Aamir Raza Husain: Theatre’s Big Bad Boy & My Generous Friend

January 1991. I’m in a fix. I need to construct a set for a ‘science lab’ for my final film project, and our college has no empty room available for shooting. I need ‘walls’. What to do? On my scooter I get to 1, Sardar Patel Marg, an ancient ‘kothi’ also known as ‘Rampur House’, and the headquarters of Aamir Raza Husain’s theatre group ‘Stagedoor’. Through college, I’ve acted in plays for ‘Stagedoor’, so I’m part of an extended family, which means, I can land up here any time, for anything.

Escorted by Aamir’s man Friday, Gulrez, I enter the underlit, decrepit, spooky innards of the kothi, up a winding staircase, down corridors lined with framed theatre posters, to a now familiar dark blue, opulent backroom, with its ornate sofas and four-poster bed, where Aamir sits smoking, and ‘holding court’.

I need 16 of his 4 feet x 9 feet stage ‘flats’ for my ‘walls’. I need them now. Aamir says, “Yaar, koyi problem nahi, take what you want!’. By the time I’ve selected the ‘flats’ from among the yard full of stage paraphernalia, I see a Tempo backing in. Gulrez smiles, ‘Transport..’. The ‘flats’ cost me nothing, the Tempo hire is paid for by Aamir too.

I reach college, to find Naseer waiting for me. He’s ‘Stagedoor’s master carpenter. ‘Aamir ne bheja hai, aapki help ke liye.’ He spends the next 4 hours putting up and painting the ‘flats’, creating the walls for my ‘lab’. He doesn’t take a rupee from me either. 

For the rest of the world, a theatre person of some heft, but for a few of us, a generous friend. Aamir Raza Husain, exited stage left, one final time, on 3 June 2023. He was just 66.

Everyone has an 'Aamir Story'

All of us, who went through the wringer, have an ‘Aamir story’ to tell. For some, it will be Aamir’s side-splitting play ‘post-mortems’ where he would imitate almost everyone’s gaffes. He was hilarious. It was a great way of making his point and yet keeping it light. And he spared no one, from the lead to the chorus line.

Some will remember putting up the set before the play, with Aamir flying into a fury every few hours, over a shade of paint or color of fabric, hurling the choicest abuses at everyone in sight.

But the fondest memory across the board will be of Aamir, with his French beard and trademark paunch, when he was particularly happy, singing and dancing to this old Hindi song ‘O Meri Pran Sajni, Champavati Aaja!’ He would do it as this loony seductive dance. And it always completely cracked us up!

When news of his passing reached us through his son Ali, I reached out to a few of the ‘Stagedoor’ alumni, for their memories.

'A Quasi-Parent': 'Stagedoor' Alumni's Memories of Aamir

Popular TV show host and RJ, Roshan Abbas was a ‘fuchha’, a first year ‘fresher’ in Hindu College in 1989. He met Aamir a few days after Aamir had judged him at an Inter-College One-Act play competition. Aamir remembered him as, ‘Ah, the boy who shouts!’ Aamir was nothing if he wasn’t brutally frank. But after that, if he took you under his wing, he worked on you.

Roshan worked in 15 plays with ‘Stagedoor’ over the next few years.

He says, ‘Aamir wasn’t just my Director, he was a quasi-parent! We simply lived at the SP Marg ‘kothi’. Aamir would pamper us with awesome Awadhi mutton and kababs along with rehearsals. If I had a crush on a girl in the crew, he would ‘arrange’ for me and her to go putting up show posters, and even slip me 100 rupees as ‘spending money’. Totally non-returnable! Saath mein, we would also be pushing Aamir’s old Datsun to start every other day. His tempers, his tantrums, his affection, all of it was Aamir.’

Another ‘alumnus’ is film-maker and media entrepreneur, Sanjay Ray Chaudhuri, or RayC, who, like many of us, worked with Aamir and ‘Stagedoor’ in his college years. For him too, Aamir’s place became ‘a second home’, where life happened, from rehearsals to romance. RayC would know firsthand because he met his future wife Megha while working on a play with Aamir.

In fact, the other ‘Stagedoor’ romance that lasted was Aamir’s own, with actress Virat Talwar. Many of us remember when play readings were shifted inexplicably to Virat’s South Delhi Defence Colony home. While some were in the know, a ‘duffer’ like me found out about Aamir and Virat long after most others.

Aamir and My Mother: A Special Bond

But the unlikeliest ‘Stagedoor’ hand.. has to be my mom! After tagging along with my ‘fauji’ dad all over the country, when he finally landed a posting in Delhi, my mom, Kamini, who always had more than a flair for acting, decided to give it a shot. I warned her about Aamir’s legendary colourful vocabulary, and I warned Aamir that my MOM was coming for a reading.

Both were nervous, but they clicked, and over the years she developed a far stronger bond with Aamir than I ever had. She acted with him, assisted him in his mega productions, and while she never got fully used to his cuss words, she always stuck by him.

She says, ‘I’ll miss his craziness. If needed, he was ready to rehearse and produce a play in a week. I will miss the jokes, the banter, the whole spirit in which we worked.’

As a theatre person, Aamir believed that his job was to entertain. He was allergic to cerebral theatre, and routinely sparred with theatre critics for whom he was theatre’s ‘bad boy’. They questioned his choice of regularly producing ‘sex-comedies’.

But Aamir stuck to his genre, even enjoying tickling the critics with provocative show titles – ‘When Did You Last See Your Trousers?’, ‘Run For Your Wife’, ‘Love in The Tub’, ‘The Itch’, and so on. Speaking to the Times of India, years ago, he said, ‘I love making people laugh and entertaining them. As the pressures of the world take a toll – lollipop and bubblegum theatre are refreshing. And, believe you me, making people laugh is tough.’ 

Back in 1997, he even staged one of his racy comedies in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, as a farewell event for the outgoing President Shankar Dayal Sharma, who was in peals of laughter right through the performance.

Introducing 'Spectacle' in Theatre for Indian Audiences

But Aamir also took it upon himself to ensure that his theatre productions made some money. A lot of his day would be spent reeling in sponsors. He innovated by tying up with 5-star hotels to stage ‘Supper Theatre’, be it comedies or who-dun-its.

The concept caught on, and several ‘Stagedoor’ productions went on tour to Hyderabad, Mumbai, Goa, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Kolkata, with the cast and crew happily lapping up the 5-star comfort and buffet meals that came with the tours!  

Aamir also realised, that Indian audiences love ‘spectacle’. And while they routinely got it in big-budget Bollywood movies, it had not been done in theatre.

He started by getting into ambitious musicals. I was part of Aamir’s ‘My Fair Lady’, which had Victor Banerjee playing Professor Henry Higgins, complete with massive choreographed dances, a live orchestra, complex changes of background sets, lighting, audio, and the whole shebang!

I even assisted him in directing ‘Starlight Express’, a musical that we staged with students of Delhi Public School, RK Puram, which was done entirely on roller skates!

He Would Just Do Everything in the World!

Aamir got the aisles of Delhi’s Siri Fort Auditorium converted into a massive roller-skating race track for the musical’s finale, with never-before laser lights thrown in to further wow the audience. It was fascinating to watch Aamir grapple with all the challenges - he was always somewhere between winging it and knowing exactly what he wanted.

Over the years he produced several lavishly mounted productions at outdoor locations. One of the first was ‘Legend of Ram’, which had 19 outdoor sets spread over 3 acres. And how did the audience get to see it all? Well, he put them on a massive tiered stand, that was mounted on railway tracks. And so, the whole audience moved from set to the next, on these rail tracks, as the story progressed. Was it the best written, or the best-enacted theatre production I watched? Maybe not. But it sure was audacious and spectacular – Aamir style!

The man also wore it on his sleeve when it came to his politics. He surprised many of us by joining the BJP in 2013 and was made a Delhi BJP Vice-President. But the outspoken Aamir, was soon in trouble for being critical of Narendra Modi, describing him as a 'divisive leader, not an inclusive one.' Naturally, he exited the party really quickly.

But he remained a critic, and unlike many from the entertainment space, he stayed invested in political debates on tv channels until they became unbearable. In my book, this counts as much as helping me complete my film project.

'The Best Comic Timing I have Ever Seen'

While he will be known for his lavish theatre productions, for many of us ‘Stagedoor’ hands, the avatar in which Aamir shone most, was as an actor, on stage. And most of all, when it was comedy. RayC shared the stage with Aamir in several comedies and says, ‘Aamir had the best comic timing I have ever seen. He always brought the house down, the only man who could sell a Full House for an English play in Delhi year after year.’

Aamir’s nutty ‘Champavati…’ song, had a closing line that we never used to get to because we always used to crack up laughing much before. It’s a good, simple line to remember him by – ‘Tu na ho to, kahin na dil ye lage na mera!’