Sujata Mehta: Teaching grandma to suck eggs

Yesteryear film actress and popular stage performer Sujata Mehta is someone known to me from the 1980s. Her husband, Latesh Shah, is known me perhaps a little longer. Both were stage actors, with Latesh also being a gifted director. Both won prizes at inter-college short play competitions, including those organised by the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), where I had occasion to serve as judge. Sujata got film breaks, like Pratighaat and Yateem, but soon disappeared from the big screen, the phenomenon ascribed by media to her snootiness, haughtiness, pride and ego. TV audiences recall her good work in Khandan and Shrikant. We even did a featured interview of her in TV&Video World, a magazine I used to edit in the late 80s.

She continued her work in Gujarati theatre, as did Latesh, Gujarati being their mother tongue, notching up milestones. Latesh also got to assist Hindi feature film directors Kundan Shah and Aziz Mirza (some of ShahRukh Khan’s earliest TV and film work was with these two) and Madhur Bhandarkar. Belonging to a community known for its astute business sense, Latesh also set-up two textile showrooms, one in central and another in suburban Mumbai. I did bump into the couple on a couple of occasions, back in the mid 90s, and then lost contact, partly due to my 8-year stay in Singapore.

Last year, when I saw Sujata at FICCI-FRAMES, with Latesh, donning a hat, red-Indian hair locks and pendants to boot, her call of “Actor” reverberated in my memory. In the good old days, when I would go for my lectures in Communication at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Chowpatty, I would often find her sitting on the steps of the auditorium where she performed. Now, since I was better known to many as a lecturer and journalist, including her, she used to make a joke of the fact that I was an actor too, and yell out’ “Actor”! Instead, I was met with a blank look. It took a while before recognition dawned upon her. Could not blame her—twenty years is a real long time. Sujata and Latesh (who could not remember me at all, even after sharing nostalgic tit-bits about his old play Galileo) gave me their cards, which told me that they were running some high-profile training and coaching programmes.

April 22, 2016. I got a call from somebody called Shilpa, inviting me to attend Sujata Mehta’s pre-launch briefing about her forthcoming acting training workshop. I told her that I am a trainer myself, and Sujata knows it. So, I am not a prospective student. Shilpa insisted that Sujata wanted me to come nevertheless. Presuming this was a kind of press conference and briefing, I said I would try, but it was not likely that I would make it, since there were no less than four other events on Saturday, 23 April evening, clashing headlong with hers. On Saturday evening, I mulled over the options, and, fatal mistake, decided to go to Prime Mall in Irla, suburban Mumbai, to give her my best wishes.

I was made to register, given enrolment forms, a questionnaire and a promo print-out, though I insisted I was not even a probable candidate for enrolment. Both these documents were poorly produced. There were about 30-32 persons inside, including a few children and at least 10 of the duo’s own team, some of them on recruiting duty, some to provide demonstrations and testimonials, which, to my discerning eye, were well-rehearsed and planted. Latesh Shah held forth, with Sujata coming up later, interspersed with audience participation and audio-visuals about Sujata and of some former students, who greatly benefitted from the training. Almost all the practicals were based on the classical nava rasas, the nine emotions classified in ancient Indian dance and acting texts.

Called Superstar Jalsa (jalsa means celebration in some Indian languages), the programme promises to teach you communication, acting, body language salesmanship, unlock all the doors of your mind and more, in just three days, 10 hours a day. There was never any denying that Latesh and Sujata were talented performers. As speakers, Latesh speaks at 180-200 words per minute, just about intelligible. Sujata sticks to 160-180, nearer normal, but gropes a little. In terms of command over English, both of them need to work on it. When it comes to Hindi, they are better, but still need to work on it.

Inhospitable as can be, they offered nothing, to persons who might have travelled up to ninety minutes either way, as beverage or food. So, somebody who left home at 6 pm to reach the venue by 7.30, and then left the far from Prime Mall at 9.30 pm, to reach home by 11 pm, was not even offered a glass of water. And mind you, some of these invitees were prospective participants, expected to shell-out Rs. 20,000 ($600+) each. I was the only Editor/journalist around, and journalists who are invited to events after 7 pm are, nine times out of ten, offered cocktails and dinner. Guess what was I offered? Intense brainwashing! A bevy of ‘duties’, comprising Shiraz Daruwala, Aishwarya and Shilpa, was let loose on me. Shiraz first made small talk about how our names were similar, and why I should consider joining a Parsee group visiting Iran (part of my ancestry is Iranian). That was fine. And then....?

Insisting that she has read my expressions as ‘windows to my mind’, Shiraz went on and on about why I should join the workshops, either SSJ or SP2 (at first I thought these were names of the Iran tours; later I realised SSJ was Superstar Jalsa and SP2 is some corporate training that Latesh does). At the cost of being branded immodest, I had to tell her that I have been acting since I was 3 ½, have been conducting training of a similar (like Sujata and Latesh) nature since 1984, some of my former students are heads of TV channels and top actors in Bollywood  ...but nothing would convince her. Aishwarya chipped in rather sheepishly and Shilpa was not very pushy either. It took a lot of effort on my part to remain cool, and not give Shiraz a real piece of my mind. Are you so desperate to entrap candidates?

I'm not going to tell you how to do your business, Sujata and Latesh, but what you tried on me was a big error in judgement. I came to give you my best wishes and this is how showed your gratitude. There’s a very old saying about misguided persons who try, “Teaching a grandma to suck eggs.” Loosely interpreted, it means 'don’t try and force a Ph.D. to enrol in a play-school'. Very bad idea.

Consider this. Superstar Jalsa lasts three days, 10 hours each. That makes 30 hours. I charge a minimum Rs. 5,000/hour as professional fees. For 30 hours, I would charge Rs. 1,50,000. Now, if you are keen on having me attend the workshop, pay me this amount, and I will attend. That is what I would call 'jalsa'.