Picture Perfect

The curse of superstardom

2016-07-24T02:13:00.002+05:30

There lived a superstar who created a whirlpool of his own stardom. His fans were sucked into it with every blockbuster he released year after year, as they cherished his mannerisms, dialogue delivery, style and held unflinching faith in him and his brand of cinema. Oh did I forget to mention, film after film, he repeated himself, quite like history. And one day, when nothing was left to be conquered, the whirlpool of his superstardom sucked the star himself into it. He remained there until another vehicle came to save him out of it. That's the curse of a superstar - to be perished by the very factors that made him.

This could be the story of any superstar. Rajesh Khanna, the king of romance, was sucked into the whirlpool he had himself created. Amitabh Bachchan created it with the persona of an ‘Angry Young Man’ and became its own victim when his films petered out of the box office (looking back you wonder how on earth did the man who signed Sholay and Deewar even agree to do Ajooba and Jadugar). While Rajesh Khanna couldn’t ever rise out of it, Amitabh Bachchan took a long break until he got a new launch vehicle in Kaun Banega Crorepati. Down south, stars who became demi-gods, like MGR and NTR, blurred the differences between their on-screen and off-screen persona to such an extent that people didn’t know when the actors capitalised on their success and shifted this whirlpool from the sea of cinema to politics.

I have already seen Pa Ranjith’s Kabali twice and I know of people who have seen it more number of times. For those who have seen Rajini's rich gamut of work prior to him having reached the dizzying heights of superstardom, Kabali will be welcomed like a long lost friend. For with Kabali, Rajini has proven that in a bid to become India’s biggest superstar, he didn’t let go of the wonderful actor in him.

When I excitedly shared this fact with a friend, he said, “You don’t need Rajini for acting. For that, we have Kamal. Rajini has to entertain us.” Perhaps, the world of cinema has its own Lakshman rekhas. You can step out of it and experience freedom but can’t return inside the rekha. Similarly, you can become a superstar after having been an actor but the superstar cannot suddenly decide to play non-conformist roles to be an actor again. In short, the fans might not like to see Rajini, as the sadist we saw in Avargal or the the pornographer who filmed his wife every night in Gayathri.

One reason fans do not allow the superstars to move on is that it also means an era in our own lives has come to an end. The day Shahrukh Khan stops romancing 20-something girls, you know that you have also grown older than what you think you are. You can no longer see something you have grown up with and letting go of comfortable experiences is not an easy job. The fans of Rajini wouldn’t want to let go of the superstar they have grown up with.

I have heard several negative views about Kabali, especially from the film critics who have lampooned Ranjith for having soiled the reputation of the superstar. For me personally, the biggest grouse was the absence of a strong antagonist (for that matter the last antagonist who could match Rajini's charisma was Neelambari in Padayappa). The script could have had more to it. But the issue here is something else. One reviewer went on to say that “Rajini does not need Kabali. Ranjith needs it.” I think there hasn’t been a worse understanding of the situation. Right from the beginning, it was made clear that it is going to be a Ranjith film. The fact remains that Rajini needed a film like Kabali to get out of his own whirlpool and take that much needed leap into that space of filmdom that befits his stature, age and charisma. If Kabali is that delivery vehicle, it might not have exactly helped him cover the desired distance with the leap. But if the film succeeds, Rajini can definitely claim to have escaped the curse of superstardom. On the other hand, if Rajini’s fans disappoint at the box office, Rajini will become a prisoner of his superstardom. In a bid to please his critics, if he further attempts to repeat his acts of the 1990s, he will become a pale shadow, a caricature of his former self. We saw a glimpse of that in Lingaa. Kabali could very well be the most well-calculated decision taken by the biggest superstar in India to break through the shackles of stardom. It is now up to the fans to make it possible. Rajini has done his bit to evolve and has scored full marks in it.

In one famous dialogue, Kabali announces his return after 25 years. Rajini’s Thalapathy was a Diwali blockbuster of 1991. Someone who was born then would have turned 25 today. And yet, we want Rajini to be stuck in time. It is asking for the impossible. On another note, Thalapathy was also the last outing where Rajini showcased the intense actor in him. He's back after 25 years and a true fan needs to celebrate that.

Sound of Music - In conversation with P Susheela

2016-04-28T17:59:00.004+05:30

Her name was synonymous with playback singing for several decades in south Indian cinema. I met her a few weeks back to do a story for The Times of India's 8th anniversary edition in Chennai, where she shared some fond memories of her musical journey and the city that became her home – Chennai. you can read the online edition here.

For those who have grown up on a staple of film songs in the last six decades, P Susheela is a name that requires no introduction.Earlier this year, the Guinness World Records deemed her the singer with the highest number of solo, duet and chorus songs.The laurel seems to rest lightly on her head, like several others that she has won in her illustrious career, including a Padma Bhushan and five national awards for playback singing. Susheela was the first singer to receive a National Award for playback singing, way back in 1969 for the song Paal Polave, in the movie Uyarndha Manidhan.“It was an AVM production and A V Meiyappa Chettiar was extremely proud that I had won the award. He organised a huge felicitation function for me in Chennai, which saw several dignitaries, including the then chief minister M Karunanidhi and the legendary playback singer Lata Mangeshkar being a part of it,“ she says.

While the Guinness citation refers to 17,695 songs from the 1960s, there definitely seems to be a lot more that have not been taken into account. “Back then, I didn't keep track of the songs I sang. There were times when I recorded over five songs in a day and my focus was on delivering the best to the music director. Now I am trying to trace the songs I sang and perhaps, the total number might come to approximately around 25,000."

The reward has not come overnight. For the sake of setting a record, many artistes deliver upon efforts which are done over a few hours. But with Susheela, it is a summation of the efforts of a lifetime, during which she has seen people rise and fall and trends come and go.“That was also a time when technology wasn't as great as we have today . Even if one singer or instrumentalist got it wrong during the recording, we would have to do the whole song all over again. But then, the singers before us had it even more difficult. We could read the songs as we sang them.Artistes like M K Thyagaraja Bhagavathar had to act as they sang. They were truly great!“ The time Susheela broke into the music scene was also when a lot of churning was happening in the world of film music.In Bombay , Lata Mangeshkar had become a sensation, bringing in a new style of singing, which broke off from the likes of Zohrabai Ambalewali and Noorjehan. In the south, the era of singing stars had ended and heavy classical numbers were giving way to light music in films. Susheela became the face of a new trend, where she utilised her grounding in classi cal music to belt out one melody after the other. But the drill of film music didn't leave her with much time to pursue classical music.

“The classical music scene had towering giants like MS Subbulakshmi, ML Vasanthakumari and DK Pattammal. I went with the flow and got into films. I got a break when music director P Nageshwara Rao chose me from a list of new singers given to him by All India Radio. I used to sing for AIR and had also done a kutcheri there. I sang a song for the movie Petra Thai (1952) and thereafter, I got employed at AVM for a monthly salary . A V Meiyappan also employed a tutor for me to learn Tamil. I lived in Triplicane and we would often go to the beach.We also had trams in Chennai.Being in this city made things a lot more convenient for me as the recording of songs for any language would happen here,“ she says.

Susheela also became the chosen voice in Malayalam and Kannada as well. “In Malayalam, I began singing after V Dakshinamoorthy got me to sing the song Pattu padi urakkam from the movie Seeta. I didn't learn Malayalam. The music directors would help me with translation and pronunciation,“ she says. When Mughal-e-azam was being made simultaneously in Tamil as Akbar, Susheela was called upon to sing for the Tamil version. “There was a lyricist by the name Kambadasan, who would translate the Hindi songs into Tamil. He took me to Bombay and introduced me to the music legend Naushad. Till then, I didn't know who he was. Naushad was very impressed with my rendition of his songs and many decades later, when he was asked to compose for the Malayalam movie Dhwani, he agreed to take up the project on the condition that I sing his songs.“

Susheela clearly doesn't believe in a `then and now' comparison. “Those songs and movies were a product of the times. Today's artistes are also doing a lot of good work. After I cut down on films, I focused on stage performances. Today , artistes do a lot of stage performances early on in their career. I worked with some wonderful music directors.People like Viswanathan Ramamoorthy and K V Mahadevan gave me songs with a lot of variety. When I look back, there is no instance when I feel that I could have done something better. The music directors would make us sing 10 times and finalise the sixth take. They were such perfectionists.“

A man for all genres: Guru Dutt

2015-07-11T02:29:00.001+05:30

A still from the song Waqt ne kiya kya haseen sitam, where
Guru Dutt interwove poetry and cinema seamlessly

Two days back, many online articles and radio shows remembered Guru Dutt, whose 90^th birth anniversary fell on July 9. What struck me most in those programmes was the complete focus on melancholy and tragedy, painted in a tinge of disillusionment and despair. There were references to the pain he endured in his personal life, which came out in his cinema. Of course, his tragic end in 1964 only made it easier to equate Guru Dutt with tragedy.

But was this the only side of Guru Dutt? It is very unfair that posterity associates this genius only with one brand of cinema. In fact, there were so many brands he spawned during his short career of over 15 years that one tends to take the parting images alone seriously. My first tryst with Guru Dutt's cinema began with classics like Pyaasa and Kaagaz ke Phool and it took me almost a decade to experience his flair for action, suspense and comedy. Watching his early films left me wondering if I understood Guru Dutt at all, in all these years.

In the early 1950s, Dev Anand asked Guru Dutt to direct Navketan’s Baazi to keep an old promise that he had given his friend Dutt during the days of his struggle. Written by Balraj Sahni, Baazi was not only a big money spinner for Navketan, but it also set the road for an urban crime thriller in Hindi cinema. The template of an urban crime thriller in Baazi, as crystallised by Guru Dutt, was used for several years and India had its earliest tryst with urban noir. It was also in Baazi that Duru
Dutt began experimenting with his style of song picturisation, where songs were employed as an extension of the script rather than as random intervals. Remember how seamlessly Geeta Bali breaks into Tadbeer se bigdi hui taqdeer bana le when Dev Anand is undergoing a turmoil? His next movie Jaal was a suspense drama. With Jaal, Guru Dutt began his partnership with cinematographer VK Murthy, who remained with him till the end.

Guru discovered a new style of comedy in Aar Paar, which would
later find concrete shape in Mr and Mrs 55

When he ventured to start his own production house, Guru Dutt started with his own comfort zone of action and made Baaz, which was also the first film where he played the lead for the first time. Though it didn’t make much noise, he struck gold with the urban noir comedy Aar Paar, which also saw his partnership with music director OP Nayyar and writer Abrar Alvi. Aar Paar showed his penchant for urban stories, portraying the everyday lives of people in Bombay.

Mr and Mrs 55 was a satire on marriages in the

urban space and misplaced feminism

When one discusses the early comedies of the 1950s and 60s, one invariably ends up talking about Padosan and Chalti ka naam gaadi. But one of the most underrated comedies of Hindi cinema was Guru Dutt’s Mr and Mrs 55, which starred himself and Madhubala in the lead roles. It was not a very great time for Madhubala as an actress, after having been dubbed a ‘box-office poison’ especially after the failure of Mehboob Khan’s Amar. Mr and Mrs 55, a satire on modern marriage and feminism, not only revived her career but also was a smash hit at the box office. Today, one might agree or disagree with his interpretation of feminism as Dutt showed in his film but that does not take away in any sense the flair for comedy he showed in it. A huge share of its success goes to the dialogue writer Abrar Alvi, who lightened it up with the finest repartees, as opposed to depending on slapstick comedy, as was the norm then.

The influence of Hollywood-type stylisaiton is clearly visible in Mr and Mrs 55 and one gets to see a Bombay that one can never see again. While it established Dutt as a successful director, Madhubala also proved her comic timing and went on to try comedies in many of her later films. And how can one forget the quirky songs, which were sung in the most random spaces. Jaane kahaan mera jigar gaya ji was sung between two lovers in an office during the lunch break and Dil par hua aisa jadoo was sung in a café. Who,but Guru Dutt could have given this film the fine finishing touch of a musical, making it look all so classy and not kitschy!

Raj Khosla was his assistant for many years and Guru Dutt produced the urban crime thriller CID to give Khosla a chance to direct a film. Guru Dutt had been to Hyderabad before the shooting of this film and spotted a new talent from Madras, who was a trained classical dancer and had already done a film in Telugu and Tamil. He not only signed her for CID as its vamp but also discovered his muse. , Waheeda Rahman, later co-starred with him in all his productions till the end. Their chemistry not only lit up the frames of his films but also caused havoc in Guru Dutt's marital life.

Guru Dutt never took himself seriously as an actor and that explains why he wanted Dilip Kumar to play the lead in Pyaasa , his masterpiece. When Dilip Kumar turned down the film, Dutt donned the greasepaint and lived the role of Vijay, the character which went on to symbolise India’s disillusionment with the new system and its broken promises of freedom. Every man goes through that phase in life when he is an idealist. Pyaasa was Guru Dutt’s attempt to immortalise that idealist in each one of us. Apparently, the script of Pyaasa was written by Guru Dutt almost a decade back. He was only waiting to find a strong footing in the industry before venturing into a sensitive subject.

The success of a serious work like Pyaasa strengthened his resolve to tell the audience his own story. Kaagaz ke Phool, which came out two years later, was partly autobiographical and was India’s first cinemascope film. It bombed, causing him a loss of Rs 17 lakhs. Its failure broke him from within and he refused to give his name in the directorial credits in his films thereafter. He produced Chaudvin ka Chand (directed by M Sadiq) and Sahib Biwi aur Ghulam (directed by his long-time associate Abrar Alvi).

In a space as constrained as the four ends of a cot,

Guru Dutt summarised the pangs of loneliness in the song Na jao Saiyan

Having been a trained dancer under the legendary Uday Shankar, song picturisation came naturally to him. Not in the sense of naach-gaana or dancing around trees as songs turned out to be in the hands of tasteless filmmakers later, but as a tool of effective storytelling. The man who could funnily break into Sun sun sun sun zalima, could also evoke the deepest of pathos in Dekhi zamane ki yaari. His dramas and tragedies were cinematic gems, which won acclaim in India after they won appreciation in European film festivals. But that does not, in any way, take away from the auteur his mastery over crime, suspense and comedies. Yes, Guru Dutt does remind you of a failed dream seen through the tainted tones of a glass of liquor but he equally belongs to those lazy and breezy evenings of fun and frolic. From period films and dramas to crime thrillers to comedies, there was hardly a genre he didn’t work upon successfully and across the world, not many filmmakers can claim such a credit. Perhaps, Guru Dutt was the greatest cinematic genius we never saw in Hindi cinema, whose life was cut short by an overdose of sleeping pills. He was then making Baharen Phir Bhi Aayengi, teaming up with OP Nayyar after almost a decade. His brother Devi Dutt refuses to call it a suicide and says that it was only an accidental overdose of pills. Perhaps. Mahedra Kapoor's song in this film was meant for Guru Dutt -
Badal jaaye agar maali, chaman hota nahi khaali
Baharen phir bhi aayi hai, baharen phir bhi aayengi

Life, art and other thoughts on Kaakka Muttai

2015-06-19T23:58:00.000+05:30

When I was in Class 2, I saw my classmate having something called Maggi during the lunch break. I went home and told my mother that I wanted that thread-like thing that my friend had in her tiffin box and even showed how she ate it.The next day, I opened my tiffin box to see something that looked like noodles but it wasn’t Maggi for sure. It didn't look nor taste like it. My mother had deceived me with a healthy rice sevai. She never made Maggi for a long time at home as she believed strongly that it wasn’t good for health. Before you think that this post has my two cents about Maggi, let me tell you that this incident sprang up in my mind as I watched debutant director M Manikandan’s Kaakka Muttai (Crow’s Egg) that came out two weeks back.

There is a scene in Kaakka Muttai, where the two boys from the slum, while talking to their grandmother, keep insisting on having a pizza, flashing the flyer of a pizza outlet that has opened shop in their locality. She asks them to buy a few vegetables so that she can make it for them. She then slices the tomatoes, capsicums and onions as shown in the flyer and evenly places them out on a freshly spread out batter of dosa. The kids taste it and know they have been duped and resolve to find a way to have a pizza by themselves.

Once, when we were at a South Indian restaurant, a lady at the table next to us ordered a vegetable uthappam and when her son asked if this was pizza, she thought for a second and said, “Yeah! This is Indian pizza.”

There is a joy of discovering life in Kaakka Muttai. The whole movie is laced with numerous sarcastic takes on the current social and political scenario in the country. You get free colour television sets at ration shops but rice and pulses are still scarce. Protest marches are guided more by a Rs 100 note and biriyani than anything else. Lofty ideals are less important than ensuring that you have enough to eat to survive, not even live, if you know what that actually means. Our society is an amalgamation of many clubs. It’s not enough to have money to enter a fine dining place. You need to look rich too. But in the middle of all that, not bothered by the social commentaries of the filmmaker, the kids – Periya Kaakka Muttai and Chinna Kaakka Muttai – are out there, trying to find the road that will lead them to their pizza and in the end, it doesn’t even matter.

At the surface level, Kaakka Muttai might be a movie about the journey of two slum dwelling kids who are out to taste their first pizza, something that they are willing to work hard for. But it is also, as we may realise, a story of our own lives, about people who are in search of something that seems exotic to us when we do not have it but cease to find it alluring once we have it.

There is a reflection of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali in Kakka Muttai, by which I do not suggest in any way that the latter was a rip off from the masterpiece. It is an inspiration in the sense that a work of art always can be. Somewhere you can see the two brothers of Kaakka Muttai discover life the way the siblings Apu and Durga do in Pather Panchali. In both these films, the mothers of these kids hope for a better tomorrow even as they try to meet the requirements of their kids in the best possible way. In Pather Panchali, Apu and Durga's father Harihar is oblivious to the complexities of problems that they face, partly because of his naivety and partly because he can't help it and in Kaakka Muttai, the father cannot help as he is serving a sentence in jail. And yes, there is the benevolent old aunt in Pather Panchali and the grandmother in Kaakka Muttai, who are blamed by the women of the home for spoiling the children. Yet, the kids strike a very beautiful bond with them.

Yet, there isn’t any melancholic air about Manikandan’s film, unlike Ray's masterpiece. It celebrates life at every turn so much so that you enjoy all the big and small moments of the protagonists through their eyes and not for a moment does the filmmaker want you to express any pity for them. Yes, the kids Vignesh and Ramesh have delivered a performance that is beyond words and have won a well-deserved National award. So have the other actors, most notably Iyshwarya Rajesh, as the mother of the two kids. But this is a high moment for Tamil cinema and let us celebrate it, for a work like this doesn’t come way too often. You might have seen children, slums and their lives in Salaam Bombay and Slumdog Millionaire. But unlike them, Kaakka Muttai is not self-indulgent and doesn’t even try to take itself too seriously. That’s what makes it a gem worth more than a watch.

Here's Crazy - In conversation with Crazy Mohan

2015-04-18T12:16:00.002+05:30

He has redefined comedy in cinema and has been at the forefront of an active theatre culture in Chennai. Crazy Mohan talks about his inspiration, works and the city of Chennai. This interview was published in The Times of India

As we settle for a conversation at the residence of Mohan Rangachari, he is brimming with excitement over the success of his play Chocolate Krishna, which has completed 760 shows and is on the way to touch the 800-show mark. It is not theatre alone that keeps him on his toes. Paintings by him adorn the walls of his home and he excitedly keeps checking the score of a cricket match. But then, writing has been his mainstay.

“Your career is destined regardless of what you study," says Mohan, who did his graduation from the Government College of Engineering, Guindy. "You have to develop as many hobbies as possible at a very young age so that you can take one of them seriously as a career later in life and also have something to look forward to after retirement. God chose me. I didn't choose my career. I only see myself as a custodian of humour."

Going back in time, Mohan gets nostalgic about the people who inspired him in his life, right from his wife, his mother, grandmother and his teacher Janaki. "My teacher sowed the seeds of good literature in me. Under her tutelage, I began reciting lines from Veerapandiya Kattabomman for a play. As a mark of tribute to her, I decided that I would name the heroine in every movie written by me Janaki," he says. There are other names that crop up. "My guru Agnihotram Ramanujar Tatachariar made me see the divine in everyone. In everybody's laughter I can see God. Kanchi Paramacharya once said that a humourist is the closest to God because he makes people happy. To think of it, the origin of slapstick comedy goes back to the puranas, when Vishnu did thoppukaranam to make Ganesha laugh and get the sudarshana chakra out of his belly. But in the space of literature, I was heavily drawn to the humour of Devan and PG Wodehouse. There is exaggeration to the limit of absurdity in the humour of Wodehouse," he says.

Mohan's flair for the unusual was noticed when he was in college, as he wrote the play The Great Bank Robbery. He got the award for best writer and actor from the hands of Kamal Hassan that year. Little did he know then that the duo would make one of the most successful writer-actor pairs in comedy, in Tamil cinema. "Kamal is a polyglot. He is well-read in many languages. I have many friends who are Palghat Iyers and I used their lingo to the hilt when I wrote Michael Madana Kama Rajan. While writing Thenali, Kamal and I listened to several tapes of Radio Ceylon to get the Ezha Tamil right for his character."

It's been close to 40 years of writing now and Mohan believes that theatre has improved since 1976, when he started working. Picking his favourites on Chennai's theatre scene, he names Augusto and S Ve Shekher. "I have also been a huge fan of the plays of Balachander, Cho Ramaswamy and Sivaji. Initially, theatres thrived on the sabha model. Today, it is sponsored by corporates. In some ways, theatre has taken the Twenty20 model. But it is fine, as I believe that trend is the best friend." Mohan also says that serious quality work can take time to take off and find recognition. "Remember, when Krishna narrated the Bhagvat Gita, he only had one person in the audience but today, it has won over the world."

Call him a complete Chennaiite and he corrects you promptly. "I am a complete Mylaporean. I was born here, studied at PS High School, my theatre activities were centred around here and even Kamal's office, where I spent a lot of time, was in Alwarpet. I feel homesick even when I go to Mambalam. Before I write the first line of a play, I place them at the feet of Goddess Karpagambal to seek her blessings," he says. So how does he define himself at the end? "I am a jack of all trades and master of fun."

Decoding a Phenomenon

2015-03-07T16:36:00.003+05:30

A review of Rajesh Khanna - The untold story of India's first superstar by Yasser Usman

In a scene from Kati Patang, Rajesh Khanna says, on a rather philosophical and romantic note, to a gathering of pretty girls - Kavita banayi nahi jaati, ban jaati hai, apne aap.... Jab kisi ki sundata, ankhon se hokar mann mein sama jaati hai. Sundarta aisi jo apni nazuk dor se kisi ko apne aur kheech ke sab kuch bhula deti hai, madhosh kar deti hai... ek khoobsurat shaam ki tarah. (Poetry is not written. It just happens when a piece of beauty enters your heart through your eyes. Beauty such, which draws you towards it and makes you forget everything, much like a beautiful evening).

He breaks into Yeh shaam mastani, listening to which an entire generation of women believed that Rajesh Khanna was singing for them. There is a similarity between Khanna's explanation of poetry and his own phenomenon, for no one really knew what drew millions towards him. His superstardom was like the twilight; it existed for a short while but then, his story could never be repeated by any superstar after him. Something similar to Yeh Shaam mastani, madhosh kiye jaaye!

Each woman in the audience believed that every blink of his eyes and every nod of his head was only for her. Girls of the 1970s did not simply go for a Rajesh Khanna movie to see it; they went on a date with him with every movie outing of theirs.

Aradhana, the blockbuster which changed his fortunes,
establishing him as the King of Romance

You get many such details in Yasser Usman's biography of Rajesh Khanna, whose meteoric rise was not only unprecedented, but also quite undecipherable. It's quite tricky for a writer to completely fathom the zenith of a superstar's appeal if he has not grown up watching him. Which is why Yasser begins his book saying, "To Rajesh Khanna. Wish I had witnessed your superstardom." This book helps a reader experience an era, when films didn't run, Rajesh Khanna did.

Yasser begins his journey with the end - the funeral procession of Rajesh Khanna. The sea of humanity that swarmed the streets of Mumbai made him wonder what it must have been like, when Kaka, as Rajesh Khanna was known to all, was at the peak of his superstardom. The author admits that he wasn't a big fan of Khanna himself, which actually lends an element of objectivity to the book. At a time when biographies usually end up as hagiographies, with a customary innocuous negative remark here and there, Yasser's account of Rajesh Khanna brings out the superstar's failings with the same candour with which it brings his dizzying heights of success.

Rajesh Khanna's fans returned albeit, in his death

The writer has based his research on a plethora of stories and interviews that appeared in the 1970s and 80s in film magazines and journals, such as Star & Style, Stardust and Filmfare. He wasn't able to talk to actress Dimple Kapadia. Hence her side of the story is put together like a jigsaw puzzle from the interviews she gave in the 1980s to various magazines after she walked out of Khanna's home. He has spoken to Khanna's contemporaries as well, but we do not know who they were, for they chose to remain anonymous. But a credible chunk of the story has come from script writer Salim Khan, who has also written the foreword for the book.

Khanna's comic outing with Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Bawarchi

The book reads almost like a movie. Yasser ends the chapters at crucial turning points and the book is well-structured. A couple of editing errors, which are very few in number, could have been avoided. There is an account of Khanna's life before he became a superstar. While his personal life gets a lot of mention, Yasser also analyses the success of his landmark films, such as Anand, Bawarchi and Amar Prem. His rivalry with Amitabh Bachchan and his descent are elaborately written.

Does this book help a reader understand the phenomenon of Rajesh Khanna, the superstar? To a great extent it does. You can almost feel the hysteria around Khanna and will agree (even if you are not his fan) that no superstar could ever achieve the zenith that Rajesh Khanna did. But does it explain the psyche of Jatin Khanna, the human being? To some extent. In parts, the writer is as puzzled as the people who lived around Khanna at that time, for Rajesh Khanna seldom revealed what was in his mind to anyone. The most beautifully written chapters of the book describe the fame that came to Khanna after the unexpected blockbuster Aradhana, his meeting with Anju Mahendroo, many years after their split and the last years of his life, when Rajesh Khanna fought hard to win back his fans. And the fans did return, though with his death.

It's quite strange that while many books have been written on Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan and even Shah Rukh Khan, Hindi cinema's biggest superstar was left untouched by many biographers. This one could very well be a benchmark for a biography on Rajesh Khanna.

First Day, First Show - The Rajini Phenomenon

2014-12-12T12:31:00.003+05:30

Image: The Times of India

There is nothing quite spectacular like the release of a Rajinikanth blockbuster in Tamil Nadu. His superstardom has got cemented with each successive release. This year, with his birthday coinciding with the release of his blockbuster Lingaa, the celebration cannot get bigger. The idea of First Day, First Show cannot be explained in words when it comes to a Rajinikanth film in Tamil Nadu.

Crackers are being burst and the cut outs of Rajnikanth, towering over cinema halls, are being offered ablutions with milk. In the days to come, houseful boards will be the mainstay at many theatres in Chennai. In the last few days, Rohit Menon, a city-based marketing professional, has been trying to get tickets of Lingaa, only to be disappointed.“I wanted to go for a first-day, first show with my family and friends. But I haven't been able to get any ticket for Friday and I will have to miss this opportunity . It's a big deal to watch a Rajinikath film on day one,“ says Rohit.

Having shifted to Chennai five years back, he saw the frenzy around Enthiran (2010) and was awed by the hysteria around the film on the day of the release.“I grew up on Amitabh Bachchan in Mumbai and to see the aura that surrounds Rajinikanth is totally mind-blowing,“ he says. The journey has been similar for Amrit Raj, whose exposure to Rajinikanth began with movies like Hum, Andha Kanoon and Chaalbaaz in the 1980s. “The whole decade of 1990s, when the Rajini phenomenon took the south by storm, people in the north were quite untouched by it,“ says Amrit, for whom things changed in 2007, when Sivaji: The Boss, was released in theatres in the north, dubbed in Hindi. “Moviegoers in the north were totally taken by surprise when they got a tryst with this frenzy that swept the country and it just grew bigger over the last few years,“ he says.

Pradeep Jain, who trades in dubbed films in the Hindi market, says that Rajini's popularity in the north started shooting northwards with the dubbed release of Sivaji and went through the roof with Robot, the Hindi version of Enthiran. “Later, Basha and Chandramukhi were also dubbed for satellite release and even today, Sivaji and Robot fetch high TRPs on television every time it is aired,“ he says.

It goes without saying that the release of a Rajini film is a festival in itself. “It's a collective celebration and people usually do not go for a Rajinikanth film alone. It's an experience they have with their friends and family members. My father-in-law is 80 and yet, he wants to watch Rajini's film on the first day . That's his charisma, which attracts cinegoers from the age of eight to 80,“ says V R Shankar, Manager, Devi Cineplex. Today, with a huge majority of cinema halls having gone the road of online booking, the serpentine queues one witnessed in the 1990s might not be a feat to rival. “In 1995, when Muthu was released, it had a phenomenal run here and Rajinikanth turned into an inimitable icon with back-to-back hits. But the wonderful thing about him is that he still is the undisputed superstar of Indian cinema,“ says Shankar, who remembers Rajini visiting Devi theatre for the shooting of Annai Oru Aalayam, in the late 1970s.

While growing up in Ayanavaram in the 1990s, Justin George never missed a single first day, first show viewing of a Rajinikanth film. He would have posters of Rajini pasted all over the walls of his room, only to be rebuked by his parents later. “The very first memory of cinema I have is watching his Panakkaran (1990) in a theatre, when I was three years old.Every time a new release of Rajini came out, I would run to a nearby shopkeeper, who sold the latest film posters. I saw the first shows of Muthu, Arunachalam, Basha, Padayappa and Sivaji on the first day of their release. There were occasions when I got beaten up when the police tried control the swelling crowd outside the cinema halls. We would fight tooth and nail to lay our hands on a ticket,“ says Justin as he goes on to describe his experience in further detail. “On the first day, you can't even listen to the dialogues or even follow the story . There will just be a larger-than-life jubilation in the theatre, which is beyond description. That would be the case in many single screens across Chennai and even today, that's how it is in the single screens,“ he says.

It was in his school that Rajinikanth began his first tryst with acting. During his school days, Rajinikanth spent a lot of his time acting in plays. On one such occasion, he played the role of the Kaurava prince Duryodhan in the play Kurukshetra.This was, perhaps, just the beginning of many negative shades that he would play in his career and in his early days, he played the anti-hero and villain to the hilt in movies like Apoorva Ragangal, Moondru Mudichu and 16 Vayathinile.

When Nishanth Ramakrishnan is not busy with his MBA classes in a B-School, he acts in short films and also makes some of them. An aspiring actor, he has seen Rajini films like Thillu Mullu, Basha and Thalapathi over and over again. “I have seen Apoorva Ragangal many times over just to see him opening the gate in the scene where he is introduced for the first time. Purely from the standpoint of entertainment, he has enormous style, which is his forte. Whether it is the Rajini of the 1970s or the Rajini of today, there has been a class in his style, which has only endured over time. People keep asking who will be the next superstar. I think he is the only superstar,“ he says.

There is news pouring in from fans queuing up outside Sathyam cinemas the first day, first show of Lingaa right from 2am. The first show of a Rajini film doesn't wait for sunrise. The sun rises to a Rajini film.

This appeared in the special feature Naan Rajini, brought out by The Times of India, to mark the birthday of Rajinikanth

Upkar - The birth of Mr Bharat

2014-08-16T21:43:00.003+05:30

Thanks to new TV channels like Zee Classic and Set Max2, a lot of old Hindi classics have gained entry into our drawing rooms yet again. During the Doordarshan days, we would invariably end up watching Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi on Aug 15 or Oct 2 every year. Yesterday, I happened to watch Upkar (1967) after many years. Since childhood, the one song that has been an instant recall at the very mention of patriotism has been Mere desh ki dharti.

A nation resting on the rifles of its soldiers
and hoes of the farmers

The name Bharat stuck onto Manoj Kumar after Upkar
and he used this name in his later films as well

Manoj Kumar had written and directed Upkar, a story about two brothers – Bharat (Manoj Kumar) and Puran (Prem Chopra), who choose different paths in life. Bharat, who supports the family working in the fields every day, is educated but chooses to stay back in the village, as he feels that it’s one’s duty to till the land and feed the nation. Puran studies in the city and wants to return to the comforts that come with urban life. Differences crop up between the brothers, after Puran’s ears are poisoned by his uncle and a local trader. Very soon, he demands the partition of their ancestral land. Bharat, in order to maintain the dignity of his land, gives it entirely to Puran and walks away to join the army. War breaks out between India and Pakistan. Puran joins ranks with hoarders and black marketers, who create an artificial food shortage in the market. Bharat gets badly injured in the war and returns, almost bleeding to death. Meanwhile, Puran, realising the malicious intent of his uncle, becomes a government approver and helps the police nab hoarders and black marketers. Bharat needs to be operated upon and his hands have to be cut off. Bharat undergoes great mental agony after he loses his hands in an operation. But the next day, he sees Puran tilling their ancestral land. Bharat has regained the arms, once lost to partition. The favours (Upkar) of the mother earth can now be returned.

Asha Parekh as Doctor Kavita,
who studies in a city but practices in the villages

Upkar was the genesis of Prem Chopra donning shades of grey,
before he went on to play villanous roles in other films

Upkar begins where Manoj Kumar's Shaheed (based on the life of Bhagat Singh) ends and tells the story of a nation fighting its problems after independence. While Shaheed was about the struggle involved in creating a new nation, Upkar discusses the issues involved in preserving the integrity of a young nation state. The film opens with a dedication to the former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. Manoj Kumar had shown his film Shaheed to Shastri, who was very impressed with the work and asked Manoj Kumar to make a film on the farmers and jawans of India. It’s with that thought that Upkar’s story was written. After independence, India’s educated elite, especially the English-educated, saw themselves as different from the masses of the country and failed to understand the real issues of India. In such a scenario came Manoj Kumar’s Bharat, who was educated but chose to fight the problems of his motherland. India was undergoing an acute food crisis in the mid 1960s and Shastri had then decided to fast every Monday, a practice, which was replicated by masses across the country in solidarity with the PM. Led by a morally upright Prime Minister, the average Indian was willing to slog an extra mile to see a better tomorrow.

The storyline revolved around most of the burning issues of the 1960s. This generation was born a few years before independence and was also the last torchbearer of Gandhian idealism. This group often came in conflict with the group that was growing restless and wanted to break off from the old rules. Collectivism of India was in direct conflict with the new individualistic culture. Urbanisation had made land a commodity and inadequate agricultural production pushed the nation towards starvation. Rural life has obviously been glorified in Upkar. Urban India has been criticized for encouraging a new class structure, where one section consists of owners and the other of workers.

Upkar marked the beginning of a new phase in Pran's career.
As Malang chacha, he made a shift to character roles

Kamini Kaushal, as the mother, was a metaphor for a nation
that could not afford another partition

Bharat’s battle against hoarders, overpopulation and rural-urban migration constantly resonated with the masses who watched Upkar, who wanted the old idealism to live on. Asha Parekh played the village doctor Kavita, who spoke to the women about family planning and its advantages, a decade before Sanjay Gandhi launched his sterilization campaign. Asha Parekh wanted to be a doctor in real life but ended up in the film industry and hence, was elated to play the role of a doctor on-screen . The rise of demagogues and public rationing is attacked in Pran’s dialogue, “ Rashan (Ration) pe bhashan bohot milta hai, par bhashan pe rashan koi nahi”. Kanhaiyalal, who had made the character of Sukhilala, the evil money lender, immortal in Mother India, repeated his feat in Upkar as well.

Puran returns to lend support to his elder brother after he loses his hands
and repay the debts of Mother Earth

Aruna Irani made a brief appearance in one of her early roles

In the scene where Puran demands partition of the ancestral land, his brother says, almost echoing a wounded nation, “Main Bharat hoon. Hamesha hi batware ke khilaf raha hoon. Main batwara hone nahi doonga.” (I’m Bharat. I’ve always been against partition and I will not let it happen). It was the voice of a nation that had been cut into three two decades back. The release of Upkar also coincided with the Green Revolution, which changed the face of agriculture for in the northern plains for a long time.

Manoj Kumar went on to make Purab Aur Paschim a few years later, where he tackled the topic of brain drain. Upkar caught the imagination of the nation. In 1968, the film was the top grosser at the box office and won six Filmfare awards, for Best Lyricist (Gulshan Bawra - Mere desh ki dharti), Best Dialogue, story and director (Manoj Kumar), Best Supporting Actor (Pran) and Best Movie. Mahendra Kapoor won the National Award for the song Mere desh ki dharti and Upkar also won the President’s silver medal for the Best Feature film. Many parts of Upkar might seem didactic today but nevertheless, the fears expressed in the movie continue to haunt the country even today. In the end, Upkar is a call to the nation to rise and take collective responsibilities. It's sad that Manoj Kumar has become a subject for parodies today, with his face palm gesture. But his Bharat continues to be the prototype of a patriotic hero, who takes ownership and delivers for a cause. Let the idealism live on.

A trailblazer called Hum Aapke Hain Koun

2014-08-06T18:39:00.001+05:30

Yesterday, an entire generation was made to feel old, after being told that Hum Aapke Hain Koun turned 20. Time just flies like no one's business. Every year, some film or the other celebrates a milestone. But Hum Aapke Hain Koun was not any other film. It was not just nostalgia that made this film important for us. Sooraj Barjatya's Hum Aapke Hain Koun changed the dynamics of the Hindi film industry forever; it wasn't just another blockbuster.

Having spent my childhood in the Middle East, I never went to a theatre to watch a film for a long time in my life. But it wasn't just me who was away from the theatres in the 1980s. The Hindi film industry, in the 1980s, went down the drain completely and lost its theatre audience to video cassette libraries and television serials. Yes, there were blockbusters coming out every year. But the condition of theatres had gone from bad to worse. Hence, Hum Aapke Hain Koun was released only in a limited number of theatres across the country, where the entire family could have a good viewing experience. The film premiered at Liberty Cinema in Mumbai, on August 5, 1994 and viewers thronged to those limited theatres where it was being screened. Across the country, many theatre owners took cue and began renovation activities in their cinema halls. The family audience, which had remained away for over a decade, was returning to the theatres.

Madhuri Dixit came to be known as female Amitabh Bachchan
after delivering back-to-back blockbusters

Shooting the climax scene

But the ground for Hum Aapke Hain Koun was being prepared right through the late 1980s. At the core of Hum Aapke Hain Koun was the idea of family, drawn from the Indian epic Ramayan. Ramanand Sagar's blockbuster TV serial in 1987 created a longing for the good old family values among the audience. There were reported instances of siblings having buried their differences after watching the serial, especially the Ram-Bharat milap episode. The collectivist spirit of the Indian society (as opposed to the individualism of the western society), with the joint family system as its base, was revived. But in real, India was changing. Urbanisation had led to the rise of nuclear families and the joint family system was largely a piece of nostalgia, a reminder of 'the idea of home' for most Indians, especially the NRIs settled in various foreign countries. Sooraj Barjatya's first production Main ne pyar kiya, was in many ways an early indication of what he sought to deliver to the Indian audience. Romance had been killed in an era of violence and revenge through the late 1970s and 80s. Main ne pyar kiya and Qayamat se qayamat tak set the standard for the kind of cinema that would dominate in the 1990s.

Hum Aapke Hain Koun also made a superstar out of Madhuri Dixit. This diva was launched by Rajshris in Abodh (1984), in which Sooraj Barjatya was an assistant director. But after Hum Aapke Hain Koun, she wasn't just another star. Sobriquets like 'Female Amitabh Bachchan' were being showered on her. Salman Khan carried forward the lover boy Prem for the next few years, till he realised the Dabangg side of his persona.

Music became a major highlight of this movie, with 14 songs!

Sooraj Barjatya giving instructions to Reema Lagoo

To think of it, Hum Aapke Hain Koun did not even have an original story. It was a remake of Rajshri's 1982 hit Nadiya Ke Paar. The story, set in the rural heartland, was adapted to suit the urban sensibilities of the 1990s. While romance was an important highlight of Hum Aapke Hain Koun, at the core of it was the fulcrum of family. While many critics wrote off the film as an extended wedding album, it had struck the right chord among moviegoers. The decade of 1980s was a time when people skipped the songs while watching movies on their VCRs or worse, many libraries even deleted songs according to their whims. Songs were treated as toilet breaks in theatres. But how could one delete songs in a movie where relationships were forged over songs and dances? Hum Aapke Hain Koun restored the lost glory of the Hindi film song, though the trend began with the musical success of Main ne pyar kiya and Qayamat se qayamat tak. HMV, which was running on losses, saw brighter days after 1989.

Today, the coy smiles of Renuka Shahane, the didactic and sanskari lectures of Alok Nath and the silly idea of a widower being married to his sister-in-law might elicit laughter. Many spoofs of Hum Aapke Hain Koun can be found in social media and their observations are not misplaced. But there can be no denial that Hum Aapke Hain Koun was the need of that era. Along with Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995), it was a breath of fresh air in a time filled with gore and blood.

Madhuri won a new fan in painter MF Hussian,
who made a series of paintings on her

For those born in the 1980s, watching Hum Aapke Hain Koun in the theatre with their family was the dominant movie viewing experience to cherish from their early years. So hugely successful it was that for many south Indian friends of mine, this was the first Hindi movie they watched in a theatre. It ran for an incredible 100 weeks at Liberty Cinema, where it premiered and joined the ranks of Mughal-e-azam and Sholay to become one of the biggest grossers in the history of Hindi cinema. So while we laugh our hearts out watching Salman and Madhuri fight over a pair of shoes through a song, we cannot quite write off a film, which not only formed an impressionable childhood experience for an entire generation, but also made filmmakers consider 'family' as their target audience while making a film.

The charm of Dedh Ishqiya

2014-01-24T13:09:00.001+05:30

A major challenge faced by most script writers while coming out with a sequel is that they have to dish out something that will retain elements of the old and yet, will captivate the audience with something absolutely fresh. Abhishek Chaubey's Ishqiya had a finely written script, street smart humour, strong characters and some wonderful songs. Retaining many of these elements, Dedh Ishqiya is the first hit of the year and what a pleasant way to start off!

Dedh Ishqiya brings back Ifteqar (known as Khalu, played by Nasseruddin Shah) and Babban (Arshad Warsi), who land up in another mess while finding crooked ways to make easy money. They steal an expensive necklace from a store and many adventures lead them to a poetry symposium being organised by Begum Para (Madhuri Dixit), the widowed begum of Mehmudabad, who will marry the best poet from the gathering. Ifteqar sees a good opportunity to spend the rest of his life there in peace and Babban takes wildly to Begum’s maid and confidante Muniya (Huma Qureshi). But beneath all this facade of poetry, the imposters fall in deep trouble, not before they cover the seven steps of love.

Nasseruddin Shah and Arshad Warsi maintain the momentum of their chemistry seen in Ishqiya. The only other pair that which has ticked off well in popular imagination is that of Munna and circuit in the Munnabhai series. Their fun, repartees and insecurities bring in plenty of homourous moments. It is wonderful to see that Shah lets the talent of his female co-stars come to the fore, be it in Ishqiya, The Dirty Picture or Dedh Ishqiya. Actors like Vijay Raaz and Manoj Pahwa, who seldom get roles they are worthy of, shine through the film.

There are two things you should thank the makers of Dedh Ishqiya for having brought back to cinema – Madhuri Dixit and the genre of Muslim social. Madhuri dances like a dream to the steps of Pandit Birju Maharaj's choreography, who has worked on the wonderful kathak piece Jagaye saari raina. As the Begum who takes to dance after ages, Madhuri springs like a bird freed out of her cage. She finely balances the coquetry of a courtesan with the elegance of an aristocrat, seasoned with oodles of humour. Watching her you wonder how her talent was largely wasted by filmmakers in the 1990s. To complement her at every step is Huma Qureshi, whose comic timing and brazen acts are a joy to watch. It’s heartening to find a beautiful story on female bonding, which has rarely been explored in Hindi cinema. In Ishqiya , Vidya Balan stole the thunder from the very talented Arshad Warsi and Nasseruddin Shah. Even in the sequel, the women are the real show stealers.

Begum Para and Muniya, in a rare story of female bonding

The Muslim social genre once ruled the roost with movies like Chaudhvin ka Chand, Mere Mehboob and Mughal-e-azam in the 1960s. The genre waned by the end of 1960s and Kamal Amrohi's Pakeezah was its last fort of its glory. In the later period, the attempts towards revival with MS Sathyu's Garam Hawa, Muzzafar Ali's Umrao Jaan and Sagar Sarhadi's Bazaar were rather scattered. But these were flash in the pan appearances and the genre was almost dead. But Dedh Ishqiya has given a glimpse into that genre once again. There is an element of hiraeth in it, a longing for the past, which surfaces throughout the film. Begum Para tries to uphold a culture that has few takers today. There is a hint of movies like Satyajit Ray's Jalsaghar, where the old world zamindars create an atmosphere of the bygone world in their private space for their psychological satisfaction. But the era has ended and as we see it, Begum Para knows it too well.

Like his previous films, Vishal Bhardwaj has given music that blends well with the story. What is notable about in Dedh Ishqiya is the inclusion of some of the most memorable ghazals of Begum Akhtar, one of the greatest ghazal singers of the 20th century. What better way of evoking the milieu of a bygone era than entreating us to gems like Woh jo hum mein tum mein qarar tha and Hamari atariya pe. Vishal Bhardwaj proves his mettle as a dialogue writer too. Listening to those repartees and couplets in chaste Urdu is sheer eutony.

There are loose ends in the script. Why did Begum stop dancing? How did Ifteqar know her during his teenage years? Did they have a strong relationship and did the Begum really love him? Abhishek has given this peek into their past and it leads to nowhere, ending up as an unnecessary distraction. The women do not have as strong a back-story or a finely layered personality as the protagonist Krishna (Vidya) did in Ishqiya.

Sometimes you wonder how can no-brainers like Chennai Express and Dhoom 3 make money in billions, while a movie like Dedh Ishqiya, with all the elements of a quality entertainer, doesn't get a blockbuster opening. But history decides which film is worthy of being watched over and over again and when that stock is taken years later, Dedh Ishqiya will not find much trouble fighting for a space. Madhuri's charm, its lilting music and the bravura performances will only endure with time.

Guns and Roses - A review of Ram Leela

2013-12-02T13:02:00.000+05:30

After more than a decade, Sanjay Leela Bhansali returns to the turf he is most familiar with – the rural terrains of Gujarat, brightened up with the colours of its festivals, costumes, dhols, opulent sets and striking dialogues. Add to this the intensity of a shakespearean drama diffused with countless splutters of blood, along with elements of Bhansali's previous movies and Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela is ready.

The movie is an adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and tells the story of love between Ram (Ranveer Singh) and Leela (Deepika Padukone), who come from two warring groups in the hinterlands of Gujarat. The relationship, that begins flirtatiously during a Holi celebration, ripens as the movie proceeds and the couple find themselves held back by deep rooted hatred, which has grown between the two groups over the past five centuries. They elope and try to set a world of their own in an attempt to erase their bloody history with their love.

Right from the opening scene to the closing credits, you can hear echoes of Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Devdas. Sometimes they appear in the form of song sequences, tunes or even a few dialogues and picturisations. You are likely to admire this movie only if you loved the above mentioned films. At some points, the roses of the lovers seem to get lost in the firing of the guns. The songs, composed by Bhansali himself, are not consistently good. Some even stand out like a sore thumb in the album.

But there are many reasons to celebrate Ram Leela. For a change, he places this movie in a real time and space, unlike his last two ventures which were set in some fairy land. The background score of Monty is among the best this year and it beautifully enunciates the emotions and high decibel drama of the film. While Ranveer Singh delivers a commendable performance, it is Deepika who shines bright all through the film. Their chemistry sets the screen ablaze, especially in the sensuous notes of Ang laga de re. Performance is indeed the high point of the movie. From Richa Chadda and Barkha Bisht as the widowed sisters-in-law of Leela and Ram, to Abhimanyu Singh as Ram's brother, they are a delight to watch. But it is Supriya Pathak who steals the thunder as the matriarch Dhankor Baa (Deepika's mother), who never for a moment seems out of character. The closing song Laal Ishq is a gem, that seems to be a fitting ode to love.

But besides being a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, Bhansali beautifully incorporates elements of the Ramayana. From the abduction of Sita and the toughness assumed by Ram as a king to the metaphoric killing of Ravan at the end, the director blends a shakespearean drama with the Indian epic seamlessly. All these merits aside, the rich visual splendour of Ram Leela itself is worth a watch in a theatre. In spite of the director going overboard at many instances, Ram Leela is a romantic battle that is worth a watch.

Kaun aaya - The unforgettable notes of Manna Dey

2013-10-25T20:42:00.000+05:30

I was hardly six years old when I watched Ramu Kariat's classic blockbuster Chemmeen (1965), which took the Malayalam film industry by storm. It is a film, which every Malayali is initiated into, right from his childhood. The only scene I retained for a long time to come was the one where Pareekutty (Madhu) sings a ballad calling for his love Karuttamma (Sheela). The song was Manasa mayine varu. I was surprised years later, when I came to know from my mother that the songs of Chemmeen, which evoked a rich imagery of the coastline of Kerala, were composed by Salil Chowdhary, a Bengali. But then, Manna Dey too was a son of Bengal, whom the Malayalis lapped up for this song.

I had seen Raj Kapoor and Nargis under the umbrella in a rainy night singing Pyar hua ikrar hua several times, without knowing that it was Manna Dey who gave us this memorable number. There were many such gems from the golden era of Hindi cinema, which were immortalised by him. To think of it, he was the last living male singer from that era in our midst. Mukesh passed away in the mid 1970s, while Rafi and Kishore Kumar left a decade later. Talat Mahmood died quite a silent death in 1998; we had not heard from his right from the 1960s. Mahendra Kapoor passed away in 2008. But a fact not known to many is that Manna Dey began his singing career in films before any of them, in 1942, even before Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhonsle got their first solo song.

Among the earliest songs he sang was Tyagmayi tu gayi, for Vijay Bhatt's Ram Rajya (1943). His uncle KC Dey, who was a leading singer, was supposed to sing it but suggested his nephew's name instead. At the age of 24, Manna Dey sang a song that was picturised on the character of an aged Valmiki. For some reason, throughout his career, Manna Dey ended up singing more songs picturised on character artistes, than the young heroes. Many a time, he did not even know that the song would end up being picturised on old men or wandering minstrels (as in Boot Polish, Parineeta and Devdas).

A huge opportunity came to him in the mid 1950s, when Mukesh decided to focus on acting career (which never took off) and gave a pause to his singing. That was when Raj Kapoor approached Manna Dey to sing the songs of Shree 420 and Chori Chori. In one of his interviews, Manna Dey recollected how Raj Kapoor and Nargis had enacted the entire sequence of Pyar hua ikrar hua before him and Lata as the song was being recorded. The result was magical. Both these films were huge musical hits, with the magic of Shree 420 travelling to Russia and the Middle East. The partnership with Raj Kapoor extended to movies like Dil Hi Toh Hai (Laaga chunri mein daag), Teesri Kasam (Chalat musafir moh liyo re) and Mera Naam Joker (Ae bhai zara dekh ke chalo). But at the end of the day, Mukesh remained etched in popular memory as Raj Kapoor's voice.

In complete contrast to the philosophical overtones of these songs, he was also the voice of Mehmood and gave an unbelievable tit-for-tat to Kishore Kumar in Ek chatur naar (Padosan). Who can forget his Hum kale hain toh kya hua dilwale hain (Gumnaam). It became an anthem for those Indians, who were undeterred by their dark skin in their pursuit of love. Who didn't gyrate to the peppy party number Aao twist karen, again picturised on Mehmood in Bhoot Bangla?

But more than anything else, he shone most in his classical numbers and was given those rare opportunities, which even Rafi could never get, for all the backing he got from Naushadl. In the 1950s, when Shankar Jaikishen (till then seen as makers of popular music) got a chance to prove their mettle in classical music, they decided to recreate a similar spectacle as Naushad did with Baiju Bawra. They roped in Pandit Bhimsen Joshi for the jugabandi Ketaki gulab juhi and had Manna Dey at the other end to reply to his musical might! Manna Dey shirked at the prospect of having to challenge the legend. Even Naushad had someone like Ustad Amir Khan to face a titan like Pandit DV Paluskar in Baiju Bawra. Not only did Manna Dey shine through with brilliance, he even won praises from Pandit Bhimsen Joshi for his flawless rendition.

As a matter of fact, Manna Dey could have easily made a career in classical music as well. But he chose to be in films. His voice had the depth and gravity to pull of any difficult bandish. In the 1970s, he got many offers to sing for younger actors like Rajesh Khanna and Dharmendra and he immortalised songs like Zindagi kaisi hai paheli (Anand) and Yeh dosti hum nahi todenge (Sholay). It was his genius that he adapted his voice so well for actors across ages at the same time - character actors like Balraj Sahni (Ae meri zonrajabeen) and Pran (Kasme vaade pyar wafa) on one hand and the young upcoming ones on the other. I cannot even write in detail about his Bengali songs, where his contribution was immense. But the one rendition that I will carry forever was his adaptation of Harivanshrai Bachchan's Madhushala. Every couplet got a new meaning in his voice. Perhaps, he did not win the rat race because he never participated in it.

Jinhone sajaaye yahan mele, sukh dukh sang sang jhele,

Wohi chunkar khaamoshi, yun chali jaaye akele kaha

Aftertaste of The Lunchbox - a review

2013-10-02T10:45:00.002+05:30

The Lunchbox (Dabba) won the Critics Week Viewers Choice Award at the 2013 Cannes film festival

Sometimes, a wrong train can take you to the right destination. This is the premise of Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox, produced by Anurag Kashyap, Guneet Monga, Karan Johar, Siddharth Roy Kapur and Arun Rangachari.

Saajan Fernandez (Irrfan Khan), a no-nonsense, lonely widower, is having one more month to go for his retirement at a government office. A new employee at the office, Shaikh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), is supposed to take over from him and constantly tries to learn work from him in vain. One day, a lunchbox is wrongly delivered to Saajan by a dabbawala and he relishes his lunch after a long time. The box, packed by Ila (Nimrat Kaur), was meant for her husband (Nakul Vaid), who is indifferent to her efforts to cook something new for him everyday. However, Ila basks in this new appreciation for her cooking from this stranger and sends him a note of thanks. The story is unfolded through a series of notes exchanged between Ila and Saajan, where they share special and mundane aspects of their everyday life. Ila constantly seeks advice from a neighbourhood aunt (Bharati Achrekar), who is only heard, but not seen throughout the film. As the date of retirement finally comes for Saajan, it is time for him and Ila to take stock of their lives and arrive at a decision.

Ritesh infuses The Lunchbox with a lot of warmth and compassion. Many elements in this movie seem to be a fond recollection of the times we lived in many years ago. Sometimes, they appear in the form of handwritten notes in an age of sms and emails and sometimes, through a friendly banter between Ila and the neighbourhood aunt, in an age when we do not even know the names of our neighbours. Saajan spends a few evenings playing video cassettes of the popular sitcom Ye Jo Hai Zindagi, to relive the moments he spent with his wife, though with a tinge of regret of not having given enough time to her. With the stranger Saajan coming in, Ila gets a reason and incentive to live her life. Shaikh, who has grown up as an orphan, strikes a chord with Saajan and builds a life out of the broken pieces handed over to him.

The Lunchbox is driven by its well written script and stellar performances. While Irrfan and Nawazuddin yet again prove their mettle, Nimrat is a true discovery. She matches the performances of these wonderful actors with ease. Without appearing in a single frame, Bharati Achrekar endears herself to the viewers with her witty remarks and free advice. Even as the story flows seamlessly, we get brilliant shots of Mumbai, with its bus rides, local trains and streets bursting with people. With understated dialogues, warm performances and a relatable storyline, The Lunchbox gives you a memorable aftertaste.

Meena Kumari by Vinod Mehta: A Review

2013-09-07T21:49:00.000+05:30

Meena Kumari's biography, initially published in the year 1972, has been republished this year by HarperCollins India.

It has been more than 40 years since the great tragedienne Meena Kumari passed away. While alive, she provided fodder for umpteen rumour mills with her siren like charm and her dramatic death, soon after the release of her swansong Pakeezah, left most questions related to her life unanswered.

Vinod Mehta, in his inchoate days as a journalist, wrote this biography of Meena Kumari, almost immediately after her death. The publisher obviously wanted to capitalise on the grief that moviegoers were still reeling under after losing their favourite heroine. He never met his subject and feels that this has lent some degree of detachment in his writing. But in a span of just a few months, Mehta met as many people as possible to gather a picture of Meena Kumari – her siblings, husband Kamal Amrohi, contemporaries like Nargis Dutt, film journalists, personal physicians, make-up artistes and anyone who had a word to say about his heroine, as he calls her throughout the book. A notable exception in this list is Dharmendra, who refused the author an interview for this book.

Mehta begins the story with Meena Kumari’s death and the perfunctory reactions from the film industry fellows to her death, which Mehta dismisses as ritual hypocrisy. He finds the reactions of his domestic help and driver more credible, as these were the people who went multiple times to the theaters to make her films a blockbuster. The chapters that follow are devoted to her birth, rise in the industry, her fall after her split from Kamal Amrohi, the making of Pakeezah and her death. There are three more chapters, where the writer tells how he conducted his research and critically examines Meena Kumari, the actress and the woman.

Mehta devotes an entire chapter to the making of Pakeezah, as Meena Kumari saw it as the most important film of her life, which was made over a span of 15 years. As a taxi driver Mehta met put it, “First Meena Kumari made this film with her money. Then with her death.” A problem with a book of this kind is that there are two or three generations of readers, who have never been to a cinema hall to watch a Meena Kumari film and many might have seen hardly a film or two on television. This book was initially released when Pakeezah was still going strong in the theaters and audience was flocking to see reruns of her first blockbuster Baiju Bawra. He also spends considerable time describing the making of Sahib Biwi aur Ghulam.

But there is not a single synopsis for the young readers to familiarise them about the plot lines of films, though he describes scenes from these movies while relating anecdotes. Even with such an elaboration on Pakeezah, there is no mention of the fact that Padma Khanna was Meena’s body double in some of the song sequences or that Meena Kumari revealed another aspect of her talent by designing the costumes for this film! There is nothing new from what Mehta had written in 1972, except for a brief introduction. Another problem is with the division of chapters. How can you talk about her stupendous performances and write about the mental agony that Meena Kumari, the method actress faced while portraying these tragic roles in a separate chapter? Meena Kumari’s fall in her personal life cannot be disassociated with discussions on Meena Kumari, the masochistic woman. He feels apprehensive of Gulzar (in 1972), to whom Meena Kumari had bequeathed her personal diaries, as he sees in him a competitor, who can write another and perhaps more credible Meena Kumari biography. To this date, Gulzar has not revealed the contents of the diary, save a few poems, which were published later in a magazine. Mehta even confidently declares that the Filmfare award for Best Actress and Best Music in 1973 would go posthumously to Meena Kumari and Pakeezah’s music director Ghulam Mohammed. Both these predictions fell flat.

Mehta writes that even the mighty Dilip Kumar felt uneasy when he had to act opposite Meena Kumari. Yet, there aren't many inputs from Dilip Kumar to give us an idea of what it was to share the screen with her. Nargis shared with the writer a few personal anecdotes. But what did she think of Meena as a contemporary actress, we do not get to know. Meena Kumari spent considerable time with Kaifi Azmi to get her poems evaluated by him. While there is no mention of this fact in the book, no input from Kaifi Azmi is there to evaluate Meena, the poetess. The absence of Dharmendra's inputs also leaves a void in the narration.

While there are ample comparisons between the lives of Marilyn Monroe and Meena Kumari in the book, there is another comparison in the Indian context, which most people are not aware about. Meena Kumari's life is very surprisingly similar to that of Tamil thespian Savithri. Both were powerhouse performers, both of them could give goosebumps to their male co-stars, both settled for already married men and were left longing for love all their lives and both died of excessive drinking. Besides, Meena Kumari displayed her humorous side in LV Prasad's Miss Mary (1957). This was a remake of the Tamil superhit Missiamma, where Savithri had done the same role.

However, this book will be treasured by Hindi cinema enthusiasts, for it gives rare insights into the thinking and state of mind of the legend at various points in her life. Present day artistes can find inspiring stories about her acting methodology and professional commitment. Even when she was in the jaws of death, she made sure all her pending projects were completed. Mehta relates anecdotes about her miraculous ability to transform herself completely once the camera was on and leave her physical illnesses aside. Most of those who were contacted for this biography are not there anymore and hence these interviews are of immense value. Besides, this came at a time, when biographies were not a well developed concept in the Indian literary market. The best thing about the book is that this does not deify Meena Kumari and instead, humanises her. While popular versions of her story hold Kamal Amrohi responsible for the mess in her life, Mehta gives his readers a well-told version from Amrohi's point of view as well.

But all these inputs just end up being a bundle of “watertight stories” which are all contrarian. As Mehta himself puts it, every event in her life has at least four versions and there is hardly any event in her life, which can be called ‘undisputed’. In a scene in Sahib Biwi aur Ghulam, where the character of Choti Bahu is introduced to the viewers, Guru Dutt’s character looks at her in amazement, unable to decipher her thoughts. Perhaps, no biographer can ever unravel her enigma.

A shorter version of this review appeared in The Times of India

The heroes of Shaheed (1965)

2013-08-16T00:53:00.002+05:30

After almost a decade, I happened to watch Manoj Kumar’s classic Shaheed, which retold the story of the glorious revolutionaries of the late 1920s, who led a parallel battle against the British rule. From a cinematic perspective too, this film, directed by S Ram Sharma and produced by Kawal P Kashyap, is a landmark, for this marked the birth of Manoj Kumar as we know him.

The movie tells a story, now familiar through history textbooks and multiple re-tellings on the silver screen. The movie begins with a description of India as a country where mothers like Jijabhai have brought up sons like Shivaji to fight fearlessly for the cause of freedom and where the likes of Maharani Lakshmibai have chosen death over a life of slavery. In the same country, Bhagat Singh (Manoj Kumar) grows up in a family of patriots.

Ma, ab toh azaadi se pyar ho gaya hai....
Dekhna, ek din mera pyar manzil tak zarur pahunchega

Well into his youth, he comes in touch with other revolutionaries like Chandrasekhar Azad, who form the Hindustan Socialist Republican Party. Protests erupt all across the country as the Simon Commission arrives in India. Lala Lajpat Rai succumbs to a few injuries he suffers from a lathi charge at one of the rallies in Lahore. Bhagat Singh and Rajguru avenge this death by killing Inspector Saunders, who was involved in the lathi charge. Bhagat Singh escapes incognito with Durga bhabhi (wife of revolutionary Bhagwati Charan Vohra and played by Nirupa Roy) to Calcutta after shaving off his beard. He later throws a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly with Batukeshwar Dutt to oppose the Defence of India Bill being tabled there. All the revolutionaries get arrested due to the treachery of Jai Gopal, who turns into a government approver. In the prison, they protest against the abominable conditions there and even refuse to participate in the court proceedings, which turns out to be nothing but a sham. Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev are sentenced to death and they embrace it with a smile on their face and song on their lips, as the entire nation seethes with sorrow and anger.

Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare dil mein hai

Manoj Kumar spent many days talking to Bhagat Singh’s mother, who provided vital inputs about her son for the story. These interactions were evident in the final work, as the mother-son chemistry between Kamini Kaushal and Manoj Kumar proved to be a high point in the drama. Another major source of input was Batukeshwar Dutt himself, who was contacted by Manoj Kumar and his team to get intricate details about the lives of the revolutionaries. Dutt was sentenced to life imprisonment by the British government and was rearrested again after his release for his participation in the Quit India movement. But sadly, he contracted tuberculosis and died in near penury, in 1965, at AIIMS, Delhi, almost a forgotten hero. Worse, no biographer or historian contacted him to record the details of what happened in the hey days of the revolutionary movement. Shaheed becomes an important work for this reason as well, as it contained first-hand information provided by BK Dutt, who gave vital inputs about the lives of the revolutionaries. Manoj Kumar also got inputs from Manmanth Raj Gupta, who was involved in the Kakori case. When Bhagat Singh's mother attended the National Awards ceremony, where the film received three awards, she received a standing ovation from the public. The award money was given to her by Manoj Kumar.

Prem Chopra, as Sukhdev, played his role to perfection

Prior to this, there were two cinematic versions of this story - Shaeed-e-azam Bhagat Singh, by Jagdish Gautam, which had Prem Adeeb as the hero and Shaheed Bhagat Singh, which had Shammi Kapoor as Bhagat Singh and Prem Nath as Chandrasekhar Azad. Both the films had failed at the box office and expectations were not high from Shaheed as well, since none of the actors in the lead roles were huge stars, barring Pran, who did this role for a pittance, as he liked the story.
The screenplay and dialogues by Din Dayal Sharma and BK Dutt held this film up like strong pillars. They even won the National Award for Best Screenplay that year. Even in the face of death, the sense of humour shared by the revolutionaries came out time and again through the dialogues. When the revolutionaries tell each other in jail, on meeting after a long time, Aisa lagta hai barso baad mile hai, the jailor retorts, much to their glee, Fikar mat karo, ab barso saath hi rehna padega. When Bhagat Singh and BK Dutt are being led to prison, the police van is stopped by a herd of goats being led to a slaughterhouse and Bhagat Singh remarks, “Chalo, yeh bhi kasaikhane jaa rahe hai”. But what gave the viewers goosebumps were the songs, mostly written and composed by Prem Dhawan. The song Ae watan, undoubtedly one of the finest patriotic songs of all time, is used across all crucial scenes in the film to heighten the drama. The element of paradox is also used effectively in the movie. In the court scenes, the attempts of a judge to maintain order in the court are juxtaposed with the mayhem created outside by the protesters. The prison into which the revolutionaries are led into before their death has the grafitti 'Live and Let Live' on its walls. The scenes of prison torture end with a constable yelling 'Sab theek hai'.

Laut kar aa sake na jahaan mein toh kya
Yaad banke dilon me toh aa jayenge

In what looks like a casting marvel in retrospect, Shaheed had three famous villains in a positive role – Prem Chopra as Sukhdev, Manmohan as Chandrasekhar Azad and Pran as Qaid Singh. Manoj Kumar’s partnership with these artists, along with Madan Puri (who played the jailer) and Kamini Kaushal continued in his other projects as well. Shaheed paved the road for Manoj Kumar’s patriotic journey through the 1960s and 1970s. Such was its impact, that on seeing the film, a much impressed Lal Bahadur Shastri asked Manoj to make a film on his slogan ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’. The idea resulted in his next blockbuster Upkar. It’s for this simplicity, poetry and straight-from-the-heart story-telling that Shaheed remains the best movie on Bhagat Singh to have been made in Hindi cinema to this day.

Immortal dancing queen - An interview with Vyjayanthimala

2013-05-29T23:52:00.001+05:30

Rarely do you get a chance to meet an icon whom you have adored since childhood. It is even rarer that you get to strike a conversation with them. As a Hindi film buff, I have grown up on umpteen classics of Vyjayanthimala and last month, I got a chance to interview her as well. I saw her perform at Kalakshetra, in Chennai and later followed up with her for a telephonic interview. It would be an understatement to say that I was brimming with excitement talking to one of the biggest icons Indian cinema has ever seen. The below interview with Vyjayanthimala was published in The Times of India on April 28, 2013.

A few weeks back, Kalakshetra organised a dance festival dedicated to its founder Rukmini Devi Arundale. As Vyjayanthimala presented a non-stop performance for close to two hours, Rukmini Arangam (the theatre hall at the institute) was packed with her fans, art aficionados and well-wishers. The chairs were full and viewers sat down on the floor and stood on knees to get a good view of performance. At the age of 78, Vyjayanthimala still packs a punch in her performance and stardom seems to cling on to her.

“Even as a child, I would restlessly run from one room to the other and my grandmother would say, ‘Her legs are sure to make her a good dancer!’ I was hardly five years old when I performed before the Pope,” says Vyjayanthimala, recollecting her growing up years. It was later that she started learning Bharatanatyam from her guru Kitappa Pillai.

She was the numero uno actress of her time and made the ability to dance an essential ingredient for the Hindi film heroine. Acting, she says, was never on her mind. The focus remained on dance. "Back in the 1940s, no one from a good family was encouraged to act. My grandmother wanted me to concentrate on my academics. In the late 1940s, director MV Raman of AVM happened to see my dance performance. He was looking for a new face for his movie Vazhgai. He convinced my grandmother and I was signed in. I was so shy to tell her friends that I was acting in a film and felt that they all would mock me,” she says.

In 1949 Vazhgai was released and was a huge success. Vyjayanthimala was suddenly called a natural actress. “I simply worked as Raman sir asked me to. He treated me like a child and having danced many times on stage, I did not feel awkward facing the camera,” she says. The movie was later released in Telugu as Jeevitham and was again, very successful. In 1951, Vazhgai was released in Hindi as Bahar and the song Saiyan dil mein aana re, picturised on her, became an instant hit.

Immortalising Chandramukhi in Devdas (1955)

The floodgates of the Hindi film industry opened to Vyjayanthimala and she was swarmed with offers and success. “I was signed in for Nandlal Jaswantlalji’s film Nagin (1954) and my dance number Man dole mera tan dole took the nation by storm. I did a very beautiful film called New Delhi with Kishore Kumar, where I did a bhangra number. People were seeing a woman do bhangra on-screen for the first time,” she says. But the film that really transformed her career was Bimal Roy’s Devdas (1955), in which she played the role of courtesan Chandramukhi. “Till then, my identity in the industry was that of a dancer. Devdas gave me recognition as an actress. Chandramukhi stands apart even today in cinema for being one of the earliest characters of a prostitute with a heart of gold. She knew the ways of the world and yet, when it came to love, she was all giving for the person she fell for,” says Vyjayanthimala, who has high regards for the cinema of Bimal Roy. “He always stuck to realism and anyone could easily identify with his characters. The re-incarnation drama Madhumati was not exactly the kind of film he would make. It was one of his most commercial ventures and yet, he added so much lyricism to it.”

Dil tadap tadap ke keh raha hai - In the reincarnation drama Madhumati

Today, when there is resurgence of discussion on women’s empowerment and fair portrayal of women in cinema, Vyjayanthimala considers the directors of the golden era as people who understood the female psyche while making films. “In the 1950s and 60s, films were quite ahead of their times in the way they portrayed women. BR Chopra’s Sadhna and Raj Kapoor’s Sangam had very progressive female characters.”

In the course of her work, Vyjayanthimala had to overcome many shortcomings. “I never sought the help of a dubbing artiste for any of my films. I learnt Hindi attending the classes of the Hindi Prachar Sabha and insisted on using my own voice.” Having been a student of the legendary DK Pattammal, she even was a trained Carnatic musician. “In the late 1960s, I did a Bengali film Hatey Bazare, directed by Tapan Sinha, where I co-starred with Ashok Kumar. I was humming a tune from the film before the shot and Tapanda was standing behind me. He instantly told me to record the song in my voice. I was hesitant but he was happy with the outcome,” she says. The film won the President’s gold medal that year. Another film, where she had to put in special effort to master the diction was Dilip Kuamr’s 1961 blockbuster Gunga Jumna. “Dilip sahab helped me a lot with the Bhojpuri dialogues in it. Gunga Jumna went on to become a landmark and inspired many films later in Hindi cinema,” she says. But the film that captured the best of her as an actress and dancer was Lekh Tandon’s 1966 classic Amrapali. “I really enjoyed working in it. I played the role of a dancer who renounces all her fame to become a Buddhist monk. During shooting, I used to take a lot of time to don the costumes designed by Bhanu Athaiya. It was a wonderful theme and I enjoyed it.” She continued her success story with many other super hits like Suraj, Jewel Thief and Prince.

As the nagarvadhu Amrapali

When she renounced the fame of films after her marriage, she devoted more time to her dancing career. “I consciously kept films apart from dance. It was very difficult to start with but I think that discipline helped me do well as a dancer too. I am a very religious person and that has reflected in my dance performances as well,” says Vyjayanthimala, who has been doing a lot of research on the works of saint poets of Tamil Nadu. Of special note are her dance productions on Krishna Bhakti. “I enjoy doing these pieces. For me, Andal epitomises all the religious philosophies and vedic thoughts. Hers was an unconditional love, involving complete surrender to the lord.”

Recently, she wrote her memoir Bonding. While some might have been irked by the candour of the book, Vyjayanthimala remains unfazed and doesn’t mind calling spade a spade. “Even as a child I have been open and candid about what I have felt and have not been diplomatic; Rajiv Gandhi, our former Prime Minister, used to say that the same about me. I have never regretted this attribute of mine.”

Today, Vyjayanthimala is one of the few stalwarts who can claim to have been in the midst of action in the golden era of Hindi cinema. “People say the 1950s and 60s comprises the golden era of cinema. I think I was fortunate to be there at that point of time and work with some of the most amazing people this industry has ever seen, right from the directors, co-artists to musicians and technicians. It was an education for life.”

An ode to Bombay cinema

2013-05-10T10:26:00.000+05:30

On May 3, 1913, Dhundiraj Govind Phalke released India’s first feature film Raja Harishchandra in Bombay and marked the genesis of the largest film industry in the world. Exactly 100 years later, four leading filmmakers of the day have come together to pay a tribute to cinema in an anthology titled Bombay Talkies, named after the studio started by Himanshu Rai and Devika Rani in the 1930s, which launched legends like Ashok Kumar, Leela Chitnis, Madhubala, Rak Kapoor and Dilip Kumar.

The first film, titled Ajeeb Dastaan Hai Yeh, is directed by Karan Johar. It dwells upon the impact of Hindi film music on our lives and stars Rani Mukherjee, Randeep Hooda and Saqib Saleem. Karan plays on the theme of homosexuality and uses two songs – Ajeeb dastaan hai yeh and Lag ja gale – composed by Shankar Jaikishan and Madan Mohan respectively, to show the unhappy lives of three individuals involved in the business of making news. Karan comes out of his comfort zone to come up with a fine work, which however falls short of capturing the enormity of Hindi film music.

The second film, Star, directed by Dibakar Bannerjee, is based on Satyajit Ray’s Patol Babu and shows one day in the life of a failed actor Purandar, who serendipitously hogs lime light for a few moments as an extra in a shot. Nawazuddin Siddiqui excels in his part as Purandar and owns it completely. Dibakar also captures the hysteria that surrounds a film star and the adoration bestowed on them by the masses, using the example of Ranbir Kapoor in this case. The movie is a tribute to the siren-like charm of the tinsel town, which makes and breaks dreams, but gives a hope to continue dreaming at the end of the day.

Cinema influences us like no other medium and while some of us have realised our dreams through the characters on screen, some have taken a leaf out of the lives of their idols on-screen to become like them. This is the idea behind Zoya Akhtar’s film Sheila Ki Jawani, which brings out the conflicts of a school boy, who, much to the chagrin of his father, aspires to become a dancer one day. Zoya fills this piece with innocence and a sense of freedom, celebrated through Katrina Kaif’s item number Sheila ki jawani.

The fourth film, titled Murabba, is directed by Anurag Kashyap and throws light on the deification of film stars in our country. A dying father asks his son Vijay (the most popular screen name of Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970s) to get the superstar eat a portion of a murabba made by his wife and bring the rest of it home for him. He believes that eating the leftover murabba would cure him of his illness. Paying homage to the God-like status achieved by superstars like Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan, this tragic comedy is about the persistence of a fan to get darshan of his idol.

The film ends with the celebratory song Apna Bombay Talkies, which encapsulates the fun, frolic, drama, action, romance and the stars of Hindi cinema. While all the four films have their high points, it is tad disappointing that the format of all these films shuns the formula of a commercial Hindi film and there is nothing in it for the perennial Hindi film fan, who has played the most important role in the success saga of this industry. But this is also a moment to look back at a phenomenon called cinema, which has propelled the desires, dreams, hopes and aspirations of millions of Indians over the last century. Bombay Talkies is a commendable effort, though Hindi cinema could have had more to its credit.

Bollywood@100?

2013-05-04T11:44:00.003+05:30

Over the last one year so much has been written and said about Indian cinema turning 100. Every news channel and magazine has milked this topic in every possible way and yet, the entire effort looks very superficial. CNN-IBN and History TV18 have roped in Karan Johar to give nuggets of trivia in a programme that is called Bollywood@100. Majority of the discussions about Indian cinema’s centenary has been zeroed down to a celebration of Hindi cinema, with a cursory mention somewhere of Ray and his Apu Trilogy. Basically these shows and features have only reinforced a wrong notion, that is rampant, that Bollywood is Indian cinema. Nothing can be farther from truth.

I am a die-hard fan of, what we call today Bollywood and, what I prefer to call Hindi cinema. 100 years on, we still keep a Hollywood-inspired name to refer to our film industry and worse, we have Mollywood, Kollywood and list of endless woods to add to the nonsense. But for all the glory and glamour of the films that have come out of Bombay, Hindi cinema is only 82 years old, considering the fact that the first Hindi talkie - Alam Ara - was made in 1931. Raja Harishchandra, made by Dhundiraj Govind Phalke in 1913, was a silent film and if there had been sound at that time, Phalke would have most probably made it in Marathi and not Hindi. Today, the irony is that Marathi cinema has been dwarfed in its home ground by Hindi cinema, with its pompousness, scale and grandiose.

With all due respect to our Bombay film industry, in the last 100 years, our regional film makers have kept the aesthetics of cinema alive far more successfully than their counterparts in Mumbai. The Hindi film industry has survived on regional talents to keep itself going. The quality of films coming from these regional stables have been as good as, if not better, than the Hindi productions. What would have been Hindi cinema without visionaries like Guru Dutt (a Konkani from Calcutta), Bimal Roy or Asit Sen? How incomplete would be its music without the melodies of RC Boral, Hemant Kumar, SD Burman, Salil Chowdhry, AR Rahman and Kishore Kumar? Didn’t Hindi cinema feast on the bilinguals made by New Theatre in the 1930s and 40s, which were all made in Calcutta?

Where would our haughty heroes go without the south heroines, who not only gave the men a tit-for-tat when it came to performance and screen presence, but were also fiercely competitive superstars of their time - Vyjayanthimala and Waheeda Rehman in the 1950s and 60s, Rekha and Hema Malini in the 1970s and 80s, Sridevi in the 1990s and Aishwarya Rai and Vidya Balan in the post-2000 era. The sound engineers from the south have transformed the Hindi soundtracks over time. More than anything else, when struck by writer’s block, the film makers and screenplay writers of Bombay have borrowed stories right, left and centre from regional films, most often, without giving any credit to it. For example, did anyone know that movies like Ram aur Shyam, Seeta aur Geeta, Chaalbaaz and Kishan Kanhaiya were all drawn from the NT Rama Rao starrer Ramudu Bheemudu? Barring Ram aur Shyam, which was remade by Nagi Reddy in Hindi, none of the others ever spoke about it. But when it came to representing the south in its films, Hindi cinema mostly caricatured it.

To top all this, now the Bombay film makers go and hijack a collective birthday party and bamboozle the regional players out of all the discussions and the media too plays along. But the fact is that without the likes of Satyajit Ray, SS Vasan, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Shaji N Karun and many others, whose names cannot be recounted here, Indian cinema’s glorious story would not have even come half its way.

The other day, a report in The Times of India said that the reels of the iconic blockbuster Mother India, at the National Film Archives, were damaged and were in danger of being lost forever. In Hollywood, many years back, leading directors and stars pooled in cash from their pockets to restore their classics. The script writers of the 1970s and 80s made a career out of Mother India and Salim Javed remodelled Sunil Dutt’s character Birju to create what we today know as the Angry Young Man. Forget any help from the government; it is not in a position to save itself, forget the reels of Mother India. While the superstars can very well have their IPL teams, private islands, yachts and luxury villas abroad, it wouldn’t cost them much to pool in funds to restore the films, to which they owe their careers. That would be a real ode to cinema.

Love and renunciation in Amrapali

2013-03-02T23:25:00.003+05:30

Period films set in ancient India have seldom succeeded at the box-office in Hindi cinema. While many of them have not been A-graders to start with, even the ones made by an A-list team have seldom created any ripples. The 1960s saw two such big budget productions ending up as damp squibs at the box-office. Lekh Tandon’s Amrapali (1966), starring Vyjayanthimala and Sunil Dutt was one of them (the other being Kidar Sharma’s Chitralekha, starring Meena Kumari, Ashok Kumar and Pradeep Kumar).

A leaf from another era

Vyjayanthimala owned the film as Amrapali

I saw Amrapali for the first time during my school days and even before that, I had seen an impressive tele-serial by the same name, directed by Hema Malini, in which she had played the title role herself. There was also another serial on DD in 2002, which failed to run beyond a few weeks. But the biggest and best production of all on this theme was the magnum opus directed by Lekh Tandon. The story begins with Ajathasatru (Sunil Dutt), the emperor of Magadha, declaring a war on the Republic of Vaishali. Defeated and wounded in the war, he runs into the dwelling of Amrapali (Vyjayanthimala), a citizen of Vaishali, who nurses him back to health, without knowing that he is the emperor of Magadha, whose effigy she has burnt in the post-victory celebrations. The Lichchavis (the ruling members of the republic) are choosing a new nagarvadhu for Vaishali and through a quirk of circumstances, Amrapali floors the pandits with her unmatched dancing skills and is declared the new nagarvadhu of Vaishali for the next three years.

M R Achrekar's art direction lent a visual splendour to the film

This scene was later used in Om Shanti Om in the song Dhoom tana

She falls in love with Ajathasatru, who stays back in Vaishali, not only to plot the next attack using an intricate web of spies, but to also relish the company of Amrapali, to whom he is irresistibly drawn. But a point comes when Amrapali discovers the truth behind his identity and banishes him from her life. Wounded from within, she requests the Lichchavis to relieve her from the responsibilities of a nagarvadhu. But word soon spreads in Vaishali that the soldier whom Amrapali was romancing all these days was their sworn enemy. Lichchavis assume that Amrapali is stepping down to get married to Ajathasatru (since a nagarvadhu is not allowed to get married) and sentence her to death for treason. In a bid to save his love, Ajathasatru attacks Vaishali and destroys an entire civilization. Disillusioned with the devastation around her, Amrapali spurns his love and moves in search of peace. She reaches the abode of Gautam Buddha and surrenders herself at his feet, renouncing a life of name, fame, glamour and glory, which brought about the destruction of one of the earliest republics of India.

At her sensuous best in Tumhe yaad karte karte

Tadap yeh din raat ki

The first thing that arrests your attention while watching the film is the visual splendour created by the Art Director M R Achrekar. Forces from infantry and cavalry of the Indian army were borrowed to shoot the battle scenes in the beginning of the film. Bhanumathi Athaiya’s costumes were well-researched and the Amrapali costume was imitated a zillion times later in films. She spent a lot of time studying the paintings at the Ajanta caves to get a hang of the style of dressing during the Buddhist era. The film was launched with a lot of pomp and show at the Ajanta Caves with leading names from the film industry and politics, including Indira Gandhi, attending the mahurat shot.

Lekh Tandon wisely restricted the number of songs to three in the movie and the other dance sequences were aided by wonderfully created instrumental music pieces by Shankar Jaikishen, who otherwise known for their commercial ventures, got a chance to prove their mettle in a period film as well. Each song is a gem and even the ones which were edited out later, such as Jao re jogi tum jao re, display signs of a genius. All the songs were sung by Lata Mangeshkar.

Surrender at the feet of Buddha

Sunil Dutt, with plenty of bare chested scenes as Ajathasatru, oozed charisma and aggression in equal measure. In 2007, his shots from Amrapali were used in Shahrukh Khan's Om Shanti Om, where Vyjayanthimala was edited out and replaced with Deepika Padukone in the song Dhoom tana. But the show belonged to Vyjayanthimala, who became the soul of Amrapali. Perhaps, she was born to do this role, which not only reinforced the fact that she was the greatest dancer Hindi cinema has ever seen, but also a fabulous actress. Watch her at her sensuous best in the songs Tumhe yaad karte karte and Tadap yeh din raat ki and you will realise she puts every glamour doll to shame. In the last couple of scenes, she lends a lot of gravity to her performance as the wronged nagarvadhu trying in vain to defend herself. As Amrapali, torn between her love and duty, she owns the film.

Choreopgraphy by Gopi Krishna proved to be a high-point

The climax scene

Amrapali was India’s official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 39th Academy Awards. But for all these high points, Amrapali failed at the box-office. Watching it today, one can hardly attribute a solid reason to this failure. The movie had many historical inaccuracies. As per Buddhist texts, the emperor who fell for Amrapali was not Ajathasatru, but his father Bimbisara. The brutality of Amrapali's punishment was also skipped to an extent in the climax of the film.
Lekha Tandon returned to making run-of-the-mill commercial films (he had previously made the musical hit Professor, with Shammi Kapoor) and his next venture Prince (1969), starring Vyjayanthimala and Shammi Kapoor was a hit. The failure of this film is said to have deeply hurt Vyjayanthimala and it hastened the process of her retirement, who despite later success like Jewel Thief, Saathi and Prince, lost interest in films.

Arjun Dev Rashk, who had previously written Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai, contemporised the drama of another era with his gritty dialogues. He infused the film with a newness, which not only glided through the silken notes of romance, but also highlighted issues of war and peace. A few dialogues stand out for their simplicity and brilliance. When Amrapali hesitates to remove an arrow that has struck Ajathasatru, he says Jis baan ke lagne se main nahi mara, uske nikalne se kya marunga?
When Ajathasatru asks his mother as to why he is unable to defeat Vaishali, she says, Vaishali ki sena apni swabhimaan ke liye ladti hai, kisi raja ke aham ke liye nahi.

The crux of the movie highlights the futility of war and the message holds true even today, as it did during the Buddhist era. With its sweeping storyline, inimitable performances and grandeur, Amrapali stands tall as a work of art.

The uninhibited passions of Bobby

2012-11-19T18:58:00.002+05:30

Sometimes, dialogues, which sound very ordinary, are the ones which become a sensation. What is so special about the line “Mujhse Dosti Karoge” delivered by a 16-year-old Dimple Kapadia in Bobby? Watching it after many years, the movie, with its simple story, still retains an element of exuberance and freshness.

Rishi Kapoor designed his own costumes for Bobby

The bikini shot became a talking point after the release

Raj (Rishi Kapoor) grows up away from his parents in a boarding school. For his 18^th birthday party, his father calls the biggest of industrialists to strike business deals over wine and dinner. But in the midst of all that glitter, Raj falls for Bobby (Dimple Kapadia), an Anglo-Indian girl, whose grandmother Mrs Braganza (Durga Khote) was his nanny during his childhood. They meet, date, go through heartbreaks and fall in love. Raj’s father Mr Nath (Pran) opposes this alliance as Bobby’s father Jack Braganza (Prem Nath), is too unsophisticated for their society. Raj elopes with Bobby, only to realise that they cannot get married as per law, as they are both still in their teens. Finally, everything falls in place for the lovers, not before egos and societal pressures almost push them to embrace death.

Mujhse Dosti Karoge?

Many people believe that Bobby was made by Raj Kapoor to launch Rishi Kapoor as a leading hero. But the fact is that Rishi and Dimple were the least of the selling points of the movie. To start with, Bobby was made to pay off the humungous debts that Raj Kapoor had incurred after the disastrous performance of Mera Naam Joker (1970). Since funds were scarce, Raj was unable to rope in any of the leading romantic heroes of the day. But this very disadvantage turned out to be its biggest asset. Raj cast his 21-year-old son Rishi and a 16-year-old Dimple in the lead roles. Their age lent a strong element of credibility to the portrayal of the characters. For the first time, a 30-something hero was not pretending to be teenager. The casting in itself made the first take on Bobby very refreshing.

Ache ghar ki ladkiyan shaadi se pehle family room mein nahi baithti

Secondly, it was with Bobby that mainstream Hindi cinema discovered the genre of a teenage romance, though it was not exactly set up in a high school environment. Till then, college was the threshold to fall in love. Raj Kapoor once said in an interview, “In my father’s generation, people got married at the age of 15 and had kids by 16.” Bobby acknowledged the fact that legal strictures were not strong enough to stop the gushing of hormones at the turn of adolescence and Raj Kapoor made no bones about displaying raw passions of romance. Watching Raj and Bobby celebrate their new found freedom in Hum tum ek kamre mein band ho, you will know that Bobby had come of age. Even as he did so, the innocence did not quite die. Bobby and Raj were constant reminders of the innocence of teenage romance.

The polka dotted top worn by Dimple became a fashion statement

There was a strong current of exuberance in romance, never seen before in cinema

Bobby was full of, what was to later become, stereotypes of a teenage love story. It helped that the script was very cleverly written by Khwaja Ahmed Abbas, Jainendra Jain and VP Sathe. Watch the scene where Jack Braganza talks to Mr Nath about the possibility of an alliance between Raj and Bobby. Even as the parents fight it out over differences of class, Raj and Bobby are lost in their innocent games. When Nath says Raja jise apni khushi samajh raha hai, who dhokha hai, we see Raj being playfully blindfolded by Bobby. When Nath points out to a possibility of Braganza’s involvement in Raj being trapped in Bobby’s love saying, Nadaan parinda daana toh dekhta hai, fanda nahi… aur aapne toh bohot khoobsurat fanda daala hai, Bobby is seen throwing her stole around Raja’s neck and pulling him towards her, drawing a parallel between the conversation and their romance.

Bobby and Raj are lost in their innocent games, ignorant of their world crashing down outside

Pran and Premnath gave formidable performances as the parents on the opposite sides of class divide

Bobby was not accepted by most distributors as they felt that Raj Kapoor had turned senile after the failure of Mera Naam Joker. The film had two unknown teenagers in the lead, a very unlikely name for title and was unabashed in its portrayal of teenage love. Besides, the lead heroine had already got married to Rajesh Khanna a few months before its release. With no takers for the project, the distribution was done by RK Films and Shammi Kapoor took the mantle on himself.
When it was released, Bobby became a nation-wide sensation, altering the portrayal of romance in cinema. Bobby rewrote the format of a commercial romantic film in the years to come and heavily influenced the likes of Love Story (1981), Ek Duje Ke Liye (1981), Main Ne Pyar Kiya (1989) and QSQT (1988). Bobby was among the top grossing films of the 1970s, along with Sholay, Jai Santoshi Maa, Roti Kapda aur Makaan and Deewar. Rishi Kapoor won the Filmfare Award for Best Actor and and Dimple Kapadia shared the Best Actress trophy with Jaya Bhaduri (for Abhimaan).

In the scene where Raj visits Bobby for the first time in her house, Raj Kapoor re-enacted his first meeting with Nargis. In the USSR, the audience believed that Rishi and Dimple were kids of Raj and Nargis. Such was the popularity of the film that in 1977, when Babu Jagjivanram was to address a rally in Delhi, the party workers were apprehensive of the turnout, as the very same day Bobby was having its television premiere on Doordarshan. The newspaper headlines next day screamed BABU BEATS BOBBY.

The dialogue Prem naam hai mera, Prem Chopra was written for this cameo

The famous motorcycle chase sequence

One of the strongest points of this movie was its music by Laxmikant Pyarelal. Every song without exception became a chart buster. Hum tum.. became an anthem laced with passion, Main shayar toh nahi was an ode to love and the whole country danced to the tunes of Jhoot bole kauwa kate. But what many do not know was that most of the songs of Bobby were originally composed by Shankar Jaikishen and came from the stock of their unused songs that was held by Raj Kapoor. The song Na maangu sona chaandi (a Goan folk number) appears in the background of the beach sequence in Awara. The theme music of Bobby was used before in Sangam and even before that in Barsaat. Though Laxmikant Pyarelal were disappointed to work as mere music arrangers for the songs that were already composed, Lata Mangeshkar advised them to hold on, as working with Raj Kapoor would boost their standing in the market.

Rishi Kapoor went on to become the new chocolate hero in Hindi cinema and Dimple Kapadia vanished for a decade from the scene, tied up in an unhappy marriage with Rajesh Khanna. When she came back with Saagar after 12 years, she won yet another Filmfare award for it/ But the young teenager had had lost her innocence and had to do with many B-graders, before she struck gold with Ram Lakhan, Lekin and Rudaali.

Today as film makers like Karan Johar are trying desperately to get the formula of a high school romance right, Raj Kapoor’s Bobby still looks fresh. “Main ikkiswi sadi ki ladki hoon!” (I belong to the 21^st century) retorted Bobby to Raj, trying to put on an extra bold face during their first date. Watching Bobby, 40 years after its release, I wouldn’t disagree.

A few Bata club thoughts about SOTY

2012-10-27T20:39:00.001+05:30

As I watched Karan Johar’s Student of the Year (SOTY), I pondered hard over something similar I had seen. I was reminded of my own high school days, when I used to be glued to the popular sitcom Hip Hip Hurray. It showed a familiar scene from class 12, where, the kids from diverse backgrounds were good, mean, helpful, fun and bitchy; but they were teenagers, who behaved like one. They were seen fiddling with the idea of treats, parties, peer pressure, misunderstandings and basketball matches, but their stories also revolved around the classrooms, libraries and laboratories. One could easily identify at some level with its characters, which made the sitcom extremely popular among teenagers. There were nerds and playboys, but they were from a school campus - not from a fantasy Hogwarts from Dehradun.

Since I’m going to refer to SOTY, here is the brief outline. The story is set in St Teresa’s, a fictitious college in Dehradun and revolves around the lives of Rohan Nanda (Varun Dhawan), son of a muti-millionaire industrialist, his girlfriend and classmate Shinaya (Alia Bhatt) and a middle-class boy Abhimanyu (Siddharth Malhotra). The love triangle between the three of them and the intense competition among all the kids in the campus to win the SOTY trophy sets the tone for the movie.

For a long time, the genre of high school romance hardly existed in Hindi cinema. It was Raj Kapoor who let loose a spirit of uninhibited frenzy with his teenage love story Bobby, where he launched real-life teenagers Rishi Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia and brought us to face the fact that hormones go loose as one crosses adolescence, when one is no more a child, but not quite an adult. That was the 1970s.

Today, when I watched Karan Johar’s Student of the Year (SOTY), I had problems with it every other minute. I had done my schooling in different countries and my high school years were replete with competition at every corner, with the so called best friends playing cheap games for the fear of you outscoring them and problems of relocation, that I had to handle at a personal level. But the only parameter of excellence was ‘Ratta maar’ or your ability to mug up and excel in exams. There were a few extra-curricular activities, but that was not what you were judged by at the end of the day. What mattered, was how you did in your board exams.

But Karan’s students seem to live in a space occupied by pure candy floss and fantasy. The richie kids (led by Rohan and his chamchas) come in Ferraris and the poor ones (like Siddharth) come riding sports bikes (a bad joke by Karan calls them Tata boys and Bata boys). All of them are mean and bitchy and their parents are even worse. One middle-class mother even constantly drives her daughter to use push-up bras to entice Rohan, so that she can have a safe future! One girl gets excited as she can cheer the boys’ football team and draw their attention. Shinaya, the leading lady, on the other hand, wants the guys to cheer her with cat calls and whistles. She breathes luxury brands and even shops some desi stuff to visit a friend’s dying grandmother! These 16 or 17 something kids do not fall under the restrictions of law to enter discos, drive fancy cars or try out some tequila shots at an upmarket pub. The guys have rippling muscles so finely toned that Hrithik or John might shirk in insecurity and the girls, with their Barbie-like bodies will make Sheilas and Chamelis suffer from an inferiority complex. The rich Rohan, as it should be, has problems with his father, who is plain devilish. The poor Siddharth, as is the norm in an average melodrama, is orphaned and hence is at the mercy of his acerbic relatives. Oh yes, they do give one exam, since Karan wants to remind us that it is a high school drama. But they are more busy preparing for their prom night, which is more of a deciding factor for them to win their trophy. Well, you might argue that kids in metros today, do live a large life, with the best of luxury. But then, this movie set 10 years back in time and is told entirely in flashback.

Karan Johar has seldom been associated with realism. So his movies are unapologetically entertaining and even the chawls and markets are stain-free and pleasing to the eyes. But then, entertainment can be aesthetic as well. I am definitely not among those who want every movie to be an arty work, appealing only to the festival audience. That will be the last thing required in a country as diverse as ours. We need variety. But it helps, if it is a little more real and we have had film makers striking that balance in movies like 3 Idiots, Barfi, The Dirty Picture and Vicky Donor, where films packed power, fun and aesthetics. SOTY works in parts and has its moments. There are situations, which seem genuine and the debut actors work well in their roles. They are sure to be heartthrobs, at least for some time to come. Karan Johar is now in a position to make heroes out of new comers and due credit has to be given to him for bringing new talents using the power that vests with him today. But then, the sour taste doesn't go away, may be because I belong to the Bata club of SOTY. And the problem lies in the fact that Karan would never be able to think from a Bata kid's perspective. It will always remain the undecipherable 'other world' for him.

As for myself, I returned home from the movie and watched a few episodes of Hip Hip Hurray to feel good about my school life.

Yash Chopra: Love is Life

2012-10-24T17:17:00.000+05:30

During my entire childhood, I had always associated Yash Chopra with some of the most popular romantic movies I had known. The first fluffy notions of romance I had was from his films. It was much later that I discovered that the same man also gave us some the most iconic action films as well. It was he who rediscovered the ‘lost and found’ formula, which was later monetised to perfection by Manmohan Desai and Nasir Hussain! Sure, his cinema was escapist. Yet, in many ways, it was indicative of the times we lived in.

It was only in the 1970s that the demarcation between the art and commercial cinema became more pronounced. What we today know as commercial cinema owes a lot of its elements to the cinema of Raj Kapoor. With a saleable story line, mega stars, songs shot at foreign locations, chart buster music and a fine dose of melodrama, Raj knew his way to the heart of the audience. Yash Chopra learnt his first lessons of film making from his brother BR Chopra. But it was Yash again, who quickly adapted the Raj Kapoor school of melodrama to perfect the idea of a commercial Hindi film.

When his directorial debut Dhool ka Phool (1958) talked about the concept of an illegitimate child, the nation was fresh from the wounds of partition. Hence, the child was told, Tu Hindu banega na Musalman banega, insan ki aulaad hai insan banega. His Dharmaputra (1961), brought out the pains of partition to the fore, though it was a box-office dud. In Waqt, he became the pompous dream merchant, as we remember him today. Waqt had luxury oozing out of every corner. It was replete with fantastic sets, top stars of the day, memorable songs and above all, the lost and found formula, which had been used sparingly before in Kismet (1943) and Awaara (1951). Waqt also was indicative of the Punjabiyat of Hindi cinema, which was to become bigger in the time to come. But above all Waqt had a much deeper subtext of time being the most powerful element of our lives and played with the idea to bring in a series of coincidences.

Waqt - pompousness at its best

He launched Yash Raj films in the 1970s with the Rajesh Khanna-starrer Daag (1973). This began a new phase in his career. Supported by the excellent scripts of Salim-Javed, he played a major role in showcasing the angry young man of Hindi cinema. Amitabh Bachchan had hit the bulls eye with Zanjeer (1973); but it was Deewar (1975), that left the ever-lasting image of an anguished man of the 1970s. With unemployment, scarcity, hartals and the Emergency to top it all, there was nothing much for an average youngster in India to look forward to. Though Deewar was unabashedly melodramatic, it echoed the sentiments of an entire nation. It did not have a new story- it was totally borrowed from Mother India (1957) and Gunga Jumna (1961) and it merely contemporised the idea of ‘majboor Ma and do bachche’. Deewar was not just one of Yash Chopra’s finest films ever, it also came to define the era of 1970s.

Deewar - It remained the most iconic script from the Yash Raj stable

And yet, the romance didn't quite die. Even as the embers of Deewar were setting the nation on fire, he brought out Kabhi Kabhie, a star-studded romantic extravaganza, dipped in the poetry of Sahir Ludhianvi. Kabhi Kabhie was one of Yash Chopra’s best musicals ever. He returned to the idea of illegitimate child with Trishul (1978), again with Amitabh as the wronged, angry, young son of a rich industrialist (played by Sanjeev Kumar). The coal mine disaster of 1970 inspired his Kala Paththar. Deewar, Trishul and Kala Paththar together formed the Vijay trilogy of Yash Chopra. The characters played by Amitabh in these movies were not markedly different; yet they brought to the fore a new facet of the angry young man each time.

In spite of being a musical delight and Yash having achieved a casting coup by roping in Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan and Rekha in the extramarital melodrama, the script of Silsila (1981) reflected the confusion of the film maker and failed at the box office. He lost track after Silsila, though Mashaal (1984) had many traces of brilliance. Silsila also marked the beginning of his association with the classical maestros Shiv Kumar Sharma and Hari Prasad Chaurasia. With Silsila, song sequences being shot in the gardens of Europe became a recurring feature in his films. Like Raj Kapoor, Yash Chopra too had a fetish for the woman in white and all his films from Silsila onwards had a prominent song sequence with the heroine in white.

Amitabh's character in Kabhi Kabhie was supposed to have been

modeled on the poet Sahir Ludhianvi

The extramarital strains of Silsila got muted in the hype surrounding the cast

Personally, I felt that barring Lamhe (1991), all his later films had style winning over substance. Chandni (1989), was more of an ode to the beauty of Sridevi. It was a movie rejected by Rekha. Lamhe (1991), was bold and off the beaten track for its time. It also saw Sridevi at the peak of her career. Lamhe was the story of a young girl falling in love with a man much senior to her. The audience rejected this work, though it remained a critic’s favourite. Starting from Chandni, his movies reflected the resurgent mood of a country at the brink of liberalisation. The borders seemed irrelevant and a new brand of romance was soon emerging.

Sridevi at her best in Lamhe

Every generation has its love story. The audience of 1960s had Mughal-e-azam, those from the 1970s had Bobby and the generation of 1990s had Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995). Though it was directed by Aditya Chopra, the Yash Chopra mark could not be missed. Today, if a mustard field reminds you of love and longing, the credit goes to DDLJ. Though it was a blockbuster, Dil Toh Pagal Hai (1997), with its forced romance and theatrical dialogues seemed no match to his yesteryear classics. Yet, there are magical moments in it, which makes it a decent watch even today. I was in Dubai when Veer Zaara was released in 2004. The audience there went mad over the film, as well as its lead actor Shahrukh Khan. Yash Raj had become a banner to reckon with in the foreign market and therein lay its pit fall as well. The banner began catering more to the nostalgic needs of the NRIs abroad than cinematic sensibilities of the audience back home. Except for the Late Madan Mohan’s music, there was hardly anything remarkable about Veer Zaara.

But then, I can’t think of many people in the history of Hindi cinema who successfully directed films for almost 55 years! He sold candy floss dreams of romance, in the most unapologetic manner. Romance, tragedy, comedy, drama – everything was larger than life. Whether you like it or not, today, what is perceived across the world as ‘Bollywood’ cinema, is to a large extent, the Yash Raj brand of cinema. He taught three generations of Indians to fall in love with the idea of love itself. A dream merchant couldn't be bigger than him. What Sahir said in Kabhi Kabhie, perhaps, best expresses his life:

Kal aur aayenge naghmon ki khilti kaliyan chunne wale

Mujhse behtar kehne wale, tumse behtar sunne wale,

Kal koi mujhko yaad kare, kyun koi mujh ko yaad kare

Masruf zamana mere liye, kyun waqt apna barbaad kare
Main pal do pal ka shayar hoon

Love is life, Life is forever....

Welcome back Hawa Hawai!

2012-10-12T11:59:00.001+05:30

Having been born in the 1980s, the first actress I liked the most was undoubtedly Sridevi. It helped that I was born in a Tamil-speaking family in Kerala, which meant that I got to see some of her finely nuanced performances in Tamil and Malayalam movies. I repeatedly enjoyed seeing her scorch the screens in Mr India, Chandni and Lamhe. There was no reason why I had to miss the comeback of a superstar.

Just as a few minutes pass after English Vinglish starts off, you realise that there are elements from our own homes playing out there. The movie is about an unassuming housewife Shashi (Sridevi), who is the butt of most of the jokes in her home because she cannot speak English. Her mispronunciations and broken words become a point of embarrassment for her husband Satish (Adil Hussain) and daughter. Things come to a turning point when Shashi is called to the US, to help her sister out with the wedding of her eldest daughter. A humiliating experience at a Manhattan café becomes the last straw for her and she takes note of an English language coaching centre and secretly slips away for the class every day, not just to learn English, but to regain her lost dignity and prove herself in her family.

Gauri Shinde has made a smashing debut with English Vinglish. Sheconfesses to have been inspired to write this script looking at her own mother’s life, who fumbled with the English language and could never gain control over it. But as you watch it, you will realise that the movie is much more than a story of a housewife trying to learn the Queen’s language. It is about a woman scoring a high to gain her confidence, which has been derided over years of insensitivity displayed by her family. Shashi is a parent who doesn’t know English, when the people who surround her family talk, walk and dream in English. It is this inability of hers which leaves her daughter embarrassed at a PTA, when Shashi requests the Principal to switch over to Hindi, as she would be more comfortable that way. Her ability to make mouthwatering delicacies is overlooked and so is her enterprising spirit in selling delicious ladoos.

Some of the scenes stand out for their sheer simplicity and comic brilliance, like the ones with her French classmate Laurent (Mehdi Nebbou) where she talks to him in Hindi and he replies in French. They don’t get what they are telling each other but perfectly understand each other's state of mind. Shashi is simplistically humourous in the scene where she memorises the responses she has to give to the immigration officer once she lands in the US and messes it all in her nervousness. Shashi could have been any lady we knew – she could have been an aunt in our neighbourhood, a relative, or our own mother! She is full of imperfections and yet so lovable.

Amit Trivedi’s music scores a high point, with lovely numbers such as Navrai Majhi, Dhak Dhuk and Badla Nazara. Gauri cleverly sets the movie in culturally neutral space, with an intention to make a tri-lingual film. So Shashi, though presented as a Maharashtrian housewife, could very well belong to any part of India. Her story is bound to resonate in the heart of every housewife, who looks for not just love, but also some respect for the selfless and thankless work that she does. Excellent support is provided by Sujata Kumar as Shashi’s sister, Adil Hussian as Satish, Priya Anand as her niece Radha and Mehdi Nebbou as her French classmate.

I personally feel that had Sridevi and Madhuri been working in the 1950s or 60s, they would have got more chances to do justice to their potential. But there could not have been a better time than today for an actress to get meaty roles, what with movies like Saat Khoon Maaf, Ishqiya and The Dirty Picture hailing the comeback of the heroine! It is after 15 years that Sridevi is back on the silver screen and the film lives up to all the hype that her comeback has been carrying. It is her genius that a simple story becomes a joy to behold and she lives the role in every possible way. At the end of it, English Vinglish leaves a sweet aftertaste, like the ladoos Shashi takes pride in making. But the biggest success point of this movie is that while you walk out adoring the film and its makers, you will be all the more in awe of your mother.

Utsav: A seductive celebration

2012-09-09T01:41:00.002+05:30

Film makers in Hindi cinema have mostly dished out period films from the Mughal and British eras. Many of these have not only tasted success at the box office, but also have stood the test of time, like Taj Mahal, Umrao Jaan, Pakeezah, Sahib Biwi aur Ghulam, Jodha Akbar, Devdas and Mughal-e-azam. Ancient India has seldom been touched upon and even when someone has come out with anything substantial, it has hardly tasted success (Amrapali, for instance). Utsav was one such attempt at presenting the society of the classical period.

The story begins with Amjad Khan (playing the soothradhar and Vatsayan, the author of Kama Sutra) introducing the characters to the viewers. He shows Vasantasena (Rekha), a prominent courtesan, running away from the lecherous and stupid Samasthanak (Shashi Kapoor), the brother-in-law of the king Paalak. She lands up in the house of a poor musician Charudutt (Shekhar Suman), who is indifferent to the bad times that have struck him. She learns that his wife has gone to visit her parents with his child. That night, Vasantsena falls for him, makes love to with him and leaves for her brothel, not before leaving her jewellery under his care.

Enamoured by the presence of Vasantsena

But the jewellery gets stolen by Sajjal (Shankar Nag), a thief, who wants to marry Vasantsena’s maid Madanika (Neena Gupta) by paying a price. The city, sinking to anarchy due to the waywardness of the nobility, is at the brink of a revolution being plotted by Aryak (Kunal Kapoor) and his aide (Kulbhushan Kharbanda). Vasantsena sees her jewellery brought by Sajjal, gifts him Madanika and sets her free. At the brothel, Vasantsena and the other prostitutes are impressed by the knowledge and detachment of the sage Vatsayan, who visits them to document the art of love making, without actually getting involved in it himself.

Vasantsena cannot get over the memories of her tryst with Charudutt and longs for his company. Meanwhile, Charudutt’s wife Aditi (Anuradha Patel) returns and finds out that her husband has slept with a courtesan in her absence. She leaves the house in a huff and hands over the last piece of jewellery left with her to Charudutt’s friend Maitreya (Harish Patel), asking him to give it to Vasantsena in place of her stolen jewellery. When Maitreya conveys to Vasantsena that Aditi has left the house, she leaves for Charudutt’s place to make love to him that night.

The next day is Vasantotsav, the spring festival of youth and love. Charudutt leaves for a lonely spot near the woods and promises to send a carriage for Vasantasena soon. But as she waits, Aditi comes home and to Vasantsena’s embarrassment and surprise, does not seem repulsed by her presence. After all, it is only a man of high social standing who can have a courtesan like Vasantasena and besides, after spending one night with Vasantsena, her husband was able to revive their mundane sex life! The ladies bond over a song and Vasantsena even gives away all her gold to Aditi to convert her son’s toy clay cart into that of gold.

Mrichchakatika - the cart of gold

Meanwhile, the carriage sent by Samasthanak arrives to pick Vasantsena and she leaves in it, mistaking it for the one sent by Charudutt. On reaching the spot, Vasantsena tries to flee again from the clutches of Samasthanak but gets strangulated by him (though she survives the attempt on her life). Samasthanak puts the blame on Charudutt and orders to execute him. As Charudutt is about to get beheaded, Aryak and his men declare a revolution, dethrone the king and begin a new state, even as the city is steeped in revelry. Seeing her husband return home, Aditi jumps with joy and both of them resume their lives, forgetting Vasantasena altogether. Vasatasena, realising the ephemeral nature of love in her life, returns to her brothel and sees Samasthanak falling at her doorstop, now a civilian, sans his arrogance and power. She welcomes him inside, resuming the life of a courtesan.

Utsav was based on Bhasa’s incomplete play Charudutta and Sudraka’s Mrichchakatikam, written around the 400 AD. With strong socialistic undertones, the movie celebrates the glory of the society in ancient India, when liberal thoughts prevailed and when every act was seen as a work of art. The narrator tells us at the very beginning that this was an India, when even gambling, stealing and love-making were done with artistic perfection. Though it is not specified, the movie is perhaps set in the Gupta period, the golden age of India's history. The film makers liberally added the character of Vatsayan, who is not seen in the work Mrichchakatikam, to introduce an element of eroticism in the movie.

Female bonding in the song Man kyun behka

Produced by Shashi Kapoor and directed by Girish Karnad, Utsav had Shekhar Suman in one of his early ventures. He puts on a good show but does seem to look dwarfed before the screen presence of Rekha. He is unable to rise to the ethereality of Charudutt, who is capable of making the most beautiful courtesan go crazy about him and turning a gambler into a saint. Amjad Khan, as Vatsayan, brings in a strong sense of humour and finesse. Other actors like Annu Kapoor (as the gambling masseur), Neena Gupta (as Rekha’s maid Madanika), Shankar Nag and Anupam Kher played their parts well. As a surprise, you get to see Master Manjunath as Charudutt's son. A few years later, we got to see him as Swami in Shankar Nag's Malgudi Days.

Utsav saw Rekha in her full glory after Umrao Jaan. Perhaps there was something about this actress, which made her perfect the role of a courtesan. She struck a pose of seduction in every scene and came out with one of the greatest performances of her career. Ashok Mehta’s camera caught her in her resplendent beauty, like it captured the India we had only read about. Art directors Nachiket Patwardhan and Jayoo Patwardhan showed an amazing sense of history and quite successfully recreated the streets, brothels and townships of the period and won a well derserved Filmfare Award for the same.

Laxmikant Pyarelal spinned umpteen tunes for the commercial films of that time and showed here that they could deliver good music for an off-beat period film as well. Who doesn’t love the Lata-Asha duet man kyun behka ri behka aadhi raat ko, which saw some of the finest images of female bonding between Rekha and Anuradha Patel. The two came together vying for the same man three years later in Gulzar’s Ijazat. But this time, it was Anuradha who was cast as the other woman.

One will be amazed to see how the film-makers were bold enough to bring alive an India, which might have caused the moviegoers of the day to shirk in prudery. For all its merits, Utsav was a box office disaster, causing Shashi Kapoor a loss of 1.5 crores. He went completely commercial with his next venture in the Amitabh Bachchan starrer Ajooba. By then, the superstar was past his prime and the film too sank. But nevertheless, Utsav still remains a wonderful celebration of art, beauty and sensuality.

Catty Kareena

2012-08-04T15:44:00.001+05:30

This is perhaps the first malicious post in the blog. Or I should say that Kareena Kapoor has made it so with her antics. Her PR has been on an aggressive note in the last few months. Be it getting cover pages of magazines (for not doing anything spectacular for a long time now) or being called at talk shows and seminars to talk about the rise of the actress in Hindi cinema or getting stories done in newspapers which say that she would win the next National award for her movie Heroine, directed by Madhur Bhandarkar, Kareena is everywhere and not really for the right reasons. Going by all the hype around it, she might very well win it eventually.

It has been five years since she did a role worth any note (the last one being Jab we Met in 2007, where she just played herself). She has been a part of many 100-crore movies, invariably playing an insignificant heroine, whose only job is to be the eye candy of the hero. Be it 3 Idiots, Bodygurard, Ra.One or Agent Vinod, the focus has been completely on the heroes. Her Ek Main aur Ek Tu (which looked like an English romcom in Hindi) did well only the uber-cool metro pockets. Her dance number in Rowdy Rathore was forgotten as soon as the movie got out of theatres. Barring 3 Idiots, none of these films are worth being remembered even a few years down the line. In her entire career, the only films where she has really ‘acted’ are Jab We Met and to an extent, Chameli.

But in spite of all her PR excercises, she suffers from the ‘foot in mouth’ syndrome. When the entire industry is lapping up the success of ‘outsiders’, she brazenly plays the Kapoor card all the way. How long will you all bask in the glory of grandpa Raj Kapoor girl? She is notorious for exiting films and her mercurial relations with the filmmakers in the industry. She has had spats with many other heroines in the past. Recently, she attacked Vidya Balan and Sonakshi Sinha for their curvaceous figure, hailing herself for her Barbie-toned body. When she was asked recently about comparisons with Aishwarya Rai (who was the first choice of Heroine), she called Ash an actress who belong to the previous generation! Really? Ash made her debut in 1997 with Aur pyar ho gaya and Kareena entered in 2000 with Refugee. One can understand such comments for Sridevi or Madhuri. But will mere three years make Aishwarya such an auntie for her? It seems, Kareena needs much more than a good PR and a glorious surname.