PANJIM: It is hard to believe that Tom Alter, the actor is no more.
The news just does not seem to sink in. Always soft spoken, always smiling, always gentle. His ready smile and his robust cry of ‘fantastic’ continues to ring in my ears.
Tom was known for his command over the Urdu language and his immense love for cricket. I still vividly remember watching the 2007 World Cup game between India and Sri Lanka with him in our Pune home. We lost the game, but he was positive of a late recovery from India till the very end. So typically him. “Aare, rukhiya Janab. India recover kar le gaa!” he would say every ten minutes.
Tom was hugely multi-faceted. He was co-organiser of India’s first triathlon event, ran a full marathon (wrote a novel with the same theme), played club level cricket way into his 50s, played high quality basketball in his younger days and wrote several books and journalistic columns.
But he always wanted to know India’s latest cricket score, whether he was shooting or in a theatre rehearsal. “Aare bhai, score kya hua?” was his regular question. He was also the first person to interview a teenaged Sachin Tendulkar for a national TV channel.
Tom was the youngest of three siblings born to American missionary parents, who made their careers in the hills of Mussoorie. Though of American origin, the Alters conversed in chaste Hindustani (mix of Hindi and Urdu) in their Mussoorie home. “My father loved the language and conducted all his sermons in chaste Urdu only,” Tom had told me in one of our many interviews.
So good was Tom’s Urdu, that the late Amjad Khan (of Gabbar Singh fame) once walked up to Tom on the sets of the movie ‘Charas’ and started searching for a microphone in Tom’s clothes. Amjad could not believe that he had actually overheard Tom speak chaste Urdu just a while ago!
Sadly, that lovely Urdu voice has been silenced forever. Khuda Hafiz, Tom Saab. You will be missed.
