Mortality never fails to take us by surprise.
A few months before his next film was due to release, the passing of filmmaker Ismail Merchant -- likely the most recognised Indian name in the world of international cinema -- left a slew of friends and associates reaching for memories and ways to absorb the shock of his sudden demise from a burst ulcer in London.
One of his closest friends, Madhur Jaffrey, broke down on hearing the news, saying "I can't talk now, I don't think I will be able to for a few days."
A more recent friend, Meera Gandhi, New York's best known desi socialite and social entrepreneur, was shocked when we told her the news. "I am devastated, it's the end of an era," she said.
And perhaps it is.
After all, such was the effect of Merchant, a Renaissance Man in his own right. An ardent devotee of art, he with his partner James Ivory, brought to the screen, and off it, a style, an aesthetic, and an old world attitude that was entirely his own.
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Ram Rahman, artist and founding member of Sahmat, a New York arts group, summed it up when he described Merchant as the public face of the famed trio that included James Ivory and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.
"Jim is a very shy person, and he'd never have achieved what he achieved without Ismail," Rahman said. " Ruth is also very shy. So he was the public face. The energetic, go-getting face of this trio of talent."
"He was very intimate with the Bombay film industry, and also the international film industry -- not just Hollywood and America, but also France. His connections and work crossed over all those industries, which is highly unusual. I don't think there's any figure from Asia quite like that."
"Ismail was one of the pioneers who made Indians in this country proud," says Vishakha Desai, president of the Asia Society. "He was one of the leaders when there were very few Indian-Americans present in the field of art and culture."
As the news of his demise started streaming out, memories started flooding in, indiscriminately, from his filmmaking, to his love of cooking, and even his thrifty nature. But above all is remembered his contribution to the awareness of the Indian sensibility, even when it didn't involve cinema.
Anjali Sharma, director for marketing for the American India Foundation, working towards social and economic development in India, recalls the time Merchant served as the gala chair in 2004.
"He was generous with his time and energy," she said. "He reached out to a lot of people that he knew -- celebrities and others. He truly believed in our cause. He even cooked for our members at the event!"
Others recalled his livewire energy, and his passion for all things he took a liking to.
"Everybody has stories about Ismail," recalled Rahman. "He was a wonderfully lively character. Hugely energetic He could go anywhere in the world with full confidence. He could work anywhere with no hesitation. That's how he accomplished what he accomplished."
And, in that accomplishment, writer Suketu Mehta, who wrote the script for Merchant's film Goddess, sees traces of a quintessential Bombay spirit.
"When you're born in Bombay, you're born with your feet running," Mehta said. "And he had that Bombay spirit of enterprise. He came to New York in the 1960s, with nothing to his name. And he speedily made a reputation as the best producer of art films, ever! He married that Bombay spirit of enterprise with a very keen aesthetic sensibility."
His aesthetic, of course, wasn't limited to the silver screen. If there is one thing Merchant is as well know for as his filmmaking, it's his skill with the skillet.
Sreenath Sreenivasan, co-founder of the South Asian Journalists' Association and teacher of journalism at Columbia University, recalls a summer when his father, Indian diplomat T P Sreenivasan was visiting New York.
"My father picked up one of Merchant's books on the shelf -- Ismail Merchant's Passionate Meals. It was so impressive that my father, who had not entered the kitchen for 35 years, taught himself to cook," Sreenivasan remembers, an admirer of Merchant for long before he met him.
Mehta recalls a party with Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson. "They were all talking about how they worked for a pittance, in a Merchant-Ivory film, and Hugh Grant said, 'We all know why we work for Ismail. We do it for the curry!'"
What sums up Merchant's joie de vivre best is perhaps the time in Zurich when he and Mehta were standing outside Tina Turner's house.
"Here's this incredibly exciting project, with this legend of music," Mehta recalls. "And he just stops and He bent down to smell a flower, and his whole being was filled with pure joy at the beauty of it he found that beauty everywhere He took time to smell the flowers."
(Reported by Arun Venugopal, Monika Joshi and Suman Guha Mozumder)
