onstage, he or she dies the next day.” She told me she had sat beside Uttamda (Uttam Kumar) at some ceremony and he passed away the day after. And, this experience had repeated itself on a couple of more occasions. It was some sort of a curse. ‘Because, I couldn’t tell you not to sit next to me, I left. You must have felt insulted. But, I love you a lot,’ she expressed. I was taken aback totally,” Tom had said, narrating this out-of-the-box incident.
Shatranj Ke Khilari released in Los Angeles in 1978. Tom’s grandmother, who was living in the US, went to see the film. In fact, his grandparents had started out their lives in India. So, his grandmother knew Punjabi and Urdu. “Manikda was there, too, for the screening,” Alter had reminisced. “My grandmother walked up to him after the screening and introduced herself. Manikda was thrilled. He sat her down for a long while and chatted over tea. Manikda told me later about the meeting.” Interestingly, Tom Alter was American by descent.
After Shatranj Ke Khilari, Tom probably met the maestro two or three times at festivals or sometimes when he was passing through Bombay. Tom was not one of those people who stayed in touch with people just for the sake of it, he had stressed. “We met for sometime when Manikda was in Bombay and I was shooting for Raj Kapoor’s Ram Teri Ganga Maili.”
Dwelling on his interactions with actors like Amjad Khan and Sir Richard in Shatranj, Alter had gone on to say that he had already acted with Amjad. He was inclined to feel that Shatranj is Amjad’s most under-rated and one of his “most brilliant” roles in films. “And, Amjad was so happy to perform the role. I know that, for sure. And, our Hindi film industry rubbished it because he was not playing his usual villains,” Tom had observed acerbically.
As is well-known now among Ray buffs, the master director used to always read out his scripts to his actors before the shooting took off. Tom’s lines in the screenplay were all in English. Ray read it out to Alter lucidly. “But, he didn’t perform to me, because he had already heard me on the cassette earlier and was happy with my dialogue rendition. He didn’t influence Attenborough or me in any way. He just let us go. Except for that one scene (when we met Wajid) where he asked me to look up and look down,” Tom had recollected.
Tom Alter had observed that his interface with Sir Richard Attenborough was nothing short of “amazing”... At that point, Sir Richard had not still made a cut as a director. “He was very much an actor. Working with him was so real and easy....he and I became very close and we stayed in touch up to a point. It was the easiest thing in the world,” Alter had commented.
Tom said that Sir Richard had not ever put him at unease despite being the famed actor that was. “Not at all...not for once,” he had exclaimed. He remembered a press conference where Sir Richard was asked on his approach to handling his actors and actresses. Sir Richard had, by then, made the film, A Bridge Too Far. He replied that, to him, his actors were the most important and his crew on the sets would work towards helping them give off the best performance. He said he would do anything to put his actors at comfort and infuse self-belief in them so that they came up with their best performance. “And, Attenborough made a famous statement about Manikda at that press meet,” Tom had recalled. “He said, ‘Why a script? Even if Ray had handed me the Calcutta Telephone directory to read, I would have still acted in his film.’ I was present at that press conference.”
Tom had not missed out on making a magnanimous mention about Satyajit Ray’s son Sandip and his experience of acting with him later in Kailashe Kelenkari (A Killer in Kailash), based on a Feluda novel (Satyajit Ray’s famed literary sleuth). “I remember him from Shatranj. He was very reticent and stood in a corner. I used to speak with him. What struck me was that I felt tremendous ease with him. So, when he called me for his film much later, I found a difference between acting with his father and him. Sandip was loving and caring. Of course, I acted with Manikda at the peak of his (Ray’s) career in 1978. So, despite the fact that he didn’t mean to dominate you in any way, one felt his towering presence. But despite being young and in the nascent stage of my acting career, I felt completely comfortable and confident facing the camera. And, the credit entirely goes to Manikda. You can see that in the film. When I look back at my performance in Shatranj Ke Khilari, it’s extremely fulfilling,” Tom had exulted. “Since it was very early in my acting stint, I would call it the first high point. That’s the most honest way of putting it.....” Tom Alter has gone. But, his voluble thoughts about Satyajit Ray and Shatranj Ke Khilari still reverberate in the recesses of one’s mind.
Ashoke Nag is a veteran writer on art and culture with a special interest in legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray.
All images from Satyajit Ray Society.
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