The last bow
By Anwar Maqsood
Courtesy Dawn Images
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I knew that Latif Kapadia was quite unwell, but I also knew that he was a great fighter. He wouldn’t give up easily and he didn’t. In fact, on his last evening (March 28) when he was recording the long play that I had written and Qasim Jalali was directing for PTV (ironically titled Afsos hasil ka), he had a breathing problem which was more severe than what he normally encountered. We decided to pack up recording but Latif wouldn’t give up. He went with his co-star Moin Akhtar to Liaquat National Hospital, where he was administered oxygen and as soon as he recovered he came back on to the sets and insisted on completing his work in the play. All our efforts to send him home proved fruitless. Such was his professionalism towards his work.
Latif was a committed man. He was dedicated to his family and his friends. I don’t know of many people who have retained their friends for so many years, or rather decades. I happened to be one of them and I feel quite proud of it.
A banker by profession, having worked 35 years for the National Bank of Pakistan, Latif’s heart was always in acting, something his elders realized when he was still a child. His debut on stage was in Gujarati theatre, indeed one of the richest genres of theatre in the subcontinent. It was, and to a certain extent still is, nurtured in the subcontinent by the Parsis. Coincidentally, those who gave him a break were also Parsis, the well known couple Meherji and Perveez Dastur. He worked subsequently for them.
Later he met another stage enthusiast - Safeerullah, who was to become a popular movie comedian adopting the name of Lehri. He did skits with him as he did with many others including Mohammed Yousuf, Qurban Jilani, Omer Qadri, Khaleel Gaya and Lily Davidson.
In 1957 he joined the Avante-Garde Arts Theatre which was formed by his brother Ghulam Ali Kapadia and the well-known stage director Ali Ahmed. Among the plays he did with Ahmed, included the hugely professional and commercial success, Sheeshey ke Aadmi. When television came to Karachi, the play was adapted for TV and was just as widely appreciated on the new medium. That was the beginning of Latif Kapadia’s long drawn and highly fruitful association with television.
On stage he did quite a few plays which turned out to be landmarks on the Karachi stage - Qissa jagtay sotay ka, Eik din ka Sultan and Phir Bhi Hum Jeete Rahe. Latif did not limit himself to one group or one banner. He worked for directors such as Shoaib Hashmi, Zia Mohyeddin, Khalid Ahmad, Rahat Kazmi, Sohail Malik and Anjum Ayaz, for whom he did Aao Manto Karein, which featured Sajid Hasan and yet another icon of the theatre in Karachi, Yasmin Ismail.
Latif Kapadia proved his versatility as much on television as he did on stage. He essayed all kind of roles, but his forte was comedy. In the last few years of his life he was sadly typecast as a Gujarati seth, but whenever he found a different role to enact he grabbed it with both hands and did a fine job.
He did Fifty fifty with me, when he played an old pavement photographer. But a more memorable role was in my serial Angan Terha, where he appeared in two episodes. He played a veterinarian turned doctor, who offers medical treatment to a reluctant Shakeel. In Sitara aur Meherunnisa he played, what we call a negative role, and the fact that he drew adverse comments from people who saw him in public places showed how successful he was. In my recent serial, Colony 52 he had a small but effective role. He was a sympathetic claim commissioner.
One of his finest plays on television was Arif Waqar’s Barzakh, which was brilliantly directed by Iqbal Ansari. He played a physically handicapped person, who manages to survive despite his disability. It was a serious role and the other formidable actor to share stellar honours with him was none other than Shafi Mohammed. He rated plays Baarish, Shikast-e-Arzoo and Gurez as his finest.
Latif Kapadia was a scene stealer. And he did that quite often. His one cameo role was in Parchayan where he played a street Romeo. He gave a lecherous smile to Sahira Kazmi, but the moment he saw her frowning, he took refuge in an elevator. He left quite an impression on the television viewers with an appearance that didn’t last for more than 15 seconds. This was way back in the seventies, at the time when he had qualified for the Pride of Performance award, an award that came 20 years too late.
Not many people outside the world of entertainment knew that Latif Kapadia couldn’t read the Urdu script, which was why he always re-wrote his own lines in Gujarati.
As I sit and think of Latif or Lato, as his friends called him, my mind races back to the early sixties when we first met. He was doing a play of Kamal Ahmed Rizvi. Very soon we discovered that we were both equally interested in old film music. He remembered the songs of such old singers as Pankaj Malik, Saigal, Kanan Bala, K.C. Dey and Kamala Jharya, and what was amazing was that he could recall even the interlude music of most of these songs. He would often sing the numbers of Hemant Kumar and Pankaj Malik for his friends. But he didn’t pursue music professionally.
Back to our last meeting, when he finished his work on the play, Afsos hasil ka, he was in a bright mood and asked me, “Have you read Shakespeare?” Before I could have replied, he mouthed Mark Anthony’s lines: “If you have tears prepare to shed them now.” It was but a few hours later that I received news of his death.