PREMNATH WAS HE A BETTER ACTOR IN REEL LIFE OR REAL LIFE?

BY ALI PETER JOHN

My boss took some rare pleasure by giving me some of the most challenging assignments even before I could complete my first year. One morning he called me up at home and said I must rush to Prem nath house on Malabar Hill. I was not prepared for this kind of a challenge but I did not say no and got ready early to meet the man about whom I had heard all kinds of mad stories and how he humiliated and abused people and took great pleasure in running down all his contemporaries. I got into a crowded train compartment with my mind crowded with what kind of questions I would ask this eccentric man who had already put the fear of God in me.

I somehow managed to reach ‘Anita, the building in which he lived with his actress wife Bina Rai and his two sons, Prem Kishan and Monty. I knocked at the door and looked at my watch. It was twelve noon sharp. I who did not believe in any of these age- old sayings but at that moment I felt like believing that I was in for trouble. A loud voice called out from behind the door. ‘Bam Bam Bhole’, come in come in my friend Ali, you are in for one of your greatest experiences’. I walked in and saw him dressed in just a silk saffron ‘lungi’ and with hundreds of malas (beads) of all colour round his neck). He embraced me and I could feel a shudder going down my spine. He said, ‘why are you so scared? Have you too got carried away by all the stories that people have been spreading about me? They think I am a mad man, but I think I am the only sane man around and all the others are fakes and frauds. They have got all their knowledge from books written by others but I am a book myself,’ he said and brought before me a number of small books and said, ‘take these books and read them when you find the time and you will find all the best philosophers and prophets and poets going into the shade. These books have been written by me during my thirteen -year old journey through the mountains and jungles of India where I went to find peace and have come back with that new found peace. I met gurus who were more than 500 years old and my real guru who taught me the realities of life is the youngest of them all. He is only 125 years old and he has predicted that I will make a grand come back in films as a villain. These books contain the kind of knowledge you will not find anywhere. The day you feel that I have written some nonsense in them, you can come and slap me’. I did not know how to react but showed him that I was very interested in all that he was saying. He then pulled out a harmonium and said it was two thousand year old and asked me if I would like to listen to some divine music. I admired the harmonium and told him that I would listen to him playing his precious harmonium and even listen to his divine songs some other evening when I had some more time. Then came the biggest surprise. He came out with two skulls and said they belonged to two of his gurus who died when they had crossed three hundred and he could work wonders with the skulls which had to listen to him. I was on the verge of going mad when he finally came to the point and said, ‘tell those b…ds that I am here again and I will screw all of them within no time and reduce them to bl…y municipalities. (It was only much later that I realized that he called anyone he didn’t like ‘municipality’). I managed to survive that afternoon and went back and wrote exactly what had happened and what he said. I expected him to call up and call me a bl…y ‘municipality’ but on the contrary he called up and told me that I was very frank and he loved every word that I had written and asked me if I would like to be his disciple. I mumbled and said I would consider his offer and thanked him for the compliment he had paid me for writing the piece. That evening I celebrated the great conquest with a small party at the Press Club.

I did not have the good opportunity to meet him for several months after that meeting but he had made his own prediction come true. Vijay Anand was the first to cast him as the villain in ‘Johnny Mera Naam’ and his performance in the film made him the highlight and also the most wanted villain. He said money was ‘like dirt’ in his hands but charged more than rupees twenty lakhs for a film which was more than the price paid to the best of stars. He traveled in an open Mercedez of which he had a fleet. He always travelled with a group of sadhus and also dressed up like them. I once met him just for a few minutes and he called out and said, ‘look, how I have screwed all those b…ds’. I just waved out to him and he raised his hand in blessing and screamed “Bam Bam Bhole”.

The next meeting we had been a very interesting meeting at Film City where he was shooting for Subhash Ghai’s ‘Karz’. That afternoon the then Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Sharad Pawar and his family were to visit the sets on a request made by the C.M. His family arrived and were very excited to see stars like Rishi Kapoor, Tina Munim, Simi and Premnath. After pleasing themselves for an hour they asked for photographs to be taken with the stars, but Premnath shouted out and asked the stars not to pose for any photographs till Pawar gave them an assurance that one of the floors at Film City would be air conditioned. The C.M. was embarrassed and immediately made a promise and if you see the air conditioned floor at Film City today, it is all because of that brash step taken by Premnath.

We were all on our way to Panchgani for the shooting of a film called ‘Dhongee’. It was winter and we were all covered in our best warm clothes and had swigs of brandy to keep ourselves warm. But in the open Mercedez driving ahead of us was Premnath bare-chested with six sadhus and an astrologer called Bejan Daruwala. They were happily having their good time with ganja and other liquids which kept them warm and in high spirits. And what was even more shocking was that after every five minutes one of the sadhus or Premnath himself pulled out a live cock and strangled it by the neck and flung it on the road and shouted ‘Bam Bam Bhole’. Premnath later told me that it was the highest form of sacrifice which would please all the gods. The next morning he introduced me to all the sadhus and even to the astrologer. He said none of them was less than two hundred years old and said that he was very sure that Bejan Daruwala would be one of the leading astrologers of the country because the senior most sadhu had blessed him. All the other journalists made fun of Daruwala but I kept quiet and he said, ‘take it from me, all these fellows will be no-where and you will be on top of the world.’ I thanked him without really believing him but two years later when I looked back and I realized that I had really reached some place of eminence in my career and even though I don’t believe in astrology, I always make it a point to read whatever Daruwala has to say about individuals and the world.

If you ask me the last and the most shocking experience in the colourful and most controversial life of Premnath was what happened at the launching of India’s first Indo-Hollywood film, ‘Shalimar’. The Turf Club of Bombay was packed with the entire industry and the big stars from Hollywood, Rex Harrison and Elizabeth Traylor were present.

Everything was going on in a very grand scale when Premnath suddenly created a scene. He called for his ADC dressed in the uniform of a police officer and asked him to bring his pot to him. The ADC followed and brought a silver pot and presented it to him and he urinated in the presence of Elizabeth Taylor and the entire crowd of celebrities and made front page news the next day. When asked for his reaction, he just said, ‘what is nature’s call? It is not something that is in man’s hands but comes naturally and no king or emperor can stop it’.

Premnath was soon taken ill but he never let anyone know. He stopped signing films and spent the next few years in solitary confinement in his own house and one day died in his sleep. A few days before he died he had told one of his Sadhu friends that he would die within a week but would be re-born as ‘another Premnath at another time’.

People did not know what to make of this man and the best comment came from his nephew, Randhir Kapoor who at his funeral in his own typical manner said, ‘watch this man carefully, who knows this also must be a part of his madness and he may come back to life again’. But that was not to happen but the fact is that there can never be another Premnath.

More on Premnath
– Premnath is the brother of Krishna, Raj Kapoor’s wife. His brother Mahendranath was the General Manager of R.K.Studios and later the Secretary of Dimple Kapadia and Karishma Kapoor. Rajendranath, the comedian was his other brother who was a popular comedian and his other brother Jeetendranath worked as the production manager of film makers like Boney Kapoor and Rakesh Roshan. All the brothers died when they were very young.

– He learnt the ropes of acting at Prithvi Theatre under the guidance of Prithviraj Kapoor where he had Raj Kapoor and Shammi Kapoor as his juniors.
– He was also one of the actors who was in love with Madhubala but gave up when he realized that the great Dilip Kumar was also in love with her.
– He fell out with Raj Kapoor after ‘Barsaat’ and came back only when Raj asked him to play the role of Jack Braganza in ‘Bobby’
– He had his own private hideout in Versova when it was not so crowded where he openly confessed he had all kinds of “orgies”.
– He was crazy enough to invest a great deal of money in making a complete film which was produced, directed, written and had lyrics and music by him and even the songs were sung by him. Needless to say the film was never released but whenever he was bored he found great excitement in watching the “master piece” he had made.
– He had a very good command over the English language which he used in the books that he wrote in the hills and jungles.
– He was an admirer of a woman’s beauty ‘and not her body and breasts like Raj’ (he meant Raj Kapoor, his brother-in-law)
– He had his own prayer meetings which were only for a few friends. He called holy men like Bhagwan Rajneesh and Sai Baba men who took poor and ignorant people for a ride in the name of God.
– He has a half written autobiography but no one knows where it is now.
– His wife Bina Rai, the well-known actress and his sons were renounced by him when he was at his peak.
– His son Prem Kishan is now a leading producer of T.V serials and Monty is a man who has tried his hand at everything but is a miserable failure.
– He had promised me that he would write about all the women in his life but was not able to even start writing it.
– The only people in the industry he admired were Sunil Dutt, Dev Anand, Vijay Anand and Subhash Ghai.
– People in the industry were literally scared of the man and he laughed at their folly because he said there were many other wolves in sheep’s clothing who were ‘much more monstrous than Swami Premnath of another world who was a misfit in this world’.

https://youtu.be/QDrjFUIp5yY?t=17