SIVAJI GANESAN NE APNE BOLLYWOOD KE DOSTON KE SAATH PYAR KI BHASHA MEIN BAAT KI... BY ALI PETER JOHN

The eary fifties was a time when actors established themselves and some of them went on to become the greatest legends of Indian cinema and among them were Ashok Kumar, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor and it didnt matter whether they were from the south, the east , the west or the north - Ali Peter John

They worked like one team with the interest of making good Indian films and the language in which they made their films really didn't matter.

It was only after the sixties that people started talking about films of the south, films from Bollywood and films from West Bengal. There were other regional films, but the films that made a big difference were the films made in the south and the films made in Bollywood. And among the stars who emerged as leaders were Sivaji Ganesan in the south and the trio of Dilip Raj and Dev, besides other leading names like Satyajit Ray and Uttam Kumar in Bengal and V.Shantaram in Marathi films.

There was a regular interaction between these leaders and legends of cinema in India and if there was one man who tried his best to better relation between the different stars, it was Sivaji Ganesan.

He had regular meetings with Dilip Kumar who he called Yousuf, Raj, who he called Raju and Dev who he always called ‘young man'. They met at all the important meetings to discuss their problems of making good cinema, and they were the only stars who prime minister Jawaharlal called for meeting like friends at his residence in Delhi.

Sivaji did not know Hindi and urdu was a language he tried to learn, but couldn't go beyond the first few steps. But he had his own ways of conversing and communicating with his three friends from Bombay and they could understand what they were trying to say or the point they wanted to make.

They even had their lighter moments at party, but Raj Kapoor made fun of him and called him a misfit because he neither drank nor smoked and there was no talk about his having affairs, even though he had more than one wife in his palace, house in Chennai, which looked as big as a village.

It was a ritual for Dilip Dev and Raj to visit Sivaji whenever they were in Chennai and Sivaji did the same when he came to Mumbai.

And Sivaji treated Lata Mangeskar like his little sister. He had a room ready for him at Prabhu Kunj whenever he came to Mumbai. And Sivaji had a permanent room with a temple for Lata in his house. Sivaji was a guest at all the functions of Lata's family and was also the chief guest when Lata opened the Master Deenanath Mangeskar in Pune.

Lata even had a little memorial in the compound of the hospital built in honour of her Anna (elder brother).

I was invited to the inauguration of the hospital and when I asked Sivaji and Lata how they overcame the hurdle of communicating with each other when Lata did not know enough of English and Sivaji did not know too much of Hindi and Sivaji said, “We speak the language of love and understanding for which we don't need the support of language and words.

Now, both Sivaji and Lata are in some other world, but I'm flooded with memories of the times when I was fortunate to be with them.

KISINE KAHA KI BHASHA EK HATTYAR HAI, JISNE BHI YEH KAHA, WOH BHASHA KE JAADU KE MOLE KO NAHI JAANTA.EK SHABD CHUPPI MEI JO BOLA JAYE,WOH BOHAT KUCH KEH DETA HAI JO YUGGO TAK YAAD REHTA HAI...