Partap Sharma, playwright, author, actor, director, filmmaker, and voice-over artist, with the golden larynx, was a genuine article. He not only carved a special niche for himself in everything he did, or explored, but he also set a benchmark — all his own.
Sharma’s foremost job was, of course, keyed to his gilded voice box, the best of his era, on this side of the Suez, and also writing. He wrote with sublime brevity, also splendid articulation, thanks to his vivid perception of reality. A reality draped with not just vibrant language skills, but also precise programming — a unity of both, so to speak.
Yet, the fact remains that Sharma was just too renowned for his verdant tonal finesse, meticulous diction and painstaking emphasis on the right, exact brogue. That he was also a lively raconteur was masked somewhat by his ‘voice-over’ celebrity status. However, what took the cake was his transcendent sense of imagination that uncoiled itself with elegant, sepia-tinted panache from his characters in natural situations. The story-line was his touchstone, wherefrom he would conceal his mind by not giving undue weightage, or excessive attention, to the writer in him. For Sharma, his characters were most fundamental; his stories, around them being absolutely central. He never hovered, or wobbled, on the balance wheel of convenience. Besides, he never ever played a role he did not like: that of a larger-than-life creator in his own writings. The spotlight was, in other words, never on him, whatever the role, vocation, or degree of involvement, yet it was always on him through his characters.
Sharma did not subscribe to the big idea that presently envelops several literary circles: that the true purpose of storytelling is passé, almost a forgotten art. This, perforce, explained his raison d’être: Sharma sculpted stories for all of us to examine more closely and/or also perceive the world clearly as one whole — to borrow a phrase from Ernest Hemingway. “A story,” as Sharma once outlined to this writer, “is an idea which strikes and erupts like a seed sprouting on the surface — a web too, with other things residing in it.”
Sharma [December 12, 1939-November 30, 2011], who was born in Lahore, Pakistan, had his early schooling in Sri Lanka, where he learnt Sinhalese, Tamil, and Latin. Latin, incidentally, happened to be his second language in school. The esoteric lingo was chosen by his teachers for the simple reason that neither Tamil nor Sinhala was Sharma’s mother tongue — and, also because Sharma, as a boy, looked like a ‘Burgher’ — the Sinhala ‘locution’ for one with a Dutch/Portuguese/European descent. Dutch and Portuguese weren’t considered, primarily because they did not find a place in the school curriculum. Sharma was always cock-a-hoop with this quirk of academic providence. He was convinced that Latin provided him with a positive foundation, or terra firma, for his sense of perceptual thought and literary finesse to emerge — in a manner born.
Sharma, who loved Mumbai and lived there for the most and best part of his life, first began his ‘preordained’ career as a disc jockey for a popular music programme on Radio Ceylon. Destiny was manifest. And, when his engineer-father embarked on one of his assignments to the US, Sharma entered a boarding school in Shimla, where his latent interests in theatre too began to blossom and flourish — more so, in a milieu that was elemental to a ‘very’ English, English institution. Sharma was once asked to read the prologue for a play — to fill-in and also ‘buy’ time. He caught the ear and also eye of S B Hill, the judge, who had, initially, ‘mistaken’ Sharma’s ‘velvety’ voice for Orson Wells, or a recording, perhaps. Soon after, Sharma made his ‘debut’ at All India Radio, and Films Division’s documentaries. The rest is history.
Sharma published a host of much-acclaimed plays, writings, stories, and novels. His works have been anthologised, in India and abroad. He was a recipient of several honours and awards. One of his plays was a prescribed textbook at three Indian universities and a subject for PhD thesis at Utah University, US. This wasn’t all. Sharma was included in more than four biographical references, and his works were translated into French and German, among others. Aside from India, many of his plays have been staged in London and published and produced elsewhere too.
Sharma’s books for children — The Surangini Tales, Dog Detective Ranjha, The Little Master of the Elephant and Top Dog, among others — made waves. They bear ample testimony to Sharma’s talent: a man, who was in a league of his own. His novel, Days of the Turban, a masterly assessment of the turmoil that was Punjab, first published by Bodley Head, London, and Futura, and packed with TNT, by way of a brilliant storyline, was republished in India in paperback. The novel is not only an insightful vade mecum of Punjabi politics, and the clamour for ‘Khalistan,’ but also a fine, ‘deliciously evil’ piece of literature.
Sharma’s documentaries have predictably received critical acclaim. His celebrated play, Begum Sumroo, a historical, was produced by the National Centre of the Performing Arts, Mumbai, with noted director Vijaya Mehta at the helm. His TV series, The Raj through Indian Eyes, a 26-part bilingual docu-drama in English and French was telecast in the UK and elsewhere. It was also made in Hindi — British Raj Hindustani Nazron Se. The docu-drama reveals Sharma’s penchant for history, also meticulous research, and fastidious alacrity to taking pains with every detail. This was a trait he carried into his acting forays — which included Shakespeare Wallah — with refined sensitivity. His pivotal role as Jawaharlal Nehru in Nehru: The Jewel of India, and Bandung Sonata, or Hindi films, such as Phir Bhi, Tyaag Patra and Pehla Kadam, among others, were no less impressive.
Sharma was also serenity personified. That he had to use an oxygen mask for 18 hours a day never upset the apple-cart of mindful balance, or equanimity. With his advanced emphysema, and hardly any lung function left, Sharma also never allowed his zest for life wane. In the midst of his illness, he recorded three William Shakespeare plays — Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, and Macbeth — reading every part himself. The audio CDs were extolled by critics as “aural treats” of the highest order — with a host of accents emerging, exemplified and recorded — and, never before incarnate in just one individual. Well, a year before he passed away into sunset, Sharma crooned and recorded a CD of songs, for his grandson. He also penned two new tales for kids.
Sharma loved reading novels. “The novel,” he often said, “is vibrant, volatile, and virtuoso. Its full scope has not really been explored.” What did he think of his own writings? “I look at readers a hundred years from now. If I can create an artistic unity… in that remote and distant future, I’ll be happy. Yet, whatever it is, I am true to myself; I am not worried about readership.”
Sharma’s penchant for stories was, for the most part, a part of his psyche: “Stories are, perhaps, a way of making ‘more coherent’ and comprehensible the bewildering complexity of the world. I learn and discover as I write and I try to share what I have understood. This began with me when I was a child, much before I could even read, and when I needed to deduce a story to explain the pictures in a book. But, that was, perhaps, just a technique; but, the aim was to uncover one or more aspects of the truth, although the real truth isn’t always palatable. Two of my documentaries and a play were banned — perhaps, for such a ‘dichotomy,’ or, maybe, paradox.”
From the Golden Age of the Radio to the wondrous world of electronic media and from his own voice workshops, Sharma came a long way. He wore his fame lightly on his shoulders, what with his magnetic smile, handsome face, mind-body intellect, and superb language, all in their right place. He had his bearings well-grounded too — simply, sensibly and without jargon.
“There’s no denying,” he once said, “[of] the role of the visual media, such as TV, films, among others — to depict whatever they wish to communicate, unlike books which through the usage of words directly addresses our imagination and activates it. Agreed, that, TV and electronic media have made deep inroads into the time that we earlier spent in reading. For me, TV is a lazy mode to learning, but it is an excellent tool to get acquainted with the headlines of a situation and to searching for content in written material, through the newspaper. Take it from me: books, and the written word, will never become extinct.”
It sums up the man, primarily because Partap ‘Voice’ Sharma always loved the art of communication and imagination, the truth and the human element, far too much to over-estimate his own sense of self-importance.
— First published in Madras Courier
