Forever Young Navketan

In the mid 1940s, a young lad had come to Bombay who, like many others, wanted to make it big in the film industry. When he got a chance to meet the legendary thespian Motilal he was asked “What brings you to Bombay?”. “The reason which brought you here sir, has also brought me” he replied, his heart pounding with excitement on seeing his matinee idol before him. With a smile Motilal quipped “So you want to become a star!”. The lad smiled and tad came the response “Like you!”. As Motilal was parting, he looked at him and said “Keep up your spirits young man!”.

A typical movie fare, one might think. A young boy, comes to Bombay, dreams big and shows the promise to make it big. Perhaps that is why when Dharam Dev Pishorimal Anand decided to make movies, he decided to keep it dramatic and entertaining. It was cinema for the youth, focusing on their problems, romances, gaiety and anxiety. It marked the birth of Navketan (meaning New Banner) in 1949, which completed its diamond jubilee this year.
After he made it finally to the silver screen with Hum Ek Hain (1946) and got his first success Ziddi (1948), Dev Anand decided to launch his own production house. In 1948, when Dev Anand was shooting for Vidya, he was waiting downstairs for the heroine to enter. He had heard a lot about the reigning superstar of the day, whom even big directors would oblige. Suraiya walked down the grand stairways and made her way, not just into the hall, but also Dev Anand’s heart. His swash buckling looks and flirtatious smile won her over and she was signed for Navketan’s first venture Afsar. The movie, directed by Chetan Anand, was not a success and nor was their romance. But in a short span, the romance created enough drama to be recounted and recollected for many decades to come.

Navketan’s first success was Baazi, the first urban crime thriller of Indian cinema. Written by Balraj Sahni, Baazi turned out to be Dev Anand’s first blockbuster and marked Guru Dutt’s debut as a director. It set the benchmark for a crime thriller and spawned many imitations. Two romances bloomed with Baazi. As Geeta Roy sang Tadbeer se bigdi hui taqdeer bana le, fate indeed played a lovable game and Geeta Roy soon became Geeta Dutt after marrying the director of Baazi. Dev Anand and the movie’s heroine Kalpana Karthik tied the knot and acted together in many other successful movies like Taxi Driver (1954) and Nau Do Gyaraah (1957).

In 1962, Dev Anand played a double role in Hum Dono, starring Sadhna and Nanda opposite him. The movie, with mellifluous songs by Jaidev, was a huge musical success. In 1964, Vijay Anand directed the evergreen romantic comedyTere Ghar ke Samne under the Navketan banner, which along with Bandini marked Nutan’s comeback after her marriage. Close to its heels came Teen Deviyan (1965). Dev Anand was waiting for some serious work. He wanted to shed the image of Navketan as a ‘light’ production house and wanted it to be taken seriously by the classes a s well.

Dev Anand loved R.K.Narayan’s Sahitya Academy Award winning novel The Guide. A phone call from London, where Dev Anand read the novel, to Mysore was all that was needed to persuade Narayan to sell the rights of his classic. Thus began the bi-lingual production of Guide. The English version, directed by Ted Danielewski bombed at the box-office. A full-scale drama began stating that the Hindi version too would be a similar disaster. Waheeda Rehman, who played the female lead in this movie, was warned of a career destruction with this movie. Finally, in 1965, Guide was released and became a landmark in Indian cinema. In what was the first colour film of Navketan, Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman endeared themselves to the masses as Raju and Rosy. S.D. Burman’s music was a runaway hit and critics were agog with praises for Vijay Anand, hailing it as his masterpiece. R.K.Narayan, however, was not at all pleased with the move, which he felt was a bastardised version of his novel, purged of all the simplicity which he, along with his Malgudi, stood for. In 1966, Guide swept the Filmfare Awards winning the awards for Best Actor, Actress, Director and Film.
After the phenomenal success of Guide, Dev Anand came back to his first love – thrillers. He signed Vyjayantimala and Ashok Kumar and began working on his ambitous project Jewel Thief. The movie, largely shot in the Kingdom of Sikkim (then not a part of India), set a new trend within Navketan. Since then, Dev Anand chose a foreign location for most of his films. Jewel Thief was a blockbhuster and was soon hailed as a suspense classic of Hindi cinema.
An outstanding feature of Navketan was the music by S.D.Burman. Remove Burman and you will find all the movies of Dev Anand left with a big unpatchable hole. His music lit up every moment of Navketan’s movies and some ran on the strength of his music alone.
But Dev Anand now wanted to do a Raj Kapoor and perhaps therein lay his flaw. He wanted to direct his movies by himself. The brother Dev and Vijay parted ways professionally (coming together only for Tere Mere Sapne) and Dev Anand brought out his first directorial venture Prem Pujari. Though the music by S.D. Burman became an instant hit, the film failed to catch on. But within an year, Dev Anand had a bomb under his arms waiting to be thrown at the publc. He launched, arguably the first sex symbol of Hindi cinema, Zeenat Aman, in his next venture Hare Rama Hare Krishna. Set in Nepal, the movie explored the problems of drug addiction haunting the youngsters. Hare Rama Hare Krishna was a huge blockbuster and Dev Anand tasted his first, and perhaps last big success as a director.

But the rot had set in. Dev Anand took himself too seriously as a director and Navketan began churning flop after flop. Barring Des Pardes, where he launched Tina Munim (now Ambani), all his movies were invariably box-office disasters. His craze for experimentation drove him to even make a sequel for the his Jewel Thief in 1998, titled The Return of Jewel Thief. But the magic was all gone and gone for good.

Navketan continues to make films every now and then. Dev Anand continues to maintain the same zest which he maintained when his first movie was launched in 1949. People joke that Dev Anand’s last hit was in the last millenium. He insists that he should act in the lead role in every production of Navketan. Strange though, that when Navketan is celebrating its diamond jubilee, a similar jubliee at the box office for its movies has become a matter of past. But the ebulliance that he radiates keeps him, and perhaps Navketan, going. Now with his Hum Dono being slated for a release in colour, Navketan is back in the news for all the right reasons. As the story unveils, we shall see yet another generation humming the tunes of “Main Zindagi ka saath nibhaata chala gaya...”. Nothing helps more than moving on in life.

Like the smile radiating from the almond-eyed face of Suraiya in Afsar, Navketan will have its name in the letters of gold in the history books of cinema, for it is impossible that a filmmaker can even think of matching to the glory of Guide or a Jewel Thief ever again.

(This article was published in the Sunday Magazine of The New Sunday Express)

The fresh flowers of Kaagaz ke Phool

Many years back, as a child I saw on television an image that stuck to my mind forever. An old man runs out of a studio and a woman, seemingly his lover, runs behind him. As she steps out of the studio, she is mobbed by fans for her autograph and the man looks at the crowd surrounding her from a distance and walks away into anonymity. The image kept haunting me. More than a decade later, I came to know that it was a scene from Guru Dutt’s Kaagaz ke Phool. On October 2 this year, Kaagaz ke Phool completed fifty years of its artistic glory.

When it was released in 1959, the critics and the audience unanimously rejected the movie. On the day of the primiere, when Guru Dutt walked into the hall, he saw the reaction and knew that his piece of heart has been outrightly thrown out of the window. In an interview later, he said “The movie was good in patches. It was too slow and went over the head of the audience”. Kaagaz ke Phool was Guru Dutt’s autobiographical venture, an extension of his own life. He could never really come to terms to the fact that the movie flopped. The story of a successful director Suresh Sinha, who seeks comfort in a relationship with his actress Shanti, to seek succour from his tattered domestic life seemed to mirror his own relationship with Waheeda Rehman and his uneasy marriage with Geeta Dutt. In the later half of the movie, Shanti becomes a superstar while Suresh’s career slides down and many years later, he is reduced to playing an extra in other movies to make his ends meet. One day, Suresh is found dead on the director’s chair in the studio he once ruled, unknown and unlamented, save by a studio worker who recognises him.
Though many feel that this movie was an extension of his own life, there are more chances that Guru Dutt was inspired by the life of his mentor Gyan Mukherjee, to whom Pyaasa was dedicated. Mukherjee, the director of the blockbuster Kismet (1943), made many flops later in his career and slipped into obscurity.

What does one say about Kaagaz ke Phool? So much has been written about the move and its maker and yet, so much remains to be discovered. What is the most outstanding feature of Kaagaz ke Phool, besides being Guru Dutt’s own story? Perhaps, it is the visual symbolism, laced with the haunting music of S.D.Burman and stunning photography of V.K.Murthy. S.D.burman does not create much impact through his songs apart from Waqt ne Kiya and Dekhi Zamaane ki yaari. But the background score augments the element of lyricism which Guru Dutt intends to serve the audience. In the movie, Suresh, in his hey days, makes a movie titled Devdas and is in search of Paro for his movie. The search ends with Shanti. The parallel between the lore and the life is evident. Like Paro, Shanti too displays a higher level of emotional strength than her male counterpart, though they initially seek strength from them. Later, certain factors of the society divide both of them. The striking similarity between the scene where Shanti, playing her successful innings, visits Guru Dutt in his dilapidated shack and the scene where Paro visits Devdas after her marriage to find him devastated, cannot be missed. In both the movies, there is a final meeting, which is almost missed by the lovers. It is the restrictions of a Zamindari household that stops Paro from meeting Devdas and the fans in Kaagaz ke Phool who mob Shanti for a photograph as she rushes behind Suresh. The tragedy of Devdas heavily influenced Guru Dutt in Pyaasa as well as Kaagaz ke Phool.

Posthumous fame seemed to haunt Guru Dutt. He showcases that in Pyaasa. He also talked of posthumous fame in one of his articles, drawing references to Homer, Narsi Mehta besides many painters of Europe. Kaagaz ke Phool saw a revival in the 1980s, when it was released in Germany and France. Soon, it caught the attention of the critics and cinema-lovers and was hailed as a classic worldwide. Two decades after his death, Guru Dutt too got his name mentioned in the same breath as other greats of cinema like Bimal Roy, Raj Kapoor and Mehboob Khan. His talk of posthumous fame turned out to be prophetic.

It is not that Kaagaz ke Phool was without flaws. The movie somewhere is drenched in self-pity and Guru Dutt takes the idea of ‘the fall of a star’ too personally and seriously. The character of Johny Walker seems cut off and forced for the sake of providing some comic relief. Like Devdas, the character of Suresh does not inspire, quite unlike the protagonist of Pyaasa, with whom the viewers are able to relate and in whom they see a relfection of their own thoughts. But in spite of all these flaws, Kaagaz ke Phool was the finest comment on the film world to come from a film-maker.

It has been 45 years since Guru Dutt left this world. On October 10, 1964, Guru took an overdose of sleeping pills and committed suicide. The night before he was found dead, he had a long talk with Abrar Alvi, at the end of which he said “I think I want to die”. Abrar pushed aside this final comment away as of mind as one of his usual expressions of depressive thoughts. It was his third and final attempt.

Guru Dutt was an artist’s artist. He successfully touched upon most of the popular genres of the day – crime thrillers, suspense dramas, comedies, period films, tragedy, musicals and biopics. No other film-maker perhaps put the feelings of a creative person as effectively and beautifully on screen as he did. The test of time, is difficult to pass and very few have done it. Guru Dutt is one of them. As talks go strong about a possible remake of Kaagaz ke Phool by Rakeysh Mehra, with Aamir Khan and Katrina Kaif in the lead, the idea of this legendary genius takes yet another form. But will it be possible to recreate a classic, into which Guru Dutt put his heart and soul, thus making it special? Only time will be the key to this lock but it rekindles the lines of a song from this movie - Daur yeh chalta rahe, rang uchalta rahe, roop machalta rahe, Jaam badalta rahe!

(This article was published in the Saturday supplement Zeitgeist of The New Indian Express)

Eighty or Eighteen?

Like the morning sun, her voice embalms the mind. Like the rays piercing through the early mist, it sends a quick wave of excitement along the spine. Like the waving branches of umpteen trees, her breezy tone enters like a gush of cool air into our consciousness. Like the early bells of a temple, her voice rings to awaken the masses from slumber to dawn. Eighty years of music and sixty three years of career in Hindi cinema is not an easy feat and to carry on with that career with the above qualities results in a personality, whose parallel we will never see in our lifetime.

Very few people know that Lata’s real name was Hema and she chose her name from a play of her father in which she played a character called Latika. Pushed unwillingly into a film career, Lata rose to prominence dramatically in the post-independence film industry, after a lot of struggle. When she got her first earnings, she bought a radio to listen to her idol K.L.Saigal. The first thing she heard as she switched on the radio was the news of K.L.Saigal’s death. Saddened, she returned to the market and sold the radio for a loss.

The year 1947 saw the exit of Mallika-e-tarannum Noorjehan, who left for Pakistan after independence. With the meteoric rise in the popularity of playback singing, the days of singing stars like Uma Devi, Surendra and Suraiyya were numbered, as the playback system sabotaged their forte, which was the clever conflation of voice and looks. The year 1948 saw the breaking of convention by not just Lata, but also Mohammed Rafi, whose songs in Dulari turned out to be chartbusters. Two years of back-to-back successes in the form of Andaz, Dulari, Barsaat and Mahal ensured the arrival of Lata Mangeshkar into the Hindi music scene.

The fifties saw her competing with the likes of Shamshad Begum, Geeta Dutt and later, her own sister Asha Bhonsle. But her true competitor was only Geeta, whose sultry voice gave her a tit-for-tat at the box office. No doubt Lata had a bigger following in her kitty, with loyalists like Naushad, Shankar Jaikishan, Roshan, Madan Mohan and Salil Choudhary, recording hit after hit under them. But Geeta had support from S.D.Burman and O.P.Nayyar, with the latter never having recorded a single song with Lata, for reasons known only to them. With Geeta and Shamshad falling silent in the sixties, Lata, along with her sister Asha dominated the film music scenario for the next three decades.

This era saw many controversies engulfing her. She never recorded a song with O.P.Nayyar. She fell off with C.Ramachandra, returning only to record the unforgettable Ae mere watan ke logon. She stopped recording songs with Rafi over a dispute over royalty with the HMV. During the three years they went on with this cold war, Rafi loyalists like Naushad used Asha instead of Lata for duets and on the other hand, Lata loyalists like S.D.Burman used Kishore Kumar to sing duets with her. This gave Kishore Kumar the big break with songs like Gaata Rahe Mera Dil, while all the other songs of Dev Anand in Guide were sung by Rafi. The first song which they sang after the tiff was Dil Pukare from Jewel Thief.

Meanwhile, she even had a tiff with S.D.Burman and did not record a single song with him for many years. It was R.D.Burman who brokered peace between them and got her to sing Mora gora ang lele for Bandini under S.D.Burman. When Suman Kalyanpur and Vani Jairam broke into the music scenario as overnight stars and slipped away without trace, Lata was accused of using her clout to get rid of unwanted competition. Once a dispute arose with the flashy Raj Kapoor and she refused to sing for his films. Raj, who considered Lata his lucky mascot, made peace with her and never let her go thereafter. From Barsaat to Ram Teri Ganga Maili, she sang for most of his films, for all the heroines from Nargis, Nimmi, Padmini and Vyjayantimala to Dimple Kapadia, Zeenat Aman, Padmini Kolhapuri and Mandakini.
There was something unusual and magical about this lady, which made all her opponents return to her fold, seeking the comfort of her voice, for reasons of money, success and superstition. She has seldom been candid about these matters in her interviews, save with a few like Ameen Sayani or Nasreen Munni Kabir, for the younger lot have not been able to cast aside the feelings of awe while approaching her.

But there is no doubt that the lady must never have had it easy. In an industry where every superstar gets goose pimples every Friday, with every new release, Lata too must have been hurdled with a flurry of competitors. Responding to the accusation of her throttling the competitors in an interview with Sayani, she once said “Once a person came with his daughter to S.D.Burman and said that she sings like Lata, to which dada replied saying why he should take someone who sang ‘like’ Lata, when Lata herself sang for him. Therein lay the problem. The new singers never tried to be different. They tried to be like me rather than cultivating something different from me”. Well said, for even today, every big and small singer aspires to sing ‘like’ Lata Mangeshkar.

Every musician worth his notes has his favourite Lata song. There is a Lata song for every emotion and every occasion. If you are happy, you sing Panchi bano udti phiroon. If you are sad and love struck, you play Rulake gaya sapna mera. If you are out there to challenge the world, you go Pyar kiya to darna kya. If you want to sing a lullaby, there is Chanda hai tu mera suraj hai tu. Every girl newly introduced to love would find her emotions resonate with Chalte Chalte from Pakeezah. A dark and horrifying place reminds you of Gumnaam hai koi. Every bhajan party loves Allah tero naam and every marriage party loves Raja ki aayegi baraat.

In her illustrious career, she has been showered with one award after the other, so much so that she stopped accepting Filmfare awards after 1969. This month, as she turns eighty, it is difficult not to say that her voice still does not carry the spiritedness of a girl of eighteen. Age has taken its toll, but then there is still some air of classicism, mysticism and lyricism about her. Perhaps, she has maintained this with a purpose, which has in turn lent her the incomparable aura we see around her today.

In the lost lanes of Urdu

Magnificent havelis, scintillating fountains, men in shervanis, women decked in ornate jewellery, music and poetry flowing like honey with umpteen shers and shayris belted out as repartees at every turn, energising qawwalis, which was the musical battlefield of the cultured; the gentle gesture of the palm being lifted to the forehead as the characters uttered “Aadab” in salutation and every couplet being appreciated with a “Subhan Allah”. Muslim socials in Bombay cinema evokes these images of romance, which like a gentle breeze of spring, brushed past us in the 1950s and 60s. Along with it flourished Urdu, the knowledge of which was a perquisite to excel in most of the major fields of movie-making.

The dominance of Urdu has a lot to do with the origins of the film industry in Bombay. There were roughly two major influences in its early phases. The first influence was from Bengal. Movies made under The New Theatre seemed more like Bengali movies with Hindi dialogues. The second and the one with a long lasting influence was of the Parsi theatre. The likes of Ardeshir Irani, Sohrab Modi and Prithviraj Kapoor brought the traditions of theatre into cinema. It is noteworthy that the first Indian talkie, Alam Ara, was a Muslim social with completely Urdu dialogues. Later, Sohrab Modi’s Pukar (1939) laid the foundation of a Parsi-theatre based historical in Hindi cinema. The Muslim socials played an instrumental role in the popularisation of Urdu.

The influence of Parsi theatre went beyond the use of Urdu. The song-and-dance formula owes its popularity to the Parsi theatre to a great extent. When the Bombay film industry grew, Urdu, by default, became the language of cinema. Moreover, the sophisticated diction and intonation that came with Urdu lent the dialogues a class which was difficult to be produced in other dialects.
Urdu also had an impact on the direction, songs and dialogues that came with any story. This is what the scholars have called the Islamiyat of cinema. Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa or Sahib Biwi aur Ghulam were not Muslim socials; but they carried the air of a Muslim social, which spread across movies in that era.
The movies made through the 50s, 60s and the 70s are indicative of the graph of Muslim socials and the associated use of Urdu in cinema. The fifties and sixties saw the growth of Muslim socials with the likes of Anarkali, Barsaat ki Raat and Chaudvin ka chand. The genre peaked with K.Asif’s magnum opus Mughal-e-azam (1960), which set unattainable standards in cinema. Close to its heels came Mere Mehboob. For the first time, a Muslim social was celebrated for three hours in full blown Technicolor. The colour of the screen matched the colour of the language. It was now trendy to express the choicest emotions of the heart in Urdu.

But the decadence had set in. The trends were changing. The writers, directors and the above all, the dynamics of the society were changing. Unemployment and poverty were no more seen through the lens of idealism, for which Urdu poetry seemed best. The angry young man had set foot and the language of the street took over. This change is exemplified by Kamal Amrohi’s masterpiece Pakeezah (1972), the last pitch of a connoisseur of Awadh to hold on its glory of yore. The movie, probably set in pre-independent India, personified the vanishing culture through the character of Meena Kumari. Mehboob ki Mehendi by H.S.Rawail, whose Mere Mehboob set cash registers ringing, turned out to be a damp squib. M.S.Sathyu’s Garam Hawa (1973) shattered all romantic notions of the contemporary Islamic society, forcing film-makers to come out of the dream world. Muzzafar Ali’s Umrao Jaan came for a change in 1983. But the genre was dead, as was visible with the disastrous performance of Razia Sultan. Muslim socials had finally sloughed away into obscurity and by the nineties, Urdu was a matter of past. It was not possible to continue to portray something which was no longer there. Globalisation made new amendments in the use of language. Hindi morphed into Hinglish and survived the onslaught. Urdu remained unamenable and petered away. Moreover, the problems post 80s that came up in the Muslim society changed the portrayal of its characters forever in cinema.
But it would be inappropriate to ascribe the use of Urdu entirely to Muslim socials. The major reason why Urdu virtually became the lingua franca of the Bombay film industry was the heavy presence of artists and writers of the Progressive Movement. These left leaning writers, like K.A.Abbas, Zia Sarhadi, Rajender Singh Bedi, Abrar Alvi, Kaifi Azmi, Sahir Ludhianvi, Majrooh Sultanpuri and Jan Nisar Akhtar, wrote predominantly in Urdu, making it the medium of expression even in dramas with Hindu characters. The foray of artists from IPTA made Urdu the language of the performing artists. This was a perfect example of the secular ethos of cinema. In the seventies, their hold and role began to wane with the entry of a new breed of writers. The new class of directors and singers were not familiar with the Persian script. Urdu slowly slid into the horizons of incomprehension. The sole success in recent times was Jodha Akbar. Shyam Benegal’s Sardari Begum and Sudhir Mishra’s Khoya Khoya Chand were lamentations of a splendid past.

Mahatma Gandhi advocated the use of Hindustani, a blend of Hindi and Urdu. But the wounds of partition made certain irreversible changes. Hindi, was perceived as a language of the Hindus, as distinct from Urdu, which with its Persian script which was labelled as a Muslim language. Many scholars opine that had the Progressive writers taken to the Devanagiri script instead of the Persian, perhaps Urdu would have survived the ravages of politics, bias and ignorance. Today, the line between Urdu and Hindi in daily use is hardly visible. Making changes to the refined forms of both the languages, they have blended to become what Gandhi called Hindustani.
Today, when one walks through Daryaganj in Old Delhi, famous for its Urdu books, one can gauge the dwindling popularity of the language. The on-screen change, by all means, reflects the changes that have taken place in the realms of politics, culture and academics. When NRI romances and peppy love stories rule the roost, it’s better to say ‘Keh do na You’re my Sonia’ rather than come out with the silken tresses of ‘Chaudvin ka Chand’. Urdu is now relegated to theatre and the pages of literature. It is a loss, not just of some words, songs or dialogues, but of an entire culture. As for cinema, the famed havelis, shervanis, shers and shayris represent an era gone with the wind.

(This article was published in the Sunday Magazine of The New Indian Express)

A forgotton Centenary

In 1953, when Do Bigha Zameen was released and became an instant classic, winning rave reviews across the world, Raj Kapoor remarked “How I wish I made this film!” This July 12 marked the centenary of Roy and a pity it was that the media did not even care to brush past the legend for it is too busy with pseudo swayamvars of item girls and the umpteen possibilities of MJ’s death. It is easy to ride on a trend and come out successful. But it is a legendary feat to create a trend. By introducing neo-realism in India, Bimal Roy did exactly the same, paving path for many others like Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Shyam Benegal. He set the records on fire with two hatricks in Filmfare awards through the 1950s.

What was special about Roy’s cinema? He introduced new dynamics in storytelling. He gave us a variety of effable characters, whose lives we lived and empathised with. When the farmer Shambhu Mitro in Do Bigha Zameen migrated to the city to save his ancestral land, we could see his story in every rickshawallah of our cities. When the untouchable girl Sujata led us through the tapestry of her life, we too saw, in a genteel manner, the evil behind the practice. When Kalyani, in a shocking scene, kills her lover’s wife in Bandini, we too identified with the wounded ego of a wronged woman. We drank to death with Devdas and saw Hindi cinema’s first reincarnation saga with Madhumati. Very few filmmakers understood women the way he did. Their portrayals were not pandering to the ideals of a man, but were independent of all chauvinistic labels. In a career spanning over two decades, he had showcased the profundity of life in its truest sense.

Bimal Roy with Balraj Sahni while shooting for Kabuliwallah(top); Suchitra Sen and Dilip Kumar in Devdas

He picked up his skills under the watchful eyes of P.C.Barua, in whose Devdas (1935) he worked as a cameraman. The actors of the time gave their best under him. Dilip Kumar gave us the definitive portrayal of Devdas, Balraj Sahni moved the nation to tears in Do Bigha Zameen and Nutan was at her passionate best in Bandini. His assistants and associates like Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Kamal Bose, Nabendu Ghose, Gulzar, Asit Sen, and Salil Chaudhry went on to mark their names in letters of gold in the pages of cinema. No other director perhaps made Sarat Chandra Chatterjee as popular as he did, as he came out with the cinematic adaptations of Parineeta, Biraj Bahu and Devdas.

Roy had a fetish for perfection. His son recalls him spending the early hours of the morning by the window of his study, religiously recording the sound of chirping birds for the background score of Sujata. Nature was a storyteller in his movies and spoke volumes for the characters. Every moment of day to day life was celebrated in the frames of his creations and gave voice to a million souls.
What made him project the injustices meted out to the creations of a lesser God? Perhaps, his upbringing in a family of Zamindars exposed him to the injustice, which reflected in his works as well. But Roy’s movies never talked of a violent upheaval to redress those wrongs. A strong believer in Gandhian ideals, his movies merely projected a problem without getting didactic and preachy. The problems he presented continue to remain relevant in today’s times. Melodrama was curbed and drama flowed smoothly like honey-drenched poetry on the screen.

Bimal Roy was a director who knew music too well and integrated it with his script. Needless to say, the songs of Madhumati, Parakh, Bandini and Sujata refuse to fade away. Who, but Bimal Roy could pull off a melancholic romance out of the song Jalte hai jiske liye sung over the telephone in Sujata? His most commercial venture was Madhumati, a musical blockbuster which swept the Filmfare awards that year.
His swansong Bandini was arguably his greatest work. In the year 1966, Hrishikesh Mukherjee dedicated his movie Anupama in the memory of his mentor, who had by then left an indelible legacy through his protégés.
Simplicity is a key to excellence. Very few filmmakers understood that after Roy. Like the gentle flowers Nutan nurtures in Sujata, his centenary too passed quietly without any ostentation, but its fragrance continues to fill the halls of brilliance.

(This review was previously published in Passion for Cinema, a unique elite online community of cinema lovers, which discusses and promotes meaningful cinema)

Manthan: Churning a revolution

Manthan was second in the series of rural trilogy of Shyam Benegal, the other two being Ankur and Nishant. With the most unconventional idea and the most unconventional sources of fund at hand, Shyam Benegal made this rural drama showcasing the success of cooperative dairies in Gujarat.

Inspired from the life of Varghese Kurien, Manthan talks of the life of Dr. Rao, a vet, who visits a village as a member of National Dairy Federation to popularise the growth of dairy cooperatives in India. The village poses many hurdles along his path. The mukhiya, or village headman (Khulbhushan Kharbanda) who is insecure about losing his clout with the arrival of the cooperative, Ganga Ram Mishra (Amrish Puri), a dairy owner who exploits the villagers with a low price on the milk, Bhola (Nasseruddin Shah), a dalit who sees every city dweller with suspicion as his mother was sexually exploited by a man from the city and umpteen tiffs and age-old battles that have left deep scars in the society. He encounters Bindu (Smita Patil), a Dalit milkmaid whose resentment slowly morphs into a liking and awe for Dr.Rao. After facing stiff opposition initially, he is finally able to convince many villagers to move towards the cooperative fold. Meanwhile, he also develops a soft corner for Bindu, who supports all his initiatives. But troubles begin when the head of the cooperative society has to be chosen. The sarpanch wants to become, by default, the head of the cooperative as well, which does not go down well with Bhola and the other Dalits. They field their own candidate feels threatened by a parallel power structure in the village. But Dr. Rao is thrown into real quandary when Bindu’s husband returns and orders her not to meet the doctor. Bindu’s buffalo dies but her ego is hurt upon meeting Dr. Rao. Unwillingly she borrows money from Ganga Ram and signs a court paper, unknowlingly, accusing Dr. Rao of rape. The sarpanch, meanwhile, meets the higher ups and gets Dr. Rao transferred. After the exit of Dr. Rao, Bhola is shocked to find the people back in the dairy of Ganga Ram. “Who will run the cooperative? The society people have left” counters a villager. But Bhola exhorts them to return and shows them the dream of a better tomorrow, when they will not be ruled neither by caste nor money. As Bhola moves towards the society, one by one, groups join him and they move towards a hopeful tomorrow.

500000 dairy farmers sponsored the movie by contributing a rupee each to Benegal. The movie was a tribute to the victory of the human spirit and the cooperative movement, which was eventually replicated across India. Girish Karnad was the Chairman of FTII, Pune. Legend goes that he was miffed with the behaviour of one of his students and sent him to Benegal so as to get rid of him from the college. Little did he know that he would have to work with that very student, whom we know as Nasseruddin Shah, in Manthan.
Girish Karnad, with his author backed role brings his magnetic presence to the screen and churns the emotions, not only of the characters, but also the audience. Smita Patil with her earthly fervour plays the feisty Bindu with flair and makes her mark in a movie meant for Karnad. Nasseruddin Shah, in the second half takes over as the empowered Dalit and gives Karnad a tit for tat through his performance. A strong support has been provided by Amrish Puri and Khulbhushan Kharbanda.
The Gujarati folk Mero gaam katha parey sets the tone for the entire movie and the different moods are brought out with a brilliant use of different instruments. Preeti Sagar won the Filmfare Best Playback Singer award in 1976 for this song and it was later used for the Amul Commercial.

Many scenes stand apart in Manthan. In one scene, Dr. Rao flirtatiously watches Bindu wash her legs in a water pump and she too returns the feelings, when she asks “Are you married?” to which he replies in the affirmative. Her expressions change instantly and she politely asks him to move away. She has no intention to walk on a cul-de-sac.

In another scene, when Dr. Rao hands out to Bindu some money for free when she asks for a loan to buy a buffalo, she bolts out with suppressed tears. Her ego has been hurt when even the sensitive Rao has treated her as a beggar.

In the brilliantly shot climax, Benegal uses a young boy ala Ankur, to conclude his movie. Bhola walks away to the cooperative with a handful of villagers. Leading them is a young boy- a symbol of tomorrow. He has rejected the current system and has chosen self-empowerment over dependence. Spot on!

Manthan is a story of dismantling of old institutions and the emergence of new ones. It is the story of a bloodless revolution - where the wrongs of caste is undone with a level playing field of the cooperatives, where the dominance of the Panchayat is countered by the power structure set up by the villagers and where the age-old exploitation is tossed out of the window by an empowered group of villagers. Today it is studied, not only in Film Institutes, but also in B-Schools where it has become a text book of Rural Marketing. The story of churning a revolution lives on and the cream of it is visible in countless success stories which propel the Indian farmers to step out of the dark ages.

(This review was published in Passion for Cinema, an elite community of cinema lovers who discuss and promote meaningful cinema)

The multiple roles of Bhumika

How will it be for an actress to act like an actress? Effortless, one may think. Shyam Benegal’s Bhumika is the tale of an actress, who, in the course of living different roles, forgets to live her life. And by the time she realises it, she has crossed miles in her life, the clock of time being irreversible.

The young Usha is a free spirited, sensitive girl. Her vocal chords are honed under the strict surveillance of her grandmother, who comes from a family of singers. On the death of her father, a relative Keshav (Amol Palekar) persuades Shantabai to send Usha to the producers to make her an actress. The young Usha soon blossoms into youth to become the acclaimed actress Urvashi (Smita Patil). Urvashi’s growing nearness to Keshav doesn’t go down well with Shantabai as he belongs to a lower caste. But Urvashi is ready to give up all to set up a life with Keshav; even leave her career forever. She even does so, but is pulled back on Keshav’s insistence, who doesn’t want to lose a money minting machine like Urvashi.

The two sources of joy - Rajan and music

Urvashi’s chemistry with her co-star Rajan (Anant Nag) raises smoke in newspapers, much to the jealousy of Keshav. Sparks fly often in the household. Usha desperately seeks the joys of a house wife. Her vexation with her marriage leads her into a series of unfulfilling relationships outside marriage. She falls for the pontificating glib talk of a director Sunil (Nasseruddin Shah) and even makes love to him, only to discover later that he is nothing more than a fraudster. She leaves her home and comes across a tad arrogant businessman Vinayak Kale (Amrish Puri). His irreverence strikes chord in her heart for he is the first one who is untouched by her stardom. Being at the end of tether in seeking some love, she even agrees to be his mistress in his feudal haveli. Usha effortlessly moulds herself into the new life but soon realises that her rights end within the four walls of the haveli. She moves out of the claustrophobic life with the help of Keshav and returns to Bombay, to find her daughter – happily married and pregnant. She contrasts it with her own cluttered life. She receives a call from her old lover Rajan, who entreats her to enter movies, for she is still in demand. But Usha, in being Urvashi, has played far too many roles for a life.

The conflict of multiple roles in one life

Shyam Benegal put his rural dramas on hold while coming out with this landmark of Indian cinema. This was the movie where the true histrionics of Smita Patil was known, who was till then a news reader in Bombay Doordarshan. Her bravura performance deservingly fetched her a National award. Her expressions and diction in each and every frame was simply out of this world, such that Hansa Wadkar, on whose life the biopic was based, couldn’t have asked for more. She was definitely the beacon light whose screen presence lit the movie, frame after frame. It helped that excellent support was provided by Amol Palekar (in a refreshing role with shades of grey), Nasseruddin Shah, Anant Nag and Dina Pathak. Amol Palekar brought out with ease the selfishness, insecurity, jealousy and pity that came out of Keshav.

Shyam Benegal strikes an entirely different chord here and in a trend setting move, uses colour to indicate time period in a movie that plays back and forth with flashback. The radio here is put to a clever use to indicate the time period through events like the death of Stalin and the coup pf Ayub Khan.

The movie also captures the growth of Hindi cinema through the growth of Usha into Urvashi, from the studio system of the 1930s to the era of demanding actors of the 50s. Benegal draws a parallel between the characters enacted by Urvashi and her own life to enunciates it further. The movie in which Urvashi is acting – Agnipareeksha- sounds more like a statement on the life of the lead actress of the movie. The lavani, with which the movie opens, sets the tone of the movie to indicate the story of a woman, who has to perform, no matter what.

Usha is a bundle of contradictions, which makes her so real and relatable. The names Usha and Urvashi also seem to be well thought out by Benegal. Usha, like the morning sun is pure and bright. But Urvashi is a celestial nymph, meant to please all who come her way. The only man with whom she is impressed is Rajan as she says in the lines “Ek tum hi ho jisne mujhe sirf diya hai.... tumse shaadi karke main tumhe bhi khona nahi chahti. Bhumika is a visual treat with avant-garde cinematography by Govind Nihalani. Watch out for the still where she sits before a multi-framed mirror, reflecting on the umpteen roles she is enmeshed in.
The movie ends with a phone call from Rajan which Usha leaves unanswered. A song sung by Urvashi in the movie would perhaps fill in the missing space.

Yeh tune kaisa dikhaya sapna
Main sab chod kar aayi apna
Khadi hoon rangon ki ek nagar mein
Badal gayi main toh ek nazar mein
Piya tumse milake ankhiyaan
Tumhare bin jee na lage ghar mein......

(This review was previously published in Passion for Cinema, a unique elite online community of cinema lovers, which discusses and promotes meaningful cinema)