Tom Alter: ‘Gora’ who played desi roles

Tom Alter, who became a familiar face among film-lovers doing bit parts in 1970s and 1980s Bollywood movies but found meatier roles and greater acclaim in theatre, succumbed to skin cancer at his Mumbai residence on Friday night.
The actor, who was also a passionate lover of Urdu poetry and cricket, was 67.
Satyajit Ray gave him one of his more memorable roles in the period classic, Shatranj Ke Khiladi (1977).As a British army officer cultured in ghazals, Hindustani classical music and the Awadh way of life under Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, Alter matched histrionics with the formidable Richard Attenborough as General James Outram. Attenborough was impressed enough to offer him a part in his Oscar-winning epic, Gandhi (1981). Television gave him longer roles; none more famous than don Keshav Kalsi in Junoon, the unending 1990s DD serial. But it was in Shyam Benegal’s underfeted, Samvidhan (2014), where Alter produced one of his most nuanced performances. His flawless Urdu diction and rich, resonant voice made for a compelling and convincing Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.
On stage, Alter also became Sahir Ludhianvi, Mahatma Gandhi, Bahadur Shah Zafar, Mirza Ghalib and Rabindranath Tagore. Perhaps his biggest achievement was banishing the idea that a ‘gora’ cannot play serious and well-known Indian characters. No surprise, Raj Kapoor even trusted him with the part of a pahadi (hill-folk) named Karam Singh in Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985).
Born in Mussoorie to a family of American missionaries, Alter went to the pedigreed Woodstock school, dropped out of Yale and worked briefly as a sports teacher in Jagadhri, a smalltown in Haryana. Sometime in 1970, Alter recounted in a Rajya Sabha TV interview, he was consumed by the idea of becoming an actor after watching Rajesh Khanna in Aradhana (1969). He joined FTII, Pune, in 1972.
The actor made his debut playing a Malta-based customs officer in Ramanand Sagar’s Charas (1976). Over the next four decades, by his own account, he worked in at least 300 films. In the 1970s and 1980s, when smugglers, Vat 69 and guns were staple in mainstream action-yarns, Alter frequently reprised the role of the token white cop (Des Pardes) or bad guy (Kranti). Musa, the crafty hoodlum in all-black kurta pyjamas in Parinda, was a relatively better-etched part.
He remained devoted to cricket and Urdu poetry till the very end. Alter even cowrote a book (with Ayaz Memon) on India’s World Cup triumphs. And he was among the first to interview Sachin Tendulkar on film. In 2008, he received the Padma Shri.
In recent years, the actor could be heard reciting couplets of Mir Taqi Mir, Nida Fazli and others in Capital soirees. During the memorable exchange in Shatranj ke Khiladi, Alter recites a poem: “Sadma na pahunche koi mere jism-e-zaar par / Aahista phool dalna mere mazaar par. (Wound not my bleeding body / Throw flowers gently on my grave”.
One doesn’t know if the actor shared the sentiment of the 19th century Lucknow Nawab. What must be said is that Alter lived life to the brim, the way he wanted it to be.