Spend time with Lekh Tandon and you realise why late actresses Geeta Bali and Nadira labelled him the best practitioner of dastangoi (oral story telling) in the film industry. So potent is his vocabulary that even a blind listener can relate to the fascinating imagery and although the peppery beard on his cherubic face lends Lekh Tandon a Sufi saint persona, you wonder why this eminent film and television director-writer-producer hasn’t been in action for last several years?
Sadly, it was the death of his wife Swarn that created a terrible vacuum in his life. The hiatus became longer due to his pledge on her death bed that he wouldn’t return to the energy sapping television arena ever again. Though his children look after him with great affection, his eyes grow moist remembering the woman who was the bedrock of his life. “Swarn was the soul of my existence but I realised her true worth only after her absence,” says Tandon with a choked throat. It’s comprehensible as his life has been a saga of fulfilling bonds that allowed not just an easy entry into filmdom but also made him a formidable director.
However, the good news is that in keeping with the second part of his promise, the creator of “Professor”, “Amrapali”, “Jhuk Gaya Aasman”, “Prince”, “Jahan Pyaar Mile”, “Dulhan Wahi Jo Piya Man Bhaye” (DWJPMB) and several other noteworthy films is now ready to wield the baton again.
Though it took him 14 years to debut as a director, Tandon’s career began without hiccups due to Prithviraj Kapoor who was a childhood friend of his father. Even after Prithviraj’s exalted star status and regular visits to Tandon residence in Lahore with the Kapoor clan, Tandon’s resolve to become a director came not after watching Prithviraj’s histrionics but after witnessing a badly made Punjabi film which he felt he could have made better!
Nevertheless, Prithviraj gave wings to the youngster’s ambition whereupon, hours after his arrival in Bombay on 17th September 1947. Tandon was made an assistant in RK Films. After assisting Raj Kapoor in “Aag” and “Barsaat”, Tandon served Kedar Sharma for five years but fearing his own creativity would never flourish under the “genius painter, poet, writer and director”, Tandon took permission to work with other banners where he rubbed shoulders with Rajendra Singh Bedi, Bhappi Soni, Mahesh Kaul and Pandit Narendra Sharma.
Rated as one of the best entertainers ever, the script of “Professor” was rejected by Guru Dutt but purchased by Tandon to help a fledgling writer. Scripted by Abrar Alvi, the film is now acknowledged as one of Shammi’s finest screen enactments but, at that time, Shammi gave Tandon a torrid time since he was unconvinced of his directorial abilities. Apart from Abrar and Lalita Pawar, Tandon credits the success of “Professor” to his old Prithvi Theatre friends Shankar-Jaikishan who came on board for a small fee but whose “presence catapulted the film into the top bracket, ensuring a great release”.
For connoisseurs, Tandon has an uncanny ability of shooting songs yet he credits the same to Raj Kapoor’s advice to “see and feel the lyrics”. But what is left unsaid is that the extraordinary compositions of SJ, Shailendra-Hasrat Jaipuri came alive in his films because of his deft cutting on the editing table. No wonder, Hollywood cameraman Robert Surtees (“Ben-Hur” fame) praised Tandon’s cinematic results of “Amrapali” despite low grade cameras and why the film is today a much taught subject in foreign film schools!
Similarly, while Tandon’s subject and treatment are always different, he has a knack of picking the right actors for the characters; Lalita Pawar in “Professor” and Madan Puri in “DWJPMB” easily come to mind as they not just broke the mould but also set new idioms in screen acting. Surprisingly, Tandon cast them even when the two established actors were themselves unsure of their own abilities! Ask him about his renowned creative obstinacy and he reveals none from Rajesh Khanna to Rekha and Sunil Dutt to Saira Banu ever gave him trouble at work but on the contrary, most producers denied him his dues thus leading to the blundering mistake of turning a producer himself. His “immaturity led to disaster”. Tandon even considered going bankrupt to ward off the creditors but his wife made him payback every penny by selling their house and jewellery to protect his honour! “I do not cry easily but always do thinking of Swarn’s extraordinary sacrifices for the family,” says Tandon, who confides missing and weeping for Papaji (Prithviraj) and Rafi Sahab whose “goodness cannot be recounted in a single lifetime!”
It is these tender tears that turned him into a universal citizen soon after India’s independence. Tandon narrates he joined a Hindu mob in raiding a Muslim household in Daryaganj (Delhi) even though his family had returned safely from Pakistan with the help of Muslim friends. Managing to pick the last remnants of the household, he returned with three books that deeply ashamed him of his despicable act. The three books “The Hindu View of Life” by Dr. Radhakrishnan, the Urdu translation of “Bhagwad Geeta” by Khwaja Din Mohammed and “Tarjaman Ul Quran” by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad “brought home the inescapable fact that we had been barbaric in plundering a residence of a man in love with the cultural ethos of the country.” Converted into a lifelong secularist thereafter with no affiliation to caste or religion, Tandon is extremely critical of the modern conspiracy to defame Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru despite their incredible contribution to the spirit of universal brotherhood. As you focus on his twinkling eyes and rapid fire conversation, you see a “restless teenager” who hopefully will bring the much needed solace with his new movie that is being made for the sake of the younger generation.
