Hi Mom! This is Bunty. How are you feeling?” Every morning that’s how I greet my mother, Kamini Kaushal. Rather, Uma Kashyap, from pre-Partition Lahore. Mom lost her father (famed botanist Professor SR Kashyap) when she was just six. She was brought up by her elder brothers Amar and Kedar. Today, she’s 89, having worked in the industry for more than 70 decades. In fact, Filmfare bestowed a Lifetime Achievement award on her last year and it’s been a defining moment. Mom tells me that Filmfare had its genesis in her home! While chatting with good friend JC Jain, a senior executive in Bennett Coleman & Co, the idea of Filmfare was born...

 
About Uma aka Kamini
Papa (the late Braham S Sood, chief engineer at the Bombay Port Trust) married Usha, mom’s older sister from Lahore, in the 1940s. They had two daughters Kumkum and Kavita. Sadly, Usha died in a car accident, while the girls were just one and two. The family turned to my mother Uma, Usha’s youngest sister and who was unmarried then, to take on the mantle of bringing up the girls and be wife to Rummy (as Papa was fondly called), many years her elder. How could Uma refuse? That was probably the biggest sacrifice mom made in her life; to marry for duty, not love. And the commitment stayed; even when India’s heartthrob and thespian Dilip Kumar came a-knocking. She went through a turbulent time. But eventually, she chose Papa and his daughters over Dilip saab. In fact, one poignant memory of mom that lingers is of her slipping a framed photo of her deceased sister Usha under Papa’s pillow as he took his last breaths in a hospital.

A privileged childhood
My earliest recollection of mom is of watching her as a toddler from my bed with its high safety railings as she prepared for work early morning... sitting in front of her custom-built dressing table with swivelling mirrors and lights. She preferred to do her make-up at home rather than rely on the make-up man. In between, she’d be sipping tea, taking phone calls, giving instructions to the staff, chatting with Papa as he returned from a game of tennis. She’d have a few words for me too.
I call our childhood home, the spacious two-storey home Gateside in Mazgaon, my haven. It was surrounded by families of other Bombay Port Trust (BPT) engineers, a quiet and idyllic area. I spent my first 18 years living there. It had a large park outside, where we boys (including my two brothers Vidur and Shravan) would play with the neighbourhood kids, run laps, chase kites and do floor exercises at dusk.

Mom’s mother, our grandmother, stayed with us at Gateside for years. She broke tradition by living with her daughter so as to be of help in bringing up the girls. For our relatives, Gateside was like an ‘open house’ many of them even lived with us as they embarked on their careers. My friends remember Gateside as a ‘Party Central’ where the bar always had liquor, the music could be turned on and everyone rock-and-rolled! To Papa’s colleagues, those were BPT’s glorious years, what with a Cary Grant like looking UK-trained chief, his celebrity wife and a frequent guest list of the Who’s Who of Bombay.

 
A CREATIVE MOM
Once a year, at Diwali, Mom would sit us down in front of our small temple. She’d read out of the Ramayana with tenderness and feeling. Our home was an extension of mom’s creativity. I had many pets as my companions: a rabbit, birds, a pedigreed golden retriever Tito and even a rhesus monkey that mom inherited from some circus movie she acted in. Mom dressed the monkey Nanoo in a colourful skirt. We published a monthly newsletter Gateside Review, for which we would all write, submit illustrations and sell cyclostyled copies to our friends and neighbours for one anna each. If it was someone’s birthday, we would draw them a card. We even organised an annual Fun Fair in our park outside our home to raise money for charity.  

                                                   
My parents helped me build a vast collection of Dinky toys. They also helped me build a top-of-the-line German Marklin train set collection over their many trips abroad. They gave me a table tennis table. A sand pit was built in the park outside our housee to help me practise athletics. The BPT carpentry shop even built me a lovely Tree House. And, the garish sound that came out of my Fender amp, when I practised the steel guitar, would make our walls reverberate and my sisters protest in despair. Yes, I was born with a silver spoon. Maybe I was a ‘mama’s boy’, being her first born!

TRAVEL TALES

Every holiday season we would take car journeys on narrow highways to places like Delhi, Simla, Jaisalmer... spending nights at dak bungalows. The most memorable was a long stint in the clean air of Gulmarg in Kashmir, so that mom could get over her bout of tuberculosis. Papa and I would golf every day. I must have been to a dozen location shoots with mom including Benares, Ooty, Mysore... with 5-star comfort all the way. I can remember overhearing Sharmila Tagore solicit advice from mom on how to get India’s most eligible bachelor, Pataudi, to propose to her! Or see young Rishi Kapoor and his beau Neetu Singh cavort on a plane. Or have a casual chin-wag with Amitabh Bachchan. Despite such a lifestyle, my weekly allowance was pitifully small! My classmate, Naushad Padamsee, ate lavish lunches at Mocambo restaurant. The best I could afford was a samosa from the school canteen or maybe bhelpuri at Vitthals! But this frugality taught me the value of money later.

 
TALES OF STARDOM
Stardom comes with a price. Once, back in the late 1950s, we were heading to Calcutta by train for the opening of mom’s production Poonam. It was night. The train stopped at some station. Someone discovered she was on the train. In no time a crowd gathered. We were asked to stay put. The mob turned ugly. First they yelled abuse. Then they pelted stones at the train in frenzied rage. Luckily, the train started moving. But one branzen fan had sneaked into her compartment, stolen her pillow and had left her a note: “Agar aap ko takiya ki chori mein koi romance dikhai deta hai, to main aap ka chor premi hoon!”

Mom made one allowance for being a star that is moving in a fancy foreign car. That too because Papa insisted. She never hired a PR agency. She never looked for work. Even during her acting years, she preferred to do something creative in her spare time. Between shots, she’d make fridge stickers, dolls or rugs. She’d even write stories for the children’s magazine Paraag. In between, she chaired the Children Film Society. She did a number of TV serials for kids on Doordarshan (Khel Khilone). For her puppet-based TV programmes (Chand Sitare, Chaat Pani and Chandamama), she made all the puppets herself and even lent her voice to the different characters sounding distinctly different each time.

QUIRKS & MORE
There were years when she chose not to act. That time, she’d just switch gears to running her home, living off Papa’s government salary. She was never a lavish spender. She never smoked or drank. She rarely went shopping. She was not much into socialising, no kitty parties, no playing cards. At home she was just a regular mom. When our doorbell rang, she would often go open it herself. Once I remember walking into our new home right after my first marriage to college sweetheart Meena, only to see mom on her knees cleaning the floor with a mop. That unpretentious nature rubbed off on me: When I lived in America I did a whole slew of jobs... a gas station attendant, bartender, tour guide, chauffeur... Even when I became a professor and earned a fat salary, I had no qualms doing the household work. In fact, when I left to study in California at 19, mom urged me to take down a few recipes... kaali daal, chicken curry, aloo gobi, raita. The very first meal I prepared were the same four dishes for 100 of my fellow dormies! She also made me promise that I’d post one letter home every week. Today, when I reread those archived letters, I relive those special days. If there is one complaint I have about mom, it’s that she’s prone to yelling! It’s her way of letting off steam. My sisters complain mom would shout at them all the time when they were kids. Papa even called her ‘Kameeni’, mentioning in his tell-all autobiography An Alien in Bollywood. My first wife Meena ended our marriage because she ‘snapped out’ after getting an earful from mom. My present wife Harinakshi, bless her soul, claims she has also been a victim. Her self-preservation instincts result in them maintaining a healthy distance.

 
THE TWILIGHT YEARS
Mom has earned every penny she has spent. And her investments have enabled her family to live a good life. Today, she lives in a lovely penthouse Since she has always enjoyed swimming; she even got the builder install a pool downstairs. A spacious terrace, festooned with palms, crotons, jasmine and bougainvillea. She delights when weaver birds build their nest on her trees. “They make a gift for my grandchildren when they come visiting,” she says. She uses the terrace for her evening walks with her cat Minnie-Mow. I bumped into a friend Amit recently. “I just saw a photo of your mother at the Filmfare Awards. She was wearing a dark blue outfit and looked so elegant!” Yes, elegant at 89! With a dress she bought over 30 years ago. But this has always been her – graceful. But without frills. Today, her memory is fading. And she gets tired easily. She continues to get acting offers. But she has to turn them down because it’s just too much effort. Thank God she is still in fairly good health. Touchwood!

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