From stuttering schoolboy to smooth-talking film star

As a little boy, he was surrounded by hordes of women – his mother, three sisters, four maternal aunts, five from his father’s side, five female cousins and sundry other relatives. He never knew how a man looked or behaved, his father having passed away months before he was born. He had a lisp and speech impairment and his mother’s attempt to get him admitted in St. Mary’s School was a disaster because he was too scared to identify a picture of a horse, lest his lisp made him utter a garbled bad word.

The virtually non-communicative boy was finally cured of his speech impairment by Ms Aloo Hirjiben who put some marbles into his mouth. He swallowed a few, like Eliza Doolittle, but started to speak. “And I have not stopped talking since then!” exclaimed popular film and stage actor Boman Irani at the meeting of July 7 as he shared vignettes of the trials and tribulations he underwent before he became a film star in his middle age (he was 44 years old). Boman, who was speaking at the meeting of July 7, the first regular meeting of the new Rotary year, brought the house down several times as he took members on a trip down memory lane. He spoke deprecatingly at one moment, admonished a member at another when his cellphone rang; gave it back with interest to Khurshed Poonawala who had probably ribbed him before the meeting about acting in Hindi movies; or mimicked some of those who had played a key role in his career, whether Alyque Padamsee, Shiamak Davar or Aspi Adajania.

He said people of his age were jealous of him because he got a chance to act with some of the most beautiful women in the film industry. But there was a catch – he usually played their father in the movies! Since he started acting very late in life, he never got a chance to play the romantic hero in the movies. And even when he did, in a film called “Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi”, he was cast opposite the director-choreographer Farah Khan. “It’s worse than being married!” When he was six or seven years old, he probably had dyslexia, dyscalculia and several other learning problems. In those days, there was another name for all these conditions – they called him a “duffer”. Although he had started talking normally, his learning disabilities continued. After the twelfth, Boman did some selfassessment and realised he could not go far in academia.

He could talk, was affable and friendly. That was all. So he decided to become a waiter. After a six-month course, he reached the Taj Mahal Palace, met Mr. Sam Bhada and told him that he wanted to work in the Rendezvous (on the top floor). Nothing doing, Mr. Bhada told him, and despatched him to the basement to work in room service. There, he was given a tray and sent off to Room 2225. “And I started my career as a waiter here in the Taj. I know every back alley in the Taj.” In course of time, he was transferred to the Shamiana, then to the Apollo Bar and finally to the Rendezvous, the place he had set his eye on. Along the way, he also started receiving a lot of tips. Some people gave him a tip of Rs. 5 on a bill of Rs. 9 (for a cup of tea). He saved all his tips in a piggy bank, which played crucial role later in his life.

The family had a wafer shop, Golden Wafers behind Novelty Cinema, where they fried wafers and sold them over the counter. When his mother suddenly had an accident Boman went to work at the shop. It was a tiny shop with a big stove and frying pan – “and it was as hot as hell”. One day, a pretty young girl, Zenobia, came to the shop. And then she started coming every day. He didn’t realise that she was courting him, coming to his shop every day and buying sali! Her father must also have wondered about this, so she gave the sali to a beggar down the street. “By the time we got married in three years, we had a very fat beggar at the end of the road!” He got married at the age of 25 and his first son was born before he turned 26. His second son came three years later. He had become a family man, proud to be a shopkeeper, selling wafers, as also chivda, fafda and so on.

But “the creative monkey inside me” wanted to do something. He couldn’t be sitting in the shop all his life. He broke open his piggy bank and bought a camera. He wanted to try his hand at photography. He started going to the Gymkhana cricket ground and took pictures of the school cricketers and of cycle races. He also went to the airport to take photographs of family members seeing off their relatives going abroad. He earned Rs. 35 per picture.

Boman regretted that even after seven years of marriag he had never been able to tak his family for a holiday outsid Bombay. It was his photography that allowed him to plan his first holiday, to exotic Ooty. He chose hotel Shawham Palace through the classified advertisements in Mid-Day, made trunk calls to book rooms and sent an advance by money order. The family travelled to Bangalore by train, then took an ST bus to Ooty. But the rickshaw driver had never heard of Shawham Palace. When they finally reached the distant, ramshackle “palace”, they were in for an even greater surprise. The place looked like a haunted house from one of the Ramsay Brothers’ horror films. He even saw a bat fly over the belfry! An even greater horror lay in store when they were taken to their room.

A key was inserted into a heavy lock and the doo creaked open, making grating sound. It was pitch dark. When the light was switched on, he saw that it was a zero number bulb. “I have no shame in saying that I had failed. I had wanted to give my family a holiday. But I had failed – I started crying. What else could I do? But then we did the huddle and I started laughing. And I said, ‘this is a learning experience’. “I think no matter from which strata of society you come, whatever age you may be, you may be very successful – but I think in everybody’s life there is a point like that. My life at that point was a ‘zero number bulb’. I’m happy it happened to me. I wonder how many people have had a ‘zero number bulb’ moment in their lives. It’s not such a bad thing; it’s a good thing, in fact. It doesn’t have to be a financial situation, it could be anything.”

And so, Boman continued, when he returned to Bombay he started doing sports photography in all earnestness. Somebody told him that six months later the World Cup of Boxing would be held in Bombay. It was a very big event for the city and the country. Many Olympians would be taking part in it. After some practice at the Western India Boxing Tournament, he was appointed the official photographer of the World Cup. He earned 900 dollars for three photographs of a Norwegian boxer. That gave Boman the courage to become a full-time photographer. He found a place in the information branch of the Russian Consulate to start a studio, took a heavy loan and set off on a career as a professional photographer. But nothing happened. There was no work for two years. He was paying heavy interest and all the cheques of 900 dollars were wiped out. He had no work, a lot of equipment and paying rent through his nose in Breach Candy.

Things went from bad to worse. He had to sell his wife’s jewellery but even then he could not pay the seven rupees for a rice plate that a neighbouring hotel gave him every afternoon. And then, just as suddenly, things started changing. Shiamak Davar walked into his life. He looked around the studio and said, “Darling, you are going to be very famous some day. I don’t know how, but you are going to be famous one day. You are an actor”. He returned three months later and offered to take Boman for lunch. He took him to see Alyque Padamsee who was rehearsing a musical called “Roshnee” and asked him to audition. Alyque was not impressed the first time they met. He told Shiamak, “I have been in this business forty years and I know when I see talent, he (Boman) doesn’t have talent.” Yet Alyque gave him a role; he had one song and one scene. And he played a pimp.

The play was rehearsed for six months and then it had its premiere. It was not a great success, but one day, Rahul da Cunha came backstage and asked him to block three dates in November for an experimental play which would open in a 180-seat auditorium. He would be paid Rs. 700 per show. The rehearsal lasted four months. It was primarily a play for two actors, Boman and the Marathi stage actor Sudhir Joshi. The two of them would sit on a park bench and talk about love, life, sex, glaucoma, arthritis and so on. How could this be an interesting play? That’s why it was called experimental, said Rahul. Boman had never done a play before. But they rehearsed for four months without any tangible rewards. Before the play opened, Burjor Patel told Rahul to open in a big theatre. Rahul said no, but Burjor insisted on opening at the Tata which had 1,200 seats. “I don’t know what happened, but the first show was house-full. People can sense what is good and what is not good. The play ran for ten years. The last show ten years later was also house-full and even though it was flooded in Bombay, people were selling tickets in black.

“There is no price for hard work. It just happens. The play was called ‘I’m Not Bajirao’. And then Sudhir Joshi passed away and the play stopped.” Boman was also offered a role by Feroze Khan in “Mahatma vs. Gandhi”. When he asked about the role, he was told that he would play Mahatma Gandhi – although he was 110 kg. in weight and six feet two inches tall! Feroze told him to lose some weight. As for the height, he mumbled something in reply.