“It was a Wednesday,” says Kiran Joneja Sippy recalling her memories of ‘Buniyaad’. “I had returned to Bombay after attending the birthday party of my nephew in Delhi. At the airport, my secretary said, ‘We have to rush to Film City as Mr. Ramesh Sippy, director of Sholay, is waiting for us.’ What’s the hurry, I retorted. He wouldn’t listen and on the way explained how much effort is being taken to mount a television serial.”
Coming from a non-film background — her father was a doctor — Kiran hardly got to watch films. “I had heard of Sholay, but didn’t know its true value till then.”
Well, they reached the set and Kiran was made to sit on a manjhi (a cot used in the rural areas of North India). “Wearing a skirt and top, I flaunted my modelling background in that village setting. Years later, Rameshji told me how I walked in, in an all-white ensemble, though I really didn’t remember,” laughs Kiran.
Talking about getting a role in the popular serial, she says, “’Amit Khanna, a well-known name in the media and entertainment world, noticed me in ‘Wah Janab,’ the comedy series I did with Shekhar Suman. In the show, I wore salwar suits and delivered dialogue in chaste Hindi. He recommended my name to Rameshji, who had cast somebody else in the role of Veeravali and had shot a couple of episodes with her. Not happy with the result, he had stopped shooting those episodes.”
So, Ramesh Sippy was still looking for his Veeravali and that Wednesday he found her. “He asked my name and age. Like most women, I was not comfortable answering the second question. I said that I was as old as I looked. He kept quiet, but said that the character might have a journey from the young to the old and wanted to know whether I would be comfortable with that. Not aware of things like typecasting, I said, of course, thinking it would be a challenge.” Kiran was asked to join the shoot the following Monday. “ Meanwhile, I was supposed to get my salwar-suits ready with the costume director.”
Kiran says that she struggled with the Punjabi of the pre-Partition era for a few days. “At home, we usually conversed in English, but I had done Hindi plays such as ‘Aashad Ka Ek Din’ in Delhi. Those days actors worked as a close-knit family. So I had Alok Nath and Vijeyandra Ghatge helping me with the lines and then there was Rameshji, who clearly knew what he wanted from his actors.”
The difficult part, Kiran says, was when she began realising that she was reliving the story of her grandparents. “My grandparents were refugees and had come from the Mianwali area of Pakistan. My maternal grandfather was a zamindar but used to teach as a hobby. He was called Masterji. He stayed back in Pakistan after the Partition for a year and saved the lives of many girls. My grandfather was called Lalaji and my aunt, Veeravali, as she had three brothers. So, in a way, I was reliving the memories of my parents and grandparents, the horror stories of the Partition that they used to tell us. It was cathartic,” says Kiran. “It still hurts,” she says, her voice choked with emotion.
Kiran’s comeback in the serial as an old woman was not part of the original plan. “It was just a thought but it had to be done on public demand. Same happened with my role of Ganga in the ‘Mahabharat.’ It was not part of the original script. But the character was brought back on public demand.” These small screen roles might have impacted her film career, but for Kiran the rewards more than made up for it.
