AGE NO BAR: Pallana

The sets of The Royal Tenenbaums had been abuzz with rumours about an actor who was claiming he will live up to 200 years. “That’s amazing,” said star Ben Stiller. “I can’t believe he looks so great.”

Several months later, actor Kumar Pallana laughs on recollecting Stiller’s words. “I shouldn’t be a miser,” says the 82-year-old. “I would love to live up to 2,000 years. After all, my movie career has just begun. I am not in a hurry to go,” he chuckles.

After having performed in circus, cabarets, night clubs and vaudeville in the Americas, Africa and Turkey for over five decades, Pallana is now hoping for more parts in Hollywood. “Don’t worry about my age. Even Gene Hackman (his co-star in The Royal Tenenbaums) thought I was just 60.” And he laughs some more. The film marks Pallana’s third collaboration with director Wes Anderson after Rocket Bottle (1996) and Rushmore (’98).

Pallana had run a successful yoga centre in Dallas for many years, starting in the late 1960s but gave it up when his wife sought separation and began running her own yoga centre. He had met his wife, Ranjana, while performing in Uganda in the mid-’60s. “Her parents called me a madari, an awara,” he says. “In a way, they were right.” Indore-born Pallana, who barely studied beyond the fifth grade, left India after trying for breaks in Bollywood. “But I had no connections, saab,” he says, “so I decided to go abroad.”

When he arrived in America in 1946, he had no idea what he was going to do. He was interested in acting “but my angrezi was bad ... I knew I could do well elsewhere,” he says. His acts in the night clubs drew him wide attention. He made up his own gags and jokes. One of them went very well with the audiences: “I speak four languages; but when I’m drunk I speak any language.”

Pallana is always ready to move on to new things. “I don’t even feel I am 40,” he says and adds, “It will also be good, won’t it be, if I get a good part in a Bollywood movie.” Anybody listening?

A Passion to Share

Manhattan’s UN School honours its Indian head of 40 years by renaming its library after her

BIDDING ADIEU: Rangel-Ribeiro with Kofi Annan

When Lea Rangel-Ribeiro retired as principal of the junior section of United Nations International School, Manhattan, after four decades of service, almost 500 children from 113 countries and their parents were overwhelmed. The emotion was encapsulated in one little girl’s poem: “Mrs Ribeiro, Mrs Ribeiro/ Please don’t go.”
Even UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was there to bid her farewell as parents raised over $50,000 to establish an annual award in her name and rechristen the school’s 27,000-volume library of international children’s literature after her.
Starting as a fifth grade teacher, Rangel-Ribeiro went on to head the primary school. “She knows every child’s name, including the names of those who graduated 30 years ago and spent only two months in junior school,” says Richard Kutner, a faculty member.
Going to the principal’s office was never a punishment at the school for, as Rangel-Ribeiro, 68, observes, “I was not the policewoman where you send children who need to be punished. My door was never shut and the children were always welcome. Sharing and caring were my mantras.”
Lea, who was a classical pianist in Mumbai, came to the US with her husband, writer Victor Rangel-Ribeiro, to pursue a career in music. She studied at the Julliard School of Music. Gradually what had begun as a teaching job at the UN school became a lifelong vocation, and music took a backseat.
She encouraged the children and their parents to maintain their national cultural integrity. Rangel-Ribeiro herself always wore saris to school. After 40 years of caring and sharing, she is finally giving some time to herself, her children and five grandchildren, and to pursuing music. The walls of her cosy home are lined with thousands of books that are a passion with the couple, and she will finally get to enjoy those.

—Lavina Melwani