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'One thought she would go on and on…'

Vivek Fernandes

Sunday, April 23, 2000. Bombay bid adieu to one of its most valuable treasures. Pearl Padamsee, matriarch of the theatre world, passed on to the ages after battling a long illness.

"You have to base your life on the structure of theatre.." she once said. "You have Act I, when it all begins. Then is Act II, when the complications, the estrangements, the confusion happen. Act III, where everything reaches a climax, and then the grand finale," she added. "I'll say the word. Why be afraid of it? Death."

Despite having a small frame, Pearl had an image that was larger than life. And she was a bundle of energy.

The first wife of ad and theatre guru Alyque Padamsee, Pearl was associated with some of the best-known stage productions in Bombay -- Princess, Don't Drink The Water, Brighton Beach Memoirs, The Taming Of The Shrew, Godspell, Betrayal being some of them. In fact, she directed Betrayal last year, after a three-year hiatus from theatre, even though she never once saw the actual performance, due to failing health.

She will also be remembered for her delightful roles in films like Baaton Baaton Mein, Khatta Meetha and Junoon (where she made a cameo appearance).

Pearl played the role of Miss Kutpiti in the soon-to-be-released Such A Long Journey, a movie based on Rohinton Mistry’s novel about a Parsi family. Here, she portrayed an eccentric miserly spinster, who practises witchcraft and is believed to be hoarding the embalmed bodies of deceased relatives.

Soni Razdan, her co-star in the film, looks back on the long association she had with Pearl. Soni first met her when she was only 12, while acting in a pantomime, Uma and the Seven Dwarfs which was directed by Pearl. She was the bat, the physical manifestation of the conscience of the wicked witch Pearl acted as.

Soni attributes her decision to take up acting as a profession to Pearl who provided her with encouragement and support. "I remember Pearl telling me that I had immense talent… her opinion mattered a lot to me," she says.

Soni had the opportunity to get together with Pearl once again when she acted in The Collector. It was Pearl who introduced her to Satyadev Dubey. "She played an important part in my career, helping me grow as an actor and a person, and she did this without any expressed design," she states.

Talking about their film together, Soni says, "Pearl was a fabulous actress, it was always a great treat working with her. She was a close friend, she was genial, affectionate and she truly had an interest in people. She transmitted her love to all around her… and that's probably why we love her so much. She was a taskmaster as well, very direct, but also down to earth. One felt safe around her… you could share secrets and tell her all that you felt," the actress reminisces.

"Our relationship wasn't a formal one," continues Soni. "We shared so many personal memories, but I never had the opportunity to thank her, formally, for all she did for me. One always thought she would go on and on… so wherever you are Pearl, many thanks for all your guidance, love and friendship."

Sabira Merchant is another person who happened to know Pearl closely. She was browsing through the bookshelves at the Tata Book Store, expecting her second child, when she came across Pearl for the first time in 1963. "She was selling tickets for The Crucible. I was, as usual, lost in a book-wonderland when my husband whistled for me. Hearing the whistle and seeing me respond to it, Pearl made a very funny remark. She said to my husband, 'I knew that whistle could mean only two things -- to summon a dog or wife!' We bought the tickets, of course, and enjoyed the play," recalls Sabira.

Years later, she contacted Pearl to see if she could step into the theatre world. But the latter told her that acting in theatre required a lot of hard work and sweat, and commissioned her to design the costumes for Hamlet.

"Pearl and I co-designed all the costumes. The theatre group had no money, so we made the costumes ourselves. We bought gunny sack material, used donated dyes and dyed the cloth on a terrace… deep green, dark blue, vibrant red… an inexpensive tailor sewed the outfits and all the embellishments and accessories were bought off the streets. The costumes were marvelously rich-looking, though," she says.

Sabira continued working with Pearl, assisting her in The Man Who Came To Dinner, and ultimately was cast with her in The Word which was scripted by Pratap Sharma and directed by Alyque Padamsee. "She was brilliant, passing on nuggets of information and was instrumental in my growth," acknowledges a grateful Sabira.

"What began as an actor-director relationship soon blossomed into a close and intense friendship. We worked together often, doing plays, readings and various other projects. I clearly remember her 60th birthday… she was bubbly, vibrant, her usual effervescent self. Farida Pedder, Homi Daruwalla and many others were there too and we had a blast recalling times spent together, laughing about how we missed our cues, forgot lines or jumped six pages ahead while we were on stage. But, shortly after that she took ill, underwent a bypass surgery and became a recluse," she says.

"The last time she went out was when I invited her over to dinner, about a year ago. I cooked all her favourite dishes and we joked about the good-old-days. She had a glass of wine and spent an enjoyable evening with us," she adds.

Betrayal, which could be called Pearl's swan song, was first performed last February, with her favourite actors, Farid Currim, Vijay Crishna and Sabira Merchant, in the lead roles. "Raell, Alyque and myself convinced Pearl that she needed to get back to theatre. We found this excellent script and she agreed to direct the play. Farid, Vijay and I would go over to her house for rehearsals. When we pretended to play hooky while the nurse gave her medicines, she would scold us from the other room, constantly monitoring our performances," Sabira remembers fondly.

She reveals that plans are on the anvil to institute an award in her memory. "We also plan to do a big show as a tribute to her genius," adds Sabira. Incidentally, Betrayal will be staged at The Club in Bombay on April 30.

Another theatre personality, Bharat Dabholkar says he met Pearl around 1978-79 when they worked together for Sylvester D'cunha's I Love Bombay. "We would rehearse every evening for a month-and-a-half at the Colaba Church and I would drop her home after practice. We would chat along the way -- she was extremely helpful and had a motherly aura about her. She always had something encouraging to say," narrates Bharat.

"After that play, we never really had the opportunity to work as a team, but our paths crossed often enough… at recordings, social gatherings. She would always come up to me after shows and tap me on the back and whisper encouragement. That mattered a lot at that time. She would say, 'You are not aware of the power of your pen. Don't waste it by only writing comedies to make people laugh, write something more serious,' " he says.

Noises Off and Brighton Beach Memoirs were two of her plays which he says he enjoyed the most. "Her roles in Hindi cinema did not do justice to her acting capabilities, but they reached huge audiences. Pearl will always be admired and respected for her total involvement in theatre. Her interest was not solely in theatre, but in moulding young actors, building up a new theatrical generation and guiding them through their formative years," he declares.