The Late Tom Alter’s Opinion About Ali Peter John

Ali Peter John

In my 41 years in the Hindi film industry --- not Bollywood, but the Hindi film industry – I have been blessed and cursed to meet every sort of person this universe could ever produce – one day I will sit down and tell about the Big Three (Dilip, Raj, and Dev), who were true blessings, to the frauds and farces who also abound – and many in between – but today, on a humid, sweaty Mumbai afternoon, I want to write about a man who breaks all conventions, even of an industry like the film industry.

Ali Peter John – an imp with a heart of gold – a journalist who writes about the truths of life – a man who knows Bombay, even Mumbai, as he knows the veins in his wrists and in his heart – of all the journalists I have met in these 41 years, Ali is the most unique – when you meet him, you feel as if he is actually listening to you, as if he actually cares about you and your career – and when he speaks of himself, it is not his ego speaking, but his experience, his journey –

Ali has been with Screen magazine for decades – he has seen and written about it all – the comings and the goings, the rise and fall, the dream and the reality – from Rajesh Khanna to Amitabh to Shahrukh – he has felt their pride and their pain – deeply – and written of it – and them – and many more – with deep insight and sensitivity.

Ali and I meet about every ten years – at some function, or some muhurat, or some premiere. Each time there is that impish smile, that tilt of the head and of the heart – those probing and yet loving eyes – a question or two, a tale or two, and we bid adieu for another ten years.

Very recently, I met him at Khajuraho during a film festival, in which a film, “Alex Hindustani’, was being screened – a film in which I had the pleasure of acting with my son, a film which is still wending its way to release, a film of immense potential, but a film, like so many others, which is struggling to reach its final destination – the cinema halls of our great country.

It was a perfect time and place to meet Ali – for he understand the film’s journey as few others could, and also because, even more importantly, he gave me a copy of his book – “Zindagi Tukdon Mein” – “Life in Fragments” – which is the tale, told in Hindustani, of Ali’s name and his father and his mother and his Bombay and his brother and his struggle and his problems and his victories and K.A. Abbas and – above all – an ode to the city where Ali was born and still lives and works and where he will, surely, one day, as we all must, drift away –

The fragments that he writes of are uniquely Ali’s – like his name – but they are also fragments of truth, of courage, of pain and hate, of prejudice and injustice, of poverty and poetry, of people and places.

ONE OF THE MANY INCOMPLETE DREAMS THE LATE TOM ALTER--A FILM HE WANTED TO DIRECT BUT COULD ONLY START...

Tom's description of his first film as a director on the day the film was launched in Manoj Kumar's apartment and Manoj Kumar was making a comeback only because he loved and had great admiration for Tom as an actor and had proved it by having him in almost every film he made...

My wife's name is Carol Evans Alter, and the 28th., was our 38th. Wedding anniversary -- hence she gave the clap for the mahurat shot -- Manoj Sahib also knows her from before our wedding -- Manoj Sahib is making a very special guest appearance as Bhandari Kaka, who is the projectionist at Rialto Cinema in Mussoorie, and knows all that is going on in the town -- he is also writing two songs for the film, which we will record in his voice -- for me, it was a dream come true to have Manoj Sahib in our film --- I have no words to express my gratitude -- for me, he has always been a big brother and a guru, since I met him in Mumbai in 1975

Many other dear friends are also involved in this dream project -- Dharam Gulati, from the Film Institute and also a cricketing buddy, is the cinematographer -- Arun Sharma, also from the Insitute, is doing the Sound -- Sanjeeva Sood, again from the Institute, is the editor -- Shiv Painuli, from Dehra Dun, is the Associate Producer and an old friend -- Adeya Partha, with whom I have done three films, is the Associate Director -- and on the acting front, Uday Chandra is playing the main role of Chandu, Asha Sachdev is playing the Bhabhiji, Chander Mohan Khanna is the DSP in Mussoorie, Benjamin Gilani is playing the manager of Rialto, and Adil Amaan, a star of the 70's and 80's, is also doing a major role -- all of these actors, and yours truly, are from the Film Institute -- two other dear friends are also acting - Anil George, a friend from Jagadhri from the past 46 years, and now a busy actor, is playing Salim, the chailwala, and Vivek Tandon, poet and actor and friend, is playing a very important role --

The songs will be written by Manoj Sahib himself, with one song each from the late Idrak Bhatty, and the Mamta Tiwari, a fine poetess from Bhopal.

And the songs will be sung and composed by Manoj Sahib, Uday Chandra, and Cyli Khare -- Cyli is also from the Film Institute –

With me in all my projects is the one and only Chander Mohan Khanna, a friend and comrade for the past 44 years, and a fine actor, writer, and director in his own right -- or write --

This is the dream of Rerun at Rialto, a film based on a novel I wrote in 2001, based entirely in Mussoorie, where I was born and where my heart still lives --

But, alas, the film was never to be made. Will someone take up that dream of Tom and make it come true? It will be an ultimate tribute to an unusual man who deducted his whole life to the world of entertainment with enlightenment?

THAT FATEFUL FINGER...

Tom in his late sixties, but was as active as any of the best young cricketers (next to films and theatre, Tom loved cricket and was an encyclopaedia about the game). He was as or more active than Amitabh Bachchan. He never liked being inactive and so kept doing one-man shows in which he played all the important historical characters like Gandhi, Maulana Azad, Kabir, Sahir Ludhianvi and many others. Theatre came to him naturally, he was born to act....

It was during the shooting of his first film as a director that he hurt one of his fingers. Like the typical player who kept playing inspite of small injuries, he continued with the shooting during the day and did his most difficult plays in the evening. His passion for theatre was so intense that he even performed Maulana Azad in an apartment in Pune at my request and more than anything else, he read my autobiography in Hindi“Zindagi Tukdo Mein"(Life--Bits and Pieces) and said that he just had to do a one act play based on my life. He was so carried away by my story which he had not known even after knowing me for than forty years that he booked the MET auditorium in Bandra and arranged for snacks for all the guests all at his own expense. His doing a play on my life gave me what I now think is the only opportunity to have hoardings put up in the most prominent places with my face being the only one on them and his name only mentioned as the director and actor of the play.....

He continued working as if his finger had not been hurt seriously at all. He started every show with a bandage around that injured finger and carried on...

It was while he was doing one of his plays in Bangalore that he first realised the seriousness of the injury. The doctors in Bangalore said he had neglected the finger for too long and gangrene had set in and the only way to save himself was to amputate his finger and he let them do it, but he never stopped working....

Matters took a turn for the worse when the doctors at the Saifee Hospital at Charni Road which was close to his house diagnosed that the cancer from the finger had spread to his arm-pits and had traveled to his lungs....

He fought a brave battle against the most painful kind of cancer and finally succumbed to it. He will always be remembered as the boy from Dehradun who made it big, but could have made it bigger if he was not known to be an Englishman or an American when the basic fact was that he was very much an Indian who could speak English better than any of the learned English men or women and he could put poets, writers and scholars of Hindi, Urdu and even Persian into the background with his command over these languages......

This industry has the very bad habit of branding even some of the best of actors and Tom Alter who could give the best of them a run for their money was the worst victim of this bad habit...

But who can forget some of the roles he played in films and how can he be forgotten for some of the most significant plays done by one man who had the power of keeping the stage active and alive week his performances and the way he used language as a weapon to win any kind of “war".

Let Tom Alter not be forgotten because of there is an attempt to forget him, there are all his films and all his plays ready to stand up as one man to defend him.

PS-Tom never used footwear and walked bare feet under any conditions and any circumstances. He always wore a white khadi pyjama and matching kurta and a scarf around his neck. He never bought a car, but always travelled by a taxi which he never changed (not even the driver) for forty years.

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