PART I

History rewards victory, not ambition. Pyaasa, Mughal-e-Azam, Sholay, Deewar, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and, now, a Happy New Year, are likely to be celebrated decades after their release. There will be endless analysis around what made them hits or critical successes, nostalgia pieces on their 50^th anniversaries, new books around their making, and interviews with ageing stars and filmmakers

Not that these aren’t useful. I would really like to know, for instance, what made Happy New Year a hit. All I have to thank the film for, after three painful hours, is that it brought back memories of Shalimar, a 1978 movie quite unlike anything Bollywood has ever seen, and a financial and critical disaster.

In a tribute to Shalimar, Happy New Year revolves around a group of people trying to steal diamonds by beating the ‘Shalimar Security System’, introduced to viewers with Shalimar’s title song—Mera Pyaar Shalimar—playing as a hat doff.

Also, the bunch of thieves in Happy New Year are described repeatedly as “losers” who’re trying to be “winners”. This is reminiscent, perhaps unintentionally, of Shalimar’s maker, Krishna Shah.

A creature of lesser Hollywood, the filmmaker has to his credit smaller genre movies (comedy and horror) such as Hard Rock Zombies, Evil Laugh, Ted & Venus and American Drive-In. A UCLA and Yale graduate, before Shalimar Shah had adapted the play The River Niger, and directed on and off Broadway theatre (one of them Rabindranath Tagore’s The Dark Chamber which won two Obies). He’d written for TV too (Six Million Dollar Man, The Flying Nun and The Man From UNCLE) and produced the animated Ramayana in 1992, and one of India’s early ‘indie’ films Hyderabad Blues.

Yet Shah never made it to the Hollwyood A list. Shalimar was his only attempt at a big blockbuster. Indian papers were full of news about him then, especially after he signed Rex Harrison. But everything was forgotten soon after the movie bombed.

The plot of the film involves four master thieves entering into a contest with one another to try and steal the “Shalimar ruby” from the biggest master thief of them all. Four master thieves and Bollywood strongman Dharmendra, who gatecrashes the competition.

It’s atrocious, but has an audacity to it that’s endearing: it features Hollywood actors like Rex Harrison, Sylvia Miles and John Saxon alongside Hindi film stars Dharmendra, Zeenat Aman and Shammi Kapoor— something no other Hindi film has done to this extent. It was released in Hindi in India and in English in the USA (as Raiders of the Sacred Stone). Both versions failed.

One really wonders what prompted Rex Harrison—Tony, Golden Globe and Oscar winner for Best Actor—after having played the iconic parts of Julius Caesar, Henry Higgins, Pope John Paul II and Dr. Dolittle, to agree to portray a Bollywood arch-villain. One imagines Harrison—now, sadly, no more, then nearing 70—would have prepared for Shalimar alongside Staircase (with Richard Burton) and Crossed Swords (with Charlton Heston). So around the same time he was essaying the considerably more complex roles of an ageing gay Londoner running a barbershop and the 16^th Century Duke of Norfolk, Harrison also played Sir John Lockheed— a retired but paranoid master-thief living on an island, with many tribal slaves and Dharmendra to handle. Not that the other two movies did much better. Both were critically panned and turkeys at the box office. Harrison himself reportedly hated Staircase. It would be interesting to find out what he made of Shalimar.

Then there’s Sylvia Miles of Greenwich Village. If you ask around New York, the story you’re most likely to hear about Miles involves her throwing a plate of food on critic John Simon’s head. Simon, now 89, remembers it being steak tartare. Miles, 82, remembers “steak tartare, coleslaw, potato salad, and cold cuts.”

The provocation for this was that Simon had referred to Miles as “one of New York’s leading party girls and gate-crashers” in a review. “How could I crash anything? I was invited to everything! I was the Gwyneth Paltrow of the day,” Miles has said.

This isn’t true. Miles won two Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress that she received for minuscule six and eight minute appearances in the movies Midnight Cowboy and Farewell My Lovely respectively. And she had a role in Andy Warhol’s underground film Heat, a parody of Sunset Boulevard, written and directed by Paul Morissey, where she plays a has-been Hollywood starlet, seduced and used by an LA Hustler.

True to her ‘party girl’ reputation, Miles was seen at so many public events with Warhol and Morissey that ventriloquist and puppeteer Wayland Flowers remarked in one of his shows: “Sylvia Miles and Andy Warhol would attend the opening of a sewer.” Also, that Miles herself would “attend the opening of an envelope”. Flowers used his puppet, ‘Madame’, to express these thoughts, now subsumed in Manhattan lore. Clever way of sidestepping the tartare.

Miles had spoken about Shalimar to Roger Ebert, in between chewing a honey dew slice and lighting a cigarette, at a 1980 LA brunch. Interestingly, she referred to it as the film with Harrison and Saxon without mentioning any of her Indian co-stars, not even the film’s protagonist, or maybe Ebert didn’t care to report that she did. She was in her mid-forties then. She plays a trapeze artist and master thief called Countess Rasmussen. Shah establishes this with a flashback that shows Miles trapeze into a museum, wearing a bright red outfit to steal Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. Later, the Countess swings like Tarzan to access windows that seem as if they could simply have been climbed into. For the purpose of knocking out a guard, or avoiding capture, she prefers summersaulting to simple hit and runs (where Dharmendra scores).

The original choice for Miles’ role in Shalimar was Gina Lollobrigida, Italian actress, photojournalist, sculptor and sex symbol of the fifties and sixties. In The Shalimar Adventure, a forgotten 1979 book on the making of the film by publicist Bunny Reuben, a chapter titled The Battle of the Boobs reports a cleavage contest of sorts between Zeenat Aman (in her late twenties) and Lollobrigida (touching fifty at the time) at an early press conference for which the European actress had traveled to India. One doesn’t know what the import of this is. Anyhow, Lollobrigida finally walked out.

The third Shalimar actor from the Hollywood circuit, the now 79 year old John Saxon, is best remembered as Bruce Lee’s comrade-in-arms from Enter The Dragon. Saxon, born Carmine Orrico, was set to be Hollywood’s next big thing when he broke into the movies with meaty roles in Running Wild (he was 20 then) and The Unguarded Moment (21). But this was not to be, and Saxon acted, instead, in innumerable sci-fi, action and horror movies and TV shows. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Golden Globes for his portrayal of a Mexican bandit in Appaloosa. He played a similar part in Joe Kidd, co-starring with Clint Eastwood and Robert Duvall. Saxon also went on to do Italian spaghetti westerns and police thrillers.

Saxon was just past 40 when he was signed on for Shalimar, though he looks as if he is in his thirties. He plays a master thief called Colonel Columbus.

Dharmendra and Zeenat Aman, both pretty much at the top of their careers, and Shammi Kapoor, the ex-hero who had aged by then and become a prolific supporting actor, made up the Indian end of the cast. Reports say Shah had approached Amitabh Bachchan to play Dharmendra’s part, but the superstar kept delaying things still Shah gave up.

Also, Shalimar had OP Ralhan, the producer-director and sometimes actor behind big Bollywood grossers like Phool Aur Patthar and Talash. Ralhan plays a character named KPW Iyengar, alias ‘Romeo’, a master thief who has robbed the Bank of Singapore. Kapoor’s character, Dr. Dubari, is a thief who poses often as a religious figure, who has stolen St. Timothy’s precious cross from Jerusalem (like the Shalimar ruby itself, this is fictional). He cites religious writing from the faiths to justify crime. Aman plays Sir John’s (Harrison) nurse and Dharmendra’s ex flame.

Shalimar is full of bloopers and irrationalities but then such problems abound in other successful heist films of the yesteryears too, such as Topkapi or The League of Gentlemen. What really does the film in is that it’s overlong, has dully paced scenes and a plot that’s just plain boring: devoid of well-conceived twists and turns and utterly predictable.

It does have some memorable Hindi film music from RD Burman. Hum Bewafa Hargiz Na Thay by Kishore Kumar, for instance, or One, Two Cha Cha Cha—by Usha Uthup—a longish cha-cha-cha number and dance sequence that the film begins with.

There’s also Asha Bhosle’s Mera Pyar Shalimar a title-track that sounds as though it belongs to a Bond film. And like with the Bond movies it should really have been played during the opening credits. Instead, it has been used, wastefully, in sporadic bursts, in laughably futile attempts to drum up pathos or fear.

There is one well-executed sequence in the film: where Dharmendra (Spoiler Alert) paints himself in black and white to blend in with the walls and floor of the hall where the Shalimar ruby lies, as a kind of camouflage. Harrison realizes the big chequered blob inching towards his ruby is Dharmendra upon staring at a chess board with a game they’ve left unfinished. Believe it or not, it’s actually pulled off quite well.

And there is a clever reference. The fictional island, in the Indian Ocean, where the thieves meet is named Saint Dismas, the name assigned to the penitent thief crucified with Jesus Christ, as per the Gospel of Luke.

PART II

Besides these, Shalimar throws up quite a few treasures for lovers of camp. There are Hindi masala film tropes that have been used here like nowhere else. This makes for novel ‘oh-it’s-so-bad-it’s-good’ moments, as opposed to Happy New Year where, for all its eighties Bollywood references, there is mostly only the ‘it’s-so-bad-it’s-bad’. Here are some gems (Many Spoilers Ahead):

1.

Rex Harrison’s voice, in the Hindi version, is dubbed by the one and only Kader Khan— who has penned dialogues for the film as well.

Yes. The same that wrote and said:

“Dukh jab hamaari kahaani sunta hai toh khud dukh ko dukh hota hai.”

A feeble attempt at translation: When sadness hears my tale, then sadness itself feels sad.

And:

“Whiskey mein soda ya pani milane se uska taste kharaab ho jaata hai. Whiskey mein Whiskey milaake peena chahiye.”

Translation: Mixing soda or water with whiskey ruins its taste. One should mix whiskey with whiskey before drinking it.

And:

“Tumhaari yeh baat sunkar mera dil Hyderabad ke tarah aabaad ho gaya.”

Translation: Impossible.

Some perspective. A doyen of eighties Bollywood dialogue writing and delivery, Khan has played a significant part in propagating the ‘angry young man’, Hindi Cinema’s most remembered stereotype, that Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar created for Amitabh Bachchan. Ganga Jamuna Saraswati, Sharaabi, Coolie, Lawaaris, Suhaag, Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, Amar Akbar Anthony, Mr. Natwarlal, Satte Pe Satta, Hum and Agneepath are some of the famous Bachchan films Khan has written dialogue for.

As an actor, Khan was Prometheus Unbound, set in Hindi film masala. So over the top, even for an industry that routinely demanded a degree of overacting, that he made Dolby Surround seem altogether unnecessary when it came to India. Here, however, the ham extraordinaire displays remarkable restraint, almost as if he wore a horse bit for the dub. Khan’s ‘Sir John voice’ for Harrison is understated and alternates between quietly menacing to a sardonic murmur. To discover this avatar—Kader Khan The Murmurer—can be such a delight for followers of eighties Bollywood that they could watch Shalimar for this reason alone.

2.

I’m not quite sure who dubbed Sylvia Miles’ voice—or whether she did it herself—but she sounds like Helen trying to sound like an Italian trying to speak in Hindi. This is coupled with political incorrectness. In one scene she greets Ralhan with “My Idlee, Dowsaaa!” punctuated by (what else) a summersault.

3.

Two foreign master thieves communicating in Hindi is more than enough, perhaps, so Col. Columbus, John Saxon’s character, is left mute. Saxon speaks in sign language throughout the film and only Dharmendra, or S. S. Kumar, understands sign language. So he translates for others. This raises a question. Dharmendra was never meant to be on the island in the first place. He cheated his way in, taking another invitee’s place. How exactly had the master thieves planned on communicating with Columbus without Dharmendra?

In the latter half Saxon’s character acquires an added shade of complexity. He dies and because the tribals on the island feel they heard him scream after his death they dress up the dead body and worship it as their god. He still doesn’t get any dialogue though.

4.

Let’s address the question of how Dharmendra gatecrashed the gathering. One must give credit where it’s due. Shalimar is possibly the only Hindi movie where Dharmendra doesn’t fool anyone by disguising himself as a Sikh. Yes, he dons a fake beard and moustache and wears a turban, pretending to be the son of Raja Bahadur Singh— yet another master thief who was invited but, sadly, shot before he could make the trip. However, after a day of watching him conspicuously pilfer trinkets from under their eyes everyone bursts into laughter when he claims to be royalty. Why they then allow him to enter the Steal-The-Shalimar Contest, instead of sending him off to be treated for kleptomania, is a mystery. Must be the sign language.

5.

Coming back to voices, when Dharmendra says “Sir John” he sounds either as if he is saying “Mausi (Aunt)” in Sholay or “Kuttay (Dog)” in every other movie. Aman is less versatile. She addresses everyone in that sultry whine she had perfected in her time in Bollywood, a studied mix of complaint and seduction.

6.

Harrison displays so much serenity in the middle of all of this that one wonders whether he was wearing earplugs. There is mild amusement writ on his face, which may have come naturally, and a detachment that makes you suspect he was actually mentally rehearsing lines for the Duke of Norfolk.

7.

The Shalimar ruby itself is assigned an intriguing fictional history. Existing since Vedic times (whenever that may be), it was taken by Alexander and then returned to Chandragupta Maurya by Seleucus I. Then it went missing and was discovered in Srinagar’s Shalimar Gardens by the Mughals. From here it went to the Portuguese and then the English. Then it went missing again. The newspaper clipping that informs us of this is from UK’s Sunday Mirror. The headline reads: “Who Has Plucked The 100 Crore Rupee Plum?”

The “100 Crore Rupee Plum” which actually looks like a snazzy red disco ball that got cut all wrong. This makes for great tragicomedy when juxtaposed with expressions of anguish on the faces of people who die trying to procure it, to the tune of Mera Pyar Shalimar. They don’t look like they’ve lost it because of the stone. They just look mad.

8.

In the end, Dharmendra is a CBI officer. We learn of this because he tells Aman that he had squandered her life’s savings and eloped with some American girl not because he didn’t love her, but because he had to get the Shalimar ruby back for the CBI. He tells her this casually, before saying into the phone purposefully: “This is Agent 3694”.

9.

The tribals under Sir John’s command—he saved 45 of them from death so now they’re his slaves for life—are a cosmopolitan lot. Some of them resemble Africans, some East Asians, and one of them is Mudhu B. Shetty. Shetty, better known as Fight Master Shetty, or, simply, Fighter Shetty—an iconic Hindi film stuntman and action choreographer—would often appear in the action sequences he created as a dark bald hulking goon who would be beaten up by heroes half his size. Here he merely glowers in snatches, in a ridiculous outfit that makes him look like a Red Indian at a fancy dress ball. There is no explanation for this, and viewers unacquainted with the cryptic genre that is the Hindi masala movie may be at a loss as to why, in the middle of so many scenes depicting tribals in ridiculous ways, they are repeatedly confronted with shots of Shetty glaring at them angrily.

Enlightenment arrives at the climax, which comprises a fight between Dharmendra and Shetty who ambushes him—and the audience—with a sword in one hand and a spear in the other. It then dawns that the previous shots were simply Shah’s way of saying: “Here is Shetty. He may be dressed like the next enslaved tribal but wait and see.”

Not that the tribal dress code is uniform— those higher in the hierarchy wear headgear reminiscent of Greek legions while lesser ones wear single feathers. They paint their bodies, light up torches and chant “Jhingalala Hoon Hoon” while marching to nowhere in particular. This makes Dharmendra break into a song, in rhythm with this chant, about his failed relationship with Zeenat Aman.

10.

To be fair, tribals aren’t the only constituency Shalimar offends. If the movie is to be believed, erstwhile rulers of princely kingdoms committing themselves to grand larceny was a worldwide trend in the seventies. Two of five master thieves invited to try and steal the Shalimar—Countess Rasmussen and Raja Bahadur Singh—hail from nobility. And then there’s Sir John. The last government in possession of the Shalimar ruby was supposedly British. Has anyone told Queen Elizabeth II she’s being shown to have knighted someone who ran off with England’s most precious jewel?

On March 28, 2013, as the country was immersed in Holi celebrations, 35 year old Santosh Kumar was shot dead in Devsadih, a village in Bihar’s Sheikhpura district. He died for what may seem like a very strange reason. Kumar protested the playing of lewd Bhojpuri songs during the festivities. As revelers around him drank bhang, splashed colour on one another and danced to music blaring from loudspeakers, Kumar found himself in the middle of a brawl. 10 people were injured. And Kumar lost his life.

On the same day, just 250 kilometres away in the district of Sitamarhi a similar set of events occured. Reports don’t mention the names of the victims or assailants or even the exact location. Just that a man was shot dead. The reason? He had objected to the playing of profane Bhojpuri songs.

Also on the same day, Guddu Rangila released a music album named Chhokari Baaj Holi (A Holi for Womanizers). As expected, it was a smashing hit. Rangila, 38, one of the Bhojpuri music industry’s most well known voices, is famous, or infamous, for the obscene songs he writes and sings. Holi, the festival of colour, is known also to lend itself to a degree of sexual frivolity. Frivolity which appears to challenge, sometimes, ideas that lie at the heart of Indian traditions and society. For instance, some of the most ribald jokes cracked on the festival in the Hindi heartland revolve around the relationship between the devar (brother-in-law) and the bhabhi (sister-in-law).

But Rangila’s forte lies in taking what’s a spot of irreverent fun and pushing it, slyly, across the line that separates it from the disturbing. Last year’s Holi came close on the heels of the outrage that followed the tragic ‘Delhi Rape’ of December 16, 2012. So Rangila recorded for his album a song called Balatkar Hota Hai Rajau (Someone is being raped).

He shot a video too. In the beginning, Rangila is shown standing between two sari-clad women. He delivers a monologue, speaking about how incidents of rape have shot up in the country of late. He talks of love, consent and evil. He sings:

“Ehe haal dekh ke sabke aankh nam ba, sach to ehe ba ki aisan aadmi ke phansiyon ke saza bahut kam ba. 

(Everyone‘s eyes are moist after seeing such atrocities/But the truth is that even death by hanging isn’t punishment enough for such people).”

Then, he gets to it. To describing a wife who’s alone at home because her husband is away. As she watches news of rape cases on TV, the maugi (housewife), says Rangila “Ke kuch kuch huwa ta aur ka kehlas ki (Gets aroused and you know what she says)?” He ruffles his hair, leans towards the woman on his left, smiles salaciously. The dholak, tabla and harmonium begin to play, signaling the impending arrival of a refrain you must listen for.

“Dekhat ho par TV ghare chhod ke biwi balatkaar hota hai aye Rajau. Arre uhe khati Holiya me Dewara ke haathe humaar hota aye rajau 

(The wife’s watching TV, which broadcasts news of rape cases/And she says that during Holi, my brother-in-law does the same to me).”

The two women on either side of Rangila break into a kind of sedate twist, clapping their hands, wide grins on their faces.

There were widespread protests against the lyrics of Yo Yo Honey Singh after the Delhi Rape, to the point of a petition for the cancellation of his concert. But fewer people know, perhaps, of Guddu Rangila.

Rangila has been a Bhojpuri singer for over 16 years. He has recorded, he says, “more than 250 albums” and sung “more than 2000 songs”. He burst into the consciousness of the Bhojpuri music hearing public with his fifth album Ja Jhar Ke (What A Swagger) in 1999. His most successful albums since, Humra Hau Chaheen (I Want ‘That’), Jeans Dhila Kara (Loosen Your Jeans), Hum Lem (I Will Take) and, of course, Rasdaar Holi (A Saucy Holi) are brimming with sexual allegories that are even more vulgar than they sound. In case you think that isn’t possible here are a few examples. A ‘Mango Frooti’ (a popular processed mango pulp drink) in a Guddu Rangila song implies a pair of breasts, as do ‘lemons’. ‘Laal rasgulla’ (red rasgulla) is a euphemism for a vagina. ‘Maal’ (commodity), in Rangilaspeak is a girl and a pichkari (Spray) a penis and so on… Rangila’s popularity mushroomed over the years and in 2004 T-Series—a big Indian music company that has been a huge beneficiary of his rocketing album sales—christened him the ‘Diamond Star’. He is the only Bhojpuri singer to have been bestowed the title so far. He began singing as well as acting in Bhojpuri movies in 2006, and has since played the lead in five of them. His recently released film Ghayal Sher (Wounded Lion), saw him starring opposite Rani Chatterji, one of the highest rated actresses in the Bhojpuri film industry. Around five years ago, he founded his own company, Sanjivani Entertainment, that earns lakhs of rupees a month via both online and offline album sales as well as YouTube revenue.

***

“I think I should wear a shirt.”

Rangila has unruly shoulder length hair and a rotund chubby face. He has just walked into the centre of the living room of a two-bedroom-hall-kitchen flat in Bhayandar, Mumbai, where he is putting up. He wears a grey vest and faded brown knee-length shorts. On his wrist is a red kalaava (a sacred Hindu thread) and a slim bracelet. There are a couple of astrological rings on his fingers. But the most striking thing about his appearance is a long fake pearl necklace that hangs from his neck, stopping just above his navel. The vest is tight for him, especially around his bulging stomach. It also reveals an immense amount of chest hair. Interestingly, he chose to walk in wearing just that and a pearl necklace and thought of a shirt only when he realized there was a photographer in the room.

He looks around the room, hoping for a reply. Besides the photographer and me there is also his assistant, but no one says anything. He disappears back inside the house.

His assistant stares blankly into space. He has shoulder length hair too, only freshly combed. “I am Mritunjaya Mastana,” he says, when I introduce myself. “I am Guddu Bhaiyya‘s (Bhaiyya means elder brother) manager, shishya (disciple), accountant and assistant.” Mastana accompanies Rangila to live shows. He opens for him with bhajans, or devotional songs. “I charge Rs. 10,000 for an hour,” says Mastana. He says Rangila charges Rs. 50,000 for an hour. He performs for about three hours at every show.

“Bhaiyya‘s live shows are something else,” Mastana continues. “People go mad. Someone’s head gets smashed, someone falls from the rooftop. The tickets range from Rs. 100 to Rs. 500.”

Rangila reappears wearing a dark blue shirt with the first two buttons left open. He settles on a black rexine sofa, opens a packet of Miraag khaini (chewing tobacco), pours and crushes some of its contents with his thumb and declares, to no one in particular, “I like eating readymade khaini.” He puts the tobacco in his mouth, dusts his hands and sinks deeper into the sofa.

On a small table to his right is a packet of Marlboro lights and a tall glass with crushed cigarette butts. Under it is a black motorcycle helmet. On its back are printed the words: “Hira Handa”.

This is Rangila’s world, one he carries with him wherever he goes. His wife and children live in Dwarka, in Delhi. But Rangila spends a lot of time outside the city, especially in Mumbai and Patna. Here, stuck on the wall of a rented apartment with uneven adhesive tape is a poster of his film Ghayal Sher. Rangila is at the centre, looking furious, blood dripping from his forehead, his fist raised. “Nayak, Diamond Star, Gayak Guddu Rangila (Actor, Diamond Star, Singer Guddu Rangila),” it reads on top. On the bottom: “Nirmatri: Deepa Yadav (Director: Deepa Yadav)” has been printed in small font.

On another wall are portraits of the Hindu gods Lakshmi and Ganesh and the Sikh guru Gobind Singh. A plaque, larger than any of these portraits, hangs next to them.

“Shree Guddu Rangila ji, Bhojpuri gaayak, Diamond star. Aapko yeh samman samaaj me utkrusht karyakon ke liye sanstha dwara sammanit kiya jaa raha hai (Shri Guddu Rangila ji, Bhojpuri Singer, Diamond Star. This respect has been accorded to you by the committee to honour you for your uplifting social work),” it reads.

On a tiny plastic stool in the room is a VCD Player with a few VCDs lying untidily on it. VCDs with videos of Ranglia’s own music albums—Lahanga Lutayil Holi Mein (She Was Robbed Of Her Skirt, On Holi), and Chhituaa Ke Didi, Tani Pyaar Kare De (Chhituaa’s Sister, Let Me Love You) as well as those of another Bhojpuri singer, Khesari Lal. What sticks out is the only non-Bhojpuri album in the lot: 50 Super Hit Songs of Kumar Sanu.

***

Before Guddu Rangila became ‘Diamond star’, before his risqué numbers began topping all the Bhojpuri music charts, his name was Sidheshwara Nand Giri. And Giri wanted to sing “soft romantic songs. Just like Kumar Sanu”. Sanu, from the state of West Bengal, neighbouring Bihar, was a leading Bollywood playback singer in the nineties, with innumerable hits and awards to his name. Incidentally, he too had changed his name— from Kedarnath Bhattacharya. He has since then faded into obscurity while Giri’s star continues to rise, even if not for “soft romantic songs”.

Giri was born in Chainpur, a hamlet in Bihar’s Siwan district. He went to a co-educational school where, “girls used to sit in the front and boys in the back”. Rangila remembers that only the students who did well in class by studying hard could talk to the girls, on the pretext of “exchanging notes”. Giri wasn’t one of them. “Nakal bhi akal se hota hai na (Even for cheating you need brains, right)? Everyone used to memorize the answers. I used to memorize the pages which contained the answers in the book I would cheat from,” he smiles. “I got decent marks from the first to the tenth grade— solely by cheating.”

Giri started to sing when he was 11. “I began by singing Ashtjaam songs, where you have to continuously sing ‘Hare Rama Hare Krishna’. And even in Ashtjaam, I used to sing like Kumar Sanu. What’s there in your mind is not easy to forget,” he says. “Then I began singing songs for Ram Leela and Shiv Leela (plays held during festivals celebrated in honour of the gods Ram and Shiv). So I slowly started getting offers for bhakti (devotional) songs.”

A few years later, Giri switched to singing kirtan (a genre of devotional songs), but this wasn’t his forte. “Kirtan isn’t just about singing songs. It requires you to act and do comedy. I saw I wasn’t able to do it properly, so I stopped singing kirtan,” he says. Then he sang nirgun gaan— monotheistic devotional Bhojpuri folk songs about one God who is formless. “But I saw I would be ‘medium’ (not very good) in nirgun gaan as well. So I stopped singing that too.”

Meanwhile, his father wasn’t happy he was wasting his time singing. “My father wanted me to become an SP (Superintendent of Police), DSP (District Superintendent of Police) or a (District) Collector.” So Giri enrolled in a college. But he finally left Chainpur for Delhi in 1993 at the age of 17. He wanted to be a Bhojpuri singer who sang for T-Series.

“At that time,” says Rangila. “Swarg me jaana aur T-Series me gaana ek hi baat tha (Singing for T-Series was like to going to heaven).”

“I had hit upon an idea,” he says. “In those days, dholak and jhaal (traditional Indian instruments) were prominent instruments in Bhojpuri music. ‘Musical’ nahin tha us samay (There was no concept of ‘musical’). So I thought, ‘Let’s do a new thing. Let’s sing ‘musical’ Bhojpuri’.” ‘Musical’ is what Rangila calls songs which are composed using contemporary Western instruments “such as the guitar, the keyboard or the mouth organ”.

In 1995, Giri went to the T-series office in Noida on the outskirts of Delhi. He said to the guard at the front door that he wanted to meet Gulshan Kumar (the T-Series’ founder). He wasn’t allowed to pass. “What else would the watchman have said?” says Rangila. “‘Who are you? What are you worth?’ It’s a company where so many musicians would have gone looking a chance to make it. But he didn’t let me enter, so that was the end of it.”

He adds: “On my journey back, Poore raaste gaali dete hua aaye T-Series ko (I kept on cursing T-Series during my entire journey).” Giri didn’t approach any other recording company. “T-Series hi sab kuch tha (T-Series was everything),” he reiterates.

To support himself financially, Giri took up a job in a Delhi garment shop, trimming extraneous threads from clothes. Every day at work, he would “remove threads from 30 to 40 shirts”. He earned Rs. 750 per month. Simultaneously, he kept singing ashtjaam and kirtan songs at local performances. In 1995, at one such show at the Sagarpur Shiv Mandir in Delhi, Giri held his own against a kirtan singer who was notorious for heckling his competitors. At the end of the show, Sharma (Rangila doesn’t remember his first name), an owner of a fledgling music company called Ganga Music, gave Rangila his card. “I thought: Now the company guy himself is calling me! Now I’ll become a star!”

Giri reached the address given on Sharma’s card. He had expected something like the T-Series building and was dejected when he realized that Sharma’s office was merely a section of his modest home. “But I was sure I wanted to sing songs my way. So I told him to do a ‘musical’,” says Rangila. There was a catch. Producing a ‘musical’ album would cost Rs. 40,000 and Giri was a new singer. So Sharma made him sign a bond for Rs. 40,000, which Giri would repay by recording his first four albums with Ganga Music for free.

The means for producing an album were in place. But Sidheshwara Nand Giri, known as Guddu Giri then, needed a new name that would appeal to a younger audience. “Guddu was my pet name back in my village,” says Rangila. “Lekin blood mein jo ho jaata hai naa ki humko aisa geet gaa kar youth ko khush karna hai (But there’s this thing that happens in your blood, right? That you want to sing songs that make youngsters happy).” The big Bollywood hit running in the theatres at the time was Rangeela (meaning ‘Colourful’). “That Rangeela film had done quite well,” Rangila recalls. “Toh lagaa diye (So I took the title for my surname).”

Rangila’s first release was titled Jawaani Ka Toofan (The Storm of Youth). “Log 100% sure hote hain na, main 300% sure tha ki yeh album hit hoga (People are 100% sure sometimes, right? But I was 300% sure that my album would be a hit),” he says. According to Rangila, the album must have sold more than “1.5 lakh copies”. “Uske baad sapna poora hua (After that, my dream got fulfilled).”

Rangila recorded his next three albums with Ganga Music in a span of two months. But they couldn’t surpass the success of Jawaani Ka Toofan. They were all, as he puts it, “medium”. But it was Rangila’s fifth album, Ja Jhar Ke, that was his big ticket. Rangila had already recorded four albums with Ganga Music for free, and now was the time to cash in. But Sharma refused. “Jhagdaa ho gaya Ganga company se (I fought with Ganga company),” he says. “He wanted that I keep on singing for free for him. Par tab tak T-Series ko bhanak lag gayaa thaa (But by that time T-Series had noticed me).”

In 1998, Rangila re-recorded Ja Jhaar Ke with T-Series. He was paid Rs. 25,000. “Back then 25,000 was worth what 25 lakhs is worth now.” He also re-recorded his first four albums with T-Series. Rangila was a singer with T-Series now. “Phir toh kya tha? Phir toh raaj chalne laga humaara (Then what? Then I started ruling the roost).”

***

The story of Bhojpuri music, in our times, is inextricably linked with the story of Bhojpuri cinema. In 2003, the Bhojpuri film industry was enthused with the release of Sasura Bada Paisawala. Made on a budget of Rs. 35 lakh, the film made more than Rs. 4.5 crore at the box-office. Since then, the Bhojpuri film industry has evolved from being a cottage industry to a behemoth that makes more than 100 films a year, hosts its own award shows, and has enlisted big Bollywood stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgn and Hema Malini to act in its films. Avijit Ghosh, the author of Cinema Bhojpuri, examines the coming-into-its-own of the industry in a Times of India article titled Mofussil’s Revenge. “The Bhojpuri film industry’s revival isn’t only about a regional genre finding its market,” he writes. “The [hinterland] audience seems to be telling mainstream Bollywood: We want our own smells and sights in the movies. As in post-Mandal politics, regions and communities are asserting themselves through cinema that suits their aesthetics.” As Bollywood turned its gaze westwards as well as towards a more urban multiplex audience, Bhojpuri cinema took over some of the ground it ceded. It fulfilled the desire of a section of Indian rural and rurban populace for entertainment rooted in the hinterland. Bhojpuri music—both film and non-film music—is the product of a similar demand and an expression that most from its home state can easily identify with.

Also, the market for Bhojpuri music and cinema isn’t just people living in Bihar, but also many migrant workers in states such as Delhi and Maharashtra. These songs remind them of what home sounds like in a foreign land. “Jiska des, uska bhes (A person’s culture is determined by his or her homeland),” says Pankaj Thakur, who hails from Katihar, in Bihar, and works in Pune as a cook. “Maharashtrian people understand Marathi songs. Similarly Biharis understand Bihari songs. Even now I have around 300 songs on my mobile.”

This Bihari diaspora accounts for a more widespread audience for the songs of singer-songwriters like Rangila.  Songs which are now being rediscovered on the internet. In the last few years, aided by YouTube, Bhojpuri songs have re-surfaced online and acquired cult status. For segments of the Indian and international urban audience, comprising both Biharis and non-Biharis, these songs—owing to their sub-standard production qualities and crude lyrics—have become a source of amusement and derision. Surabhi Sharma, the documentary filmmaker whose documentary Bidesia in Bambai explores the lives of Bihari migrants in Mumbai empowered by Bhojpuri music, finds this sort of simplistic outlook problematic. “If you see singers like Guddu Rangila or Rampat Haraami (another popular singer of risque Bhojpuri numbers), I will be still wary of dismissing them as misogynistic,” she says. “Of course, there’s a misogynistic angle to it. There’s a desire being created out of objectifying a woman. That is central. But the reason why a VCD or a YouTube link to a Guddu Rangila song really looks irksome and disturbing is because it exists outside of any context. There’s a lot more that you can listen to in songs beyond the literal text. To pull out the lyrics of the song and try and evaluate the entire musical tradition through it, that becomes a huge problem.”

True. It could be argued, however, that it’s not the VCDs or YouTube videos that place these musical traditions out of context as much as singers like Rangila themselves, simply with the lyrics they choose to pen, which alters the nature of the song drastically.

Playful irreverence, often bordering on vulgarity, has been an ingredient of folk songs that have been part of the Indian hinterland’s longest held traditions. For example, Gaari (derived from the Hindi word gaali, which translates into ‘swear’) songs are integral to Bihari weddings. One of the many rituals in such a wedding is a Dwar Puja— performed to welcome the groom as he arrives with his baraat (the groom’s family) at the bride’s door. The bride is led to the mandap by her friends and cousins and they sing cheeky, coarse songs, flouting ideas of conventional familial propriety, to taunt the groom and his family. The songs are quite unsparing and target especially the bride’s future father-in-law. In fact, the 1986 Bhojpuri film, Dulha Ganga Paar Ke, contains one such gaari song, Chala Sakhi Mil Ke, which opens with the lines: “Swaagat me gaari sunayin, aa chala sakhi mil ke/ Inka ke langte nachayin, aa chala sakhi mil ke (We will welcome with swearing/ Come friends, all together now/ We will make them dance naked/ Come friends, all together now)… ”

This tradition helps see the gender roles in a renewed light—here the women are assertive and vocal—and cautions one against the easy sanctimony listeners often adopt while hearing anything that’s even remotely bawdy. Gaari songs are examples of how perceived vulgarity can function instead as an agent of creativity, possibly, and even social cohesiveness or simply great fun.

What becomes unsettling, however, is when the explicit content has sprung up not purely out of tradition or a creative urge, but from a need to pander to the base demands of as large an audience as it is possible to usurp— for profit.

Manoj Tiwari, a prominent actor and singer in the Bhojpuri film industry (he played the protagonist in Sasura Bada Paisawala), has often lashed out against obscene Bhojpuri songs. “I have always maintained that our state should have its own censor board,” says Tiwari. “So that if there are people who are singing vulgar songs then someone will stop them. I feel such songs must be banned. Songs can make you laugh but they should not shame someone. And if there are people who are singing those songs, then they should be punished.”

“I am not in favour of banning anything,” says Avijit Ghosh. “Banning books, music, films… Once a culture of ban starts then you don’t know what to ban and what not to. So this whole trajectory of debate goes into a different realm.”

Talking specifically about Rangila, Tiwari says, “He has also sung some good songs. But he couldn’t understand which songs of his were liked the most. 1998, 1999 was a good phase of Guddu Rangila, when he had sung Ja Jhar Ke. It was that song that made him big. Ja Jhar Ke didn’t have any vulgarity as such. But the problem was he saw it is a vulgar song— so he couldn’t understand what made him successful.”

Tiwari also feels that such songs project an image of the state and the language that is misleading. “These songs cause a lot of harm to the Bhojpuri region. For instance, I was doing a show on Life Ok, Welcome – Baazi Mehmaan Nawazi Ki, which had a lot of actresses like Ragini Khanna, Negar Khan. And whenever I used to talk about Bhojpuri and whenever someone wanted to put me down, people gave me examples of those (vulgar) songs,” says Tiwari. “But, the fact is, there are also many singers (in the state) such as Bharat Sharma, Sharda Sinha, who have sung many great songs, and their fans are all over the world.”

Kalpana Patowary, who hails from Assam, is another famous mainstream Bhojpuri singer. Like other mainstream Bhojpuri singers, she also began her career by singing a lot of songs with overt sexual connotations. But, unlike others, she didn’t get stereotyped and managed to diversify her oeuvre. One way she did this was by singing different kinds of songs in various languages— Hindi, English, Marathi, and a host of other regional languages. She’s appeared in Coke Studio’s Season 3 and has performed for music festivals such as the Rajasthan International Folk Festival and the NH7 Weekender. In 2012, she released The Legacy of Bhikhari Thakur, a Bhojpuri folk album based on the songs of the celebrated Bhojpuri playwright, Bhikhari Thakur. But, today, 11 years later, Patowary finds herself disillusioned with the very music industry that catapulted her to fame: “Today the state of (Bhojpuri) music is such that often I have to leave the studio, refusing to perform. I have to return the money. I have to leave a lot of songs just because of the lyrics,” says Patowary in the documentary, 50 Years of Bhojpuri Cinema. “Recently, there was a song where the lyrics were about a crooked button on a blouse and it also mentioned the word petticoat. I felt that was cheap. Later they changed the lyrics though. If you want to show sexual pleasure then of course you should, because it’s a part of our life, but it should be shown in an aesthetic manner.”

What is the reason for such songs continuing to flood the market then? One answer could be that the social, economic and cultural realties of more affluent and educated Biharis have little in common with their poorer counterparts. “Do you think the white-collared Biharis—the IAS officers, the management executives—identify with Bihar at all? They are not very comfortable with their Bihari identity,” says Ratnakar Tripathy, Senior Research Fellow at the Asian Development Research Institute. Tripathy believes the “white-collared Biharis refuse to support Bhojpuri” as a language and culture, and “when someone does it, they rubbish them”. He says: “It’s a very strange relationship between the lower classes and upper classes in Bihar. The Bihari elite doesn’t patronize Bhojpuri and the ones who patronize Bhojpuri tend to vulgarize it, at times. So this is a cultural dead-end.”

Patowary adds: “I have seen in the towns of Bihar that the younger generation says: ‘In our homes, we speak Hindi. We don’t know Bhojpuri.’”

In 2009, when Sneha Khanwalkar and Varun Grover went to Bihar to research sounds and music from the state for Gangs of Wasseypur (Khanwalkar was the music director, Grover the lyricist), they did so, according to Grover, “with a blank slate”. While digging, they discovered how the local popular culture had shaped and dictated the aspirations of Bihar’s youngsters. Grover has an interesting story.

When Khanwalkar and Grover met the 16 year old Deepak Kumar for the first time, he was a “very simple kid, very timid. He wasn’t even sure if he could sing. He had come with his Guruji, and was carrying a harmonium,” remembers Grover. “In fact, he wasn’t even a chela (disciple), because his Guruji had said that, ‘He has just started singing. It would take him years.’” As Guruji’s more experienced disciples auditioned in front of Khanwalkar, Kumar stood quietly in a corner. Despite his Guru’s reservation, Khanwalkar persuaded him to sing. He said he would sing a song of Pawan Singh (a popular mainstream Bhojpuri singer, known for a song named Lollypop Lage Lu or ‘You Look Like A Lollypop’). Khanwalkar liked his voice and Kumar ended up singing two songs in Gangs of Wasseypur I: Moora and Humni Ke Nagariya Chhoda Re Baba.

Khanwalkar and Grover met Kumar six months later for another recording, when Gangs of Wasseypur I’s music had already been released. By this time Kumar had become a ‘star’ of sorts in Bihar. “He came with the CD, and he said, ‘Bhaiyya mera na apna CD, apna album aa gaya hai (I have got my own CD, my own album released).’ The first album he got as a 16 year old was called Petticoat mein… some Bhojpuri word, I don’t remember,” says Grover. “So that’s what, no? The moment you become popular, you get to do this kind of lewd stuff. He didn’t get to do another album like Gangs… though he had proved himself in that kind of genre, that kind of music. All he still got to do was this kind of crude stuff. And he grabbed that opportunity.”

***

Naigaon is one of Mumbai’s Northern suburbs but the ease with which it flouts most Mumbai rules makes you wonder whether it’s a part of the city at all. For instance, all the auto-rickshaws at Naigaon station ply on a ‘sharing basis’. When you hail one, the driver refuses to budge till he has three passengers seated at the back and two at the front, including himself. As you drive off, cramped, you see many open spaces— mostly lush green fields. The buildings, just a few storeys high, are nowhere near Mumbai’s skyscrapers, but they look as though they’ve been around for a while. The roads are rocky and uneven. There are not too many people or cars around. In fact, Naigaon could easily pass of as suburban Patna.

It’s here that Guddu Rangila chose to buy a flat. It is a modest space with just one bedroom, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. It’s been over a month since my last interview with Rangila who’s still asleep even though it’s late in the afternoon. Instead, eyeing me suspiciously from his perch on a couch in the living room is a man wearing a white vest that clings to his protruding stomach and a pair of blue baseball shorts. Mritunjaya Mastana keeps bustling in and out of the room, looking busy, putting things in order before “Bhaiyyaji” wakes up.

Rangila has moved in recently. The furniture in the living room seems awkwardly arranged. The couch with the man in the blue shorts is at one end while another similar sofa is placed as far away from this one as possible— so that people seated on each would have to yell at each other to be heard. A table with a glass top is sandwiched between this other sofa and a TV set. Huge posters of new or upcoming Guddu Rangila movies take up most of two of the walls: Sasuro Kabhi Damaad Rahal (Because The Father-in-Law Was Also Once The Son-in-Law), and Piritiya Kahe Ke Lagawla (Why Did You Fall In Love With Me?).

“Aap kyun aaye hain yahan? (Why have you come here)?” asks the man in the blue shorts.

“Interview ke liye (For an interview),” I say.

“Usse humara kya fayeda hoga (How will it help us)?”

While switching on my laptop, I say something about the importance of knowing where an artist comes from and what bearing this may have on his work.

“Yeh Apple ka sign mein light jalta hai kya (Does the Apple sign glow)?” He stares intently at the laptop. “Shining bahut hai ismein. Lagta hai radium laga hai (It shines a lot. I think it has radium).”

I nod.

A few minutes later, he asks for my laptop and notices that I have jotted down our conversation on a word-file. He seems uncomfortable with this at first, but eventually this gets us talking.

His name is Deepak Mandal. He heads a “tours and travels” company in Mumbai. Before that, he says, “Main naacha karta tha (I used to dance).” He smiles slightly, stealing a quick glance at the bedroom, where Rangila is sleeping. “In Kalpana Patowary’s group.” He had wanted to act in films, but had learnt that it would cost him Rs. 20,000. So he decided to try his hand at the transport business instead.

A few minutes later, Mastana runs into the living room, looking very harried. “Bhaiyyaji uth gaye hain. Unko cigarette chahiye (Bhaiyyaji has woken up. He needs a cigarette),” he says. Mastana manages to find one and rushes back out. Ten minutes later, Rangila enters. Mandal vacates his couch for him and sits next to me. Rangila’s eyes are puffed. He looks out of the balcony and lights a cigarette.

An odd silence floats through the room. The interview begins. Mandal remains sitting next to me like a watchful bodyguard, peeking curiously at times into my list of questions, often answering, out of turn, questions put to Rangila.

But this isn’t the only thing that makes striking up a conversation with Guddu Rangila difficult. Rangila has three ways of dealing with tough queries. Either he remains non-committal, like a politician, and says: Apni apni soch hai (Each person has his or her own point of view).

Or, when feeling more verbose, he comes up with bizarre non-sequiturs. Here are a few of the most commonly employed:

Mard ko dard nahin hota (A man doesn’t feel any pain).

Dulhan wahi jo piya mann bhaaye (An ideal bride is the one who pleases the husband).

Chalti ka naam gaadi hai, nahin chala ton kabaadi (If it works, and moves, it’s a car, if it doesn’t then it’s rubbish).

He utters such sentences, often out of context, as if they’re the smartest one-liners on earth, then sinks back into silence.

As a third option, as if this wasn’t enough in itself to make you flee, he loves to reinterpret Hindu mythology. He frequently cites absolutely irrelevant tales of the gods Shiv and Parvati or—and this is an obsession—how we are living in the wrong yug (age), and how kalyug is utterly rotten, to validate his actions and beliefs.

We begin by talking about his detractors. “People who are above the age of 50 don’t like my songs,” says Rangila. “In fact they shouldn’t even be alive. They should all die. They are just a burden on this planet.” That simple. “They would like all songs related to Gods,” he continues. “But they won’t have anything to do with girls. So, I tell them that in your age, you would have also played a lot of gilli ganda, done a lot of things. Now you should sing bhajan and earn punya.” Gilli danda, a popular Indian game akin to cricket, is a euphemism for sex for the purposes of this conversation.

I plod on. Rangila’s songs and videos are obsessed with a woman’s physical attributes. She is an object to be in awe of, possessed or lampooned. There are constant references to her body parts, how she’s being a tease, or how the male (in most cases this is Rangila himself) will win her over finally. But that could be just Rangila the performer, playing to the gallery. What does Rangila, the person, believe in, really, when it comes to the opposite sex?

These pearls of wisdom:

“A girl and a boy can never be friends. If there has to be friendship, then it should be either between boys or between girls.”

“You fall in love only after you are married. Anything that’s before marriage is meaningless.”

“You should love whom you get married to. What kind of love is there before marriage? I didn’t even know of something called a girlfriend before marriage. Anyway, it’s a wrong system. What’s the need?”

For someone who writes and sings the most lewd lyrics imaginable, Rangila’s personal outlook is surprisingly conservative. He was married in 2002. “It was an arranged marriage,” he says and appears reticent when I ask him for further details. He has two children.

“I fall in love every day,” he says. “I had closed pyaar ka (love’s) factory in 2002. There’s no love in this world. There’s only selfishness.”

‘Closed love’s factory’? I ask him to elaborate.

“In 2002, in my album Humra Hau Chaheen, there was a dialogue: Tell me one relationship, which doesn’t revolve around selfishness? When a girl is born to parents, they are not that happy as opposed to when a boy is born to them. Why is it like that? Isn’t that selfishness? Because a girl will get married and go away while the boy will take care of them even when they are old. The love between a husband and wife is also centered on selfishness. Why don’t a boy and boy get married? See, when it comes to husband and wife, if you don’t earn do you think the wife will care about you? She wouldn’t. You would have to earn. Isn’t that selfishness? If you won’t earn, what would she eat? A girl gets married to a boy because she can’t earn. There’s selfishness everywhere.”

I ask Rangila about his own marriage again, and whether he believes it follows this principle. “When you get a lot of love and respect outside, you won’t get the same at home, and vice versa,” is all he says. “Because if you’re getting a lot of adoration from outsiders you won’t have time to devote to your family.”

When I ask him about the obscenity in his songs, he comes up with the strangest suggestion. “Recently, I sang a song, Ghus gayil, phans gayil, adas gayil (It went inside, got stuck and stayed there),” says Rangila. “People would think that it’s vulgar. What do they know what I have written? I have actually written this song about Asaram Bapu. It’s absolutely clear.” I stare at him, puzzled. Rangila has a smile playing on his lips.

I ask him about another song. The lyrics go: Khol ke dikha de gori laal rasgulla, toh ke karayeb hum dudhwa ke kulla (Show me your red rasgullah/ Then I will make you gargle with milk).

“What does that mean?” I ask him.

“This song is not mine. I don’t think I remember this song,” says Rangila.

I tell him the video of this song on YouTube features him and also the vocals are unmistakably his.

Rangila’s reply: “No song is bad. The kind of sunglasses you wear determines the kind of song you will see. If you wear red sunglasses and think you will see black, then that’s not possible. If you wear green, you can’t see white.”

Rangila’s songs are disturbing not simply because they are hyper-sexualized and cater to his audience’s baser instincts, but because they eschew any female participation. In most of his songs, there are no female vocals. The only role for a woman in a Guddu Rangila music video is to evade the advances of a plethora of men. She is on guard, and never voices her opinion. An unsettling power equation to say the least. We never really know what a woman is thinking about when Rangila talks about her body parts, expresses his discontentment about the fact that she might not be a virgin, or points towards her clothes and demands that she takes them off.

This absolute absence of consent—or conversation—in his songs is telling. Take Ae Tengra Ke Didi (Hey, Tengra’s elder sister), from his album, 80 Na 85 Humra 90 Chaheen (I don’t want 80 or 85. I want 90), Rangila places his fingers close to the girl’s breast and sings: Nibuwa gotail bate ras khacha khoch ba, gadrol jawani dekhi man humar gach ba (The ripe lemon has enough juice, and seeing your nubile body makes me happy). The camera zooms in. All this, while the girl makes it quite clear that she’s not interested— resisting his advances, rolling her eyes. Rangila appears to acknowledge this for a moment. He sings: Jabbe hoi man tor tabbe chahi (I want it only when you are ready).

But, soon after, he changes his mind: Prince guddu maani nahi chahe hoi phaansi, ihe baate pahile tor ijjat ke naasi. Guddu ke jab mann hoi tabbe chahi (Prince Guddu will not listen to you even if that means he’s hanged, he will be the first one to ravage your honour. Guddu will get it when he wants it). At the end of the song, the girl finally lets herself be heard. And she says, “Jab na maanbe tab chal (If you don’t agree, then what’s the point. Let’s go)”. A thought here. What if she had refused?
I ask him about this and the recurring imagery in his songs and videos— of a woman hounded by him or by hordes of men, trying desperately to resist their advances, then yielding. “It might be the thinking of people who criticize me. The world doesn’t revolve around what some people think about my song. Don’t you think?” Rangila retorts. He is opaque, calm, his face almost expressionless.

Then, his voice booms: “Ladki cheeze aisa hai, sab koi dekhta hai (A girl is such a thing, everyone looks). Is there any harm in looking? God has made something good so that it may be seen. Of all the pleasures in the world the most beautiful is nain bhog (the pleasure you get from looking at things). If I don’t see, then that means I am insulting her. God will feel bad. He will think, ‘I made someone so beautiful and no one is looking at her’.”

It’s not so much the outburst that’s disturbing as the way he says it. I wait for Rangila to break into a chuckle at the end. He doesn’t. He is staring at me with great sincerity, with an almost grim demeanour. His manner resembles that of a priest at a sermon.

In the last couple of years, Rangila’s songs have begun featuring a few female playback singers at times. He is unhappy about this: “When I used to sing everything by myself it was better. I used to sing the female parts as well. Now, people’s points of view have changed,” says Rangila. “Lekin woh faaltu hai (But that is rubbish).”

“I have written a line on this too,” says Rangila, when I bring him back to the subject of his portrayal of women and women’s issues. “Original balatkaari ke yadi ye duniya me talaasi huile to sabse pahile dewara sabke phaansi bhaile (If there’s a search for the ‘original’ rapists in this world, then brothers-in-law will be the first ones to be hanged).” He hates brothers-in-law apparently. I mention that he has a similar reference in his song Balatkaar Hota Aye Rajau for last year’s Holi. “Shuraat toh wahi sab karta hai (They are the ones who start it),” He says.“Now, a bhabhi (sister-in-law) is like a mother. But people of kalyug are such that they think that the bhabhi belongs half to them. This is wrong. This system is wrong. How can you have fun with your bhabhi?”

Kalyug and brothers-in-law. And the system. That’s what it boils down to. “I merely sing about what’s happening in kalyug,” says Rangila. “Accha hotaa hai to accha gaate hain, kharaab hotaa hai to kharaab gaate hain (If good is happening then I will sing about good things, if something bad is happening then I will sing about bad things).”

He orders an assistant to get him paan (betel leaf). The assistant, who was listening at the door so far, breaks out of his reverie. He goes into the kitchen and returns with a glass of water. “I had asked for paan not paani (water)),” says Rangila. He shakes his head, distraught. I wonder if he will bring up kalyug again. He doesn’t. The minion, flustered by now, runs out to find paan.

Rangila carries on: “I just say what happens. Even Manoj [Tiwari] sang a song… I think the lines were Goriya Apna Dupatta Sambhaal (Fair girl, Mind Your Stole)… I don’t remember exactly. So, he’s saying what’s happening,” says Rangila. “What’s wrong in this? If there’s an odhni (stole), you should cover yourself with it. You are sending a message.”

I ask him what message he had intended to convey with the lines: Bada jaldi badh gayil goriya tohaar mango frooty re, jaldi batawa hum se ki ras kab choosi re (Girl, your Mango Frooty has grown too soon. Tell me quickly, when will I be able to suck its juice)? “There’s a lot of message in that song,” he says. “Now everything can’t be explained. Paani paani ka dosh hota hai (A Hindi idiom that roughly translates into: Every kind of water has its own unique fault).”

“Explain?” I ask him

“It’s better that you don’t understand.”

I coax him. Finally, he says: “You can understand it like this: “Umar ke hisaab se sab kuch badhta ghatta hai. Usi ke anusaar badhna ghattna chahiye. Usse zada kuch bhi badhega ghatega toh wo bura kaha jayega (According to one’s age everything increases or decreases in size. And things should increase or decrease according to age only. If things increase or decrease more than one’s age entitles them to, then they will be criticized).”

There’s that saintly expression again. Rangila is now smiling benignly.

There’s more. “For the festival of Holi, girls should only put colours on girls, same with boys. If a boy puts colour on a girl, it’s wrong. I don’t like that system,” he says. This, despite the fact that almost all his Holi songs milk the sexual flippancy that’s synonymous with the festival. In one of his most curious videos, Kutta Pos Diha (Domesticate a dog by my name), a man is on all fours, barking like a dog while Rangila has a leash around his neck, and is patting his head. There’s also a girl, naturally, surrounded by a bunch of men. In a matter of seconds the music kicks in and everyone begins to gyrate vigorously (except, well, the man on all fours). Rangila sings: “Holi me personal maal bhi ho jaala sarkaari. Abki Holi chahe chale goli, Likh ke kahin khons diha. Taara haun me na rang lagawni tah, mora naam pe kutta pos diha (During Holi even personal belongings become public. In this Holi, even if bullets fire, write this down somewhere: If I don’t put a colour right ‘there’, you can domesticate a dog on my name).”

Mandal, unable to hold himself any longer, interrupts the conversation with his two bits: “If people didn’t like his songs, then how did they become such huge hits?  What Bhaiyya said was right— that if you think about the song Ghus gayil, phans gayil, adas gayil (the song “about Asaram Bapu”) in some incorrect way, then where will your mind wander? If people don’t like the song then why are they watching it? They should ignore it.”

This idea, that Rangila sings as he does not for gain but for the people, has been asserted by the singer himself. In song, no less. Rangila sang Bhaasa Bhojpuri Ke (The language of Bhojpuri) which had the line: “Bhaasa Bhojpuri ke uthayi kaise ho? Sabbe suna ta hi oohi to sunayi kaise ho (How do I uplift the language of Bhojpuri? If everyone listens only to those [profane] songs, then how can I make them listen to something else)?”

But today he contradicts this thought. In all these hours spent with him, there has been only one brief moment of honest exchange.

“I wanted to sing like Kumar Sanu,” says Rangila. “But I saw this wasn’t possible, so you have to find a way somewhere. What matters is what the public likes. Public is janta janardhan (almighty). You sing for them, not for yourself.”

But did he ever try to sing those soulful romantic numbers he had dreamt of singing as Giri? To sing “like Kumar Sanu”? “To produce a another album like Bewafa Sanam (‘Unfaithful Lover’, one of Rangila’s rare successful romantic albums) it would take me anywhere close to 6 months,” he lets out. “On the other hand, if I need to make a ‘double meaning’ album, even 15 days are more than enough. In 15 days, I can write around 8 such songs, record them. Bewafa Sanam took around 3 months to write. Because every line has to be powerful. No line can be less powerful than the previous; it has to come from the heart.” He isn’t sermonizing now. He falls silent after this.

Then: “Till 2010, the trend of ‘double meaning’ songs was okay. But now it has become too much. In fact, kalyug itself is ganda (dirty). If we were really pure we would never have been born in kalyug.”

I ask him to define kalyug. “Kalyug is the yug when what we planned doesn’t come to be, and what happens instead is something we didn’t think of in our wildest imaginings,” he says. “It’s the yug where what you’re seeing isn’t really taking place. And what’s happening actually— you cannot possibly see. Don’t you think this is unfortunate?”

It is. As is Rangila in kalyug. Stuck between Kumar Sanu and his ‘double meaning’ songs, between his khaini and his Marlboro Lights, between himself and Sidheshwara Nand Giri.

Our conversation comes to an end. He leaves. Mandal follows him to his room to discuss some business. Mastana enters the living room and plops down on the sofa where Rangila was seated. Dusk has settled in. Since no light was turned on during the interview the living room has grown steadily darker and through the darkness I hear Mastana’s voice: Har kalakaar ka alag alag rutba hota hai, khwahish hota hai (Every artist has his own style, his own forte, his own desires).” I nod silently, still jotting down Rangila’s definition of kalyug.

Then:

“Be it Manoj Tiwari or Pawan Singh, no one has been marked ‘Diamond’ yet in the world of singing. But he’s a ‘Diamond Star’.”

There is a pause. Then Mastana asks me pointedly: “You understand what a diamond is, don’t you?”

The really odd thing about Regal Theatre is the numbers on the back of its seats. Walk by behind a tattered row in the front stalls and you will most likely find them out of sequence. ‘6’ comes after ‘9’. Then ‘11’, and so on. Like torn pages from a history book, shuffled, till you suddenly have Jawaharlal Nehru staring you in the eye.

In the early 1940s Nehru had come in to Delhi from Rangoon, with a film called Delhi Chalo on the war of liberation Subhas Chandra Bose was fighting against the British in the East. His relative, Rajan Nehru, requested Rajeshwar Dayal to show the film at Regal. “I did not realize the risk involved in screening this uncensored film,” Dayal wrote on the theatre’s Golden Jubilee, in an article in a film journal called Screen, in 1988. It had been barely a few years since he had taken over the lease for the cinema in 1939. “I was surprised when I found that the full Congress High Command including Pandit Nehru came to this film,” he writes. The authorities found out. Dayal was sent a showcause notice asking why his license shouldn’t be cancelled. He rushed to Nehru for help. Finally, City Magistrate Kanwar Mahinder Singh Bedi bailed them out. That Nehru, seen as being at odds with Bose during this period, would go to such lengths to screen a film showcasing his work may seem strange. But nuances tend to emerge when you shuffle history.

There were palm trees at Regal’s porch back then. The foyer had chandeliers. The staff would don dinner suits and, on occasion, bow ties. Scotch and soda was available for seven and a half annas. Tickets for anything between eight annas to three rupees. Everyone would stand in queue, including the Deputy Commissioner of Delhi, the highest local authority at the time. “A thick maroon velvet curtain adorned the stage,” writes Dayal. When the Viceroy or Governor General visited, a red carpet would be laid out.

Located today in the middle of the crazy bustle that is Connaught Place, Regal, say reports, was the first building in the area. It was built in 1932, by Sobha Singh and designed by British architect Walter Sykes George (Dayal also credits Herbert Baker, who was working, along with Edwin Lutyens, on what would come to be known as Lutyen’s Delhi, for inputs.) Called the New Delhi Premier Theatre in the beginning, Regal, as it was renamed shortly after, came up with a large central porch, a sloping roof and brick masonry throughout. It went on to host, along with Hollywood movies, Western Classical maestros, Russian ballet and British theatre groups. On the top floor was a restaurant called Davicos (later ‘Standard Restaurant’) that was the toast of the town. “Is there truth in the rumours that New Delhi has become more cosmopolitan?” Hindustan Times columnist Captain P. L. Rau had asked after visiting Connaught Place in 1936. This cinema, the cultural epicenter of not just Connaught Place but also the new capital, formed a part of the answer.

“Kisi se nahin mila. Main chay baje chalaa jaataa hoon. (I met no one. I leave at six o’ clock in the evening).”

Amar Singh Verma has been working as an accountant at Regal since 1977. The lease of the cinema was transferred from the Dayal family to Vikas Mahajan—a hotelier from Jammu who spends his time in between the city and Delhi—in 2006. Verma, 73, is the only one around in the theatre who has witnessed Regal’s past years of glory, a meticulous citation that keeps reappearing on pages from its history, recounted in innumerable articles. He is wiry but dignified in the way that gentlemen from another era are, with grey hair combed neatly back, a shadow of a moustache and rimmed glasses. He is wearing a cream coloured shirt and dark brown trousers. He retired 12 years ago but still oversees things at the theatre, continuing in a kind of informal employment, because he feels he “is not employed but belongs here”. He lists dignitaries who’ve visited the theatre. “Lord Mountbatten, Pandit Nehru, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Dr. Zakir Hussain, Indira Gandhi… kisi se nahin mila,” he says, matter-of-factly, without a trace of regret. “Main chay baje chalaa jaataa hoon.” The dignitaries, apparently, always watched night shows.

The corridors and staircase of the cinema hall are lined with large black and white photographic portraits of stars from the yesteryears. Dev Anand, Meena Kumari, Nargis, Raj Kapoor… “Raj Kapoor and Nargis would spend time in this room,” says Verma. We are at his office, a tiny wood and glass cabin at the entrance to the cinema. “If someone intruded on their privacy they would scold them and shoo them away.” He giggles faintly. A stoic man, this is the first time his eyes light up. He remembers there being a line all the way to Malik Sweets, a few blocks away, for Raj Kapoor’s films. Verma saw Kapoor during the premiere of Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1968). He had not been working here then. “The whole theatre was decorated with flowers,” he remembers. “There was a havan (a Hindu ritual in which fire is worshipped) before the film began.” Among the first films Verma remembers watching here are Dilip Kumar’s Leader (1964) and the social drama Khilona (1970). The latter, a tale of how a tabloid editor gets ensnared by a politician-criminal nexus he then exposes, was a movie Kumar agreed to do after doctors advised the actor against taking on any more tragic roles as they were sapping him emotionally. “It shows you how political leaders exploit people and how they get their comeuppance, as they should,” says Verma with some feeling. He is disillusioned with the films of today. He cites the absence of social messages and a change in the conventional aesthetic of filmmaking as two reasons for the disconnect he feels from contemporary cinema. “Dance ke naam pe yog hota hai (in the name of dancing, you have people doing yoga on screen),” he says.

Dayal, one of the early champions of Hollywood in India, was not quite as conservative. In 1938, he travelled to Calcutta to book British films. He met Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s representative in India, Arthur Rolland Jones, who later became his “guru”. “For the first six, seven years, I used to type, myself, advertisements in newspapers,” Dayal writes. One of these was for Greta Garbo’s Ninotchka (1939) which had its North India premiere in Regal in December, 1940. Like with Leader and Kumar, the film was a departure from Garbo’s sombre and melancholy image. “Garbo Laughs!” the advertisement for it read. “Garbo Blushes!” “Garbo Loves!” Dayal would hang out with stars like Kenneth More and Lauren Bacall when they visited Delhi. Regal eventually also became a coveted venue for international film festivals. Eventually, besides English movies, Dayal began screening Russian films too. He remembers Mrs. Indira Gandhi had come to the theatre with her grandchildren for Operation Tiger.

There are other reminiscences in his account of those days. Dayal and his family would travel to Russia, often, as invitees at the Tashkent and Moscow Film Festivals. The Indian ambassador to the Soviet Union then, I. K. Gujral, who later became Prime Minister, was a friend of his. Dayal and his wife Niranjan Rani visited London to attend the world premiere of A Queen Is Crowned, shortly after Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953. They were guests of Lord J. Arthur Rank, Chairman of Rank Pictures and Pinewood Studios. The screening was “graced by the Royal Family”, Dayal writes.

“Woh shauq se, izzat se picture dikhaatay thay (He would show people movies with passion and with grace),” says Verma of Dayal. “Woh samay aisa thaa— picture dikhaatay toh kaam ho jaata tha (Those were the days when, if you showed someone a movie, they would do your work for you).” Verma doesn’t make any bones about saying that it was primarily because of running Regal that Dayal had many friends in high places, in India and abroad. He passed away in 2005, at the grand age of 93.

His son Sidheshwar Dayal, who passed away four years ago at the age of 71, has an article in the same issue of Screen on Regal and off-beat cinema. Born in the year his father took charge of the theatre, Sidheshwar’s life runs parallel to the Dayal family’s association with Regal. “I was considered lucky for my parents because my father, in that very year, signed a contract with MGM,” he writes.

Sidheshwar’s writes that his earliest memories of cinema are the films Chandralekha (1948), Andaz (1949) and Barsaat (1949) as well as a party the Dayals threw for Raj Kapoor at their house after the premiere of Barsaat. He believed the films of the fifties and sixties were “a beautiful blend of art and commerce”. Later, however, Indian films degenerated rapidly into “make-believe entertainment, stereotyped stories… ” “Situations were increasingly being shoehorned into every film,” he writes. It was at such a time that Regal screened Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome (1969) on December 4, 1970. It received “wide appreciation” and did “reasonably well at the box office too”. Films that followed at Regal include Basu Chatterji’s Sara Akash (1969), M. S. Sathyu’s Garm Hava (1974), Shyam Benegal’s Ankur (1974) and Nishant (1975), Govind Nihalani’s Aakrosh (1980), Shekhar Kapoor’s Masoom (1983) and Mahesh Bhatt’s Saaransh (1984). The Film Finance Corporation, NFDC’s predecessor, sought out Regal to stage a festival of its films.

“There are either good films or bad films,” writes Sidheshwar, while talking of the distinction between commercial and art cinema. “In principle, there is no such distinction,” he says.

Speaking about the cinema of the seventies and the eighties, Sidheshwar says, “The dream of every filmmaker was not to make a good film but a box office hit by hook or crook.”

A sweeping statement perhaps, but the other pages of Screen, where this article appeared in 1988, seem to stand testimony to his words. They too present a history of sorts. One has an advertisement for Khatron Ke Khiladi, where Dharmendra, the face of so much remarkable cinema in the sixties, plays a vigilante dressed like Zorro with a machine gun. On another page is a poster of Tohfa Mohabbat Ka with Kimi Katkar wearing a swimsuit, her hand on the shoulder of a young Govinda, who is wearing a pair of gaudy sunglasses and a muffler and holding a revolver. Elsewhere in the poster Katkar appears in something that looks like a tribal crown, designed, possibly, by Bombay’s Maganlal Dresswalla in the eighties.

Shuffle again. There are stories about Asha Parekh directing a Gujarati TV series for women and Mithun Chakraborty being “hand-in-glove” with the Left government in West Bengal (he’s with the Trinamool Congress now, the Left has been routed in the state) and organizing a gala event for them. On another page, next to a photograph of Meenakshi Sheshadri marching to Vaishnodevi, Chakraborty appears again. Apparently he and the actress Neelam got into a bit of a tiff on the sets of a film they were shooting, because she couldn’t understand the English he spoke. “I beg your pardon,” she would keep saying. So he decided to mimic her. On hearing this Neelam “said ‘hell’ and walked out into the lawn”.

The report goes on to say:

“The photographers who had accompanied us followed her and she continued to pose for all of them, if only to be away from Mithun.”

Another actress, Sonam, was also on set: “She replied in monosyllables looking far into the sea. As if immersed in some deep thought which needed greater attention.”

The issue of language creeps up again, on the same page, in a report on Tamil producer K. L. Baase producing a Hindi film whereas he “is not at all conversant in the language.”

The reports form part of a column called ‘Sound, Camera, Clap’ by Jivraj Burman. He makes everyone in the film business sound insane.

As I look over these pages the audience begins to line up outside Regal. The first show of the day is about to begin. Heropanti is showing presently. The popcorn and soft drink counters are being readied. “We will have a good house,” says Verma. “We have a good house still, sometimes. But not the same crowd.”

Sidheshwar’s wife Chandni Dayal, 70, is the only surviving member of the family to have actually seen Regal’s heydays. She and Sidheshwar were without child. They adopted a son but, according to Verma, “He had no interest in the theatre business and is now managing Sidheshwarji’s other businesses instead.” Chandni is reticent when asked about why the family sold the theatre. “Sidheshwarji’s health was not keeping up. He had constant bouts of asthma,” is all she offers by way of an answer. One of her earliest memories of the theatre is watching Raj Kapoor’s Bobby (1973). “The havan, Raj Kapoor coming over to their house to talk to Sidheshwar” are things she remembers besides the film itself.

But more precious to Chandni than her own memories are the stories. Stories of how Regal would run practically empty during the summer months in the forties, when the British would retreat to Shimla. The showing of the 1939 epic Gone With The Wind. How soldiers would flock to the theatre during the war to see films like Pride and Prejudice (1940), The Great Dictator (1940) and Madame Curie (1943). How the cinema would be requisitioned by the Army in the mornings for secret and confidential lectures. “What can I tell you,” says Chandni. “You should go and speak to those who were there then.” As if Rajeshwar Dayal, Jawaharlal Nehru and Raj Kapoor were still sitting around Regal’s dusty misnumbered seats, waiting for a movie to begin. “All I have is stories I’ve heard from my father in law,” she says. “I married into a family with many stories.”

“Rakh de rakh de wahin pe bhai, tere kaam ka nahin hai. Aage jaa.”

At the Sunday Book Bazaar in Old Delhi’s Daryaganj, where everyone is desperate to sell, Mohammad Suleiman dismisses a prospective customer who has stopped at his Hindi film poster collection. “It’s not for you, move on,” he says to the young man leafing through a booklet of songs from the 1982 Dharmendra starrer Teesri Ankh. It has been an uneventful day so far for Suleiman. He has not sold anything.

Opposite a board announcing the availability of ‘Sabse Sasti Magazines’, next to a heap of ten rupee second hand books, Suleiman has set up shop on the pavement, like everyone else in this bazaar. He sits on a stool, surrounded by film booklets and A2 size posters. “This is made by hand,” remarks a passerby, referring to a poster of Boot Polish at the centre of it all.

Suleiman, who sells posters, song booklets and film memorabilia, is looking for a particular kind of customer. “My customer is royal,” he says. “He is a VIP. He is one who is a lover of the old and the antique.”

This rules out most of those who pause before his collection at the bazaar— students interested in cheap school textbooks or simply those out for a Sunday stroll. Suleiman’s visiting card calls him a ‘Cinema Poster Historian’. Also, ‘Shenky’, a name he has adopted because his own is “too heavy” for New Delhi’s “high society”, a society Shenky aspires to sell to.

It was, in fact, on a visit to a regular haunt of this society two years ago—an expensive poster store in Hauz Khas Village—that Shenky, now in his forties, discovered he had had “a treasure” back home all along.

***

Shenky’s family hails from Nainital originally, but his father, Ali Hassan, was born and brought up in the nearby locality of Chandni Chowk. He was a factory supervisor. In the picture Shenky paints of him Hassan appears to have had three interests above all else: his work, smoking beedis and Hindi films.

Almost every day, after work ended at 5 pm, Hassan and his friends would be at one of the single screen theatres in the Old Delhi area. “Such as Excelsior, Jagat, Novelty or Jubilee. Raj Kapoor and Rajesh Khanna were his favourite actors,” Shenky says. Cinema halls used to be different back then. Says Shenky, “There was no other entertainment at that time. We did not have the hausla to go anywhere else.” Hausla, or courage, which was needed even for leisure in a society that remained feudal in its outlook. Connaught Place, nearby, was “hi-fi” in Shenky’s words. He recalls the apprehension they felt in visiting such localities where one would have to be mindful of what one wore. The single screen cinemas of Old Delhi provided for a kind of parallel space, a shield of sorts from the harsh class divisions in society.

Hassan was also a collector of film memorabilia. By virtue of his close association with cinema hall owners, many of whom he did odd jobs for, and because of his friends being on the staff of these theatres, he was able to eventually build a collection of 3,000 posters. “He would not show the collection to anyone.” Not even to Shenky, even though he was the only one from the family Hassan took along to watch films. “He would collect whatever he could lay his hands on.” Those days song booklets would be sold during the intermission, as part of the heavy print publicity distributors relied on. So these too found their way to Hassan’s home. Shenky has added steadily to this personal collection, which he sees as a legacy of his father’s Hindi film “deewaanaapan”, by frequenting kabadiwalas and cinema halls to look for more collectibles.

But till that fateful visit to Hauz Khas Village Shenky had never thought of these as having business potential. Perhaps because they didn’t, for a long time. Ranjani Mazumdar, in an essay on the Bombay film poster, writes that in a “strange twist”, the “once ordinary” hand painted poster acquired the status of an “art object” as it disappeared from streets and public places. Once, it had been “seen plastered on walls in various parts of the country and available for a price of five rupees in the streets till the early 1990s”. With its disappearance, it has “acquired the status of an ‘art’ form as collectors enter the field of preservation, display and sale of the traditional poster”.

What Shenky saw that day was the possibility of bridging the class divide he found himself on the wrong side of. “I initially sold to the Hauz Khas Village poster shop. But they were paying me too little, so I decided to start on my own.” He used to work at a shoe shop in Old Delhi. Now he could hope to work for himself. Shenky recognized, however, that this transition would rely on people of means willing to invest in his collection. To begin, he rented a flat in Daryaganj.

Two years later Shenky is at the weekly Sunday Bazaar, still trying to make that transition. “All this came to me because of my father, otherwise I would have been working at the mercy of someone else.” What started for his father as a hobby has become for Shenky an inheritance, the capital on which he hopes to build his future.

***

Among those selling at the bazaar, Shenky is the object of quiet envy. Even though most people walk by his collection, everyone is convinced he is making a lot of money. Rehan, who sells stationery next to him, is hesitant in disclosing his surname. He was intrigued when he first saw Shenky set up shop. “Initially, Shenky would distribute his visiting cards to whoever cared to give his collection a look and we would wonder why he is doing this,” Rehan says. Shenky knows he can’t take every old poster to the market so he puts on display a few samples from his collection and distributes his contact information to whoever expresses interest, hoping they are back sometime. If they are, he leads them to his flat, behind the market, where the posters are stored.

“Then we got to know he is famous,” Rehan continues. “He has been written about in the papers. There’s a lot of money in this. He doesn’t have to rely on everyday customers. People must be approaching him directly.” Shenky sells each poster for between Rs. 300 and Rs. 400. The song booklets are for Rs. 100. He says this is cheaper than what most people offer, that the karigiri (workmanship) of the posters makes them worth it. “Painting involved hard work and love,” says Shenky as he points to a poster of Night Club from 1958. He says he earns between “Rs. 6,000 to Rs. 7,000 per month”. Sometimes, for weeks, there is no buyer. Then, suddenly, there are orders for many posters. He has also begun to sell small antique items. He claims to be doing sufficiently well for his family of four— himself, his wife and two sons. His daughter is married.

On some days customers have specific requests, such as one who had insisted on a Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro poster. “These days people have also started gifting posters as wedding presents. DDLJ is very popular.”

In her essay, Mazumdar also speaks of the “power of nostalgia within modernity”, fuelled by the release of old films on television.

Advocate Sanjay Hegde, one of Shenky’s clients, has the poster of Zamaanat, an unreleased Amitabh Bachchan film, framed and displayed in his office chamber. “I have not collected with the intensity of a ‘collector’,” says Hegde. “But sometimes you want a film poster because of a certain memory associated with it.”

Today, a man and woman stumble upon Shenky and his posters while looking for books. The two posters they ask for—of the films Mughal-e-Azam and Kaagaz Ke Phool—are among the 12 he has chosen to bring to the market. “These are for my mother,” the woman says. “We think she’ll like them.”

Regular customers drop by as well. Syamantak, a designer, has bought three posters from Shenky. “I’m a regular at this market. One day I saw these posters,” he says. “I bought Shree 420, Shatranj Ke Khilari and Anand.” A NIFT student, he is interested more in the posters themselves, because they are “hand painted and old”, than in the cinema they advertise. Syamantak is unconcerned about where the posters come from. He says he couldn’t care lesser if “Shenky paints them himself”.

Accompanying him is his friend Aman Nigam, a software developer, who chances upon a song booklet of the 1990 Tamil film Anjali. “I have seen this film on television when I was a kid,” he says, humming a song from the movie.

There are also customers whose choices Shenky doesn’t understand. Leena, a Ukranian living in India, visits his stall every Sunday. She seems to be looking for something specific today but isn’t able to explain what it is to Shenky. She can’t speak English, only broken Hindi. She sifts patiently through two piles of movie song booklets, leaving out classics and picking out ones from more recent films. She doesn’t like the painted posters and prefers movie stills instead. Shenky shows her one of Amitabh Bachchan in Deewaar but she waves it aside. “A collector would pay so much for this,” he says. She ends up buying 10 song booklets of films she hasn’t seen.

***

“I am thinking of setting up shop in South Delhi,” Shenky announces suddenly. “Kaisa rahega?” Today “hi-fi” areas like Connaught Place aren’t half as intimidating to him as he said it was for his father.

Nevertheless, he will head to an Old Delhi favourite, Delite Cinema in Daryaganj, later this week, to catch one of the latest Hindi releases. He likes Delite, he says, because it caters to “both the old and new”, by which Shenky means audiences from Old and New Delhi.

Film scholars wonder whether technology will enable a reproduction of these posters from the yesteryears in greater numbers, as well as a more democratic distribution, freeing old movie posters from the clutches of collectors and galleries. But Shenky, who has built his dreams around the novelty of the vintage Indian film poster, would not like this to happen. At least, not till he has discharged his father’s collection of 3000. So far, he has only sold “about 300”.

There’s no doubt about it— Kamal Haasan’s Vishwaroopam (2013), which he wrote, directed, co-produced and starred in, is an out and out action blockbuster on par with the most spectacular Hollywood thrillers of all time. Yet, for the first 41 minutes of its running time of two hours and something, the character Viz, played by the versatile superstar himself, is actually a comic one: a caricatured, cuckolded teacher of Indian dance in America, whose clownish antics have driven his attractive wife, Nirupama (played by model Pooja Kumar), to seek out a therapist and a private eye (specializing in divorce cases), resulting in a series of events that make the couple end up in genuinely unsavoury company.

It’s only in the 42nd minute, as Viz and Nirupama are about to be slaughtered by a group of hardcore terrorists, that he loses his deep cover and reveals his true identity as a virtual one-man army, the toughest bare-hands killing machine in cinema history, disposing of his enemies down to the last man. Nirupama then realizes that her husband is a true hero, and so do we in the audience.

My point is not that Kamal Haasan clowns around a bit in his own movie—his track record includes many hit comedies as well as romantic roles in a very long and distinguished career—but rather that he mixes comedy with thriller, and highly successfully too. So when the silly dance guru cuts off his flowing locks before the bathroom mirror and turns into the powerful superhero, I totally buy it.

And it occurs to me that I’ve rarely seen anything like this in Western cinema. Could it be because comic relief and elements of slapstick are normally expected to defuse whatever suspense a thriller may laboriously be building up? This may explain why humorous elements are treated with utmost care in Hollywood cinema. If a Western movie opened in the manner of Vishwaroopam, it would have stayed there—in comedy land—rather than switching genre midway. But here the switch is made remarkably effortlessly from a domestic comedy of errors to an international high-tension war-zone thriller of terrors, as if the home and the world were but different facets of our complex daily lives.

This is not to say that Western thrillers never have humour in them. Comic effects are frequently used in horror cinema. Shock-slash-guffaw is a thoroughly exploited formula in, for example, the top-grossing Scream franchise, which went on to inspire the early 2000s spoof series Scary Movie. You might recall that Wes Craven’s original Scream (1996) was a spectacularly self-conscious satire on horror genre tropes— starting with that “What’s your favourite scary movie?” quiz which the prank caller subjects Drew Barrymore to before the slashing begins. But the fact remains that most horror movies, through horror history, have taken themselves with deadly seriousness.

As for Hollywood films that blend comedy and crime genres, the only memorable one I can think of is Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), starring comedian Steve Martin as a detective. This is more of a film buff’s film, where Martin (shot in intense black-and-white) interacts with a selection of classic clips from vintage Hollywood noir. There’s no actual suspense, though, and the thrills (and jokes) consist of the juxtaposition of unconnected typical pulp thriller scenes (Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep, Bette Davis in Deception, Burt Lancaster in The Killers, Veronica Lake in The Glass Key and fourteen other genre classics) loosely held together by Martin’s private eye navigating through the mix. The whole film is a gag.

Other than that what’s funny about modern Western action? The Indiana Jones flicks were action-packed and occasionally bizarrely funny, granted, but essentially they paid homage to the swashbuckling heroics of 1930s Saturday matinee yarns— so whatever they were, they weren’t comedies. The same goes for Quentin Tarantino’s films. The epic Pulp Fiction (1994) made us see modern Hollywood in a fresh light, but no matter how riddled it is with memorable and macabre gags, it really is a homage to classic gangster pulp. Whatever comic effects Tarantino uses in his films operate to intellectualize the action and make the viewer step back so as to analyze what’s happening on screen.

The truth seems to be that Western action flicks can contain fun sequences but steer clear of out and out comedy. Humour, if incorporated, comes in minimal doses. One of my personal classics is the ski chase in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) when James Bond (Roger Moore) escapes the Soviet agents by jumping off the Alps— in what was, at the time, the most expensive stunt ever filmed. Just as we think this is goodbye to 007, a Union Jack parachute unfurls from his backpack. But even if some critics view the James Bond franchise in its entirety as ridiculous and campy, as in this scene, it wasn’t the intention of the filmmakers to make spy spoof flicks.

It is quite another matter that the James Bond films spawned several genre parodies, perhaps most notably those with Mike Myers’s Austin Powers character (featured in films like The Spy Who Shagged Me and Austin Powers in Goldmember), but their action quotient doesn’t count for much if we try to watch them as thrillers.

Another great instance of limited fun that comes to mind is the acerbic wit of Clint Eastwood in the 1970s ‘Dirty Harry’ cop movies (“I know what you’re thinking… Did he fire six shots, or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement… ”) or the low key way in which Eastwood, playing the aged, reformed gunslinger William Munny, falls off his horse in the Academy Award-winning Unforgiven (1992). The grim-jawed one liner cracked by an action hero in the midst of nail-biting drama was developed further in the Die Hard series starring Bruce Willis (starting with Die Hard way back in 1988 and followed by several sequels including A Good Day to Die Hard in 2013), where our streetwise NYPD hero often stops, when the thrills peak, for a fraction of a second, to quip about something— usually along the lines of “this is a bad, bad, bad idea” before he jumps down an elevator shaft or out of the window of a skyscraper. But these are small instances of lightness in essentially dark, violent films, and that’s as much fun as it generally gets in your typical Western action.

Meanwhile, in Indian cinema, broad-spectrum entertainment seems to be what it’s all about. When watching action heroes like Shah Rukh Khan or Sanjay Dutt, I’m usually clinging on to the seat at the end of the show, my heart rate irregular from pumping too much adrenaline, my eyes sore from crying during the sentimental scenes, but also—significantly—my stomach aching from having laughed a lot.

Comedy or suspense? As I look back at a number of favourites from over the decades, films that for one reason or the other have stuck in the mind, I really find it hard to say if I was watching comedies or thrillers.

Yash Chopra’s final epic Jab Tak Hai Jaan (2012), for example, is a romantic drama-comedy about the joys and hardships of immigrant life in London, true, but the opening scenes of the film actually show Shah Rukh Khan as the cynical hero in battle fatigues (the character he later becomes after love disappointments): a major portion of the plot is centred around his career as a tough bomb-defusing expert hanging under booby-trapped bridges. Before that there was Delhi Belly (2011)— we may remember it as a disgustingly funny black comedy of unrefined toilet humour, but underpinning it there’s a solid thriller centred around a dangerous smuggled package. A special cinematic treat in the film is Vijay Raaz as a memorably sinister gangster. One of the funniest Wild West farces I’ve seen is Quick Gun Murugan (2009)— which is at the same time a hardboiled gunslinger action with remarkable shootouts, as well as being centred around a vegetarian cowboy (Rajendra Prasad) who tries to stop the creation of the ultimate non-veg dosa. Before that there was Munna Bhai MBBS (2003)— brutal slapstick where a gangster don (Sanjay Dutt) has to redeem himself by going to medical college; come to think of it, Dutt has an unrivalled talent for acting the clown and also the tough guy (rivaled perhaps only by Kamal Haasan, who remade this gangster comedy as Vasool Raja MBBS in the south). A couple of years earlier there was the Kannada hit film Upendra (1999), a violently funny but also intense psychological gangster movie by superstar Upendra who wrote, directed and starred in it. Here the witty actor-director plays the rowdy Naanu who smokes “filter bidis” (bidis tucked into filters torn off cigarettes) and sees the world through “cooling glasses” (shades).

The oldest example I can think of right now is Kundan Shah’s satirical Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983)— a goofy comedy about bumbling photo journalists (Naseeruddin Shah and Ravi Baswani), but on the other hand a cult detective movie with pretty macabre sequences in which a dead corpse is carted around town.

Although this essay isn’t based on statistical analysis, I’m sure it is possible to come up with many more examples of comic thrillers or thrilling comedies. We laugh our hearts out but enjoy the hard-hitting action, and we’re horrified by the violence. Notably, many of the above actors, although expert comedians, aren’t typecast as comic characters— most of them are equally comfortable doing serious roles. How is this possible?

It is the caricatured dance teacher in Vishwaroopam who might hold a key to unravelling this cinematic mystery. The theatrical emotions that Kamal Haasan plays out in the dance class, taught to him—incidentally—by the Kathak maestro, Birju Maharaj, himself, hint to us that this might be one movie appreciated best if we lean back and think. Hassan’s classical dance moves take us back to the Natya Shastra, the famous, ancient Indian treatise on the performing arts. But what do these more than 2000 year old codifications have to do with 21st century cinema?

From the ancient Indian theory about dance, theatre and music, we learn that any artistic performance must have a dominant mood, a rasa, built out of emotions (bhavas) of which there are eight in number (in addition to which there’s also shanti, or peace, which is the ninth and the opposite of the other eight bhavas). A subtle mixing of the component bhavas, displayed in different segments of the work, serves to create the ultimate rasa or emotional response in the viewer.

One of these components is comedy (hasya), but others include terror or thrills (bhayanaka) and, of course, there’s heroism (vira) and love (rati). Natya Shastra explains in detail how each of these particular emotions is conveyed to the audience.

After the performance, having gone through the emotional turmoil thus produced, the audience experiences shanti or peace, calm, inner purity, insight, which glimpses the truth of life. A performance is judged by its success on this precise count. This very matrix, constructed two millennia before Bollywood was born, can give us a fascinating analytical tool to separate the various elements of a modern Indian film, and understand how components that would oppose each other in Western cinema, actually interlock and produce—through the friction created between opposites—a singular and unique greater experience.

By contrast, Hollywood cinema seems to operate according to the classic strictures of ‘the dramatic unities’ such as they were expounded by ancient art critics starting from the time of Aristotle through to the Renaissance. In about 17th century Europe, this resulted in an extreme purism in the interest of creating a semblance of credibility, particularly strongly expressed in French classicism which rejected all hybrid art forms, such as tragicomedy for example. In the olden days a staged play therefore had to confine itself within a rigorously delineated timeframe, social circumstance, and so on. Although modern cinema isn’t bound by these traditional unities, there remains in Hollywood filmmaking that same strong sense of a formal unity of plot with a single, central, pivotal action at its base: hence an action flick is a thriller and not a comedy, and vice versa. Incredible as it may sound, this tendency, that can be traced back to the 3rd century B. C. philosopher Aristotle, remains very much alive today. Check out Quentin Tarantino’s directorial debut, the iconic Reservoir Dogs (1992) or the more mainstream, claustrophobic David Fincher thriller Panic Room (2002) starring Jodie Foster for extreme cases of adherence to these dramatic unities.

These tendencies that I’m discussing here aren’t absolute or exclusive, of course. There are also clear parallels between Indian and Western films— both types of cinema aim at taking us through classic cathartic experiences, for one. Hollywood and Indian cinema have influenced each other through the years, and there are many Indian films that are rather Western in their expression.

All the same, the hallmark of the Western tradition is that it tends to focus on a single emotion, whereas the Indian tradition not only has space for many more bhavas, but we expect this particular quality from the films— they must operate on all possible emotional levels, speak to the whole body, the brain, the heart, the guts, the groin, as well as the funny bone.

Like life itself, the Indian hero (and the heroine too) is complex: consisting of one part heroics, one part love, one part comedy, and so on. We in the audience are all smaller versions of our multi-tasking heroes. Paradoxically, the Western cinema’s attempt at achieving lifelikeness through its dramatic unities and purer realism may to some extent actually be less close to the viewer’s real life.

So, therefore, a typical Indian film contains, within itself, the elements of every other cinematic genre: a romantic movie will also have a villain who plots to do nefarious mischief as well as a clown who makes us laugh until we cry. A comedy is also likely to have heroics of the nail-biting kind, as well as a romantic element which will bring tears to our eyes. And the action film, too, will have serious comic elements in it, the latter seeming to enhance the thrills rather than defusing them— as we Indian cinema-goers very well know. If a Western film attempts the same, critics and audiences are likely to judge it as being all over the place; it is impossible to imagine Sylvester Stallone sing, dance and horse around on a mountain slope, and then go on a shooting spree. But this same impossibility is not only possible in India, it is the prerequisite of any really great movie.

I am an actor. It is probably useful at this stage to qualify that statement. I am a stage actor. I don’t say this with any disdain for my fellow actors in cinema but rather to put into context my association with the ‘film world’, which is close to none; my understanding of how the film industry functions, which is negligible, and my expectations of individuals existing in that universe. That is where this story begins.

One fine morning I received a call for a screen test for Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. Though I have never had great aspirations as an actor to make the big transition to Bollywood, I would be lying if I said my heart didn’t skip a beat when half way through the audition the casting director whipped out his phone and made a call straight to Mr. Mehra saying there was someone he strongly felt should be considered for the title role in the film.

Things moved pretty swiftly from that point on. A week later I was due to leave for London and then onto New York for two months to commence work on a theatre project, when the casting director called me and said that it was imperative that I fly down to Mumbai immediately to meet with Mr. Mehra. So I booked myself on a flight to Mumbai from Delhi and spent the day at Mr. Mehra’s office reading the script cover to cover and then sitting in on a meeting with Mr. Mehra over lunch. We talked about life and the theatre and art and my training and interests in a candid one-on-one in his office.

Through all of this I was of course more than a little bit star struck and overwhelmed— in casual conversation over lunch with the director of films like Rang De Basanti and Delhi-6!

About a month later I received a call from Mr. Mehra’s PA telling me that I needed to be in Mumbai for a second screen test urgently, within the next couple of days. I told them that it would be very difficult since I was in London, set to depart for NYC the next day. They seemed quite certain that there was no way around it and so I immediately booked myself on a flight from London to Mumbai and an onward journey from Mumbai to NYC. I should mention at this point that all my travel was paid for out of my own pocket with the unspoken understanding that it would be sorted out later. But then perhaps it is my presumptiveness that is the villain of this piece.

Mr. Mehra himself was present for the screen test this time round. We worked meticulously through three scenes from the film with Mr. Mehra being very hands-on and pushing me hard to clarify the tiniest details— an experience I value to this day. As far as a day in the life of a jobbing actor goes, this was a pretty darn exciting one. I left for NYC on a high, thinking that the fact that I had come this far was commendable enough and, even if I didn’t get the role, this experience was reward enough.

Another month passed before Mr. Mehra’s PA got in touch with me again telling me that Mr. Mehra was in New York with his family and would very much like to meet with me. I joined them at their hotel and once again had a long conversation with Mr. Mehra, this time specifically about the film and my audition. He told me that there would be much to be worked on but that he was definitely keen to take this to the next step. What remained was a final physical audition in which they would film me running since that was such a major part of the film. He explained to me how he was very intent on casting a ‘new face’ as the lead in the film since he wanted the film to be about Milkha Singh, the man and not the actor. In all fairness he did also warn me that the financiers might think otherwise and want an established actor for the lead.

I returned to Delhi full of all these thoughts, trying desperately to keep my excitement in check. The running test was soon set up and a crew met me in Delhi. Thinking back now, I wonder at what point all of this started to become real for me. At what point did I stop and say to myself, “Wow! I think this actually might be happening!” Was it at the end of the screen test I flew half way round the world for? Was it when I met Mr. Mehra for coffee at his hotel in New York City? Or was it after the running audition, when I was asked to immediately start training with the national athletics coach who was to train up the actors for the film? Or perhaps it was when I was told to not take up any other big projects as the schedule for the shoot was being decided.

And so I started training, turned down what work came my way and prepared myself for what was to come. Writing this now I realize how naïve of me it was to carry on like this with little more than the intermittent verbal assurance that things were delayed but definitely on track. And for this I have no one to blame but myself.

In the meantime, among the offers I received, one was to perform in a play that would rehearse in Kerala for two months and subsequently go on tour in South India. The opportunity was far too exciting to pass up so I got in touch with the producer P. S. Bharathi who advised me to go ahead and take up the project, as it seemed that the schedule had been delayed further. And so I did.

I was immersed in my new play but couldn’t help notice that another month had gone by without any communication from them. When I eventually did try to get in touch with someone, anyone, from the project, I was met with a week of unanswered phone calls and emails. It soon became clear why. Friends of mine from Delhi soon called to tell me that they had just read in the Delhi Times that Farhan Akhtar had been chosen to play Milkha Singh in Rakeysh Mehra’s new film.

Rejection is part of being an actor. The factors that go into selecting an actor, especially for a role in a film are numerous. Height, weight, complexion, age, hair, accent, the list is endless. And finally, if all the above check out, ability.

Was I upset that I didn’t get to do the film? Yes, of course I was! But that did not begin to match either my utter confusion at how this situation had played itself out, nor my anger at my own gullibility. Given how much I had invested in this project already (monetarily and otherwise) is it truly unimaginable to have expected a simple call or email or even a text to tell me that their plans had changed? The truth is that it probably was. Working actors in Mumbai will probably read this, scoff and say, “Welcome to my world… ” This probably happens every week to countless aspiring actors.

What bothers me now, in retrospect, is only the fact that for them this probably was a complete non-issue. Again, in my naiveté, I had assumed that in the three meetings I had with the director some sort of a relationship had been forged between two individuals. A relationship, which in my book, at the very least warranted a simple phone call.

Recently, I chanced upon an article in a daily newspaper. At a talk Farhan Akhtar gave in Delhi he had this to say about playing Milkha: “I must thank all the actors who refused to play Milkha Singh before me; I was sold on it in the first 20 minutes of the story’s narration. Working on the film taught me that there is potential within each human being to achieve anything they set their mind on to if they’re willing to sacrifice luxuries and remain focussed.”

I entirely agree. Except that all the actors didn’t quite refuse. In all honesty, by the time I read this article, I had put this experience behind me, but suddenly, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to feel. It’s not that this experience left me deeply wounded or scarred. If anything it was a sharp learning curve. My grouse in the end is not with any of the individuals mentioned in this story; it is with what we accept as ‘the way things are’. My only question is: Is there a better way?

In 1981, in the approach to Doordarshan’s first colour telecast, the Union Minister for Information Vasant Sathe announced, “Black and white is a dead technology. Dead like a dodo.” Three years later, Rajiv Gandhi was the darling of the middle classes, according to India Today, for being the first Prime Minister “who understands the importance of colour TV”. The final triumph of the moving image in colour has been declared many times, in many places around the world. But it was in Delhi in 1911 that colour cinematography made its first and perhaps most confident promise to end the age of black-and-white pictures.

The story of Charles Urban at the Coronation Durbar is usually overlooked in histories of film. Urban used his Kinemacolor process to record the events of the Durbar, the cresting moment of the British Empire and its greatest visual spectacle. With Our King and Queen through India became the first colour cinematography – or film of any sort – that most Western audiences had laid eyes on. The film elevated the “picture show”, a cheap thrill for the working classes, into an entertainment suitable for the most shimmering sections of world society, including the British royal family, the Pope and the Emperor of Japan. Yet within a few years, the footage had disappeared, and it wasn’t until 2000 that one reel was recovered, in the Russian town of Krasnogorsk. Ten minutes is all that is left of the most grandiose and course-altering production in the first generation of natural-colour films.

In the first decade of the twentieth century, the sole technology for colour films involved painting dyes onto the filmreel. In 1906, GA Smith patented a camera and projection technology with two filters, red and green, that captured the natural colour of light. He called it Kinemacolor (a reminder of the origin of the word “cinema” in the Greek root for “movement”).

Charles Urban was an associate of Smith’s, and a man who did not lack imagination about the eventual role of Kinemacolor, or of himself, in how the world viewed the world. Urban recognised that if this regal new motion-picture technology was linked to a regal subject, Kinemacolor films would be more like the theatre than the picture-shows: genteel, desirable and also lucrative. Urban began recording royal outings. In 1909, King Edward VII was shown a Kinemacolor film of himself and reportedly said, “Very good, very good.” An even better film was recorded when the King died the next year, and the colour newsreel of the funeral caught the public’s interest. According to Luke McKernan, film curator at the British Library, Urban was brilliantly equating fidelity to nature (through colour) with fidelity to the Crown, an unbeatable combination in the peak years of the Empire.

The association of Kinemacolor with royal extravaganza was built up through the unveiling of the Victoria Memorial (when the Kinemacolor catalogue trumpeted: “No one can henceforth regard monotone pictures of the glories of pageantry as anything but obsolete and unsatisfying,” that is, dead as a dodo) and later the coronation of George V. But it was when Lord Hardinge hosted the new King-Emperor at the ancient capital of Delhi that Urban would shoot his greatest film.

Five firms received permission to shoot “featured actualities” – what we’d now call documentary footage – at the Coronation Durbar. Of course, Urban’s team was the only one shooting in colour, and he nursed paranoid fantasies of sabotage. Urban later claimed that each day’s negatives were boxed, buried in the sand with a rug on top, his bed on the rug and his pistol under the pillow. The footage followed the King and Queen from their disembarkation at the Apollo Bunder in Mumbai (later the site of the Gateway of India). They entered Delhi between the stone elephants at the gate of Salimgarh Fortress, just north of Lal Qila. The actual Durbar was a series of parades and proclamations, which culminated with the Emperor making two announcements: one annulling the partition of Bengal, the other proclaiming the relocation of the capital to Delhi.

The scale of the Durbar would be difficult to believe if it hadn’t been thoroughly filmed and photographed (filmed by some of India’s first cinematographers and photographed by everyone – like today, there were complaints about guests bringing their Eastman Kodaks). Between the pomp of the assembled maharajahs, the shining brass of 34,000 soldiers, the Viceregal entourage and the Imperial retinue itself (the King wore a little something called the Imperial Crown of India, set with 6,100 diamonds), Urban couldn’t have asked for more natural colour to record. After it all wound up, the monochrome film teams raced each other back to Britain, each needing to be the first to screen their footage. But Urban remained at his leisure and filmed the military review at the Badli-ki-Sarai, which would prove to be a good thing. Later, he rejoined the Imperial tour in Calcutta.

Back in London, With Our King and Queen through India was screened throughout 1912 as a 150-minute programme, the longest film-show to that date, accompanied by a 48-piece orchestra, a 24-person choir and a full fife-and-drum corps. “The film was raputurously received in Britain,” McKernan said via email. “It received similar acclaim worldwide.” He points to a review in the film trade paper The Bioscope, which “sums up the feeling many had on seeing it”. The review reads: “Men and women yet unborn,…by the magic of a little box and a roll of film, will be enabled to witness the marvels of a hundred years before their age, in all the colour and movement of life…Man has conquered most things; now he has vanquished Time.”

Famous last words. In 1913, the Kinemacolor patent was defeated in court. Urban’s company was liquidated and its holdings – including its film library – sold off. Kinemascope reels required special projectors, without which they couldn’t be viewed. “The film ‘disappeared’ from general consciousness soon after the start of the First World War,” McKernan said. Since then, Urban’s role in cinematographic history has been underrated. “With Our King and Queen Through India’s importance to film history is social rather than purely cinematic,” McKernan explained. “[Urban’s] great contribution to film as record, as an educational medium, and to film’s social status isn’t recognised.” The Durbar footage itself was lost: vanquished, quite efficiently, by time.

Among many other effects, the filming of the Darbar created an Indian tradition of filming political extravaganzas. Baburao Painter shot The Congress Session in Bombay in 1919, and thereafter every Congress session was filmed. Gandhi alone was a walking cottage industry for filmmakers.

Still there was no sign and little recollection of Urban’s pioneering footage. Until 2000, when the filmmaker Adrian Wood was researching a documentary series on the British Empire. Wood caught wind of a stray fact, that Urban had had a franchise in Tsarist Russia and that some pre-revolutionary materials might survive in the Russian state archive in Krasnogorsk. Along with Victor Belyakov, a local producer, he unearthed a number of reels of Indian troops.

In the fourth reel, something titled With Our Indian Troops Now Serving in France, Wood recognised the flicker of a Kinemacolor film. “It clearly showed a military parade (at Badli-ki-Sarai) that formed part of the Durbar celebrations,” Wood said, in an email. “It had been repurposed to show Russians their British Empire allies fighting against German forces in WWI.” No more was found. But we do have a glimpse of the world’s original colour blockbuster, and through it the event, in all its imperial hues, that sounded the modern rebirth of Delhi.

This article first appeared in TimeOut Delhi’s December 11-24, 2009 issue.

There were many reasons for making Gulabi Gang. The most obvious reason was to look at a women’s movement in one of the most backward parts of the country. I wanted to profile the members of Gulabi Gang. The majority of them are poor, old, unlettered and from backward castes. The film is an ode to their courage, humour and resilience.

Bundelkhand has thrown up very strong women—some celebrated, some notorious—Jhansi Ki Rani, Phoolan Devi, Mayawati and Sampat Pal Devi, the leader of Gulabi Gang. Ironically, women are forced to become masculine in order to fight machismo and patriarchy. I can talk about it from my own experience of growing up in Delhi. Travelling in public transport meant we had to be in combative mode all the time. We often had scuffles with men who violated us. We had to raise our voices to be heard. And we had to be vigilant. My whole body language and attitude changed once I moved to Mumbai. I realized that only people living in equal societies could afford to be soft-spoken. They don’t need to be shrill or aggressive. It’s with this consciousness that I travelled with my camera to the charged and conflicted spaces where Gulabi Gang functions.

We know so little about what’s happening in our rural areas. These areas reek of neglect— not just governmental neglect but neglect of the intelligentsia. Women have no one to turn to in these areas. There was one known NGO, but in the several months we were there, we didn’t manage to meet anyone. The extent of gender and caste violence that goes unreported is shocking. It was absolutely crucial for me to present this heartless milieu in which Gulabi Gang is attempting to bring about a change.

In January 2009 when I started making my film there was no feature documentary on Gulabi Gang. There was a book but it was in French (Moi, Sampat Pal: chef de gang en sari rose). And there were only a couple of written pieces about the gang on the Internet. It took me some time to raise money for the project but when I was ready to shoot I learnt that another crew had landed there so I had to wait. I finally began shooting in September 2010. I shot for five months, edited for over a year and it premiered in June 2012.

I chose to shoot in winter because of the winter-light. It might sound strange that documentary filmmakers should have considerations like this over and above the content but my documentaries are not reports or newsreels. There’s conscious planning of what stories we’ll be pursuing and why. For me, the visual aspect of the film is equally important. This is a visual medium after all. The composition of shots, the light, the movement— these are all elements that enrich the narrative. But I don’t blindly lust after the image either; it’s not about capturing beautiful images but about capturing the right moment in the right way.

Often people ask me whether the members of the Gulabi Gang cooperated with me. I think people don’t realize that documentaries shot for such long periods of time cannot be done without the permission or cooperation of the protagonists. People also wonder about how the women opened up to me. I don’t have an answer to this question because it happened organically, I didn’t have to try. Looking back, I am inclined to say I was closer to the two Lakshmis— the protagonists of my previous two documentaries (Lakshmi and Me and Call it Slut). But perhaps that is not entirely true because all relationships are different and they also change and evolve over time.  My relationship with Sampat took a different trajectory. At first she would get very impatient with what she called my ‘NGO-urban-feminist’ views. She could sense my reserve. But still she was generous enough to allow me access. I grew to admire certain qualities in her, especially during editing when I could closely observe what she had said, how she conducted certain negotiations. It’s only when we travelled in Norway during the theatrical release of our film that we got a chance to relax and unwind a little.

When it comes to making a documentary, I believe editing is the most important stage because documentaries actually take shape on the editing table. We shot approximately 200 hours of footage, which is not much given the kind of film it is. The final running time of the film is 96 minutes. That is roughly a 1:125 ratio. There were very interesting cases that we pursued but some were too complicated to include in the film and we also had to keep the final duration in mind. But now I would like to put back some important stuff, which I had deleted to bring the film to its current length. There’s always a trade-off between detail and attention span. The initial feedback was that the film is too long so we had to reluctantly cut some portions. The new length worked for everyone but at the same time some people would ask why I didn’t show this or that. It’s difficult to please everyone with one film. But I’m still hoping that I can bring out the longer version for outreach purposes.

As regards my views on the ideology of the gang, I don’t know if there’s any homogenous discourse around feminism or whether that’s desirable. The Gulabi Gang is doing what they can within the limitation of their understanding, means and circumstances. I strongly believe that we should allow room for different voices to exist. If India as a nation has survived this long it’s because of its ability to resist homogeneity. Let us not try to kill that with the dominant urban western views and paradigms. There are other lessons to be learnt out there, let us not dismiss them without examining them.

Are they vigilantes? What’s my opinion about vigilante justice? In her personal capacity, Sampat Pal does arbitration in marital and inter-personal cases, but not as a Gulabi Gang representative. People come to her with their problems, largely related to their marriages or inter-caste, inter-religious love affairs and she makes the two parties come together, makes them reach a settlement. She makes them sign a paper and acts as a guarantor. She claims 90% success in these cases. These are non-criminal cases.  A lot of people come to her because they can’t afford long, drawn-out legal battles. These settlements have to be understood in the context of a non-functional and corrupt judiciary. But also Gulabi Gang as a group doesn’t dole out vigilante justice. They hold rallies and protests against malpractices. Gulabi Gang’s protests are no different from people’s protests in any part of the world.

Of late, I haven’t kept up with the activism and politics of the gang in as much detail as I would like to. I don’t have the means to travel there as exhaustively as I did while shooting. But I know what happened to the particular cases I followed in my film.  About the gang’s activities I know from what I hear from them or from the media reports, though one cannot fully trust what is reported. The kind of access we got during the shooting is impossible to repeat. However, I would like to take my film to the far-flung villages where it was shot and share it with as many Gulabi Gang members as possible. I hope that there’ll be a spin-off from the theatrical release enabling me to do this.

As Told to Tanul Thakur

Fencing match. Duel. Swordfight. Movie manifestation of what would become a legendary rivalry between the titans of Bengali cinema. Call it what you will, it is the moment I most eagerly anticipated in Jhinder Bondi,  Tapan Sinha’s 1961 adaptation of The Prisoner of Zenda and the first pairing of West Bengal’s most famous actors, Uttam Kumar and Soumitra Chatterjee. Kumar, already well established as the king of Calcutta cinema, plays royal lookalike Gauri Shankar Rai. He comes to the beleaguered kingdom of Jhind to stand in for their missing ineffectual king (also Kumar), who has been kidnapped by a devious brother. Chatterjee, just a few films old after his debut in Satyajit Ray’s Apur Sansar (1959), is the kidnapper’s conspirator Mayurbahan, the story’s principal face of evil and the actor’s first stab at villainy.

When I first watched Jhinder Bondi,  I had little idea who either of these men were and had no investment in them beyond how they were performing in the film at hand. But there was a lot riding on this swordfight simply because I’d heard so much about it. Everyone I asked about Jhinder Bondi, every write-up of the film online, implied some kind of epic confrontation, satisfying in the story of the film in itself but also significant for splashing onto the screen the kind of real-life celebrity conflict fans live to witness.

Jhinder Bondi  is full of ingredients that implicitly promise some kind of mano-a-mano confrontation as well— arrogant men with blousy satin shirts and matinee mustaches clanking around with swords hanging from their belts. Gauri practices fencing in his Calcutta club. Mayurbahan throws a drink in the imprisoned king’s face. They try to stare each other down on horseback (even if equestrian malfunctions interrupt the tensions).

Everything seems to whet your appetite for the great climactic duel I had heard so much about. Except, in the end, it doesn’t come. What actually transpires is choreography I like to call a strangulation tango: in the shadows of the palace dungeon, the protagonist and antagonist lunge at each other, but as Gauri restrains Mayurbahan’s sword arm, Mayurbahan knocks Gauri’s pistol away and pins him against the wall. Violins tremble in the background, facial muscles strain, and Gauri fumbles for his dagger and stabs Mayurbahan, who reluctantly collapses onto the floor.

Now, maybe years of consuming Manmohan Desai have made me unfairly expect something larger and grander in scale but this is certainly not the end it was billed to be.

Disappointment notwithstanding, in the months after I first saw Jhinder Bondi,  I went on to fall head over teakettle in love with vintage Bengali cinema. However, amidst all the Ray, Mrinal Sen, Ajoy Kar, and even some Sukhen Das, I keep coming back to Jhinder Bondi, partly because it’s so entertaining but mainly because I am fascinated with the fact that this epic confrontation, that so many people remember in its climax, does not exist.

I have no idea why the scene I was made to imagine by fans of the film does not exist but what is clear is that people want this scene to exist. It has long been believed that the world of Bengali cine fans is divided into those who love Uttam and those who love Soumitra. We want to see Uttam and Soumitra, so close to their prime as actors and men, duke it out— Uttam’s hair impeccably in place despite turbans and Soumitra’s eyes glinting with evil instead of brimming with grief as usual. The scene needs to exist so we can compare them directly, not just in the same film but in the same situation, and have one idol emerge the undisputable king of Bengali cinema. We need evidence to go with our respective faiths.

Particularly because otherwise it isn’t easy to imagine them on a common ground where they could face-off. They cannot really be compared as stars. They’re simply too different. One was called ‘Guru’ and ‘Mahanayak’ (the great hero) by his fans, so great that the metro station in the filmmaking Tollygunge area of Calcutta has been officially renamed Mahanayak Uttam Kumar and its interior plastered with his image. Outside the station is a larger-than-life metal statue of the man striding confidently in billowing dhoti–kurta. Soumitra on the other hand is the sort of star that is revered, not nick-named. The movie-consuming public seems not to have been moved to give this international yet still very Indian star an honorific, a superlative, or even just an affectionate shorthand. When I asked a Calcutta-bred friend to provide the local version of “thinking woman’s crumpet”, he suggested I call him “Soan Papdi”: a popular Indian sweetmeat complexly layered, delicious, delicate yet substantial.

Examined from our far-away perch in 2014, this popular concept of rivalry could have had its roots in the nature of the stars’ projects and the industry in which they worked. After all, Jhinder Bondi,  their first film together, pitted them as enemies, even opposites: Kumar in a dual role as both selfless hero and innocent victim, Chatterjee as unjust usurper who cackles in the face of virtue. They were often cast in opposing roles in real life too. The two men were affiliated with different artistes’ associations that were occasionally in boisterous conflict, dragging the two figureheads into the fray (probably against their will). They were also each a part of the two different sub-industries in Bengal. Kumar and his star power were the very center of the matinee movie machinery. Chatterjee was the flag-bearer of respectable, intelligent movie-making in Calcutta— at the centre of which was the work of Satyajit Ray, Chatterjee’s long-term collaborator and mentor. When Ray was asked why he preferred working with Chatterjee over Kumar, he is rumoured to have said “Ghee’er kaaj Dalda diye hoye na (You cannot use cheap emulsified oil where only clarified butter will do).” When Ray did cast Kumar finally, it was in the role of a restless, ruthless superstar in Nayak— a character bearing close resemblance to Kumar in real life. Ray went to the extent of saying he would have shelved Nayak had Kumar not agreed to be a part of it. And yet, he worked with Kumar only once after Nayak. Nayak  remains one of Kumar’s best films to date but in a recent interview his co-actor in the film, Sharmila Tagore, attributed his performance to Ray’s genius direction saying, “Manik da (Ray) was a better actor than Uttam Kumar.”

Their actual life stories up to the point of stardom are also in stark contrast— one rocky and a bit unlikely, the other well-poised and full of momentum. Kumar, from a nondescript upbringing, held an office job and delivered flops early in his career before redefining the Bengali film hero and still embodying it 60 years on. Chatterjee, a graduate student in literature, editor, poet, and theatre protégé, became an instant star through the film that more than half a century later remains a masterpiece of India’s globally best-known director (Apur Sansar ).

If their lives had differences, then perhaps, sadly, Uttam Kumar’s death may have fossilized the contrasts. One of the first mythic-but-true stories I heard about Bengali cinema was that Kumar, aged 54, had a fatal heart attack while shooting a film. He had already been moving away from hero roles but had yet to truly age as a major star when he died. Chatterjee, now 78 and making multiple films a year in addition to his work in theatre, has grown old before our eyes both as a human and as an actor. Chatterjee’s image and impact continue to be shaped by his further decades of work, but Kumar’s can be enhanced or diluted only by us, not by the efforts of the man himself.

To the narrative built on their origin myths, bodies of work, and roles in the industry, add their typical acting styles. These too seem to position the performers at odds. In his reflection on Uttam Kumar in the magazine Sunday after Kumar’s death (and now included in the Columbia University Press collection Satyajit Ray On Cinema ), Ray discusses his joy at working with such an easy, confident, instinctive actor in Nayak (1966), setting that experience off from that of directing a cerebral actor who analyzes and probes his characters. Ray doesn’t name anyone in particular here, but one imagines he means the man he cast in half of his feature films. In The Master and I: Soumitra on Satyajit, a book by Chatterjee on his decades of work with Ray (an English translation by Arunava Sinha), he repeatedly mentions the talkative, discursive nature of their long friendship. We audience members don’t even need stories from the sets to appreciate these differences. We can see it in their performances. Kumar’s nonchalance puts joy, loss, and passion at the perfect scale for empathy; Chatterjee is at his best when his characters are deep in thought, whatever that thought might be, whether or not it is expressed out loud. Chatterjee claims he admired Kumar long before he became an actor himself and that the two were comfortable with each other, often hanging out at the Great Eastern Hotel post shoots. In an interview in 2012, to illustrate this comfort he speaks of, Chatterjee recalls an incident: “Once during a film shoot, he was getting stuck on a word and wasn’t being able to pronounce it properly. There were a lot of takes and still he wasn’t able to deliver the line. I was there and asked him what was going wrong and, mind you, we shared a very good rapport. He said after some time, ‘Do something, go out for sometime’. So I did. Then in one take he delivered the line. When he came out, I asked him why he had asked me to leave and whether he was feeling uncomfortable in my presence. He told me, ‘I was getting self-conscious. You have very clear pronunciation and I don’t really have that.’”

If you simply must compare the two as actors, it might be most interesting to look at how they performed when visiting each other’s home turf. The most prominent examples for Kumar may be his two projects with Ray: the flawless performance as the complex hero based on his own life in Nayak  and his often overlooked turn as the Bengali detective, Byomkesh Bakshi, in Chiriyakhana (1967). I may get booted from the Ray fan club for saying so, but I like his easygoing, slightly silly Bakshi every bit as much as I enjoy Chatterjee as the drier, more tightly wound and more famous of the two detective characters Ray portrayed: Feluda. It is significant, I think, that neither of these roles is the anxious or weary yet thoughtfully persistent protagonist that Chatterjee perfected with Ray.

Chatterjee as a more urbane Kumarian romantic lead seems uncommon too. He’s suave in much of Aranyer Din Ratri (1970) but his detachment comes from restlessness, not from comfort. Barnali (1963) has a sweet, simple love story, but it takes the heroine far too long to realize she should be in love with the hero to imagine the Mahanayak in the role. Basanta Bilap (1973) focuses so long on the ‘boys vs. girls’ obstacle to romance that there’s no time for an Uttam-Suchitra-style ‘us vs. the world’ drama. Where Chatterjee shines in a truly Kumar-type role is Baksa Badal (1965), a screenplay by Ray (directed by Nityananda Datta) that puts him in a dual role as a smug psychiatrist who also pretends to be a softer, kinder orchid enthusiast, the two identities indicated by the presence and absence of a mustache. There is a swaggery confidence in this comedic performance that is the closest I’ve seen Chatterjee come to unleashing his matinee idol potential.

The two went on to star in other films together but they were all rather dismissible for one reason or the other. Chatterjee is the villain in Pratishodh (1980), plotting to murder Kumar. They are both shades of despicable in Stree (1972), with Kumar as a cross between the zamindar from Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam and Jabba the Hutt (in temperament and mannerisms) and Chatterjee as the sensitive lover of the zamindar’s cruelly mistreated wife. In other movies, Kumar is avuncular to Chatterjee’s younger characters. In Jadi Jantem (1974), Kumar is a lawyer who proves Chatterjee’s innocence in a murder trial and in Devdas (1979) Kumar plays Chunnilal, best friend to Chatterjee, ridiculously miscast in the title role. Which is what makes Jhinder Bondi  even more critical. None of these other films have the potential fire and brimstone that it offers up.

Now that we are back to where we began, you should know what happens to Chatterjee’s villain (Mayurbahan) in the end, even though the legendary sword fight is just a legend. When we left off, Gauri (Kumar) had stabbed him with a dagger and left him on the floor of the dungeon. A few minutes later though, we learn he is not quite dead and staggers after both Gauri and the real king with his sword drawn. But before he can attack, he is felled by a shot in the back from a royal advisor who has come rushing to the scene. If this first co-starring film encouraged the idea of Chatterjee and Kumar as competitors, it also left each with his dignity regarding the other intact. Chatterjee himself talks about his relationship with Kumar as one of a “healthy rivalry,” as well as brotherly and encouraging. Maybe it is time the rest of us learn to let go of our need to say “mine is better than yours” too, to respect both for what they achieved, and to appreciate their complementary, occasionally entangled legacies.

But where is the fun in that! In case you couldn’t tell: #TeamSoumitra.

Maganlal Dresswalla is not difficult to find. In Mumbai’s posh suburb of Juhu, on the Vainkunthbhai Mehta Road that connects the city’s iconic Prithvi Theatre to the eminent Nanavati Hospital, it is situated in the middle of a bustling shopping complex. The number of vehicles the complex attracts has the effect of slowing down, dramatically, the pace of traffic on this thoroughfare.

And yet, the high profile of its neighbours, on either side, leads visitors to walk past Maganlal Dresswalla, without so much as casting a look in its direction. Situated right between Kala Niketan, a famous sari store, and two designer couture boutiques, Jesal Vora and Archana Kochhar, Maganlal Dresswalla does precious little to battle the ethnic charm of the former or the contemporary glamour of the latter. Where the bedecked mannequins within the glass facade of these three outlets entice many a passer-by into paying the shops a visit, the words ‘Maganlal Dresswalla’, inscribed on a solitary rusted metal hoarding that stands a few metres before the narrow entrance to its basement premises, appear more like a warning for construction being carried out at a site than the sign for an institution that has been an intrinsic part of the history of Indian show business.

But the moment you make your way down the flight of stairs, from this inconspicuous facade into the sprawling 3000 square feet plus premises of Maganlal Dresswalla, you are transported into another realm. The feeling is that of a Harry Potter-finds-himself-on-platform-nine-and-three-quarter experience, where visitors, much like JK Rowling’s protagonist, are left wide-eyed at what lies before them. A swan-shaped wedding palanquin greets you as you step off the staircase. Beyond it lies an unlikely landscape steeped in colour— a variety of costumes, turbans, masquerade masks. Piles of wooden and metallic bows, arrows, maces, spears, bayonet-laden-rifles are stacked up in one corner. The sound of tailors working away frenetically at their sewing machines can be heard from the other end. The space is brightly lit— a glow of yellow light accentuating the ornate interiors of the shop.

It is from here that Maganlal Dresswalla serves the requirements of Mumbai’s film and television industry. Its association with Hindi cinema dating way back to 1926. The family that has founded and runs this enterprise is not so much an overlooked chapter of the industry’s history, as a quintessential and ongoing participant in the evolution of cinema for so long that its presence has perhaps been taken for granted. From Indian films like India’s first talkie Alam-Ara (1931), to Mughal-e-Azam (1960), to Jewel Thief  (1967) to the more recent Jodhaa Akbar (2008), Hollywood movies like Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Life of Pi, TV shows like Shyam Benegal’s Bharat Ek Khoj and B. R. Chopra’s Mahabharat to innumerable regional language movies, Maganlal Dresswalla has provided costumes to hundreds of characters, protagonists as well as extras, for close to 90 years, working closely with filmmakers such as K. Asif, Shyam Benegal and Ashutosh Gowarikar.

***

Suresh Dresswalla, 67, is the man at the helm of Maganlal Dresswalla today. Even on this lazy Sunday afternoon he is carefully dressed in a silk maroon full sleeved shirt with a mandarin collar and black pin stripes, dark brown trousers and a pair of formal black shoes— all seeming to reinforce his Dresswalla credentials. We are seated on either side of a wooden desk, with a reflective glass panel on top, in the section of the premises reserved exclusively for film costumes. Garments of various hues are stacked in metal racks along the walls behind him and to his right. To my right, a female mannequin, dressed in Kimi Katkar’s sultry red flamenco outfit from the widely popular Jumma Chumma number in Hum (1991), catches my attention, as Suresh bhai, as he is called, begins speaking.

“Kya hai ke, pehley jo hai na, before 1926, mere daddy aur unke bhaisaab, gaon mein pagdi baandhte thay— shaadi byaah ho ya koi function ho (Earlier, before 1926, my father and uncle would tie turbans at weddings and other functions at their village),” Suresh bhai tells me in a hoarse voice, laced with a distinct Gujarati accent. Hailing from Dhari village in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, the two brothers worked their way into Mumbai’s film industry, making a name for themselves in the turban business. “Us zamaaney mein gents hi ladies ka role kartey thay, as a heroine (At that time, men played female characters in films). Maganlal Dresswalla is established since then.”

There are other tidbits that emerge— like how the firm got its name. “My father’s name was Harilal. Maganlalji was his elder brother. The business was in the company’s name, which my father was handling,” Suresh bhai tells me. The story of how Dresswalla was incorporated into the firm’s identity, which Suresh bhai tells me, with a hint of pride in his voice, involves his father going to meet a film producer at his office. The producer made Harilal wait. “Daddy ko achcha nahin laga. Appointment lekar aaye thay. Toh unhoney turant bola, ‘Mujhe bulaaya gaya hai isi liye aaya hoon. Unko time nahin hai toh main jaata hoon (Daddy did not appreciate being made to wait. He had an appointment. He said, ‘I have been called here and that is why I have come. If he does not have time, I will leave.).’” When the message was relayed to the producer, he said the ‘tailor’ should wait patiently for another 10-15 minutes. To this, an angry Harilal’s parting repartee to the producer, which went on to define his enterprise, was: “I am not a tailor. I am Dresswalla. Mere paas sau-sau tailor kaam kartey hain (Hundreds of tailors work for me).” It is this pride in their work that has kept Maganlal Dresswalla going in the entertainment business for over three generations. The commitment to their craft, their work is something shared by their employees as well. Their expertise in mythologicals and period films, built over the past several decades, doesn’t stem from their ingenuity alone, but from hard work, too. “We study literature, photos, books with designers,” Suresh bhai tells me, explaining his commitment to respond to any kind of costume requirement.

***

‘Tailor’ is used as a generic term by Suresh bhai. It describes the array of people—tailors, cobblers, metal and fibre craftsmen— Maganlal Dresswalla employs and works with to execute costume requirements in films. Eventually, the scope of Maganlal’s services was broadened to include the entire gamut of livery, headgear or weapons that formed a part of a character’s appearance in a film. Suresh bhai extracts, from his fading memory, a cursory list of names of the films Maganlal Dresswalla has been associated with over the last nine-odd decades.

“All the costumes in Mughal-e-Azam were ours. Kranti (1981) as well. Babubhai Mistry’s Sampoorna Ramayan (1961) and Mahabharat (1965) had a lot of our costumes,” he says, taking long pauses while recalling these films. Then, suddenly, he remembers, “The dacoit costumes in Sunil Dutt’s Mujhe Jeene Do (1963) and Vinod Khanna’s Mera Gaon Mera Desh (1971) were done by us.” In the next instant, he names a film from an entirely unrelated genre: “The side artistes in Ajooba (1991), the crowds in the film, their costumes were done by us.” From the present day, he speaks of Jodhaa Akbar. “The turbans for most of the main artistes were done by us,” he says. “Ashutosh Gowarikar khud aaye thay selection ke liye (Ashustosh Gowarikar himself came to select the turbans).” Suresh bhai adds: “We have easily done more than 100 films. Itne kiye hain ki abhi mind mein hai bhi nahin (We have done so many, that it’s easy to forget them).”

However, when I ask which film so far has posed the greatest challenge for the Dresswallas, he talks of television. He cites Shyam Benegal’s Bharat Ek Khoj (1988). “What would happen is that every 10 days, the show’s period would change. That meant the character’s turbans, their dhotis, everything changed.” In order to deal with this constant state of flux, Suresh bhai stationed more than a dozen craftsmen in Mumbai’s Film City, where the serial was shot, who often worked through the night to meet production requirements. “It was a very tedious job,” he says. “But I did my best.” He adds, almost shyly, “Shyam babu ne mujhe gold medal bhi diya thaa uske liye (Shyam Benegal even gave me a token of appreciation for my efforts).”

Suresh bhai is a ready reckoner on material that has been used to dress up artistes over the years. While speaking of Mughal-e-Azam, he tells me that Prithviraj Kapoor’s armour for the war scenes weighed in excess of 50 kgs. “In those days, armours were made of iron. Today, they are made of aluminium.” Similarly, he explains, crowns worn by kings or divine characters today, have thermocol, instead of metal, as the base frame material, to make them lighter on the actors’ heads.

He talks of how K. Asif kept telling his father, Harilal, during the making of Mughal-e-Azam, with great conviction, that the same film that had landed him in a penurious state, would deliver him from it. (The film, started in 1944 and released in 1960 was made on a whopping budget of Rs. 1.5 crores has since become a cultural milepost in our cinema for its grandeur, scale and beauty.) Or how Dilip Kumar insisted, unreasonably at times, on having Suresh bhai, who was then a young man, present on set to tie his turban throughout the shooting schedule of Manoj Kumar’s period drama, Kranti (1981). But the one memory that stands out for him revolves around the 1975 mythological blockbuster Jai Santoshi Maa. The episode, besides highlighting the fickle nature of luck in the movies, is also a telling comment on the urge to repeat a successful ‘formula’ to death in the industry.

“Usme maje ki baat kyaa thi (What was interesting about it was),” says Suresh bhai, sitting up in his chair in excitement, “Ashish Kumar, Jai Santoshi Maa ’s hero, made Solah Shukrawar (1977),” a rehashed version of Jai Santoshi Maa, which he hoped would cash in on the former film’s success. Kumar even called his production house Santoshi Maa Pictures. And Maganlal Dresswalla, who had done costumes for the previous movie, were called upon for this one as well. But the film tanked. “Yeh taqdeer ki baat hai, ki yeh (Jai Santoshi Maa )superhit gaya aur usi ka hero, jo khud film banaaya, us type ka, woh flop ho gaya (This is destiny, that while Jai Santoshi Maa was a hit, a similar film, made by its hero, tanked).”  

***

Tea arrives. The conversation changes track. Suresh bhai says he lost his father, Harilal, almost 13 years ago. Maganlal, his father’s elder brother, had passed away much before that, “Some time in the 1940s or 1950s, I don’t know.” Until seven years before Harilal’s passing, the family had continued to operate from the first Maganlal Dresswalla premises in Bhuleshwar, a crowded neighbourhood close to Kalbadevi in South Mumbai, also famous for being the early residence of the Dhirubhai Ambani family. Suresh bhai and his father Harilal moved from there to Juhu only in 1993, when the Indian television industry was beginning to grow.

“I was doing Tipu Sultan (The Sword of Tipu Sultan, a historical drama on TV) at that time,” remembers Suresh bhai. Coming to South Bombay, with its constant traffic snarls, was a problem for producers, many of whom lived in the suburbs. “Sanjay Khan (director of The Sword of Tipu Sultan) would pester me regularly, saying you have to take up premises in Juhu. He would tell me, ‘Even if you take up a place on the fifth floor, aur lift nahin hoga, toh bhi hum chad ke aayengey (and there is no lift, I will still climb the stairs and come).’”

Before joining the business with his father, Suresh bhai went to Kishinchand Chellaram College in Mumbai’s Churchgate, from where he studied up to “Inter-Arts only (two years of college)”. He says he had a passion for acting in those days and performed in several college shows, but could not take up acting professionally because his father would not allow it. “Daddy ne thappad maar ke bitha diya shop pe (Daddy summarily dismissed the idea and made me sit at the shop),” he tells me, breaking into a wistful chuckle. His warmest memory from those days is of acting in a play whose title may be seen with some irony in hindsight: ‘Yadi drama na ho sakey, toh yaaron mujhe maaf karna (If the drama doesn’t take place, then friends please forgive me)’. He grins as he says the title out loud. “Jatin, means Rajesh Khanna (Hindi cinema’s first big superstar), was there; Amjad (Khan, a star villain) was there; Jeetu (Jeetendra, also a film star) was there (they were all acting in the play). We stood first in the inter-college competition.”

The other acting memory Suresh bhai recalls is when he dressed up as the Hindu god Krishna from B. R. Chopra’s television series Mahabharat, having provided costumes for the same. “Kabhi kabhi aisa lagta hai na, itne heroes ke costumes kiye, film mein, serial mein, mujhko khud yeh banna hai. Toh mujhe Mahabharat ka Krishna banna thaa (Sometimes you feel, you have done costumes for so many heroes, in film, in TV serials… you would like to be one of them. I wanted to be Krishna from Mahabharat ).” The opportunity to fulfill this whim came his way when an independent director, whose name Suresh bhai cannot recall, approached him for a short film. “I was in Bhuleshwar then… She made me wear Krishna’s costume and took me to Marine Drive where she asked the beggars to gather around me,” he says, laughing heartily at the idea. “She wanted to show the contrast— between the time of the Mahabharat, with its wealthy kings and prosperous setting, to the poverty in Mumbai today.”

While speaking of Marine Drive, Suresh bhai decides to clear the confusion created by two other Maganlal Dresswalla outlets in this part of South Mumbai. These, he explains, are run by his brothers, but have nothing to do with films (“They are not in Bollywood”). Kirti bhai, his elder brother, functions out of Marine Drive. “He is dealing mostly in school and college functions, fancy dress costumes for kids.” Girish bhai, the youngest of Harilal’s three sons, operates out of Bhuleshwar, but not from the original Maganlal Dresswalla premises. “He is doing exports to Middle East.” When I ask Suresh bhai what led to the division in the business, he says, “Daddy only said to do so.” He insists that all three siblings have been and continue to be on good terms with each other, but “now everything is separate.” The one time that I managed to connect with Girish bhai over the phone, he too ruled out any conflict between the brothers: “Whatever we are doing, we are satisfied. Whatever he is doing, he is satisfied.”

***

At the 2012 Mumbai Film Festival organized by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI), young, upcoming actor and filmmaker, Shriya Pilgaonkar’s Dresswala, a four-minute short film, was shown in the ‘Dimensions Mumbai’ section of the festival. Shriya had known of Maganlal Dresswalla for a long time as a place for costumes, but once she got to know of the films they had been associated with, she says, it became “like a heritage site” for her. “That is when I realized that I have to know more about this (place).”

While Shriya believes that the audience at MAMI left with a new perspective of Maganlal Dresswalla, she feels bad that not enough goes into preserving Maganlal’s legacy. “In the 2005 floods, a lot of their stuff was washed away,” she says. “In India, a thing like preservation is not taken very seriously. I wish there would be archives of these costumes for people to see.” Pilgaonkar’s statement is an echo of Suresh bhai ’s own regret, at the devastation brought about by the 2005 Mumbai floods, which obliterated records of their work not just in Hindi cinema, but in English films like Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and in several Gujarati and South Indian language movies, including N. T. Rama Rao’s costume for Ashoka The Great (Samrat Ashok – 1992). “Sab ke album thay, photograph thay original, woh sab paani mein chale gaye. Khatam (We had albums of all our films, original photographs in them, but they were all destroyed in the floods. Finished.).”

Presently Suresh bhai is more focused on the television industry, which for him takes precedence over films. He says this is due to a decline in the quantum of period and mythological films being made today. “Aajkal Western type kay… ya Las Vegas type kay… toh woh costumes zyaada chaltay hain. Woh type ke costumes main nahin karta (Nowadays, Western costumes, Las Vegas style costumes, are in greater demand. I don’t do those kinds of costumes),” he says about costumes in today’s movies. His discomfort is especially reflected in the way the words ‘Las Vegas type’ stumble off his tongue, with great reluctance, as if by merely mentioning the phrase he is compromising on a value system. “But I do a lot of TV serials. Sagar Arts ne jitney Devi Ma ke upar serials banaaye, usme mostly maine saarey main lady artists ke costumes diye hain (Whatever mythological serials have been produced by Sagar Arts around Devi Maa—the Hindu goddess—I have given the costumes for most of the main female protagonists),” he adds, immediately.

Forty-five minutes into our conversation, we are joined by the younger of Suresh bhai ’s two daughters, Sarika Dresswalla, 36, who is visiting the premises on this Sunday evening with her husband, a banker. Like her elder sister Rupal Dresswalla, Sarika has been involved in the business for more than a decade now. “As a child, this was like a dreamland for me,” she says. Her face lights up at the memory. “Every time papa would call me to the shop, even if it was in the middle of the night, I would be ready because there was so much going on. So many colours, so many costumes. It was like a passion for me, it was in the blood.”

As Suresh bhai gets up to attend to matters of business, Sarika gives me a tour of the premises. She begins with the film section, right behind the mannequin styled like Kimi Katkar from Hum. A wide array of outfits are on display here, iconic costumes that have been worn by heroes and heroines over the years. Amitabh Bachchan’s Shahenshah jacket, with netted-metallic material on the right arm and a rope that the character usually carries in his left hand, stands out. Another female mannequin is dressed as Madhubala’s Anarkali from Mughal-e-Azam. Then there is Aamir Khan’s Elvis Presley outfit from the song ‘Tere pyaar ne kar diya deewaana ’ in the 2011 film, Delhi Belly. But these are duplicates, made by tailors at Maganlal Dresswalla to cater to the rising demand for Bollywood themed parties. They allow people to relive their favourite film characters vicariously. “Everyone has a dream. Everyone wants to become something,” says Sarika. “And when they come here, we bring their dream to life.” The costumes also represent new avenues of business being developed by the Rupal and Sarika, the third generation of Dresswallas.

“I want to expand into foreign films. That’s my dream,” says Sarika, when asked about her vision for Maganlal Dresswalla. “There’s such beautiful work that we do here and I think we can offer so much more to them (foreign films). I’ve already done foreign films— supplied costumes for Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol (2011, for a section that was set in India) supplied for Life Of Pi (2012)— about 400 to 500 school uniforms.”

Rupal, who I spoke to a few days later, spoke of plans for expansion as well. She pointed out how Maganlal Dresswalla today helps create mascots for brands such as Bournvita and Colgate, an initiative driven entirely by Sarika and her. Rupal is older than Sarika by four years. She did a course in fashion design from the J. D. Institute Of Fashion Technology before joining the family business. She says that since her husband, Gujarati superstar Hitu Kanodia, is part of the entertainment industry, “it helps”. “We are 21^st century women. Once you are married, you need to know how to balance your life,” she added, in a measured way.

***

As we near the end of the quick look around the Maganlal Dresswalla premises, Sarika mentions the store is about to undergo a complete overhaul. “What I am trying to do is… ” she begins to outline her plans— essentially a more compact, functional and organized premises, suited to the next generation of Dresswallas. Her zest sits well with Suresh bhai ’s own plans as he nears 70 and looks to his children to take the legacy forward. “My ambition is that both my kids – Rupal and Sarika, woh dono bahut aagey badhey film industry mein, badi badi filmein karey (go a long way in the film industry and do good work),” he had said earlier. From an idea that began at a time when even female characters in the movies were portrayed by men, to an institution that now sits on the shoulders of two confident young businesswomen, the Dresswallas have had an eventful journey.

Nothing is quite the same since when they started. In the last two decades Hindi films have become glossier and slicker. Every star today has his or her own stylist, as does every film. The fashion industry is of global standards in India now and almost all the top designers are involved with the movies. The large number of fashion magazines in the market has cemented the bond between cinema and fashion. It is common practice to have makeup and prosthetics technicians flown down from Hollywood now and costumes in superhero films like Ra.One are generated by SFX. The space for traditional costumers like the Dresswallas is shrinking. But their significance is not. To have loved Hindi movies and their inimitable characters is to have loved Maganlal Dresswalla.