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Balraj Sahni had a handsome, radiant face and transparent personality and the warm, carefree
abandon with which he mixed with others endeared him to all. He had a very sensitive,
literary bent of mind. He wrote poems in English and was also fond of writing stories. A few
of these appeared in Ravi, the monthly college journal. Prem Bhatia, one of the most reputed
and respected journalists of our times, was its editor at that time. Prem Bhatia, Balraj and
myself were class fellows in Government College, Lahore, in the early Thirties.
Balraj was very fond of theatre. I saw him on stage in the role of a young lady in a delightful
play called The Man Who Ate the Popomack.While watching him in that frivolous role,
little did I know at that time that one day the young Balraj would develop into one of India’s
foremost screen actors.
After doing his MA in English, Balraj went back to his hometown of Rawalpindi and joined
his father in the family business. But business did not interest him. In early 1937, Balraj,
along with his newly married wife Damyanti, came to my house and we went to the
improvised hut of our common friends, the Bedis.
A scheme was hatched there to bring out a weekly English paper. Besides Balraj and
myself, B.P.L. Bedi and his British wife Freda (the parents of the famous screen actor
Kabir Bedi), with Ramesh Chander, formed the group that launched the paper. It was
called Monday Morning. In those days, besides The Tribune, a nationalist daily, there
was the pro-British Civil and Military Gazette published from Lahore. On Mondays, neither
of them brought out any edition. So, thinking that there would be a ready clientele for
our weekly venture, we brought it out on Monday, naming it Monday Morning. The paper
became the mouthpiece of the nationalist movement and was a success from the start.
Balraj, however, fell ill and left us soon after. There were also other vistas that pulled him
away. A few months after he left, we learnt that he, along with his wife, had reached
Shantiniketan and got the job of a Hindi teacher.
His political consciousness was full of depth. It took him to Sevagram in 1938 to work for
Gandhiji’s new venture of Basic Education. He was too excited to live with the saint-politician.
After the war started in 1939, Balraj, with the permission of Gandhiji, went to London to work
in the BBC. He was there for four years.
In 1955, Balraj led the Indian Youth Delegation to the World Youth Festival held in Warsaw,
Poland. He then went to China as a member of the Indian film delegation led by Prithviraj Kapoor.
In 1960, Balraj went on a tour of Pakistan and wrote Mera Pakistani Safar. In 1969, he
flew to the Soviet Union and wrote Mera Roosi Safarnama. The book won the Soviet Land
Nehru Award.
In 1944, Balraj entered a new phase of life in Bombay. He got his first break in the film Justice.
Later, he made his name in Hum Log as an unemployed youth. However, his talent was finally
recognised in Do Bigha Zamin.
It was in this film that he achieved his reputation as a serious actor.
Since he believed that film had become a powerful medium influencing the minds of millions,
he acted in over 100 films. His commendable contribution to the films earned him the Padma Shri.
Sometimes he dreamt of establishing a simple abode on the lines of Shantiniketan after returning
back to Punjab. But following a heart attack in 1973, death took him away and along with that
withered away his dream of having, his “own little Shantiniketan”.
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