The Talented Mr Ganguly

Actor Ashok Kumar wore many hats in his life, including those of a painter of nudes and master homeopath

The loo, it seems, was where actor Ashok Kumar was at his creative best. He rehearsed his lines there, he chose race horses to back there, and he painted nudes in the buff there (his logic: “You have to feel it!”). “Like his acting, he took his painting very seriously. He painted in the privacy of his bathroom and we weren’t allowed to disturb him,” recalls his eldest daughter Bharti Jaffrey. Inspired by Henri Matisse, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne and the Impressionists, and prodded by his actor-friend Iftekhar, every morning, from 7 am to 10 am, he would shut the bathroom door behind him, three hours dedicated to oil, watercolour and charcoal. Few of the paintings, however, survive, scattered in the homes of family and friends. “I don’t have any. I have to borrow and sometimes steal when I need them,” Bharti laughs.

Ashok Kumar, reveals his daughter, was not just a talented actor, but also a writer, painter, singer and homeopath. Born as Kumudlal Ganguly in Bhagalpur, Bihar, to a family of lawyers, he came to be called Dadamoni. Bharti says their ancestors were actually notorious as a band of ‘Robinhoods’ who stole from the rich to hand over to the poor. Dadamoni, though, gave his heart to cinema the day his mother took him to Calcutta to see a film, and soon boarded a train to Bombay.

In the 1940s, the decade in which Dadamoni shot to fame, movies weren’t considered a respectful business. His mother, especially, was mortified that no respectable family was ready to give their daughter in marriage to him. “Papa was a charming man, never short of female attention. He would go to these high-society parties where he would charm aristocratic, bejewelled ladies smelling of French perfumes and joke that he was taking them to the bedroom. But when it came to finding a bride, the going got tough. Nobody was willing to marry their daughters to him, because [actors were below their dignity],” says Bharti.

Finally, he married the modestly educated girl next door, Shobha, much younger than him. They were as different as oil and water, but Shobha was ever the dutiful wife, bringing him food on the sets and taking care of their four children. “He was the fulcrum of her life. Her husband mattered more to her than her children,” says Bharti. So much so that even rumours of Dadamoni’s closeness with his heroines, Devika Rani and Nalini Jaywant in particular, didn’t cause any trouble in their marriage. Says Bharti, “It would be wrong to assume that such gossip wouldn’t have bothered mom, but she was from a time when women considered their husbands swamis.”

It was Shobha’s lung ailment that drove Dadamoni to master homeopathy. Thereafter, for 45 years, the actor treated patients for free. “Once, a 14-year-old girl with gangrene came to him, and frightened at the thought of cutting off the limb of such a young girl, he spent several days on the case and finally cured her. When her doctors heard that, they said in a derogatory manner, ‘That actor Ashok Kumar has cured her? We can’t believe it.’”

Ashok Kumar paid as little heed to this as he did to opinions of his acting. “Papa didn’t take his stardom seriously,” says Bharti. He was always full of self-deprecating jokes. When he got the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, he played it down by saying, “Kaunsa bada sher maara hai?” 

Dadamoni’s half-century of work in films was full of glory and grime. Riding the wave of success, he piled up enormous wealth, including a partnership in Bombay Talkies, a building at Kala Ghoda, bungalows in Bandra, land at Chembur and a farm at Karla near Mumbai. But he lost most of it because, as Bharti puts it, “he was a bad businessman”. “He believed in karma. At Bombay Talkies, he ran into losses, but always felt maybe he owed them money, and would say, ‘Jaane doh. Agar paisa jaa raha hai toh kuchh wajah hai.’” 

He spent his last days in his Chembur bungalow. “Until a few years before his death in 2001, he had a sharp memory and sharper instincts,” Bharti says, adding, “Just two years before that, he was being operated upon at Jaslok Hospital. In a semi-conscious state, he heard a doctor say, ‘Has he written his will? He won’t survive a day.’ When he recovered and the doctor came to check on him,  recognising his voice, papa held out his fist and chased him down the corridor. That’s when the doctor realised papa was a boxer too.”

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