How Chapal Bhaduri transformed into Chapal Rani

The well-known make-up man looked me up and down and asked quite dismissively, ‘So what role are you playing?’

‘Morjina,’ I mumbled.

‘Oh,’ he said, a little taken aback. Then he said, ‘Well, you are young. You will look fine, I guess.’

He took some white powder and mixed it with some yellow, then added a bit of orange and made a paste while I followed along, trying to remember all the steps. Then he took a brush and slathered that paste on my face as if he was whitewashing a wall. When the paste had dried, he dabbed some powder on my cheeks. When he was satisfied, he took a matchstick and drew my eyes and brows quite expertly. All that was left were the lips. He put a little colour on them, then used the tip of the matchstick to draw a fine line to emphasize the upper lip and make it a little more prominent. Then he stepped back, inspected his handiwork and hollered, ‘This one is doing Morjina. Get him his outfits, Nirode.’

Nirode-da appeared with Morjina’s shiny red-satin outfit. Of course, Morjina also needed breasts. But we didn’t have falsies then, nor any concept of bras and bodices. Instead, there was a long ribbon with two small bundles of rags which they tied firmly around my chest.

Once that was done, Lalu-da appeared. In those days, we called hairdressers like him ‘hair-fit men’. He put a wig on me, and quickly tied up the long hair into plaits. Then he said, ‘Now go, look at yourself in the big mirror over there.’

When I stood in front of the mirror, I could not recognize myself. A pretty woman in loose Baghdadi pyjamas, a red shirt and a golden Irani waistcoat looked back at me. Her hair was tied in two thick plaits, and her jewellery gleamed golden. Someone explained that in Arabia, the maids wore gold while the queens wore diamonds. Morjina was a maid.

‘Is this really me? Really? Or is this my sister?’ I wondered, gaping at myself. A lot of young men had slowly come up. They were standing around me, staring. One of the older ones, he was perhaps 25 or 26, and quite handsome, came up to me: ‘Everything looks beautiful’—and truly it did—‘but there is one thing missing.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I replied. At that time, I was quite naive and innocent... He pulled out a red rose and offered it to me with a flourish.

‘I can’t take this,’ I said, blushing. ‘But you can pin it on me.’ And that’s exactly what he did while all the other boys whooped and whistled. Then the drop screen went up. The clarinet, which was a must in jatras in those days, struck up the jaunty tune of Morjina’s signature song ‘Chhi chhi itna janjaal’. But I stood there utterly paralysed, peacock feathers in my hands, anklets on my feet, teetering in my heeled shoes. I took one step forward, one step back.

A man shoved me forward: ‘Go on, enter! The scene is flowing by.’ That was an odd phrase they would use: the scene is flowing by—as if it was a river. And so I stumbled onto the stage, headfirst into my first female role.

The year was 1955, and I had no idea that role was going to change my life forever.... Seven days later I got a job at Indian Railways. My designation was ‘chain-man’, salary 2.50 rupees a day, which came to about 75 rupees a month. My job was to measure the land with a steel chain. But I never actually measured anything. There was no question of going out in the sun. I had to protect my complexion for the stage, after all. That was my real job.

Every month there was a new play, because the Railways had so many departments and each had their own recreational club. And every time there was a dance scene, they would send for me. In those days, our plays had a ‘drop’. It was like an intermission. After the first four scenes, a drop would fall and there would be a dance number. Then a few more scenes and then another drop and another dance number. The dance numbers were performed by me. I slowly acquired a taste for them. It’s like when you first drink alcohol, you just have one sip. Then you have a little more and then some more. At the end some pass out, some don’t. But you are well and truly addicted. This acting is a bit like drinking.

But I needed to learn more about the nuts and bolts of acting. Otherwise I’d never go beyond the song-and-dance routines. One day, my friend Subrata said, ‘Why don’t you do your own make-up? You can do a better job than the make-up man.’

He taught me some make-up tricks, but I asked, ‘What do I do with my hair?’

‘Your hair is quite long anyway. Just part it down the middle and brush it flat on both sides.’

There were two kinds of wigs at that time—full bust and half bust. The half bust you placed on your head, tied it in place from the back, then carefully blended your own hair into it. If you did it right, people couldn’t make out where your own hair ended and the wig began. The full bust was, as the name suggests, a full wig, fully covering your own hair. The wigmakers—Farhad, Mehboob, Abdul—were all from the Chitpur area of Kolkata, near Nakhoda Masjid. You had to go and have your head measured by them, so that they could make your wig made to order.

Now they are all gone. Like my hair.

Excerpted with permission from Seagull Books, from Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal: The Life and Times of a Female Impersonator.