Tag Archives: nocontributor

Rani Pink

Posted on by
5

Nishtha Jain’s documentary, Gulabi Gang, is about a group of rural women in Uttar Pradesh who fight for the rights of women and Dalits. Sampat Pal Devi formed Gulabi Gang in 2006 to combat corruption and crime against women. The group is named after its pink sari clad members who wield bamboo sticks and seek to bring about justice in a patriarchal society riddled with poverty, caste divisions, and crime. Here’s Nishtha Jain on why she chose to make this documentary, the process of making it, her relationship with Sampat Pal during and after shooting the film, and her views on the gang’s ideology. Gulabi Gang releases in India, in select cities, on February 21.

 

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

 

Big City Boy

Posted on by
3

Ritesh Batra on his relationship with the city he grew up in, Mumbai, and the city where he went to learn filmmaking, New York, and how these relationships found their way into his first feature film, The Lunchbox. 

 

Bombay was very different when I was growing up.  And, that’s one of the things The Lunchbox is about. Nawaz’s character in the movie, Sheikh, is a stand-in for Bombay in a way. The sort of optimism he has and the way in which he is out there. Everywhere he goes, he smiles. He is everything the other two characters are not. And in that sense he represents Bombay.

 

I left for the U.S. when I was 18. I went to study economics in Drake University in Iowa. After graduating I became a consultant at Deloitte and then I went to film school at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

 

The Lunchbox is about loneliness in big cities— cities like Bombay and New York, which is what makes it so identifiable. The experience of living in New York is completely different from the experience of living in Bombay in most ways, but in that one regard both experiences are very similar. New York is very cosmopolitan, Bombay might not be as cosmopolitan but it’s segregated like New York is. If you move around in a certain circle, if you live in a certain part of Bombay, it’s possible that you may never see another part of Bombay. There are many Bombays in one and that is how New York is as well. The story of the film bounces between all these different Bombays. The Bombay of Irrfan’s character, the Bombay of Ila and the Bombay of Sheikh; and these three different places could never be woven together or mix with one other, except in cinema.

 

I have worked with people who come from very different places and sensibilities for this film. For instance, I have an American DOP, the colourist in the film is from France, the sound designer is from Germany but the film is rooted in Bombay. I moved back to Bombay to make this film and now live here.

 

And I believe that is the reason it has been appreciated in different parts of the world. Only if something is extremely local, can it be universal. I had a very interesting experience at Toronto and Telluride, because I was curious to know why they liked the film, and they told me it was because they experienced India, but not as a tourist. So, once that’s taken care of, people think that, ‘Okay this is not make believe or farce, this is true.’ And then they start to see the universality in the film, in the relationships, in the characters.

 

And that is great because when I start to make a film, I don’t know what kind of a connect I am looking for from the audience. You just want that a good story be well told, and hope people invest themselves emotionally while watching it. Anyone who comes to watch a film brings himself to it, and different people take different things away from it.

 

When you are writing a film you don’t really know what it is about. One day you might think you do but on the next day it becomes about something else. Because writing is a journey, it is about finding out more. When you’re giving interviews you have to say that your film is about one thing or the other but when I was writing The Lunchbox it was pretty vague for most part. Again, I don’t know what my next film is about. All I know is that it is set in Bombay, but, honestly, I don’t know what it’s about.

 

As told to Tanul Thakur

Super Days

Posted on by
7

Namita Gokhale is one of India’s leading litterateurs. She has authored six novels, a collection of short stories, and several works of nonfiction, in English. Her debut novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion, a satire on the Mumbai and Delhi elite, caused an uproar due to its candid sexual humour upon its release in 1984. Gokhale went on to write Gods Graves and Grandmother, A Himalayan Love Story, Mountain Echoes – Reminiscenes of Kumaoni Women, The Book of Shadows, The Book of Shiva, Shakuntala: The Play of Memory, The Puffin Mahabharata and In Search of Sita. In 2011 she wrote Priya: In Incredible Indyaa in which she resurrected some characters from Paro. Her last book, a collection of short stories titled The Habit of Love, was released last year.

 

She is also a publisher who has introduced some notable titles and, as one of the founder directors of Yatra Books, has translated and showcased the best of Indian writing in Indian languages. And, along with the author William Dalrymple, she is the founder-director of the well known Jaipur Literature Festival.

 

But a lesser known fact about Gokhale is that, between 1976 and 1982 she published a film magazine called Super from Bombay. In this essay, written a few years ago, with characteristic wry wit, she revisits those days.

 

 

The year 1976. After being chucked out of college for not wanting to study Chaucer, I embarked on the contrarian option and set about publishing a popular film magazine. My dreams of becoming an academic, possibly a philologist, had been rudely interrupted by karma, kismet and the soon-to-be defrocked Sister Aquinas, principal of Jesus and Mary College, New Delhi.

 

I tried to kill myself, unsuccessfully. Then, having survived, I decided to revolt against academia and to publish Super. I was twenty, and the rest of the staff in Super were just a little younger or older. Rauf Ahmed, the slim, soft-spoken and elegant editor was all of twenty-eight, which made him seem very old. Rama (now Ramma) Luthra, who helped us get the ads, was rumoured to be touching thirty. Thirty was clearly the end of the world or life as we knew it. Bhawana Somaaya was eighteen and her folks were upset that she was working for a film magazine. Every time she was deputed to cover a filmi party, she would pretend she was staying over with friends to catch up on college work. Of course, it wasn’t Bollywood then. The B-word had not been coined (it first came into currency, I am told, in the early 1980s). Mollywood in Madras and Tollywood in Tollygunge were already there in filmi jargon, but Bollywood was still waiting to arrive and conquer the world.

 

The process of de-intellectualisation hit me like a disastrous crash landing. The word most in circulation was ‘maha’, and everything around us was ‘maha’ this or ‘maha’ that. Like Rajesh Khanna was ‘maha’ cool. It was Shobhaa Dé (then Shobha Kilachand), the gorgeous editor of Stardust, who had unleashed a whole new dhakar street vocabulary via ‘Neeta’s Natter’. G.V. Desani had done it before in All About H. Hatterr. Later, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children magically unshackled the English language from its colonial straitjacket. But it was Shobha Kilachand (nee Rajadhyaksha) who absolutely nanga karaoed things. The thwarted philologist in me approved.

 

Super folded up in 1982, and I began writing novels. I stopped watching films, and gradually the insider lexicon of the industry and the once-removed interface with what had now been dubbed Bollywood became a thing of the past. I no longer got a rush from reading film magazines. I began writing long sentences; usually with semi-colons in them. The exclamation marks and hyperbole of those early days had been determinedly abandoned. The years rolled by. The Bollygarchy grew and expanded and spawned new superstars. Amitabh and Jaya begat Abhishek, Babita (nee Shivdasani) begat Karisma and Kareena, Rakesh Roshan and Pinky begat Hrithik, while the badminton star Prakash Padukone begat Deepika Padukone. And so on.

 

And then there was a flashback moment. A crisp New Delhi winter mid-morning. The security lady at the Imperial hotel was fidgeting through my handbag, examining my ‘English Rose’ and ‘Venetian Venus’ lipsticks with inordinate suspicion, when I realised that Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh were standing there, beside me, on the cobbled driveway.

 

It was what academics would term a liminal encounter, a threshold between two worlds. Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh, Rishi Baba and his lady love. They looked like just any well-groomed couple, toned and gymmed and togged in designer clothes, diamond-crusted shades and expensive leatherwear. Of course, they couldn’t ever look like any-just-body, for their faces, self-consciously private, bore the stamp of constant public scrutiny, of celebrity, of Bollywood stardom, of surfaces that sense they are being examined.

 

I was sixteen when Bobby was released in 1973. I can remember it all, even today— the artless streak of flour in Dimple’s hair when Rishi visits her, Premnath’s open fly, unzipped for posterity, and Rishi Kapoor with side locks singing Main shayar toh nahin to Farida Jalal. That was the year Paul McCartney released ‘Band on the Run’. The year I first read The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer and got confused about the ideology of lipstick.

 

It was the year of Bobby.

 

I may have betrayed and belied it, but I belong, in history and chronology, to the Bobby generation. I found myself staring star-struck at Mr. Plastic-Pink Duck Lips and Mrs. Rishi Kapoor, and it was like Proust and his madeleines from A Remembrance of Things Past, if I may be allowed a suitably highbrow allusion. I remembered the Neetu Singh of my Super days, her much-hyped vital statistics, her much-discussed cleavage, her much-feared mother, the late Mrs. Rajee Singh, who had dark circles around her eyes and was reputedly of a stern disposition. I even remembered some haiku poems that Neetu had once written, the articulate verses I had read in the course of an editorial meeting. I forgot my handbag and the security lady and rushed across and gushed all over the cool power couple, inarticulately expressing my delight and nostalgia at seeing them. I think they were startled by my enthusiasm, and before I could sink into deeper shame by asking for Neetu’s autograph, they had disappeared, sped away in a waiting car.

 

Coincidences mounted in Bollywood style, and I encountered Rishi and Neetu again, the very same day, at the delicatessen at the Oberoi, biting into macaroons and sipping hot chocolate. I had recovered my composure by then, but I think they perceived me as a Delhi stalker. Later, I connected with all that Proustian consciousness through YouTube, where I viewed the Shemaroo video of Main shayar toh nahin, and also Googled gyan on Ranbir, Neetu and Rishi’s star son.

 

There are two bound volumes of old copies of Super on my bookshelf. Here were ‘Super Scoops of Seventy Nine’— where Super Scooper Pammi Bakshi goes to interview Chintu Baba— Rishi Kapoor to you and me. Rishi, at twenty-six, ‘symbolises the acme of achievement that a person his age can reach’. The interviewer reaches his residence at the appointed time. ‘I saw him prancing around in a towel. “Why are you here so early in the morning?” he enquires cheekily, before getting to talk about The Woman in His Life. It’s his mother, Krishna Kapoor. He was practically in tears when he talked about her influence on him. Then the conversation turned to the other woman in his life, Neetu . . . “I am too irresponsible for marriage but I’ll marry. Maybe next year.”!!!!!’

 

Bollywood stars are not cardboard cut-outs, they are a chunk of collective consciousness. The custodians of Bharatiya youth, glamour, and celebrity, they are the emanations of our national dreams and desires, the essence of the projected other, the validation of all we would but could not be. In short, we live through them. I realised this afresh, in not so many long words when I met Dev Anand at the Jaipur Literature Festival some years ago. His autobiography Romancing with Life had just been released by the prime minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh.

 

Dev Sa’ab, with his uniquely jaunty style, was a staple of our Super days. We watched him mentoring Zeenat Aman, and introducing Tina Munim, while the sepia-tinted nostalgia sections would of course regularly resurrect the Suraiya love story— the engagement ring she had thrown away into the Arabian Sea and all that. Dev Anand’s first film Ziddi had him starring opposite Kamini Kaushal. This was followed by classics like Taxi Driver, CID, and Paying Guest. The evergreen hero wore a beret and dripped attitude. He delivered his lines in a rapid, breathless, each word-a-paper-plane style. He sang songs like Main zindagi ko dhuen mein udata chala gaya. He looked and acted like his contemporary, Gregory Peck.

 

January 2007, a restaurant at the Rambagh Palace, Jaipur. At our table, William Dalrymple before me, John Berendt to my right. I struggled to explain to them who the dapper, debonair man beside me was, what he represented to my world. Dev Anand’s face was creased into a classic Dev Anand smile. His perfectly folded silk cravat supported an impeccably youthful face, which remained tilted at a familiar forty-five-degree angle. All the waiters wanted his autograph, they had stopped serving us and were staring at the Living Legend in silent adoration. The lobby manager had arrived too, and the girls from the reception desk. ‘Dev Anand is one of the most popular film stars ever,’ I said. It sounded inadequate. Suddenly Dev Anand turned to me and enumerated, with perfect recall, the last time we had met. ‘It was in 1981, I think,’ he mused. ‘You were with your editor Rauf Ahmed—what was the magazine called . . . ?’

 

‘Super,’ I said humbly, remembering, once again, those days. Age cannot wither nor custom stale . . .

 

Rajesh Khanna and his wife Dimple Kapadia had dominated the gossip columns: ‘Neeta’s Natter’ in Stardust, and the ‘Deep Throat’ and ‘Grapevine’ segments in Super. We paid fifty rupees an ‘item’ to our informants, and the tiny office in Nariman Point would be abuzz with The Khanna’s latest antics as, over tea and bhelpuri, we dissected his mystique and his human failures.

 

Super, September 1979: ‘No one would believe that Rajesh Khanna bears any resemblance to a lottery ticket. But both go for one-rupee gambles. Both promise huge returns. There’s one difference though. Rajesh Khanna always wins. He says, “When I want something badly, I take a one-rupee bet with someone that I will get it. And I always win. Recently it happened with my film Amar Deep . . . ” Floundering as he was in a maelstrom of flops, Amar Deep seemed to be the only straw in sight. The film, which most distributors avoided after seeing the first trial, is a hit . . . Will the person who has taken that fatal one-rupee bet with Rajesh on who will become the next No. 1, please stand up?’

 

Rajesh Khanna hasn’t written his memoirs yet. Born Jatin Khanna in 1942, he changed the way a generation felt about romance and love. The Rajesh Khanna phenomenon was both everyman and anti-hero. He had peaked by the time we embarked on Super. An angry young man, Amitabh Bachchan, was on the rise even as Khanna’s star was waning.

 

I remember the first time I ‘met’ Rajesh Khanna. It was in my hometown, Nainital, where he was shooting with Asha Parekh, for Kati Patang. Everybody and everyone knew that Asha Parekh wore padded hips, and hordes of observant onlookers trained their eyes on her posterior as she executed faultless matkas and jhatkas around the Municipal Gardens by the lakeside with Rajesh Khanna. At least, that’s how I remember it. As we returned home, my mother bought a carton of eggs and asked me to carry them. We stopped at the Grand Hotel for a bit, where Kaka Luthra, the local hotelier who had once been with Prithvi Theatre, had promised to introduce us to The Superstar. We were waiting upstairs, and there was Rajesh Khanna climbing the wooden staircase, clutching the banister. He wore a brown corduroy jacket, and I realised, staring from above, that he was bald and there was boot polish on his head. Just then one of the eggs broke and everything was a mess— or a liminal moment, depending on how you looked at it.

 

Rajesh Khanna should have written his memoirs, and perhaps he will, one day. He has begat his own minor dynasty, with his son-in-law Akshay Kumar top-of-the pops in Bollygarchy ratings. His ex-wife Dimple still looks beautiful. I remember reading somewhere that her sister Simple had died. It gave me a shock, tugged at my heart as though she were family. At Super, so long ago, we had been current and informed about sister Simple, and their father Chunnibhai Kapadia, known to the film mags as CBI, or the Chunnibhai Bureau of Information. I didn’t have to Google any of this— I was steeped in a complex secular mythology, which mirrored, in intricate detail, the religious mythology of the great Indian epics. We are like that only, with over a billion gods and trillion minor deities, and a Film Lok in parallel to Indra Lok and Dev Lok.

 

Rajesh Khanna is clustered in memory with Devyani Chaubal. For those of you who don’t know, or don’t remember, DC was a gossip columnist with Star & Style. Devyani was a well-connected Maharashtrian with once-beautiful features. Like The Superstar, her hair was thinning under her back-combed bouffant. She was middle-aged, single, and desperately in love with Rajesh Khanna. Also, she was under the delusion that The Superstar reciprocated her love. Insiders hinted that he had once seduced her. How we mocked Devyani, how she fuelled our laughter! Every week, her column would revolve around The Khanna, what he said, what he did, and all of this would be flavoured with meaningful innuendoes about the ‘special’ relationship between The Superstar and her.

 

Devyani Chaubal had a sharp mind, and a pen dipped in vitriol. She wrote really well, except for her tragic vulnerability on this one obsessive subject. We laughed then, we bright young Super immortals, we sneered and hooted at her column. ‘I want to look like a million dollars,’ she told me when we had lunch together. That was the last time I met her. Devyani overdid her diet, as she overdid everything, and she fell ill from malnutrition. She deteriorated. Then she slipped into a diabetic coma, and her friends who loved her looked after her. I don’t know if Rajesh Khanna visited her in hospital, but looking back and remembering her after all these years, I recognise there was something heroic and magnificent about her one-sided love, and I feel a bit sad and stupid about the way we had all laughed at her.

 

Doomed love gets me thinking about Parveen Babi. She was lovely in an incandescent sort of way, with glowing skin and straight hair and a cloud of innocence floating around her. The gossip columns regularly reported on her sizzling love life. I think she had an affair with Danny Denzongpa and then she moved in with Kabir Bedi, after which she sought consolation with Mahesh Bhatt— and somewhere in this trajectory she fell in love with Amitabh Bachchan. Films like Amar Akbar Anthony record Babi in her glory days, before she reportedly became victim to acute and extended attacks of paranoia and schizophrenia.

 

It was perhaps the trio of Parveen Babi, Zeenat Aman and Shabana Azmi that radically altered the way young Indian women perceived themselves. The ghunghats and ghararas of family dramas and Muslim socials gave way to a casual, natural style in dressing and demeanour. Parveen Babi was possibly the most conventionally beautiful, but all of them shared a spontaneity and infectious spunk that communicated itself to their enormous fan following. Then Zeenie Baby too went into cinematic and media exile, and only Shabana remained to move from strength to strength.

 

Shabana Azmi is beautiful, intelligent and articulate, but I would hesitate to describe her as a Bollywood star, as there are many more dimensions and parameters to her public and private persona. But in my memory, from those Super days, there are three bindaas, bohemian girls in bell-bottoms. Carefree and contemporary, they liberated their audiences of a tyrannical set of tired clichés about femininity.

 

And then there was Mandakini, the Ram Teri Ganga Maili girl. I remember Mandakini with a sense of personal involvement because she looked exactly like my younger sister. Both had gorgeous smoky eyes and a sort of in-your-face glamour. My sister was often mistaken for Mandakini. When I was in Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai, recovering from cancer, the security guards and lift men let my sister come and go as she pleased, bypassing the strict rules of the hospital. They had assumed she was Mandakini— who in those days was the best friend and constant companion of Dawood Ibrahim, the mafia don. My sister never corrected them; the mistaken identity amused her, and it was convenient too!

 

Mandakini disappeared. Nobody had any idea of what had happened to her. Just a single photograph some years ago, where she looked radiantly cheerful: Mandakini is married to a Tibetan, who used to be a monk, and treading the path of virtue and happiness. A Bollywood ending with a tangled twist, and what I am sure must be several intermediate untold stories.

 

Bollywood was and is not only about actors, but about stories and scripts and plots and sub-plots. Like Shakespeare and Kalidasa, Bollywood simultaneously sustains both high and low art. It is a repository of folk and classical traditions reinterpreted in context. And it is fun, a national stress-buster, a collective mood-enhancer. The unique spirit of Bollywood, of its manic megalomania, its plastic plagiarism, its transcendental understanding, was perhaps best represented in the immortal films of Manmohan Desai.

 

Manmohan Desai was the director who, with Amar Akbar Anthony, birthed the new genre of the Masala Hindi Movie. Films like Parvarish, Naseeb and Coolie brought together comedy, coincidence, synchronicity, miracles, and a determined secular respect for all religions. These vibrant entertainers did not insult the viewer’s intelligence— they simply ignored it.

 

The intellectual world despised Desai. Rosie Thomas came to India in 1980 to undertake an anthropological study of popular Indian films and was an observer on the sets of the Bachchan-starrer Naseeb (Naseeb is a story of fate and kismet: it begins with a lottery ticket being given away by a drunk to a waiter). K.K. Shukla, Manmohan Desai’s scriptwriter, told her, ‘I can’t believe you are getting money to do this!’ She recalls giving a talk on the subject to cinema scholars at an Italian film festival. ‘I suddenly realised I was being given a slow clap! They expected a lecture on someone like Satyajit Ray!’

 

Manmohan Desai died in 1994, just fifty-eight years old. A widower, he had only recently got engaged to the film actress Nanda. The obituaries called him the ‘Miracle Man of Bollywood’ and referred to the deliberate illogic of his incredible genius.

 

Super shut down in 1982, for reasons too complicated to explain here. I returned to the seductions of literature, and got down to writing my first novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion. There was a scene in it where I paid my dues to Bollywood.

 

‘Deus Ex Machina,’ Lenin announced sonorously, and extracted a bottle of champagne from under his shawl. We had a copy of Latin for Lawyers in Suresh’s library but so much erudition and class went right over my head.

 

‘Saved by the bell,’ he clarified.

 

‘He’s won a fucking lottery,’ Paro amplified. She was dressed in a long black kaftan, and her hair lay loose about her shoulders, the red highlights giving her an eerie flamboyance. I sensed that she was not being flippant, for there was a subtle change in her demeanour, and her arrogance, which had appeared a little threatened recently, seemed to have resurfaced without any major bruises. Her contempt for me was once again visible and tangible.

 

I never knew such things happened in real life. I thought they happened only in films. In fact it had all begun with a film. One drunken night Lenin and Paro decided to ‘go slumming’ and see a Bachchan starrer. One of Amitabh’s dialogues really appealed to Lenin.

 

‘Apna naseeb kabhi kisi ko mat becho,’ Amitabh Bachchan had said, and that was what Lenin was now repeating in excellent declamatory style, his eyebrows all askew. He told us the whole involuted story of the film, the upshot being that he (Lenin), went and bought himself a lottery ticket. He didn’t forget about it after that, but kept the ticket (for Lenin) very carefully, and assiduously checked all the results in the newspapers on the due date. He swore that he was not in the least surprised to find that he had won five lakhs of rupees.

 

I don’t watch many films any more. I should, but I don’t. But I remember every minute of those Super days, and Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh are still superstars for me.

 

Excerpted from The Popcorn Essayists – What Movies do to Writers, published by Tranquebar Press/Westland Ltd., 2011. You can buy the book here.

The Narcissus of Undying Bloom

Posted on by
Reply

Saadat Hasan Manto was one of the greatest Urdu writers of the last century. He led a rich life, the last years of which, sadly, were given to trials for obscenity, financial troubles and, finally, a liver cirrhosis that was the cause of his death at age 42, in 1955, in Lahore, Pakistan.

In happier years in Bombay, Manto was also a film journalist and a radio and film scriptwriter. As an insider in the Bombay film industry he had a ready window into the lives of the brightest stars of those times. 

Here is a translation from the Urdu, of Manto’s account of Nargis— one of Indian cinema’s greatest actresses. Of when her ascent to stardom had just about begun, and of her slow yet studied metamorphosis as an actress. 

 

It was a long time ago. The Nawab of Chattari’s daughter Tasnim—later Mrs. Tasnim Saleem Chattari—had written me a letter: “So what do you think of your brother-in-law, my husband? Since his return from Bombay, he has been talking ceaselessly about you, much to my delight. He was apprehensive of meeting you, my unseen, unmet brother. In fact, he used to tease me about you. Now for the last two days he has been insisting that I should come to Bombay and meet you. He says you are a fascinating person. The way he talks about you, it would seem that you are his brother rather than mine… in any case, he is very happy that I choose people carefully. My own brother got here before Saleem did and lost no time in telling me of his meeting with you. Nargis he never mentioned, but when Saleem arrived and spilled the beans, including your fracas with Nakhshab, only then did everything fall into place. Saleem is apologetic about the second visit to Jaddan Bai’s house and holds his brother Shamshad, whom you have met, responsible for it… You do know, of course, that if Saleem was ever infatuated, it was with Leela Chitnis, which, at least, shows good taste.”

 

When Saleem dropped in to see me in Bombay, it was our first meeting, and he already was, as Tasnim put it, my brother-in-law, being her husband. I showed him what hospitality I could. Movie people have one ‘present’ they can always give: take their visitors to see a film being shot. So, dutifully, I took him around to Shri Studio where K. Asif was shooting Phool. Saleem and his friends should have been happy with that but it appeared to me that they had other plans, which they obviously had made before arriving in Bombay. So at one point, quite casually, Saleem asked me, “And where is Nargis these days?”

 

“With her mother,” I replied lightly. My joke fell flat because one of the nawabs asked with the utmost simplicity, “With Jaddan Bai?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Saleem spoke next, “Can one meet her… I mean my friends here are quite keen on doing that. Do you know her?”

 

“I do… but only just,” I answered.

 

“Why?” one of them asked.

 

“Because she and I have never worked on a movie together,” I said.

 

“Then we should really not bother you with this,” Saleem remarked.

 

However, I did want to visit Nargis. I had decided to do so several times but I had not been able to bring myself to go there. These young men whom I would be taking to see her were the kind who just stare at women with their eyes practically jumping out of their sockets. But they were an innocent lot. All they wanted was to catch a glimpse of Nargis so that when they went back to their lands and estates they would be able to brag to their friends that they had met Nargis, the famous film star. So I told them that we could go and meet her.

 

Why did I want to meet Nargis? After all, Bombay was full of actresses to whose homes I could go any time I wished. Before I answer that question, let me narrate an interesting story.

 

I was at Filmistan and my working day was long, starting early and ending at eight in the evening. One day, I returned earlier than usual, in fact, in the afternoon, and as I entered my place, I felt there was something different about it, as if someone had strummed a stringed instrument and then disappeared from view. Two of my wife’s younger sisters were doing their hair but they seemed to be preoccupied. Their lips were moving but I couldn’t hear a word. It was obvious they were trying to hide something. I eased myself into a sofa and the two sisters, after whispering in each other’s ears, said in chorus, “Bhai, salaam.” I answered the greeting, then looked at them intently and asked, “What is the matter?” I thought they were planning to go to the movies but it was not so. They consulted one another, again in whispers, burst out laughing and ran into the next room. I was convinced they had invited a friend of theirs and since I had come in unexpectedly I had upset their plans.

 

The three sisters were together for some time and I could hear them talking. There was much laughter. After a few minutes, my wife, pretending that she was talking to her sisters but actually wishing me to pay attention, said, “Why are you asking me? Why don’t you talk to him? Saadat, you are unusually early today.” I told her there was no work at the studio. “What do these girls want?” I asked. “They want to say that they are expecting Nargis,” she answered. “So what? Hasn’t she been here before?” I replied, quite sure they were talking about a Parsi girl who lived in the neighbourhood and often visited them. Her mother was married to a Muslim. “This Nargis has never been here before. I am talking of Nargis the actress,” my wife replied. “What is she going to do here?” I asked.

 

My wife then told me the entire story. There was a telephone in the house and the three sisters loved to be on it whenever they had a minute. When they got tired of talking to their friends, they would dial an actress’s number and carry on a generally nonsensical conversation with her, such as, “Oh! We are great fans of yours. We have arrived from Delhi only today and with great difficulty we have been able to get your phone number… We are dying to meet you… We would have come but we are in purdah and cannot leave the house… You are so lovely, absolutely ravishing and what a wonderfully sweet voice you are gifted with—” although they knew that the voice which was heard on the screen was that of either Amir Bai Karnatiki or Shamshad Begum.

 

Actresses had unlisted numbers; otherwise their phones would never have stopped ringing. But these three had managed to get almost everyone’s number with the help of my friend the screenwriter Agha Khalish Kashmiri. During one of their phone sessions, they had called Nargis and they liked the way she talked to them. They were the same age and so they became friends and would talk on the phone often, but they were yet to meet. Initially, the sisters did not let on who they were. One would say she was from Africa while the other was from Lucknow who was here to meet her aunt. Or she was from Rawalpindi and had travelled to Bombay just to catch a glimpse of Nargis. My wife would at times pretend to be a woman from Gujarat, at others, a Parsi. Quite a few times, Nargis would ask them in exasperation to tell her who they really were and why they were hiding their real names.

 

It was obvious that Nargis liked them, although there could have been no shortage of fans phoning her home. These three girls were different and she was dying to know who they really were because she did very much want to meet them. Whenever these three mysterious ones called, she would drop everything and talk to them for hours. One day, Nargis insisted that they should meet. My wife told her where we lived, adding that if there was any difficulty in locating the place she should phone from a hotel in Byculla and they would come and get her. When I came home that day, Nargis had just phoned to say that she was in the area but could not find the house, so they were all getting ready in desperation to fetch her. I had entered at a very awkward time.

 

The two younger sisters were afraid I would be annoyed, while my wife was just nervous. I wanted to pretend I was annoyed but it did not seem right. It was just an innocent prank. Was my wife behind this madcap scheme or was it her sisters’? It is said in Urdu that one’s sister-in-law owns half the household and here I was, not with one but two. I offered to go out and fetch Nargis. As I walked out of the door, I heard loud clapping from the other room.

 

In the main Byculla square, I saw Jaddan Bai’s huge limousine— and her. We greeted each other. “Manto, how are you?” Jaddan Bai asked in a rather loud voice. “I am well, but what are you doing here?” I asked. She looked at her daughter who was in the back seat and said, “Nothing, except that Baby has to meet some friends but we can’t find the house.” I smiled. “Let me guide you.” When Nargis heard this, she drew her face close to the window. “Do you know where they live?” “But of course!” I replied. “Who can forget his own house!” Jaddan Bai shifted the paan she was chewing from one side of her mouth to the other and said, “What kind of storytelling is this?” I opened the door and got in next to her. “Bibi, this is no story, but if it is one, then its authors happen to be my wife and her sisters.” Then I told them everything that had happened since I returned home. Nargis listened with great concentration, but her mother was not so amused. “A curse be on the devils… if they had said at the start that they were calling from your home, I would have sent Baby over right away. My, my, for days we were all so curious… By God, you have no idea how excited and worked up Baby has been over these phone calls. Whenever the phone rang, she would run. Every time I would ask her who it was at the other end with whom she had been carrying on such a sweet conversation for hours, and she would reply that she did not know who they were but they sounded very nice. Once or twice, I also picked up the phone and was impressed by their good manners. They seemed to be from a nice family. But the imps would not tell me their names. Today Baby was beside herself with joy because they had invited her to their place and told her where they lived. I said to her, ‘Are you mad? You don’t know who they are.’ But she just would not listen and kept after me, so I had to come myself. Had I known by God that these goblins lived in your house—”

 

“Then you would not have come personally.” I did not let her complete her sentence.

 

A smile appeared on her face. “Of course, don’t I know you?” Jaddan Bai was well read and always read my writings. Only recently, one of my pieces, ‘The Graveyard of the Progressives’, had appeared in Saqi, the Urdu literary magazine edited by Shahid Ahmad Dehlvi. God knows why, but she now turned to that. “By God, Manto, what a writer you are! You can really put the knife in, as you did in that one. Baby, do you remember how I kept raving about that article for the rest of the day?”

 

But Nargis was thinking of her unseen friends. “Let’s go, bibi,” she implored her mother impatiently.

 

“Let’s go then,” Jaddan Bai said to me.

 

We were home in minutes. The three sisters saw us from the upstairs balcony. The younger two just could not contain their excitement and were continually whispering in each other’s ears. We walked up the stairs, and while Nargis and the two girls moved into the next room, Jaddan Bai, my wife and I sat in the front room. We amused ourselves by going over the charade the girls had been playing all these months. My wife, now feeling calmer, got down to playing the hostess while Jaddan Bai and I talked about the movie industry and the state it was in. She always carried her paandaan with her because she could not be without her paan, which gave me an opportunity to help myself to a couple as well.

 

I had not seen Nargis since she was ten or eleven years old. I remembered her holding her mother’s hand on movie opening nights. She was a thin-legged girl with an unattractive long face and two unlit eyes. She seemed to have just woken up or about to go to sleep. But now she was a young woman and her body had filled out in all the right places, though her eyes were the same— small, dreamy, even a bit sickly. I thought she had been given an appropriate name, Nargis, the narcissus.

 

In Urdu poetry, the narcissus is always said to be ailing and sightless. She was simple and playful like a child and was always blowing her nose as if she had a perennial cold; this was used in the movie Barsaat as an endearing habit. Her wan face indicated that she had acting talent. She was in the habit of talking with her lips slightly joined. Her smile was self-conscious and carefully cultivated. One could see that she would use these mannerisms as raw material to forge her acting style. Acting, come to think of it, is made up of just such things.

 

Another thing that I noticed about her was her conviction that one day she would become a star, though she appeared to be in no hurry to bring that day closer. She did not want to bid farewell quite yet to the small joys of girlhood and move into the larger, chaotic world of adults with its working life.

 

But back to that afternoon. The three girls were now busy exchanging their experiences of convent schools and home. They had no interest right now in what happened in movie studios or how love affairs took place. Nargis had forgotten that she was a film star who captivated many hearts when she appeared on the screen. The two girls were equally unconcerned with the fact that Nargis was an actress who was sometimes shown doing rather daring things in the movies.

 

My wife, who was older than Nargis, had already taken her under her wing as if she were another of her younger sisters. Initially, she was interested in Nargis because she was a film actress who fell in love with different men in her movies, who laughed and cried or danced as required by the script, but not now. She seemed to be more concerned about her eating sour things, drinking ice-cold water or working in too many films as it could affect her health. It was perfectly all right with her that Nargis was an actress.

 

While the three of us were busy chatting, in walked a relation of mine whom we all called Apa Saadat. Not only was she my namesake, but also a most flamboyant personality, a person who was totally informal, so much so that I did not even feel the need to introduce her to Jaddan Bai. She lowered herself, all two hundred plus pounds of her, on to the sofa and said, “Saffo jaan, I pleaded with your brother not to buy this excuse for a car but he just wouldn’t listen. We had only driven a few yards when the dashed thing came to a stop and there he is now trying to get it going. I told him that I was not going to stand there but was taking myself to your place to wait.”

 

Jaddan Bai had been talking of some dissolute nawab, a topic Apa Saadat immediately pounced on. She knew all the nawabs and other rulers of the states that dotted the Kathiawar region because her husband belonged to the ruling family of the Mangrol state. Jaddan Bai knew all those princes because of her profession. The conversation at one point turned to a well known courtesan who had the reputation of having bankrupted several princely states. Apa Saadat was in her element. “God protect us from these women. Whosoever falls into their clutches is lost both to this world and the next. You can say goodbye to your money, your health and your good name if you get ensnared by one of these creatures. The biggest curse in the world, if you ask me, is these courtesans and prostitutes… ”

 

My wife and I were severely embarrassed and did not know how to stop Apa Saadat. Jaddan Bai, on the other hand, was agreeing with all her observations with the utmost sincerity. Once or twice, I tried to interrupt Apa Saadat but she got even more carried away. For a few minutes she heaped every choice abuse on “these women”. Then suddenly she paused, her fair and broad face underwent a tremor or two and the tiny diamond ornament in her nose sparkled even more than it normally did. She slapped herself on the thigh and stammered, looking at Jaddan Bai, “You, you are Jaddan. You are Jaddan Bai, aren’t you?”

 

“Yes,” Jaddan Bai replied soberly.

 

Apa Saadat did not stop. “Oh you, I mean, you are a very high-class courtesan, isn’t that so Saffo jaan?” My wife froze. I looked at Jaddan Bai and gave her a smile, which must have been a sheepish one. Jaddan Bai did not flinch, but calmly and in great detail continued her story of this most notorious courtesan. However, the situation could not be recovered. Apa Saadat had finally realized her faux pas and we were too embarrassed to say anything. Then the girls walked in and the tension evaporated. When Nargis was asked to sing, Jaddan Bai told us, “I did not teach her to sing because Mohan Babu was not in favour of it, and the truth is I too was against it. She can sing a bit though.” Then she said to her daughter, “Baby, sing something.”

 

Like a child, Nargis began to sing. She had no voice at all. It was not sweet nor was the timbre good. Compared to her, my youngest sister-in-law was a thousand times better. However, since Nargis had been asked and asked repeatedly, we had to suffer her for two or three minutes. When she finished, everyone praised her, except Apa Saadat and I. After a few minutes Jaddan Bai said it was time to go. The girls embraced one another and promised to meet again. There was much whispering. Then mother and daughter were gone.

 

This was my first meeting with Nargis.

 

I met her several times after this. The telephone was kept busy; the girls would phone her and she would get into her car without her mother and come over. The feeling that she was an actress had almost disappeared. The girls met as if they were related or had known one another for years. Many times, after she had left, the three sisters would say, “There is nothing actress-like about her.”

 

A new movie starring Nargis was released around this time with quite a few love scenes which showed her whispering coyly to the hero, looking at him longingly, nuzzling up to him, holding his hand and so on. My wife said, “Look at her, the way she is sighing, one would think she really was in love with this fellow.” Her two sisters would say to each other, “Only yesterday she was asking us how to make toffee with raw sugar and here she is… ”

 

My own view of Nargis’s acting abilities was that she was incapable of portraying emotion. Her inexperienced fingers could not possibly feel the racing pulse of love. Nor could she be aware of the excitement of love, which was different from the excitement of running a race in school. Any perceptive viewer could see from her early movies that her acting was untouched by artifice or deception. The most effective artifice must appear to be natural, but since Nargis was callow and inexperienced, her performances were totally artless. It was only her sincerity and her love for the profession that carried her through her early movies. She was naive about the ways of the world and some of that genuine innocence came through in her performance. Since then, given age and experience, she has become a mature actress. She knows well the difference between love and the games she played at school. She can portray all the nuances of love. She has come of age.

 

It is good that her journey to acting fame was a slow one. Had she arrived there in one leap, it would have hurt the artistic feelings of perceptive filmgoers. If her off-screen life in her early years had been anything like the roles she was given to play, I for one would have died of shock.

 

Nargis could have become only an actress, given the fact of her birth. Jaddan Bai was getting on and, though she had two sons, her entire concentration was on Baby Nargis, a plain-looking girl who could not sing. However, Jaddan Bai knew that a sweet voice could be borrowed, and if one had the talent even the disadvantage of ordinary looks could be surmounted. That was why she had devoted herself entirely to Nargis’s development and ensured that whatever talent her daughter had was fully brought out and made central to her personality. Nargis was destined to become an actress and she did become one. The secret of her success, in my opinion, was her sincerity, a quality she always retained. In Jaddan Bai’s family there was Mohan Babu, Baby Nargis and her two brothers. All of them were the responsibility of Jaddan Bai. Mohan Babu came from a rich family and had been so fascinated with the musical web Jaddan Bai’s mellifluous voice had woven around him that he had allowed her to become his entire life. He was handsome and he had money. He was also an educated man and enjoyed good health. All these assets he had laid at her feet like offerings in a temple. Jaddan Bai enjoyed great fame at the time. Rajas and nawabs would shower her with gold and silver when she sang. However, after this rain of gold and silver was over, she would put her arms around Mohan because he was all she really cared about. He stayed by her side until the end and she loved him deeply. He was also the father of her children. She had no illusions about rajas and nawabs; she knew that their money smelt of the blood of the poor. She also knew that when it came to women, they were capricious.

 

Nargis was always conscious that my sisters-in-law, whom she came to meet, and spent hours with, were different from her. She was always reluctant to invite them to her home, afraid that they might say it was not possible for them to accept her invitation. One day when I was not around, she told her friends, “Now you must come to my home some time.” The sisters looked at one another, not sure what to say. Since my wife was aware of my views, she accepted Nargis’s invitation, but she did not tell me. All three went.

 

Nargis had sent them her car and when it arrived at Marine Drive, Bombay’s most luxurious residential area, they realized that Nargis had made special arrangements for them. Mohan Babu and his two grown-up sons had been asked not to stay around because Nargis was expecting her friends. The male servants were not allowed into the room where the women were. Jaddan Bai came in for a few minutes, exchanged greetings and left. She did not want to inhibit them in any way. All three sisters kept saying later how excited Nargis was by their presence in her home. Elaborate arrangements had been made and special milk shakes had been ordered from the nearby Parisian Dairy. Nargis had gone herself to get the drinks because she did not trust a servant to get the right thing. In her excitement and enthusiasm, she broke a glass, which was part of a new set. When her guests expressed regret, she said, “It’s nothing. Bibi will be annoyed but daddy will quieten her down and the matter will be forgotten.”

 

After the milk shakes, Nargis showed them her albums of photographs, which had stills from many of her movies. There was a world of difference between the Nargis who was showing them the pictures and the Nargis who was the subject of those pictures. Off and on, the three sisters would look at her to compare her with the movie photographs. “Nargis, how do you become Nargis?” one of them asked. Nargis merely smiled. My wife told me that at home Nargis was simple, homely and childlike, not the bouncing, flirtatious girl whom people saw on the screen. I always felt a sadness floating in her eyes like an unclaimed body in the still waters of a pond whose surface is occasionally disturbed by the breeze.

 

It was clear to me that Nargis would not have to wait long for the fame which was her destiny. Fate had already taken a decision and handed her the papers, signed and sealed. Why then did she look sad? Did she perhaps feel in an unconscious way that this make-believe game of love she played on the screen would one day lead her to a desert where she would see nothing but mirage followed by mirage, where her throat would be parched with thirst and the clouds would have no rain to release? The sky would offer no solace, and the earth would suck in all moisture deep into its recesses because it would not believe she was thirsty. In the end, she herself would come to believe that her thirst was an illusion.

 

Many years have passed and when I see her on the screen, I find that her sadness has turned into melancholy. In the beginning, one felt that she was searching for something but now even that urge has been overtaken by despondency and exhaustion. Why? This is a question only Nargis could answer.

 

But back to the three sisters at Nargis’s house. Since they had gone there on their own, they did not stay long. The two younger ones were afraid I would find out and be annoyed, so they took Nargis’s leave and came home. I noticed that whenever they talked about Nargis, it would come to the question of marriage. The younger ones were dying to know when or whom she would marry, while my wife, who had been married for five years, would speculate about what kind of mother Nargis would make.

 

My wife did not tell me at first about their visit, but when she did I pretended to be displeased. She was immediately on the defensive and agreed that it was a mistake. She wanted me to keep it to myself because, according to the moral and social milieu in which the three had been brought up, visiting the home of an actress was improper. As far as I know, they had not told even their mother that they had gone to see Nargis, although the old lady was by no means narrow-minded. To this day, I do not understand why they thought they had done something wrong. What was wrong with going to see Nargis at her home? Why was acting considered a bad profession? Did we not have people in our own family who had spent their entire lives telling lies and practising hypocrisy? Nargis was a professional actress. What she did, she did in the open. It was not she but others who practised deception.

 

Since I began this account with Tasnim Saleem Chattari’s letter, let me return to it because that is what set the whole thing off. Since I was keen to meet Nargis at her own place, I went along with Saleem and his friends despite being busy. The correct thing would have been to phone Jaddan Bai to see if Nargis was free or not, but since in my daily life I was no great believer in such formalities, I just appeared at her door. Jaddan Bai was sitting on her veranda, slicing betel nut. As soon as she saw me, she said in a loud voice, “Oh! Manto, come in, come in.” Then she shouted for Nargis, “Baby, your sahelis are here,” thinking that I had brought my two sisters-in-law. When I told her that I was accompanied not by sahelis but sahelas, and also who they were, her tone changed. “Call them in,” she said. When Nargis came running out, she said to her, “Baby, you go in, Manto sahib has his friends with him.” She received Saleem and his companions as if they were buyers who had come to inspect the house. The informality with which she always spoke to me had disappeared. Instead of “Sit down”, it was “Do please make yourselves comfortable”, and “Want a drink?” had become “And what would you prefer for a drink?” I felt like a fool.

 

When I told her the purpose of our visit, her rather studied and stylized reply took me aback. “Oh! They want to meet Baby? The poor thing has been down with a bad cold for days. Her heavy work schedule has taken the last ounce of energy out of her. I tell her every day, ‘Daughter, just rest for a day.’ But she does not listen, so devoted is she to her work. Even director Mehboob has told her the same thing, offering to suspend the shooting for a day, but it has no effect on her. Today, I put my foot down because her cold was bad. Poor thing!”

 

Naturally, my young friends were gravely disappointed when they heard that. They had caught a glimpse of her from the taxi when she had briefly run on to the veranda, but they were dying to see her from close quarters and were disappointed that she was ill. Jaddan Bai, meanwhile, had begun to talk of other things and I could see that my young friends were bored. Since I knew there was nothing the matter with Nargis, I said to Jaddan Bai, “I know it is going to be hard on Baby but they have come from so far; maybe she could come in for a minute.”

 

After being summoned three or four times, Nargis finally appeared. All of them stood up and greeted her in a very courtly manner. I did not rise. Nargis had made the entry of an actress. Her conversation too was that of an actress, as if she were delivering her given lines. It was quite silly. “It is such a great pleasure to meet you”. “Yes, we only arrived in Bombay today”. “Yes, we will be returning the day after”. “You are now the top star of India”. “We have always seen the opening show of every one of your movies”. “The picture you have given us will go into our album”. Mohan Babu also joined us at one point but he did not say a word, just kept looking at us with his big eyes before going into some reverie of his own.

 

Jaddan Bai spoke most of the time, making it clear to her visitors that she was personally acquainted with every Indian raja and nawab. Nargis’s entire conversation was pure artifice. The way she sat, the way she moved, the way she raised her eyes, was like an offering on a platter. Obviously, she expected them to respond in the same self-conscious, artificial manner. It was a boring and somewhat tense meeting. The young men felt inhibited in my company, as I did in theirs. It was interesting to see a different Nargis from the one to whom I was accustomed. Saleem and his friends went to see her again the next day, but without telling me. Perhaps this meeting was different. As for my argument with the poet Nakhshab to which Tasnim Saleem had referred in her letter, I do not have the least recollection of it. It is possible he was there when we arrived because Jaddan Bai was fond of poetry and liked to entertain poets and have them recite. It is possible I may have had a tiff with Nakhshab.

 

I saw another aspect of Nargis’s personality once when I was with Ashok. Jaddan Bai was planning to launch a production of her own and wanted Ashok to play the lead, but since Ashok, as usual, did not want to go by himself, he had asked me to come along. During our conversation, we discussed many things but discreetly, things such as business, money, flattery and friendship. At times, Jaddan Bai would talk as a senior, at others as the movie producer and at times as Nargis’s mother who wanted the right price paid for her daughter’s work. Mohan Babu would nod his agreement now and then.

 

They were talking big money, money which was going to be spent, money which had been spent. However, each paisa was carefully discussed and accounted for. Nargis was pretty businesslike. She seemed to suggest, “Look Ashok, I agree that you are a polished actor and famous but I am not to be undermined. You will have to concede that I can be your equal in acting.” This was the point she wanted to hammer home. Off and on, the woman in her would come to life, as if she were telling Ashok, “I know there are thousands of girls who are in love with you, but I too have thousands of admirers and if you don’t believe that, ask anyone… maybe you too will become my admirer one of these days.”

 

Periodically, Jaddan Bai would play the conciliator. “Ashok, the world is crazy about you and Baby, so I want the two of you to appear together. It will be a sensation and we will all be happy.” Sometimes, she would address me. “Manto, Ashok has become such a great star and he is such a nice man, so quiet, so shy. God grant him a long life! For this movie, I have had a role specially written for him. When I tell you all about it, you will be thrilled.”

 

I did not know what role or character she had got specially written for Ashok, but anyway I was happy for her. It did occur to me though that Jaddan Bai herself was playing a most fascinating role, and the one she had chosen for Nargis was even more fascinating. Had this been a scene being shot with Ashok, she could not have spoken her lines with more conviction. At one point, Suraiya’s name came up and she pulled a long face and started saying nasty things about her family and pulling her down as if she were doing it out of a sense of duty. She said Suraiya’s voice was bad, she could not hold a note, she had had no musical training, her teeth were bad and so on. I am sure had someone gone to Suraiya’s home, he would have witnessed the same kind of surgery being performed on Nargis and Jaddan Bai. The woman whom Suraiya called her grandmother, but who was actually her mother, would have taken a drag at her hookah and told even nastier stories about Jaddan Bai and Nargis. I know that whenever Nargis’s name came up, Suraiya’s mother would look disgusted and compare her face to a rotting papaya.

 

Mohan Babu’s big, handsome eyes have been eternally closed for many years and Jaddan Bai has been lying under tons of earth for a long time, her heart full of unrequited desires. As for her Baby Nargis, she stands at the top of that make believe ladder we know as the movies, though it is hard to say if she is looking up, or if she is looking down at the first rung on which she put her tiny child’s foot many years ago. Is she seeking a patch of dark under those brilliant arc lights that illuminate her life now, or is she searching for a tiny ray of light in that darkness? This interplay of light and dark constitutes life, although in the world of movies there are times when the dividing line between the two ceases to exist.

 

Excerpted with permission from Penguin Books India from Stars from Another Sky by Saadat Hasan Manto (Rs. 250). You can buy the book here. 

 

Also listen to:

The Death of a Piper. Mahmood Farooqui reads Saadat Hasan Manto’s piece on the life and death of the actor Shyam.

 

Inshallah, Kashmir

Posted on by
Reply

Today Oscar nominated filmmaker Ashvin Kumar won a National Award for Best Investigative Film for Inshallah, Kashmir. This is his second National Award. His first win, for Best Film On Social Issues, was in 2012 for Inshallah, Football, his first film on Kashmir, which was followed by Inshallah, Kashmir. Despite two National Awards Kumar has still not been able to show his films in Srinagar. The film has now been made available to the public for free viewing and therefore a one of its kind opportunity for it to reach a wider audience in Kashmir.

 

DIRECTOR’S NOTE:

 

I made this film to throw light on the deep distrust and misconception of the Kashmiri and his aspirations for self-governance, as well as highlight the unacceptable, institutional abuse of individual human rights in the valley. The film questions the legitimacy and human cost of sustaining India’s occupation of Kashmir for over two decades and it does so through the telling of stories of terror and fear that haunt ordinary Kashmiri folk.

The testimonies in this film are those that the mainstream media keeps away from its audiences in India. Till we Indians understand and acknowledge the pain and suffering of our Kashmiri brethren, and what is happening in the name of India in Kashmir, no solution can ever be found. We need to evolve a new idiom based on the reality of what has happened in the past twenty five years. I hope Inshallah, Kashmir provides one such reference point.

TBIP Jabs & Jabber

Posted on by
Reply

A fun and freewheeling chat between Rahul Bose, Aseem Chhabra and TBIP editors Pragya Tiwari and Rishi Majumder on what the 14th Mumbai Film Festival got right and what it got wrong

 

Pragya Tiwari: Ok. Opening ceremony, since that is the one thing that we all watched, and opening film. Thoughts?

 

Aseem Chhabra (to Rahul): You want to start?

 

Rahul Bose: Well, I…. look just to have the opening ceremony at the Jamshed Bhabha (Auditorium) was something that, you know… it is a crying need for us to mount something well in the beginning. So I think that that auditorium, that entire complex being used, is a huge feather in their cap. I’m sure Mr. (Shyam) Benegal had something to do with it but I can’t swear by that.
So I thought that the venue was great, very well attended. As far as the actual Lifetime Achievement Award and things go, I think that, personally, Zhang Yimou, is somebody who in the beginning made films like Raise the Red Lantern which really, sort of, showed you a new lens. But I’m not so sure about his later work. Lifetime Achievement Awards will always remain bones of contention. I’m not… I don’t think I’m contentious about it. I think he deserves it for his earlier work and less for the big people-flying-across-the-air kind of work.

 

AC: People flying across the air was fine. I actually love them. I didn’t really care for his last film, The Flowers of War. It’s a very, sort of, important interesting theme but it just lacked the dramatic content. But, you know, people flying across the air with the swords, there was a lot of art in what he did.
But he evolved from those very important social themes.

 

PT: But when we’re talking about a Lifetime Achievement Award I also feel like we’re rewarding, or talking about a larger context in which this person worked.
They were known as the second generation?

 

AC: The Fourth Generation.

 

Rishi Majumder: The Fifth Generation, after the Cultural Revolution.

 

RB: I’m not even making a political comment on what he did in the Beijing closing ceremony (at the Olympics). Lets not even get into that. We’re talking about his achievement as a filmmaker. And as a filmmaker, I think there is no question that it’s a gigantic piece of work.

 

PT: And he’s also representative of that generation of filmmakers. The Fifth Generation that came out of the Cultural Revolution. And they were the first guys who were negotiating a new language for cinema and the new political conditions. So I think somewhere that is also a part of it. I’m not saying that’s at the centre of it, but I’m saying that it’s also a part.

 

AC: And also from China’s perspective, he is the first guy in the last two decades who actually brought forth Chinese cinema, it’s almost like the early (19)50s when Kurosawa brought Japanese films to world cinema. Of course, there were Japanese films being made before. And there have been many other Chinese filmmakers after him, but the scale at which he made the films, even the smaller ones, they had this appeal, they moved out of just being vis-a-vis Chinese films. They had, sort of, a universal unity. So, I don’t know why he was picked. I don’t want to be a cynic, but maybe because he was available.

 

(Laughter)

 

 

PT: You’re not being cynical. You know the story. You’re not being cynical…

 

AC: I’m a huge fan of his, so…

 

RB: I thought introducing the jury was a lovely idea which, maybe, happens at every festival. But somehow, here it seemed to have a ceremony that I don’t associate with other festivals. Does it happen every festival?

 

RM: Lighting the lamp?

 

RB: No, when they introduce the Jury.

 

AC: I don’t know. I’ve never been to Cannes, but i think they do it there.

 

RM: I think they introduced the Jury in other festivals as well.

 

AC: Berlin does that also.

 

RB: In that case, maybe they do it everywhere, but it’s very nice to see the faces behind who…

 

PT: That is wonderful. That is wonderful. I think the lamp-lighting and all of that, there was a lot of comic reverence there, including the plastic not coming off… (the lifetime achievement trophy at the time of presentation).

 

RB: Lamp lighting has, like many things in a secular country—where secularism means ‘being equally closed to every religion’ versus the French version of secularism which is ‘equally distant from every religion’—our country started with Mahatma Gandhi. The definition of secularism was: being very close. In a majority, in a society where the majority is Hindu, you are going to have a lot of the majoritarian cultural mores infiltrating into the so-called secular space. I have written a whole article about it. Why don’t we ever see an Islamic ritual that is permeated across the Indian spectrum of religions? Or for that matter, Zoroastrian. The answer obviously is that even in England, and most often in America, the Prime Minister goes to church. He actually goes to church every weekend or whatever. And says ‘thank you God’, and all that stuff happens, right? So there is a much greater connection between religion and state there. I’m not saying it’s great but it’s greater. Lamp-lighting is one of those things that has become ‘Ah, this is Indian’. And it seems very HIndu. And as Aseem says very rightly, it’s a Hindu tradition. You could actually just recite poetry for the opening ceremony.

 

RM: Which might have been preferable actually.

 

PT: But to be fair, there is a line, like with everything. See with lamp-lighting, for example, a lot religions in India, the way they are practiced, a lot of rituals are actually common. Like the lighting of fire is common. Parsis worship fire. I’m saying the act of lighting the lamp may not be, but Parsis worship the fire. Hindus light a lamp and most dargas have the same ritual of lighting a lamp, or lighting a dhoop (an incense stick), or whatever. So I think that in India, it’s what you are choosing. I was at the Habitat (the India Habitat Centre) for something and this was a function for street kids organized by street kids, the majority were Muslim, because they were from the slums, and the thing organized was to sing to Ganpati. So it was Jaidev Jaidev… (a Hindu hymn) and there was a Ganpati. There was an idol there, and the whole dance was organized. That I felt was perhaps…

 

AC: Obviously Hindu?

 

PT: Yes, because it doesn’t offend anyone’s sensibilities to light the lamp. I don’t think that it does.

 

RB: Again, its the lens you look at it from. For example, I know this lady who works for a friend of mine and she converted from Hinduism to Christianity and her name became Mary. But when it came to Diwali she asked for a Diwali holiday. So my friend said “but Mary you’re Christian”. She said: “naam badal gaya, iska matlab dharm nahi badla (just because the name has changed, it doesn’t mean thereligious duties/way of life have changed too)”.

 

AC: That’s a great quote.

 

RB: It’s a fantastic quote because there is a whole ocean of meaning beneath that. It could well be that so many idol makers are Muslim.

 

RM: The complexity of secularism…

 

RB: There are so many wonderful threads of actual secularism that takes place in this country which is not something that anybody is talking about. How does the flower get sold in a market? You see where it starts from, and you’ll see it goes through at least three different religions.

 

PT: As long as it’s a matter of choice, it’s perfectly fine. When it’s not then it’s a problem.

 

RB: I disagree. I grew up in a convent school, I said the Lord’s prayer everyday— but it’s not choice: the fact that I said the Lord’s prayer everyday and sang to Christ. I sang every single hymn to Christ.

 

PT: But, Rahul, I felt that too and I feel that still. But I’m saying, maybe that is our perspective as the majority. I mean, you and me are in the majority and it doesn’t threaten us in any way to go to church. But coming back to the question…

 

AC: I’m sorry. The point you made, the question you asked about the opening ceremony and the opening night film (Silver Linings Playbook). I want to touch upon the opening night film. I think it came from Toronto (the Toronto International Film Festival), hugely popular, won the Audience Award and I can see why. I mean, its not the greatest film ever made but I did laugh a lot. It was overstretched at times. I thought it was very romantic. But I think for the opening night of the film festival, it was the right choice actually because it’s not supposed to set the mood for the rest of the festival but it’s supposed to be a celebration of cinema and they picked, sort of a popular film… and the audience absolutely loved it. Even last year, Moneyball, which was a more… heftier film and was the right choice. Very impressive, the films they got even for the opening night.

 

RB: MAMI really came from being a little infant to this huge entity, I think 2 years ago. This year the selection of films was just incredible. I mean to get those films and filmmakers here is something with which India struggled. Kerala did it with a modicum of success, has been doing it. But now the festival really has done it. Suddenly, BOOM! It’s not just the infusion of money, I think it’s also got to do with taste. The kind of taste that they have shown. Today, I mean I was at the Jury at the Kerala Film festival, and I would be hard pressed to choose between the two, but the kind of quality they have actually shown… (Abbas) Kiarostami, (Mohsen) Makhmalbaf, you have everyone here and I agree with Aseem, that the opening night film at the festival was spot-on. It had big-ness, it had the crowd-pleasing-ness, yet it wasn’t Rocky 4. So it was a great choice.

 

PT: Yes I think it was a great choice.

 

RM: Actually what we’re saying about the opening night raises an interesting question which then links up to Zhang Yimou being awarded the Lifetime Achievement. It was Oliver Stone last year. One remembers 4-5 years ago it was Majid Majidi. Do you think that the focus is shifting to something which, like you said, is not Rocky, but far more mainstream, and the way the festival is projecting itself?

 

AC: The rest of the films are not necessarily, altogether, mainstream this year. They had some very… they had some brilliant… they finally showed Amour yesterday. Very serious, very important film…

 

PT: It’s how we define mainstream. I mean, I would say that (Michael) Haneke or Zhang Yimou are mainstream. Mainstream is actually a word that can be interpreted very differently.

 

AC: Mainstream in the art house circuits.

 

RM: Exactly.

 

PT: Yes. So he is mainstream in the art house sense.

 

RB: I have just watched 13 films and you don’t know any of those filmmakers.

 

RM: Right.

 

RB: It’s an extraordinary collection to have. So just because those 13 films don’t open the festival on the first night… Ultimately, as Aseem very rightly put it… Cannes (the Festival de Cannes) has had some shocking opening films. The tradition of opening films is that the selection doesn’t necessarily translate into the identity of the film. So one should be forgiving because it’s always in a big hall. Thousand people, two thousand people. There has to be an appeal to a certain broad spectrum. You know, you are not going to turn around and show some slit-your-throat Scandinavian film.

 

PT: Which you will be watching back to back in the next 5 days.

 

AC: Well I saw Holy Motors. Did you see that?

 

PT (laughs): Yes I saw Holy Motors. And I also know that you’re the only person on twitter…

 

AC: Well at least I had the courage to say: WTF (What The Fuck). What with people going ‘It’s brilliant… ‘

 

PT: Actually I liked it, but we’ll come to that.

 

RB: You like the film?

 

AC: It’s in my top ten list of most bizarre films I have ever seen.

 

PT: I find that director extremely intriguing but we will come to that for sure. Okay, the ‘sections’ and the ‘selections’. Whats the difference between the ‘sections’ and the ‘selections’ do you know? There are the competitive sections…

 

AC: There is the International Competition and the Indian Competition.

 

RB: I have no clue.

 

PT: There is India Gold.

 

RM: There is Dimensons Mumbai.

 

RB: Short film festival. Short film competition.

 

PT: Dimensions Mumbai that is the short films on Bombay by first time filmmakers.

 

RM: No, that’s just short films on Mumbai.

 

PT: Okay. Then there is the Celebrate Age which I am assuming is related to age or specific to elderly people, I’m not sure. Those are the four categories. Then you have Retrospectives, New Faces in Indian Cinema. Above the Cut which is basically films that did not make it to the International Competition and World Cinema, which I’m guessing is a catch-all category. But then there is something called the ‘selections’ which, if you go to their website, is Rendezvous with French cinema, Italian cinema, Restore Classics, India Film Worldwide, The Real Reel, The Pusan Selection, 100 years of Cinema.

 

AC: Afghan..

 

PT: …and the very unfortunately named Kabul Fresh. I’m not really sure what the difference is between the selections and the sections. Are they all different categories?

 

RB: I have no clue.

 

AC: I have no clue how all it is done but I personally feel that, as much as the programming is really really good—this is my second year here—I found the festival trying to be very ambitious. There is just way too many. I mean it’s remarkable that they have the silent films and the restored films. I think the MAMI should have those in many festivals through the year. I think the people should go see… some of the Italian films— the subtitles weren’t working, but the restored films— they were brilliant. And they are being shown only once this part of the town and they’ll never come to Mumbai. I think they are in New York. I live there so one can still see them. I think there was too much happening. One retrospective, two retrospectives is good. I don’t know. What do you think about it?

 

RB: I agree with you. I think it would be lovely if many of these selections/sections would be repeated. It’s like once you look at the buffet, and you’re so happy that next week there is just the rogan josh.

 

AC: You go to refill your plate only with two things.

 

PT: I completely agree there definitely should be mini festivals around the year. And you always face this. Even in (the) Jaipur (Literature Festival), it can be frustrating, there are times, when you go from one venue to other…

 

RM: Your three favourite authors talking at the same time.

 

PT: This is way too much. There is just no way.

 

AC: No matter which festival you go to, you never can watch all the films.

 

PT: But if they have such a wealth of selection then at least some of these… New cinema from Afghanistan or things they were showing from the (19)20s and the (19)30s which is priceless. I mean I have no idea of the Italian selection of films.

 

RB: Yes, the Italian selection was delectable. Oof!

 

AC: Yeah the Italian films, some of those films were pulled out, they had subtitling problems. I think what is even more important is that— last year I was at Versova Cinemax, and it’s the audience that I was seeing. Young 20-something, 30-something year old budding fiilmmakers. All of them, college students who are writing scripts, people who, like Rahul, have been in the film industry. There are so many people. But most people try and go for what is the most popular film. I mean I didn’t go for the Amour screening yesterday because I had already seen it but I think there was a huge demand for that. In the process what happens is that some of the old restored classics get neglected. Once Upon A Time In America was shown and I was dying to see it and I didn’t end up seeing it. I have seen it twice before. But there was another new film. Even I went for the new film. I think specially the restored classics should be shown in a space where people can only focus on that. People will (also) run to see the latest film from Cannes because that will never come here in any case. So some spacing needs to be done organizationally.

 

PT: It’s not just the fact that the film won’t come here. I think also the lure of the new films, or the foreign films, is also because of censorship. Because you know a lot of films are not going to… for example the reason I was really upset when I met you that day, when I couldn’t watch Miss Lovely, was because I had no idea what form it would finally take, when it is released. How much of it is going to be cut.

 

RM: Or Shahid.

 

PT: Shahid I don’t know. I think Shahid should get away.

 

AC: There may be some language issues but there is no sex in it.

 

RM: Before watching it we were scared— what if it doesn’t release or they cut certain parts of it…

 

PT: Also, because I’m not sure the case (with Shahid) is subjudice in that extreme way, so it should be fine. So I think that also becomes a big concern. These are films we are not going to be able to see on the big screen because they are going to be, if they are ever going to be released, there are going to be with so many cuts that, you know…

 

AC: All people who are aiming to be filmmakers should see (Luchino) Visconti’s The Leopard. The three hour version of it.

 

PT: Of course. Of course. Anybody should be able to see it.

 

AC: I don’t know how many went to see it. Film festivals are also part of educating…

 

PT: Or Kalpana…

 

AC: Kalpana. I don’t know how many people went to see them.

 

PT: So what could be done differently? What do we think could be done differently?

 

AC: I have a few things but Rahul can talk first.

 

RB: No, no. You are a programmer, you have a clearer perspective.

 

AC: I think that the programming was very very strong, the selection was very strong this year and even last year. I think organizationally there are some major issues and I’ll say so openly. Practically everyday screenings were being cancelled. I went the first day, the first day was last Friday. The first film I went to see was an Iranian film. Nira Benegal was with me and we were very excited to see that. Ten minutes into the film and: no subtitle. The subtitles would not come. And yesterday it happened with another French film and I have heard many people complain about the aspect ratios of the subtitles. You know, it’s very important that every print should be tested. You should get the prints in advance and, you know, these multiplexes can show Hollywood films and Bollywood films but they also need to be trained to show other foreign language films with subtitles. Very important. All of that requires a different kind of skill set than just selection and I think, from the organizational point of view, this festival needs to grow up more. I know it will because it’s a very ambitious festival.

 

PT: Specifically, in relation to technical glitches, the technical side needs to, sort of…

 

AC: The many many technical glitches or prints arrived that didn’t have subtitles, when they should have arrived 2 weeks ago, 3 weeks ago, so you should have been able to see them.

 

PT: Also Taste of Money, just right before the climax the film went off.

 

AC: Right, and people left. And I actually came back and realized the film was still going on.

 

PT: Yeah, actually, a lot of people thought the film was over. Then they came back.

 

RM: Also in Girish Kasaravalli’s film (Kurmavatara) some of the actors’ heads got sort of chopped of, a bit…

 

PT: Yeah stuff like that.

 

RM: Thats something, you know, when you have a festival that is so ambitious and you have fabulous films then I feel it’s the finishing touch, it’s about the last mile…

 

RB: Look it’s the little things that can happen and you can’t predict it. I mean, in my debut film, its a film called Everyone Says I’m Fine, and my debut screening was in Toronto, at TIFF (the Toronto International Film Festival). And the sound went off. Its a 6.1 mixed film and the entire sound collapsed and they refused to acknowledge (it). I went to them and I said: you’re actually playing it from the front two speakers, mono style, literally from the 1920s. I said people couldn’t hear anything because it was mixed. There was the sound of salon machines going on, there was music in the salon, the sound of the person talking, the sound of traffic outside as the door opens and shuts. So there were four levels of sound that were all mixed up and presented in the front two speakers. And the projectionists, they refused to… they said “it cannot happen, our system cannot collapse” and I told them “it definitely has, what are you going to do about it” and they said “there is nothing we can do about it”. The whole film, completely, I mean, there is no defence. We got distribution, we got some wonderful reviews, and some not good reveiws, forget all that. The point is that it happened in Toronto. It slaughtered a guy’s opening film on the opening night. Do I hold it against them? Of course not. It’s a technical issue. The next day they came and said the whole box had burnt down. It’s never happened in their history. So I said… what can you do? So those little issues of heads being cut off and stuff, I think we can be forgiving about. Aseem makes the larger issues. Subtitling the film, you obviously expect, because you want people to see and understand the movie. It’s as simple as that. The only aspect I can speak of about the festival is as the member of the Jury and how that whole thing has been handled. It’s been flawless, really flawless. Its unbelievable how well planned they are.. they are juggling four juries going to four venues, watching approximately 70-80 films.

 

AC: Have you seen the films in the hotels or in the theatres?

 

RB: In the theatres. All in the theatres.

 

AC: Oh with the audience.

 

RB: No separate jury screenings at mini-theatres across the city, South Bombay. So, for them to juggle—and we keep bumping into other juries—it must have been a logistical nightmare in itself, this little thing. But exquisitely organized without the shadow of a single glitch. Everything happened on time, everybody is waiting and at all the venues the screenings have been going really well. So if I was to look at it, because I haven’t been anywhere else, I haven’t had a moment to breathe, I would say that these guys really know their stuff on this side. Of course, I’m aware…

 

PT: Which is absolutely great to hear. But coming back to subtitling for a minute, I was wondering what the subtitling policy is. Because I know the Hindi films are subtitled, the regional films are subtitled, the foreign films are subtitled but the English films are not subtitled which I’m not sure…

 

RB: Where are they subtitled anywhere in the world?

 

AC: No, in India, now, Hollywood films are being subtitled in India.

 

PT: If you want to watch The Dark Knight Rises in Delhi or Bombay, there’ll be ‘n’ number of screens..

 

RB: My question is where else in the world? I have never seen English films be subtitled anywhere else in the English speaking world…

 

AC: Except in India and what’s happened in India is that, I guess the studios have realized…

 

RB: You can’t understand the American accent.

 

AC: Well, yeah and you can really access a larger audience, people who think they understand English and if you give them the chance… Hey I like subtitles also. If you show me an Irish film, I want subtitles although they speak in English.

 

PT: I like subtitles. Even when I get it. I think I don’t like missing dialogues. But that apart, I’m wondering… if we’re subtitling Hindi films, we’re subtitling Shahid and showing it at MAMI, I’m not sure why On The Road was not subtitled or Silver Linings Playbook. English films are the only films which I have seen that have not been subtitled in the festival, which is obviously making the assumption that anyone coming to the festival understands English as a common language. Every other language, including Hindi, is not common to everybody else. I was actually afraid the Hindi films would not be subtitled which, fortunately they were, but that is a very strange decision.

 

AC: I don’t think that it’s a strange decision because that’s what’s happening in the commercial market in India. As Rahul said, where else are English films…

 

RB: They assume that if you can read English, you can understand English also. Why are you making a distinction? I’m saying they assume that if giving subtitles helps you— if you can read the damn thing, you can definitely understand the damn thing. The people who can understand spoken English are far greater than the people who can read English.

 

AC: Well, the other thing is…..

 

PT: But I’m saying there are so many filmmakers who cannot speak English very well.

 

AC: There are a few, well like Zhang Yimou, who probably cannot speak it very well. Is he still around? Has he left?

 

PT: No, but I’m saying, I’m just wondering if it makes sense because you are subtitling everything. How can you not subtitle that as well? Because you’re subtitling everything else in English…

 

RB: And I can counter argue that I hate subtitles because it makes me look here when the filmmaker wants me to look there. So, if it’s a language I understand, take them off. Let me see the cinema. I might miss a word or two. But, you know, I actually try my best to watch a film without subtitles because which filmmaker wants a guy to spend half his time looking at the words.

 

AC: I have seen, in Puerto Rico (The Puerto Rico International Film Festival), films—some Hollywood… some Tom Cruise film, I forget, and there subtitles were in Spanish and I don’t read Spanish, I don’t understand Spanish but I’m also trying to read that than listening to the film.

 

PT (laughs): That is way more distracting…

 

AC: Can I make one more point about the operational point? I think, one of the things that the festival needs to do is that, at the festival there were many glitches—I keep hearing from people—they were often because of the poor manager at INOX who is clueless about what is happening, and people want to know, to talk to the people who are running the operations. I think the festival needs to have more responsible people who actually can make decisions and are there and can handle technical issues and can give answers to the audience. Because the audience is very confused about what is happening. Why are the screenings being cancelled again and again? The Conformist screening was cancelled.

 

PT: The Miss Lovely screening was cancelled at Versova.

 

RB: Oh really?

 

AC: Yeah

 

RB: Why was that?

 

PT: Well the festival issued a statement saying that Ashim (Ahluwalia) did not want to show it again.

 

RB: Then how come they programmed it?

 

AC: Well, they programmed it. I don’t know…

 

PT: It eventually went on. Somebody said that Ashim wasn’t happy with the slot. Nobody really knows, but that’s what the festival said. Yeah, lots of cancellations but its always nice to know why. I’d gone there at 10, in the morning, woken up at 7 in the morning, stood in line, only to find that…

 

RB: Which were the cinema halls in the North in the festival?

 

PT: It was Cinemax Versova, Cinemax in Sion. INOX in town. Liberty… and Liberty lot of the screenings were cancelled because of technical issues.

 

RM: One whole day at Liberty.

 

AC: It’s been pretty odd how many cancellations have been happening. Everyday, practically. And yet, people are still patient, people are still lining up. It’s just such a rare opportunity to see these films.

 

RM: And the spread (of films).

 

AC: That’s why I was saying, that if there was any way to get across to the audience and explain to them what is going wrong, I think people would be a little bit calmer.

 

PT: Yeah, of course. It’s always better, which I think they were trying to do it on Twitter, on Facebook— they had a note by the festival Director saying what went wrong where, which is, I think, very graceful. But one issue that, if I had an issue with the festival, would not be the with festival itself. I feel like there was room to have more interactions, you know. I wish there were more interactions, more seminars, more talks because you have a lot of people coming down and I would also like hear them. I would also like to hear panel discussions. So if things like that could go on in the side, or if there was more scope to perhaps meet them formally and informally. I mean, festivals like Cannes have a lot of parties that are organized by corporates, so there is a lot of scope to network as well. That’s also an important aspect of festivals, The business part of it, to be able to sell your film. I mean, there is the Film Mart, the one formal space. But I think that is one thing. Because there was a whole bunch of people here, and a lot of people were like “oh this one is here as well. I couldn’t meet them”. So I think that would also be a…..

 

AC: There has to be space where you can have that. It doesn’t have to be parties or things like that. It could be this concept of an open bar— which we have in America, where in the little festival I organized (the New York Indian Film Festival) and Rahul has been there and we do it at the Tribeca cinemas— where there is a bar at the back and some nights, events are sponsored by restaurants, there is some food, there is some beer, other than it’s just an open bar. And people just want to be able to mingle.

 

RB: It’s not a little festival, it’s a wonderful festival.

 

AC: Thank you. But there, if you look at the Bhabha theatre (the Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, at the NCPA), there people are mingling in the lobby right there and I actually ended up….

 

RB: I think that what Aseem does very successfully at NYIFF is what the really big film festivals have already done for years, every morning in Toronto we used to walk into the Festival badge holder’s lounge, before you went to all your screenings, you have your festival brochure with you, everybody would come, get a cup of coffee, get a croissant or something. And there was food, like 18 hours a day, in that place. So you’ve met, touched base: ‘Kya dekh rahe ho (what are you watching)? Where are you going? Okay fine, lets meet up.’ So there was a place to touch base and then you again touched base in the evening at a party.

 

PT: Which is what Osian’s (The Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival) also does.

 

RB: It’s really simple for them to do. And, god knows, MAMI is so well-funded, they just need to have that space where everyone who is an accredited festival goer can walk in and walk out of. There is a… what do you call them… the ones who have a delegate pass, and an industry pass. So you have two— where the business of cinema is conducted, that’s a lounge, and there are two lounges. And you just go there every morning, yawn wake up there and then take off.

 

PT: Because that’s what’s so great about Jaipur (The Jaipur Literature Festival), right? That you can actually ….. the literature festival.

 

RB: Is there a lounge there?

 

PT: Well, there isn’t a (special lounge)… they keep it extremely egalitarian. So they don’t reserve spaces

 

RB: One of the amazing things about book festivals is that you can have it in little rooms all over the place.

 

PT: Yes

 

RB: Here, in cinema, you have to travel to cinema houses. That’s where the great need for a place arises where everybody can come in the morning, start, eat a little…

 

PT: But Jaipur had that Flow, that part, that café, you know right at the back where…

 

RB: I know. Pragya I don’t think that you can compare a book festival with a film festival.

 

PT: No, I’m just talking about the fact that there’s this space to mingle and talk and interact and that adds so much.

 

RB: Jaipur’s Flow is, you pay at the restaurant. I’m making a different point. I’m saying here is a place where you walk in for free, you’re there because you’re a delegate either with the artistic side of cinema or the business side. You walk in everyday, there’s always coffee and tea, and beer, in fact, sponsored by whoever it maybe. So even between screenings when you go in there just to go to the restroom, come out, stuff like that, it’s always central. I would position this one at NCPA.

 

AC: And that’s why NCPA has been… and you know what I find very important for me, for instance in those kind of settings, is that you talk to somebody… Anurag Kashyap for instance, has influenced me so many times, to change what film I’m going to see. He said “Horror film dekni hai” and you go to see the horror film or something like that. Last minute, you know, your plans change because somebody else recommends something and you’re like, okay, maybe I should go check that out.

 

RB: And you know a lot of business is done there, because in this business it’s about relationships. It’s about…

 

RM: Keeping it very free flowing…

 

RB: If a director likes an actor, he will repeat that actor in three or four films despite that actor not being the best person for that role. A producer works with a director although the director’s new film is of a genre the producer’s never touched— because there’s a relationship. He (Aseem) will program, and I’m not saying this is partiality, it happens, he will look forward to programming X filmmaker’s work because he loved the previous piece of work and they had a coffee together and they walked and saw a horror film together. You know, this is how it works, but it’s splendid. These are the little tendrils that happen. The industry has always worked on this. You turn around and say my film didn’t turn out well— Aseem, you gave me 10 crores to make my film, I can give you 5 back now. On the next film, which you would have paid 10 crores for, only pay me 5.

 

AC: Right.

 

RB: But that only happens when you have an actual one to one relationship.

 

PT: Absolutely.

 

RB: Festivals are… I know Andre Turpin, the French-Canadian, from Montreal, because we drank all night one weekend. That is where the actual sense of community and business and exciting collaborations happen. So I really think that that’s one thing that needs to be done.

 

PT: And can be easily done.

 

AC: Then there were quite a few panels, I think one or two may have gotten cancelled because of Yash Chopra’s death. So there was that, and I actually went for half an hour for a panel on film restoration.

 

RM: Which was actually very good I heard.

 

AC: Which I found very interesting. I had to leave early because in between films I had lunch. And it was very interesting to hear different perspectives from people from outside India. There were quite a few filmmakers. I mean, it would have been great… I don’t know, did they have just one on one conversations?

 

PT: They had something called the Masterclasses, which were also with Indian filmmakers or Indian film personalities— Jaya (Bachchan) for instance.

 

AC: Yeah Jaya Bachchan and Geoffrey Gilmore.

 

PT: And just, not really, not any panel discussions or any…

 

AC: The director of Taste Of Money was here, he was on the jury also.

 

RB: Im Sang-soo. Declan Quinn is here. He’s a fantastic resource.

 

AC: He’s worked in Indian cinema, he’s done lots of Indian films.

 

RB: Mira’s (Nair) films

 

PT: Imagine all the young filmmakers who’d absolutely love to come and listen to him talk and just listen to him, and what he has to say and even if he was on a panel, if there was an open interview format with Declan talking to somebody about his work and about what he thinks about stuff. I think I would…

 

AC: Geoff Gilmore who really built Sundance to where it is today and is heading Tribeca, again he is busy with his jury duty. But it would have been fantastic.

 

RB: We finish our duties by 6. So an evening session…

 

AC: It would be fantastic if he had just just talked about film festivals, what they do to cinema, independent cinema movements, it would be fantastic.

 

PT: I would have attended those over the films because I can still watch…

 

RM: You can catch the films (later) possibly. I think the film restoration session is a case in point something very interesting happened there, which I heard about—I didn’t attend the session—which is that Dev Benegal stood up from the audience and shared his own story and spoke about…

 

AC: There’s a film called English August, with this gentleman also (Rahul Bose), which Dev is desperately trying to restore.

 

RB: Oh is he?

 

AC: Yeah the print is in a bad state

 

RM: …so he spoke about a Satyajit Ray film which he found just lying under some producer’s bed in a very bad state. But the point being that it’s that kind of interaction that really makes a festive space come alive. To have an interaction there, that has people reacting from the audience. It sort of creates that atmosphere.

 

PT: That’s what gives you stories, you know…

 

RM: …to tell, and that’s what makes you remember festivals.

 

PT: One thing that I found curious, and this is not a good or a bad thing, this not a criticism, is that given that this festival is in Bombay, which is the capital of film glamour in India, when you compare it to a glamourous festival like Cannes, glamour is not something you associate with this festival and I found that very, very curious

 

AC: We had Sridevi the first day and that is quite glamourous.

 

RM: And there was a red carpet.

 

PT: That’s because we love Sridevi.

 

AC: Are you trying to say that there’s no Shah Rukh Khans and Aamir Khans is that what you’re saying?

 

PT: I don’t think I’m trying to say that the presence of X star or Y star… I’m talking about glamour on the whole, stars, of course, are a part of that.

 

RB: It’s to MAMIs’ credit that it’s never needed glamour to be a powerful festival and it continues to be to its credit. Glamour can only add. But at a certain point it can even detract. And you might have asked another question, like: Weren’t there just too many Bollywood film stars at this festival? Hasn’t it skewed the whole seriousness? Look how it was in 2012. So I’m saying at this point in time I think they’ve got it just right. It’s about the cinema. It’s about the films, it’s about the films, it’s about the films. All we do is we talk, if you read or hear anything about MAMI it’s about the films, about the conversations…

 

PT: It’s open to all. I mean if there were actors, stars whoever, if they were interested in watching films they can come and check it out.

 

AC: You know Pragya, sorry for cutting you but when you talk about glamour, you know to me… I guess the presence of star makes a difference but the opening night, there was a point where I had stepped out and some friends were smoking, I don’t smoke, because smoking kills.

 

 

(laughter)

 

 

PT: Well done

 

AC: And within minutes, there were Shridhar Raghavan, there was Sriram Raghavan, there was Sudhir Mishra, there was Vikramaditya Motwane, there was Rahul Bose. There was a lot of star power, in that sense there. That’s what makes the festival interesting, we don’t need to do… you can have… and all these people are accessible, people were walking up and talking to them. I was talking to Ranvir Shorey the other day and people kept walking up and asking to take pictures with him. That’s what makes glamour also.

 

PT: Of course it does.

 

RB: I would fundamentally disagree with you, because I don’t think any of us, any of the names you mentioned, are remotely glamourous.

 

AC: But that’s what makes it so glamourous, that you guys are there to be able to talk…

 

RB: We’re different kind of guys and this question comes from the obvious, like look: is it a good thing, is it a bad thing? I think neither. It’s a thing. And Cannes went one way and Toronto made a very conscious decision to go that way. About a decade ago, before that when I first went in 1995, it was a different feel when David Overby and all were running it. These are decisions that you take.

 

PT: It’s about the focus, you know Aseem I’d like to reiterate that it’s not about… there could have been a Shah Rukh Khan watching a film, it’s not a Shah Rukh Khan’s presence, it’s not about lesser rated star, it’s about the emphasis. Cannes has that whole thing where there will be a whole section of people, who wore what, the red carpet, you know all of that, which is a huge draw at a festival.

 

RB: Don’t we have enough of it in this city?

 

PT: Exactly. I’m not saying it’s a good or bad thing. It’s just interesting to me that it’s not a part of MAMI.

 

AC: I went to FICCI FRAMES last year, 2011. And some of it was very good, some of it was whatever. There was a panel which Karan Johar moderated with the young actors and there was a presence and that was the first time I met Vikram Motwane for instance. Closing night, Shah Rukh Khan turns up and it’s hysteria. Journalists were clamoring to be in the first row, everybody wanted to dance with Shah Rukh, I mean what happens is that that’s the other part of it. If you bring these stars it takes the total attention away from what this event is because we have… I also wanted to sit close to watch Shah Rukh dance… and I’m not saying that it was just other journalists. It sort of also takes the mood away from what we are here for, if you bring them.

 

PT: I agree, because there’s no such thing as controlled hysteria in India. Perhaps there is a degree of control to hysteria or star hysteria when we go to Cannes.

 

RB: It can happen but in Bombay, you have massive glamourous occasions. The Filmfare Awards, for instance. So you get… we get our dose of glamour. I don’t think we’re lacking it.

 

PT: My question was more about the emphasis. The same actress, one actress who attended Toronto and who was also watching all the films at MAMI was obsessing for 2 months before Toronto about what she’s going to wear every morning, every evening and she was here in jeans, in a T-shirt, for every screening.

 

RB: Fantastic, fantastic…

 

PT: And this is the same actress, who’d just come from Toronto. So I’m saying that is the difference. It’s not about the presence of that actress, it’s about how she…

 

RB: Lovely, that’s a compliment to MAMI.

 

AC: To me the greatest thing that I noticed this year and last year when you see the faces of people standing in the lines, and they’re young students, college students. This festival is 8 days long. So thousand plus rupees for 8 days of— you can see 5 times 8, that’s 40 films you can possibly see. It is remarkable how egalitarian this festival is. I mean I know other film festivals abroad also, when you talk about Cannes— those are expensive tickets…

 

PT: That’s very important… I think it’s a very well priced festival.

 

AC: And the films are reaching people who should be seeing them.

 

PT: Absolutely. I think that’s a very good point. That for 1200 rupees you could buy a season pass and you can actually watch (out of) 100 movies if you like, I think that’s fantastic.

 

AC: That’s really great, I mean obviously (that) Reliance is (behind this is) very well, the festival is very well funded. But it’s good that they’re making it available to everybody. Because film festivals can be very elitist also.

 

PT: I wanted to talk a little bit about the standing of this festival internationally, which you guys are in a much better position to talk on. So there’s not much, I think we can add. But my question really is about how it compares with festivals abroad, but more than that is it on it’s way to, and on the right way perhaps, to make its… to position itself as one of the big international festivals worldwide? Because it really matters if people also want to start saying alongside selection at Cannes, selection at Sundance, they also want to say film selection at MAMI and not just Indian films but films abroad as well. That is what will…

 

RM: To market them…

 

PT: To market them, because that is what will give it that standing.

 

RB: Look, one would like to believe that the heart of a great festival is great programming. But the heft of the festival, as opposed to the heart of the festival, is in the business. So people will come here saying this is a place to do business in. If you don’t have that, it’s never going to be one of the top festivals of the world. Be very certain about that. Because everybody including the stars now, will go into a place because they know that once they’re there, there’s going to be enormous business being interacted for that film. The business end of festivals, I think Indian festivals in general have not laid emphasis on this much. I was discussing this with the jury in fact yesterday, quite informally, and the first thing to get right is the heart of the festival: you have Amour, you have Makhmalbaf, you have Zhang Yimou, whoever it might be, right? You have these people, you have their films, so when somebody looks at the brochure and says ‘Huh, this is a pretty decent festival’. But what about the guy who’s doing business? Then you start working on the business side. It takes time for festivals. It took time for Toronto also. How do we organize it in a way that people can come in here and do business? Where is the lounge? Where is the place where they meet? Where are the industry screenings? Where are the industry panels? Where are the industry conversations? Where can those money boys, the suits, sit and crack deals? How do we make it attractive for the suits to come here? It could not just be your film— we can programme your film at MAMI. It has to be something else. What it is— I don’t know. Some people throw in free trips, some people throw in this and that. But you have to make it attractive because they’re always going to say: I’ll come if he comes, he’ll come if she comes, she comes if he comes and then they make a decision, they talk to each other. These guys will talk and say: “Are you going to be at Cannes? I’m gonna see you at Cannes, I’m gonna give Venice a skip.” This is how they talk. Aseem knows about this from the inside. That part of it, the heft of the festival, is defined by the business it does. It is never defined by the films that it gets. The heart is there. It’s very important to have that first. MAMI has the first part, is well on it’s way to doing the first part. The second part is where now, it’s tough work, it’s really hard work and it requires a different kind of noose.

 

AC: What I’m finding very interesting is, as the Indian market is becoming more and more important. I mean Tom Cruise did come here to promote his Mission Impossible 4, I believe Ang Lee is supposed to come here later this week or early next week to promote Life of Pi. Ang Lee doesn’t need to come here to promote Life of Pi but he’s still coming here, thinking the Indian market is important enough. If that is so, that could certainly translate eventually into a film festival of this size to be able to have more presence of industry and, as Rahul was saying, people who may not even have films showing here.

 

RB: No Aseem, it’s different. San Sebastian (where the San Sebastian Film Festival is held) is not a market for films. Ang Lee doesn’t go to San Sebastian because the Mexicans or the Spanish want to see it. My point is, even if Bombay was in the middle of nowhere, it was in the middle of the Indian ocean, it could be a great place to do great business. It’s not about the box office of India, it’s a different dynamic that is a separate creature unto itself, which the artistic director of the festival, like Aseem, might not have the nose to understand how to do that. It’s a different animal. And I’ve seen those guys, I mean look at Piers (Handling— the Director & CEO of TIFF) and the work that these guys have done in Toronto. It’s a totally different strategy.

 

AC: That day will come when you open the Silver Linings Playbook and Bradley Cooper and David O’ Russel and the entire cast, also comes for the screening.

 

PT: And they want to come to the screening because they’ve seen the audience react.

 

AC: Because they’re saying after Toronto we’re going to show our film in India.

 

RB: And you have distributors from all over the world coming to see— we wanna pick up that, we want that. We’re gonna meet Ang Lee here, we’re gonna meet this producer here, Harvey and Bob (Weinstein) are going to be here, that’s the thing you want.

 

RM: That’s where all the deals will be struck.

 

RB: Correct.

 

AC: So this is the very early stages, baby steps have been taken— the fact that they’ve got Geoff Gilmore to be on the jury and some of the other prominent film personalities. So they’re starting to invite people, people are coming and that’s what happens. People are going to go back and talk more about…

 

RB: Right now it will be a respected artistic festival, but as he said for them to go back and start talking about this they have to be assured that business will be conducted here. It also depends on the appetite of the festival organizers— one wonders which way they want it to go, who knows?

 

AC: I go to Telluride (the Telluride Film Festival) every year, and there’s no market at Telluride, but all the directors and all the stars still come from around the world because they just want to be there for 4-5 days and talk about cinema. So there’s that kind of a thing and Mumbai can be a nice place to talk about cinema, if it wasn’t so muggy here.

 

RB: Is Telluride a better place to go and hang out in terms of weather?

 

AC: It’s in the middle of the mountains.

 

RB: I guess that also helps interaction. It’s like having a festival in Kasauli. We had it last month and everyone came, 700 people were there. And I was like, this is going to be massive in the future because just to come to Kasauli… Aseem come to Kasauli for 3 days, stay at the quaint Kassauli club, overlooking the valley and just…

 

AC: I’m going to spend the whole year in India, the Delhi book festival, Mumbai film festival…

 

PT: I can draw up an itinerary for you right now.

 

RB: I think that Bombay is ready for a festival with industry heft. Seriously.

 

PT: I hope it happens.

 

RB: It is where every other kind of business is conducted.

 

AC: Can I say one more thing, I’m sorry? But one of the more remarkable things about this festival is that since there’s no government involvement, there’s no babugiri (bureaucracy) in this festival. When I was growing up in Delhi in the 70s, you know we started the International Film festival in Vigyan Bhavan in Delhi and in old Goa. And when I was talking to Namit Khanna, ’cause he also remembers those days where within 5 minutes all the tickets would be sold out because all the babus (bureaucrats), they were so much obsessed with seeing all these, sort of slight nude scenes etc. And it became a festival just for that. Every minister had to come to make speeches. It was so good that there wasn’t any minister who made any speech. There was no minister there right?

 

RM: No, not at all.

 

RB: I remember wintry evenings in Siri Fort, watching films and coming out and it was great fun.

 

AC: That’s a big part of it, because as students we were…

 

RB: Because also it was a nice, well not Telluride, but it was nice, the winter in Delhi, when you go out…

 

PT: And again I come back to Jaipur, and that’s what works for Jaipur, that sunlight, you just want to be there…

 

RB: And wherever you go you stumble into some palace in some state of disrepair or repair so you are always enthralled.

 

PT: William (Dalrymple— one of the directors of the Jaipur Literature Festival) keeps saying that in fact. That he doesn’t have to really work hard. Everyone asks him how do you get this guy and how do you get that, and he says: the big turks? They’re ready, they’re like I’ll come. I don’t care who you have, who you don’t have. Of course he’s being humble, he’s being William but it’s a big part of any festival. You know, I’m going to come to the films we watched finally. How many films did we all end up watching? You of course, had to watch 13 films.

 

RB: 13 films

 

AC: I guess I’ve only seen about 10-12 films, about 2 or 3 a day. Many of the films showing I had already seen because living in New York itself you get to see them. But there are some really wonderful discoveries. There’s a film that I missed, it’s been running in New York for a while, it’s a documentary on Aie Weiwei: Never Sorry. I had heard it was good. It was absolutely stunningly brilliant, it’s an amazing, amazing documentary about this man and his spirit and his art itself is remarkable… challenging the Chinese authorities where you can be banned and everything else. It’s a terrific, terrific film. There’s some really wonderful discoveries. I saw a Korean film called Architecture 101. It was such a sweet romantic film, I had no idea what to expect and it was just lovely. It was a great way to start, a film at 10 in the morning.

 

RB: Our jury films have been pre-selected. There was a huge number of films and they send up 13 films for this jury and 20 films for that jury. Obviously there were two groups of people who were selecting for our… And we’ve seen some absolute… just enthralling films. One or two have been very, very strange and puzzling but that’s what a film festival is about. You can turn around and say confidently that 11 of these 13 films  will have five people sitting in the theatre whether they’re enthralling, good and whichever way it is. Only one of them was a true… you can say this is a box office success and well that’s fine but that in itself, it showed us who the people behind this festival are, you know, it shows your taste. So it shows the taste of the festival. We were very satisfied.

 

PT: I’m sure you can’t talk about it.

 

RB: Yes, we had to give seven prizes so we were sitting yesterday and we’ll probably sit again today but…

 

PT: But you can’t talk about some of your favourite films?

 

RB: No absolutely not.

 

AC: There was this film… it’s in competition is it, Valley of Saints?

 

RB: It is…

 

AC: And Ship of Theseus is also in competition?

 

RB: Yes…

 

AC: Both are absolutely stunning films. Valley of Saints, I’ve known the film for more than a year because of the New York film festival. Such a quiet amazing story about Kashmir, and you see the conflict on the side and you see the impact of the conflict… But it’s just the lives of these ordinary people. How they manage to survive and live and love and they smile and they sing and they go into a love triangle. Beautifully done. Ship of Theseus is just unbelievably amazing when I saw it in Toronto, I walked out and the director is standing there and usually you go and say hello, it’s very good and all. I couldn’t talk because I thought I would start to cry. There was something in that film which just triggered something in me, which really touched me. There’s a lovely film that I saw that’s called Kauwboy.

 

RB: Which is also in our selection

 

AC: It’s in selection? And I’m so glad I saw it although against that was a 4 hour long Once Upon a Time in America. What a simple little story about a boy growing up without his mother, and done in such a genuine artistic style. People stood up and they were clapping. It touched a lot of the people in the audience. So there’s some very good stuff.

 

PT: I mean for me Valley of Saints and Shahid, watching both these films was again finding… again, both are nuanced, talking about Indian politics in a nuanced way and political events— more so in a nuanced way, which was very very heartening because when we talk about political films in India, it’s usually the Rajneetis that we’re talking about, so we’re not really talking about… you know, there’s this massive gap. In the first issue of The Big Indian Picture, I don’t know if you guys have had a chance to see it but Mahmood Farooqui wrote a piece on the complete absence, again, he argued that Kaala Pathar was a lot more political than the self conscious political cinema that we’re trying to make…

 

AC: The Chakravyuhs of the world.

 

PT: The Chakravyuhs of the world. But coming back to… lovely, for me, Shahid.

 

AC: I like Shahid a lot.

 

PT: As a journalist, for us to see a film that did justice to his story was fantastic.

 

RM: I think it meant a lot for that story to be told and that counterpoint, and a current counterpoint, to be raised. I remember when Shanghai was out and everyone was talking about why can’t we have our Z. I’m not saying this is our Z. But it’s great to have a political story that belongs to your present.

 

RB: You made a very good point and I kept saying this in the screenings: I kept saying how amazing that this guy got funding for this film. How incredible that this lady got funding for this film. She had just gone there and said this is a story about a flower that grows and a little child who’s fascinated by it. Really you want a million dollars for this? You know, like screw off. Whether it’s Shahid, I’m wondering who funded Shahid because the way you guys are talking about it…

 

AC: Well it’s Anurag’s (Kashyap) production.

 

PT: Anurag and Sunil Bohra.

 

RB: Yeah so I mean, it’s fantastic in this festival to see that there are still people out there, in what is known as dark times for art house cinema, who are funding movies that are so incredibly out there and wow! And you look and see 1.3 million dollars. They actually got 1.3 million dollars for this film.

 

PT (to Rishi): You know you and me were talking about the milieu of Shahid and how well it was detailed and it was little things. When Shahid is studying for his law exams he’s studying, he’s not studying from a thick text book he’s studying from Pathan (a tutorial law notebook). You know we’ve all studied law so…

 

RM: Tutorial law notes.

 

PT: So the level of detailing, which is something that you miss. I don’t know who it is for but it’s there, and the courtroom scenes, the way… every single thing and it’s nuanced. That’s a very important factor.

 

RB: I’ve spent 6 years trying to raise money for Moth Smoke. And now Anurag and Guneet have come on board. So… one Anurag can spawn a summer of Anurags, you know, but it has to start somewhere…

 

PT: You know it’s about what we were talking about earlier. Whether Easy Rider gives birth to a Weinstein or whether a Weinstein…

 

RM: Do you need a producer to back a movie or… (a great movie to get that producer)

PT: We’re very glad that we can do that now. You remember when I was talking to you (to Aseem), I was writing an opinion piece on Chittagong and I was telling you about how…

 

RB: How is that?

 

AC: I liked Chittagong

 

PT: It’s a lovely film but…

 

AC: It’s a very lovely story

 

PT: There were a couple of questions that come from there, which is about how we look at our history and how we look at our political present and the distinct contrast between that…

 

RB: You know I’ve actually been there. Do you know that Bangladesh denies it completely?

 

AC: Really?

 

RB: Do you know there’s no monument, there’s nothing.

 

AC: They claim their history started in 1971 or in…?

 

RB: Yeah. From (19)50, whatever, from the first uprising. Do you know that for Bangladesh as a country their history starts in the (19)’50s but actually picks up in (19)’71. And I got to know why. I went to Bangladesh and I spent three days and I said hey Chittagong massacre, it’s film is coming out Jee Jaan Sey Khelein Hum, I think at that time, whatever it is… And they said I don’t know where it is. I said you really don’t know where this place is, where this professor and all this… They said no. Till finally I spoke to somebody who’s in the police and he said of course I know where it is, but we don’t really talk about it. I said, why? He said because all those boys were Hindus. And the Muslims were oppressed by the Hindus at the time. So there is one round thing with white writing on the thing, at the armory. There’s an office inside, you don’t get to see the armory. I went there, I even took a photograph, I tweeted about it. It’s not that it’s a shameful blot, it’s just that if it’s not Muslim it doesn’t exist.

 

AC: The Hindu-Muslim issue can be a very complicated but it’s…

 

RB: It’s nationalism.

 

AC: It’s a state… it’s like in Pakistan for instance, there’s no history, those kids are not taught about Ashoka and the Maurya period.

 

RB: In Maharashtra they almost wiped out the Mughal empire, which for us is a text book in itself. There was the English but the Mughal empire was reduced to a footnote. All 5 emperors were cut-cut-cut. One, one paragraph on Aurangzeb, phat phat phat.

 

AC: For instance, there are all these Buddha sculptures which are just being smuggled out because people just don’t seem to have the value for that.

 

RB: This is the thing, the history, historiography of things, global warming in Canadian textbooks is cyclical. I actually read that, I went to Canada to campaign against climate change and it’s like, they say that it comes and goes, it comes and goes. So you never know what our kids are taught. I know I’ve just taken off somewhere else…

 

PT: No but that links up, that’s what we were talking about how—and this is not to make a very simple comparison—but when we were talking about Surjo Sen, we were talking about Surjo Sen being a hero. We’re not talking about Surjo Sen as a grey figure. Some of these kids were 13 year olds. They were thrust into a war they were not likely to win. And yet not even the most left liberal commentator today is going to look at the Maoist uprising in the same way, even though their leader, commander in chief Ganapathi used to be a school teacher, is an ideologue—very similar to Surjo Sen’s trajectory—claims to be fighting a just war against imperialistic attitudes. But, there’s no way we’re talking about the kids in Kashmir who were pelting stones in the same way in 2010— not even the most left leaning political commentators. But we’re all looking at Surjo Sen in a particular way where there’s no question raised. And I’m all for that. I still think that Chittagong is still a beautiful film. However I think that there’s—and this is what I wrote in this piece—when I was talking about how, maybe, it’s just the fact that how we were all Jhunkus back
then and today, at least some of us are Wilkinsons or his dissenting powerless wife. But the other thing is that his aide, one of Surjo’s main aides, Ananta Singh, lived on. He was jailed, he was in Kala Pani for many, many years. He lived on post independence. Most of the guys who participated, the leaders of the uprising, who were not martyred, went on to become CPI members, MLAs, join the government. Ananta Singh went on to form an extremist Communist Party and was jailed by the Indian government as a traitor post independence. So I feel that Ananta’s story would be a lot more difficult to tell than Surjo Sen’s story, who fought against the British, fought the ‘good war’.

 

RB: I also thought about why Bangladesh had done what it has done. I said every nation does it, in the beginning…

 

PT: We’re doing it.

 

RB: In the beginning, being teenagers, you don’t want to be anything but what you want to be perceived as: I’m the rebel in the school, I’m the one with the black nail polish and the tattoo, I’m the one who’s the good girl. You know, you’re so obsessed that you’re making sure that everyone gets your image right and young nations do that and initially there’s an immaturity and an over enthusiasm to be perceived as one thing and then later on they chill out and open out. So it’s a process.

 

PT: But it’s also us, we love the stories that make us feel good, we always do. It doesn’t depend on which way we lean politically. We all love the stories that make us feel good which is why Stories We Tell was such a beautiful film…

 

AC: I loved Stories We Tell.

 

PT: Two lovely documentaries in this festival which were great to watch.

 

AC (to Rahul): It’s Sarah Polley’s documentary about her own life, discovering that her father was not her biological father, it’s a lovely film.

 

RB: Oh lovely.

 

PT: It always intrigues me about how we get material like that. I remember watching an Egyptian documentary called Salata Baladi. Again, I don’t know how you put cameras in the face of your father and you talk about things like this, you conduct interviews, you always have a camera. I don’t know how you do it, but the outcome is absolutely fantastic. Even if you feel like a voyeur, it’s beautifully done. So recommendations, finally, your film recommendation from the festival would be?

 

AC: I have a list of my 10 favourite films.

 

PT (to Rishi): Your one recommendation

 

RM: It would be Shahid probably

 

PT: For personal reasons?

 

RM: For personal reasons as well as it’s an Indian film, that’s just come out…

 

PT: Mine would not be On the Road. If I had to ‘not recommend’. Very extremely, extremely betrayed personally about what’s been done with the film. Really disappointed in that film…

 

AC: I made that list, a separate article that I had to write. Did you guys see Beasts of the Southern Wild?

 

PT: Yes, of course.

 

AC: Is that in competition also?

 

RB: Yes

 

AC: All the great films are in competition. Rahul can’t comment on them but obviously he’s seen some of them. I haven’t seen the film here…

 

RB: It won the Camera d’Or in Cannes

 

AC: And it won the Grand Jury Award at Sundance

 

PT: Sorry to cut you, but are the marks revealed? Is it made public as to who voted and what marks (were given)?

 

AC: By the Jury?

 

PT: Yeah and how voting was done or which film got the lowest points or which…

 

RB: Nothing, no.

 

PT: Because for Cannes, I was reading an article about how Taste of Money got the lowest points.

 

AC: Those things are revealed? Or somebody just leaks them out…

 

PT: It’s been leaked, it’s not officially…

 

AC: I was surprised. I wish I had known that before… But Beasts of the Southern Wild was such an imaginative, amazing story about this child who’s trying to survive in a world which will probably… her father won’t be there. As it is it’s about how these people are living on the extreme edge of society, trying to survive also but she brings up all these thoughts and ideas in our minds and the beasts keep following her and she finally stops them and… how remarkable it was.

 

RB: Did you see it?

 

PT: Yes. I have the soundtrack. It is stunning.

 

AC: You’ve got the soundtrack? I’ve got to figure how you got that…

 

PT: I’m not going to tell you on record but I’ll tell you off it…

 

 

 

 

Editor’s Cut

Posted on by
1

Ik lafz-e-mohabbat ka, Adna sa fasaana hai,

Simte to dil-e-aashiq, Faile to zamaana hai,

— Jigar Moradabadi

“Love is a small word with a small myth/ Ensconced, it is the heart of the lover/ Unraveled, it is everything.” Indulge us a little on this rather ornate quote by one of the most eminent Urdu poets of the 20th Century, Jigar Moradabadi. What he said for love, we apply to Indian cinema.

As we countdown to its centenary, we look back at the Indian film in its many avatars. From a bewildering invention to high art, pastiche, kitsch, a cause and any number of things in between. Glamorous, earthy, shrill, silent, garish, exquisite, aspirational– there is hardly any robe the Indian movie hasn’t donned. At its best it has nurtured allied arts– music, poetry, photography, painting and literature. At its worst it has given us cult films; in-jokes recreated as memes on tumblrs for a whole new generation.

What started as a personal whimsy of an ordinary man in 1913 has become integral to the very idea of India. I say this, because I can think of very little that unifies us, gives us a shared sense of the past and a common culture, as our films do. Go as far into India as you will and you are likely to meet people who you have nothing in common with except Amitabh Bachchan. Or Rajinikanth.

Indian cinema is not merely an industry or a stand-alone form of art or entertainment. The body of it is a document of our political and social history. It tells many more stories than it intends to. Who we were as a people and who we seek to become. The way we live with each other. The way we see ourselves. The invisible influence of cinema pervades everything. We exist in a hall of mirrors with our movies- constantly reflecting and distorting each other.

At The Big Indian Picture we hope to hold cinema up as a prism and look at ourselves anew. To celebrate it. To drink it up and dance. Because we as a nation love cinema to the point of obsession. Because our cinema, like our country, freely allows influences from all over the world but manages to remain its own creature—for better or worse.

Like our movies, we see The Big Indian Picture as many things at once. What is starting out as a magazine, we hope will transform into an art gallery, a museum, a classroom, a library, a movie screen and a tavern.

Another eminent voice of the 20th century, Hindi poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan, used the word Madhushala (The Tavern) as a changeable metaphor. It took on new meanings with each verse to allude to the many complexities of life. We hope this publication can be to cinema a little of what Madhushala is to life.

Ek baras mein ek baar hi

Jagti holi ki jwala,

Ek baar hi lagti baaji

 Jalti deepon ki mala,

Duniyawalon kintu kisi din

 Aa madiralaya mein dekho,

Din ko Holi, raat Diwali

 Roz manati Madhushala.

 

24th September 2012