When the red elephant walked NSD’s corridors | Hindi Movie News
Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vani Tripathi Tikoo and Anup Soni recently visited their alma mater, the National School of Drama (NSD), for Vani Tripathi Tikoo’s book launch and reminisced about their NSD days – how NSD was more than an institution for them.
The trio said that the plays they performed and the time they spent on campus not only shaped them by handing down wisdom but also by pushing them to question, and reconstruct their artistic instincts.
Nawazuddin Siddiqui
‘Each of us carries a red elephant within – our creativity, our imagination – and we must nurture it, even as adults’
Vani Tripathi Tikoo, a graduate of NSD’s 1997 batch, fondly recalled playing the role of a red elephant in the play Laal Laal Haathi during her student days.
“Why can’t the elephant be red?” she asked, and explained, “This was a play I did with my theatre education company, and it was called Laal Laal Haathi. It became a massive hit, especially the song Laal Laal Haathi, which gained quite a bit of popularity. The play talks about the power of imagination. The world is full of grey elephants, but this child believes in a red one. It goes to school with him every day. Through this play, we wanted to say that each of us carries a red elephant within – our creativity, our imagination – and we must nurture it, even as adults.”
Decades later, during the pandemic, while Vani Tripathi Tikoo was in India taking care of her mother and away from her daughter, she penned a children’s book titled Why Can’t Elephants Be Red?
The book captures the world through the eyes of a 2.5-year-old – a curious child who has endless questions. The book resonated with both children and adults and is now translated into Hindi. Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vani Tripathi Tikoo and Anup Soni gathered at the NSD to release its Hindi version, recalling memories of their time at the institution.
Nawazuddin Siddiqui with Chittaranjan Tripathy
If we let kids think freely, the world would be so different: Nawazuddin Siddiqui
Vani recalled that after Laal Laal Haathi, Nawaz continued to call her Laal Haathi for almost a decade, and this is the name he has saved in his phone too.
Nawazuddin Siddiqui recalled, “Laal Haathi play chal raha tha aur laal kapde pehne ye corridor mein chal rahi thi toh maine inko Laal Haathi kehna shuru kar diya. Ye title mujhe bahut strike kiya. Kids have an incredible imagination. If we let them think freely, the world would be so different. But we, as adults, keep forcing them to think like us.”
As the book is about children, Vani shared about a recent moment with Nawaz, and told him,”When you spent time with my daughter Akku, I felt like Kabuliwala himself was standing in front of her, holding dry fruits, and she was picking them from his hands. Very few people know that Nawaz has a special connection with children – that’s one of the reasons he’s here today.”
Nawaz replied, “I think we should behave with kids according to our own age, not theirs. The problem starts when adults try to act like children around them. Another issue is that we try to prove that we know everything. I spoke to her just as I speak to you. That’s probably why she didn’t feel like some ‘uncle’ was trying to scare her.”
‘The most beautiful thing about books is how detailed they are’
Talking about the roles he played that were book adaptations, Nawaz added, “The most beautiful thing about books is how detailed they are – it reduces our workload. Another beautiful thing is someone spends 15 years of their life researching and writing a book, and we can get that knowledge in just 1.5 to 2 hours. Most of the books I read were during my NSD days. After moving to Bombay, I didn’t get to read as much. Sometimes, I regret that.”
NSD director Chittaranjan Tripathy, who and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, are from the 1996 batch, welcomed his old friend with a garland. Nawaz joked, “Jab hostel mein ek doosre ko gaaliyon ki mala pehnate thay, tab kabhi socha nahi tha ki ek din phoolon ki mala pehnaenge!”
Before reading a paragraph, Anup Soni chuckled, “This book is written from the perspective of a 2.5-year-old. I’m over 50 now, but I’ll give it a shot!”
Sunit Tandon
