Alok Nath Uninterrupted

Posted on October 29, 2014 by admin

Last year, TBIP documented the work and lives of some of India’s best known ‘character actors’, through a series of photographic portraits and in-depth interviews. In the second part of that series, we present Alok Nath.

Alok Nath, 58, is one of Hindi cinema’s most recognizable ‘character actors’. A National School of Drama alumnus, he is well known for essaying the role of a kindly patriarch in many Bollywood films in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, among them the blockbusters Maine Pyar Kiya (1989), Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1993) and Hum Saath-Saath Hain (1999). Also, Nath has won acclaim for his turn as Haveli Ram in Doordarshan’s television series, Buniyaad.

Last December, jokes and memes based on characters played by Alok Nath—mostly on the ‘sanskaari’ (morally upright) and ‘kanyadaani’ (father of the bride) nature of his on-screen avatars—went viral on Twitter and Facebook, leading to the actor’s name trending on social media for no apparent reason, prompting online marketing case studies on the phenomenon.

The shoot and interview takes place at his apartment in Lokhandwala, Mumbai. We sit on velvet upholstered sofas in his sitting room, chatting about the highs and lows of his journey as an actor, interrupted occasionally by the snores of his pet Boston terrier sleeping on a chair nearby.

One of your first roles was in Gandhi. What were your thoughts while working on the movie with actors like Ben Kingsley, Roshan Seth, etc. Do you have any special memories of it? How did you get the role?

When I joined Hindu college, at Delhi University, I was very active in college theatre as well as in the Ruchika theatre group. I also kept doing television. After college I chose to take up acting professionally. My parents had wanted me to be a doctor—my father is a doctor—but they stopped interfering and left the decision to me once I took up humanities instead of science in college. After graduating I joined the National School of Drama in Delhi. I did three years there and even in my spare time and during the holidays continued with professional theatre and television in Delhi. Towards the end of my time at the National School of Drama (NSD), in 1980, Dolly Thakore from Bombay came to our school looking for actors for small character roles in Gandhi, being directed by the great Sir Richard Attenborough. We were told to represent the National School of Drama in the auditions and have a nice bath, wear clean clothes, shave, oil our hair… Getting the role or not was immaterial. Just to see Richard Attenborough in the flesh—he used to do theatre too and we were in awe of him—was a big high. When I met him at the Ashoka Hotel I was shivering. He looked me over and seemed to contemplate, as if he was buying a horse or cattle. His eyes were piercing into me and I was dying, frankly, because I wasn’t getting any reaction that revealed whether he liked me or not. He finally said, “Yeah Dolly looks good.” Dolly lead me into an adjacent room and said, “You’re on Alok. So this character is called Tyeb Mohammed, one of Gandhi’s associates and friends when he was in South Africa and involved in the coal miners’ agitation. So you got the role.” I said, “That’s great. But what do I do for it?” And she said, “See you look the role, that’s why Attenborough chose you.”

Later I realized I must have been chosen because I had that mean hungry look those days, the look of a frustrated theatre actor who is a committed revolutionary, a Commie theatre enthusiast.

She asked me “How much will you charge?” In those days, in television, for a play for which you had to rehearse for a week or 10 days and then record, we would get 60 rupees. Nobody had asked me what I would charge. I was just given whatever pittance and I took it. So I was like, “Madam Dolly…” Dolly was a nice looking young woman, very Westernised. And here we were, the lesser humans visiting a posh Delhi hotel, who had never been to a five star hotel suite, and my feet were like jelly but I couldn’t say that I haven’t done a film before so I don’t know how much to charge. Also I couldn’t say I used to get 60 rupees or she’d give me 100 rupees or something. So I just kept quiet. She finally said, “Okay will over 20 be alright?” I almost got a heart attack because I used to get 60 and now 20? Then she said, “Twenty thousand rupees. Should we close the deal?” My expression was like… I literally shat in my pants. I was like, “Yeah 20 is fine, it should be good.” And as I was calculating how much 20,000 rupees was, she took out a wad of notes for 10,000 rupees. “Here is an advance and you’re on.” And she made me sign some papers. So that was how I got Gandhi. I went out of the room, kept the money in my pocket, left the hotel, then took the money out and checked if they were real notes. I kept the wad under my armpits and the whole way back I took an auto-rickshaw (I used to travel by bus normally). I went home and gave the money to mom. My parents too were shocked. “Thank God you didn’t become a doctor,” they said. Because my father didn’t earn 10,000 rupees in a year.

You had only one film as a hero, Kamagni. Why were you not considered for the lead more often back then? Because I’ve seen younger photos of you. And…

Just say it. That I was good looking.

You were good looking. Why were you not offered leads?

Between Gandhi and Kamagni there were five to six years. I struggled in Bombay for almost two years and got nothing but constantly kept doing theatre at Prithvi Theatre with Mrs. Nadira Babbar, Raj Babbar’s wife. Raj, an NSD alumnus, had suddenly become an overnight superstar and signed some 30 to 40 odd films. That was also one of the reasons for this exodus of a lot of Delhi actors to Bombay. They wanted to get into the gold rush of cinema by which Raj Babbar, a Delhi theatre actor, had become a hero.

During that span of doing theatre in Prithvi with Nadiraji, a lot of film people used to come and watch our shows. I got some small roles in films. My first break was with Mr. Yash Chopra in a film called Mashaal with Anil Kapoor—it was also one of his first films—and Dilip (Kumar) saab. I played a journalist and he later gave me a role again in his film Lamhe and then I got a role in Aaj Ki Awaaz, a B. R. Chopra film.

Also, in those days the TV serial business had begun in a big way here. There was a serial made in Delhi called Hum Log, the first Indian soap. And people lapped it up like crazy. In the wake of that, more serials started getting made in Bombay. So 26 and 30 episode serials were being made. I started getting work in these serials starting with one by Basu Chatterjee, then by Nadiraji herself doing a serial and then Mr. Ramesh Sippy’s company making a serial on journalism, a caricaturist kind of show called Chapte Chapte. I played a cranky, grumpy editor, and then Buniyaad happened.

Buniyaad was a major milestone in my life which catapulted me into the acting space. I was compared to the greats of those times. The press suddenly put me on this pedestal and I got great acting offers but the condition of Buniyaad, also made by Mr. Ramesh Sippy, was that you had to give one year to them in which you would concentrate on this one show. With Buniyaad it was like I had gotten my voting card for Bombay, that read: ‘Alok Nath, Actor’.

And yet the irony of Buniyaad was I couldn’t do other work, so a lot of offers went rejected. And while people wanted to work initially, things changed. Let me explain. When I started Buniyaad I was 26-27 years of age and it started with me playing a young revolutionary, an honest, good looking guy, falling in love with a woman. Then we married, had children, they grew up, they got married, they having children and we became grandparents. All of this in one year. So in one year I lived 60 years of my life. In that one year the younger Haveli Ram, the character in the serial which got all these offers, was forgotten and at the end the image of a masterji, growing old, remained in the audience’s mind. The last shot of the serial, that has lasted in people’s memory, was that I am walking with two grandchildren into the horizon. An 80 year old man, balding, with white hair. That was the lasting image of Alok Nath.

Hum Aapke Hain Koun.. ! established you as a sort of household name. What was it like working on that film? Hum Aapke… also affected the tone of movies made in Bollywood in the nineties. Did you anticipate the effect that it had?

Before that was Maine Pyaar Kiya and even before that was Saraansh in 1983, produced by the same Rajshri Productions. In the early eighties I was doing doing a play at Prithvi called Sandheya Chaya. It’s about an old couple in their late 60s or 70s, whose children have left them for their work, staying abroad. And how they make friends with people who visit them, or the postman, or the next door servant or some person who’s dialed them by mistake. So I was playing one of the old couple and Raj Babbar was doing some Rajshri film. The people from Rajshri saw a performance. So the next day Mr. Babbar had left a message with the paanwalla asking me to call him immediately. We never had phones in those days so the paanwalla at the corner would take our messages and paid him a little extra in return. So I called Raj Babbar and he asked me to turn up at the Rajshri office.

When I landed up I was shown into a room and it was Rajkumar Barjatya, Sooraj Barjatya’s father’s room.

I introduced myself, saying: “My name is Alok Nath. Mr. Raj Babbar has asked me to come and meet you.”

He said, “Lekin par kyon (But why)?”

I’m amazed at this man. He has called me all the way from Juhu and he’s not even recognizing me.

A little agitated, I said, “Sir I am Mrs. Nadira Babbar’s actor. We have a group called Ekjute. Yesterday some people from your office came to see the play and then I got a call.”

He said, “You were in the play last night?” I said, “Yes sir.” He asked, “What were you doing in the play?” I was on the edge, also reaching the end of my patience. “Sir I was acting in the play, playing the lead.” He said, “Tum toh… lekin woh buddha tha (But, he was an old man)!” I said, “Sir, he was an old man, but I am a young man. I was acting in that play as an old man. But I am 25 years old.”

He finally recognised me, then said, “Good, good. But very sad.” He said he couldn’t give me the role. “This film we are making, we need an older man in this. But don’t worry Mr. Alok. We will always work with you.” So this is my history with Rajshri. I didn’t get that role, Anupam Kher got it. Bastard! He is just one year older than me. The only solace I got was that he must have been looking older than me. They gave me a small role in that film, a sadhu’s role. And since that film, I have worked in every film of theirs except Main Prem ki Diwaani Hoon.

Were you wary of getting typecast? Did you try to resist it?

I was aware of it, not much initially because initially there was the thirst of getting into the groove of films, being a part of this cinema world. I accepted what I was offered. Refusal would mean that the offers would stop coming, because it’s a small industry and people take offence if you refuse them.

When I was in it, I was doing it with all my honesty. By the time I realised no yaar, I think I’m on the wrong bus, I could not change things.

There were some offers, but they were not out and out different. A good man turning villain in the end, at the climax, so people will not think that he’s a villain— those kinds of roles. But even they did not work with the audience. The films worked, but I didn’t get any recognition, so I was stuck in this scenario where I would do only goody-goody roles, older roles, big brother roles, the uncle, the father, now the grandfather… It’s ok. It’s paid my bills, I’ve bought my own house, my car, I had the courage to get married, have children, give them a good education. At the end of the day, the creativity got a little dejected but survival was funded by these films.

In Hindi cinema it’s not just an actor but also a role that gets typecast. What have been the characteristics of the traditional Indian father? Is that image changing today?

A father is a person who is always looked upon as a positive person from the hero’s point of view because we have an Indian tradition of following in your father’s footsteps. So if the father is good the hero is good and the hero is always good so that means the father should always be good. If the father is bad then there are influences of that in the hero which get corrected during the process of the film. Goodness prevails. But the father figure is mostly pujya. Pujya matlab (Pujya means) a respected person. Whether he is poor or rich he is listened to, his values are cared for, his directives are obeyed.

But now, also, over the last decade our cinema has gone through a lot of churning. The whole genre of filmmaking has changed in which the family has suddenly taken a back seat. There’s less of pitaji or bauji or babuji, and more of ‘mom-dad’. The ‘Yo!’ kind of generation has emerged. And the generation gap between children and their parents doesn’t seem to show much, even literally, because of facilities such as beauty products, various options in clothing, technologies like hair weaving etc. So the parents look young and happening now, which is a kind of role I don’t fit into.

Also the heroes of the last two decades have now become fathers, though they still want to be heroes. But unfortunately their children have become heroes too, so they have had to graduate to fathers. So automatically those fathers have taken up more cinema space and left little for outsider fathers like us.

Finally, there are ‘lesser parents’, for subjects where parents are not really required. Here they are just like furniture in a film, with small roles. Maybe just passing by or with two or three scenes. Or they’re shown in albums or photographs, things like that. So, often, parents are now not an integral part of Indian cinema.

You once mentioned some particular mannerisms or thought processes that you may have that make people cast you as an older person? What did you mean?

You can’t defy age, though I did do so in the opposite direction. I played father to heroes elder to me. I’ve done almost 500 films till now in my 30 to 35 years in Bombay and almost 95% of them have been in older roles— older than my present age. And I have never said no to a film. The only film I refused around 20 years ago was one from Madras. I was asked to play Mr. Jeetendra’s father to which I said nahin (no) yaar, this is too much. He must be about 15 years older to me.

You also mentioned in an interview that you had certain goals when you came to Mumbai but you hadn’t achieved what you set out to do. If you could re-do your innings as an actor, what changes would you make to it?

In any sphere of life you have to have a goal post and you have to aim well to score. Anybody who comes in at an early age, wants to become a star, a hero. When you brush or shave in the morning there’s nobody better looking than you. You’re the ultimate. You’re Don Juan. I also came in thinking like that. But your dreams get shattered slowly, till you realise you need to face the world, face reality. This is it, accept it or leave it. At this one stage of life you’re a beggar so you can’t be a chooser because it’s a question of survival. In addition you have your family’s baggage: What the hell, you’ve left us! You’ve gone to Bombay to become a hero! What’s happening? No news! Nothing’s happening! Everybody’s shining, you’re not shining!

You get frustrated, you’re in a foreign country and you lap up the first opportunity just to prove to somebody back home that: No, no. See, that show is coming, or that film is coming. Watch. It’s me. So in doing so you accept a little defeat thinking that if you prove yourself in that little role maybe in the next film the same people will say, “He performed well, he’s a good man. He behaved well while shooting, let’s give him a better role.”

And things keeps improving too but, in doing so, time passes. To relive the past, to recycle, to change goal posts, is not easy. Obviously anybody would want to be a star, live young like a hero, sing nice songs, dance with beautiful girls, fall in love with them on screen, different women, different films, different directors. That karishma (miracle), that aura, the almost demi-god feeling… that I missed.

Bollywood can limit actors like yourself and yet you have been a part
of it for many years. What keeps you going?

With acting the biggest reward was that it was my hobby which turned into my passion and then my passion turned into my profession. And it’s paying you, with money, recognition, adulation, love and respect from the audience. The money makes it a very cushy life that way.

You’ve done work recently with well known online comedy groups. What was it like exploring this new aspect? Also, did your newfound spurt of fame on social media affect your life in any way?

Comedy is not an integral part of an Indian household. We don’t laugh too much or too often unfortunately. There is a lack of humour in our lives. When I was in school, in the initial stages of theatre, I used to do a lot of comedy in school functions because you are young and your audience is young. There was laughter, gaiety and even more slapstick, bizarre and over the top comedy.

But then seriousness happened to me, age happened, so the comic aspect of my personality got buried. People think: He’s a serious bugger, he doesn’t laugh much, he doesn’t make people laugh much.

So with people making fun of me in the social media what can I do? It’s good! It takes a lot of work to squeeze out something funny from a serious wood like Alok Nath. Why take offense? I laugh at jokes made on other people.

Now my daughter, who’s studied filmmaking abroad, was working with AIB (All India Bakchod). One evening, she seemed very serious. “Papa, they’re making sketches and caricaturish stuff on you and Kejriwal. I don’t think I’ll be assisting them on this one.” When I asked why she said, “They’re making fun of you. You’ll be saying funny things to him and your voice will be speaking from your portrait.” I said, “So what? So much of that has happened already (on social media).” She said, “Yeah but doing it to your own father, I’m not feeling quite good about it.” I said, “That’s your call. But it’s your work. I’d say go ahead and do it.”

Then I said, “Suppose I do it? Instead of the portrait, if I was there? Then would you do it?” She immediately called those people: “Hey my dad says that you can take him.” And they went crazy. Really? Alokji will do it? Then they called me and thanked me. I went and shot it and I enjoyed it. It went viral, got some 35 lakh views. Then some other company called Gray made some jokes, some rap songs to promote some project. Then the 9X people, Comedy Central, Channel V… So I said, chalo karo (come lets do it). That hidden bug of comedy is coming alive so let’s give it a different shape. I’m enjoying it.

Talking Films with Yash Chopra

Posted on October 18, 2014 by admin

An interview of Yash Chopra by Rafique Baghdadi, done after he had made Mashaal in 1984.

Yash Chopra has been making films from the last thirty-five years. Most of his films have been successful— from Dhool Ka Phool, Waqt, Ittefaq, Deewar, Trishul, Kala Patthar, Noorie, to his Mashaal, which has been favourably received by both the public and the press.

Your film Dharamputra (1961) was close to the partition experience. How were you personally affected by the events during that period?

I studied in Lahore, but I had to come to Jalandhar after my primary school. Things happened on both sides. Hindus were killed there, Muslims were killed here. I saw massacres with my own eyes and lived through the frenzy, the foolishness and the madness of the time. It was not necessary to be in Lahore to experience the trauma. What I saw in those days I used in Dharmaputra, but I didn’t make Dharmaputra because of what I saw. When I read the novel, something of that experience must have spurred me to make the film. The scenes in the film looked realistic because I had witnessed those scenes myself. Today, if an Indian director has to portray war, it would be based on what he has read about it, or heard about it or as he has seen it in the foreign films. In India, in the recent past, we have not experienced war.

The thematic content of your films have usually been something new and original. Even your earliest films, like Dhool Ka Phool (1959), Dharmaputra (1961) and Waqt (1965), broke new grounds in terms of their themes which had not been tackled by filmmakers in India till then.

At that time we had a story department. They would come up with stories and if we liked the stories we would turn them into films. Now that set-up has gone. Different writers come to us with stories from which we select what we like. I feel that even after I branched out on my own, after Admi Aur Insaan and Ittefaq, I showed in Daag how a man under certain circumstances is landed with two wives. The treatment was emotional and romantic but what I wanted to say was that fate plays a decisive part in our lives and that we have to make compromises with it. In the film, the three people, who had each other, had to make a compromise and decide to live together. Life is a compromise. In Kabhi Kabhie, I wanted to say that the social binding of the tradition should be broken. When a couple gets married no one has the right to go back to the girl’s past, and drag it into her present. No one does that to a man. If a man has an affair before marriage it is not held against him. Why should we hold it against a woman? Deewar was a very well written script; and in Trishul, I showed the conflict between father and son and the son’s obsession with destroying his father. The film has a new angle of revenge. I think that was the first film with that theme. Others followed. Sometimes people do not see the newness in a commercial film with a big cast. Similarly, Silsila presented a different subject— extra-marital relations, which has been followed by Arth, Yeh Nazdeekiyan and others. So, from ’59 to ’84, in the twenty-five years that have passed, I have come out with new subjects as society changed.

Would you have achieved your success without your brother’s support?

I don’t think so. Whatever I am, I owe to my brother…

Your films are usually clean. You avoid rape and cabarets. How did you bring in these elements in Joshila?

I think that was the only film in which I showed those scenes and I’m not happy about it. The film was made at a time when I was at a crucial stage in my life. I was making the film for Gulshan Rai and something of Johnny Mera Naam must have influenced me. Also in those days I had separated from my brother and was emotionally upset and unbalanced. A stage like that comes in everyone’s life, I suppose. I had this feeling of insecurity. But in all my romantic films I don’t find the need for a villain or a vamp. Life itself plays a role, in a strange way. The theory that directors have is that for any victory there has to be a powerful negative force. I like to make a film which the whole family can enjoy watching together. Even the romantic films should be done with aesthetic taste.

Ittefaq was a well-controlled film. Why do you not make more films in this genre?

I feel a suspense or a comedy film is not a very lasting thing for a filmmaker. The moment the suspense is over, the next audience knows what it is all about. Very few suspense films are made in the world today. Films where basic emotions are involved last longer. Suspense films involve a lot of technical gimmicks. The heart is less there. The basic plot should be emotional, action should come later. We should not have action for action’s sake.

Love is predominant in your films as well as ‘Punjabiness’! Could you comment?

I love to make romantic films. I don’t like crime films. My projects are all based on emotion. In Mashaal I showed slum boys, and the underworld mafia, so action was in-built in to the film. If I take a film like Kabhi Kabhie, the atmosphere changes. You can blame me for the ‘Punjabiness’. I know more about Punjabi music and culture than I know of other languages and this I present because I know it best. I may not be able to handle what I don’t know.

How did you come to make Mashaal, which is neither a commercial film nor an art film?

I liked the basic theme which was expressed in a dialogue. It referred to the reversal of roles. The good had turned bad, and the bad had turned good and their goals changed consequently. The situation is compared to a football game where, after half-time, the goals change. Secondly, I was influenced by the likely emotional impact of Waheeda’s death in the film. I think the central idea is important, both for a commercial filmmaker, and an art-maker, to train the film’s appeal. I had made a soft film, Silsila. I wanted to make a hard, realistic film.

But it was risky?

I felt the film would run. Of course the inherent risk was there. Kabhi Kabhie was a risk. I had a new idea. But a soft film with a small idea, with a small budget, may not look risky. Silsila was risky. It was the first film on extra-marital relations. But it did not seem risky because film was filled with big stars. My mistake was in the casting which made the audience look for something which was not there in the film. If the girls were different in that film, people would have taken the film as any other film.

How do you view reality in Mashaal? Events are apparently shown to extract the maximum dramatic impact.

I don’t make very realistic films, or art films or experimental films. By reality, I mean that everything in the film should look normal. You should feel you know the characters, that you’ve seen or met the people. In Mashaal you should take the sequence into account which shows that his (Dilip Kumar’s) press has been burnt and his house taken away. These are cinematic liberties taken as we want to make him look isolated and alone. The rain delays them. Now I have witnessed the following scene many times. On a rainy night, if you try to get a lift, you are not likely to be successful. The reality is there, but we have taken cinematic liberties. Given the circumstances, I feel the subsequent events can happen. It rains, they go for help and are alone on the road. Please don’t stop to give them a lift. His wife dies. I don’t think the events sound unreal.

How closely do you work with your scriptwriter?

I cant work unless there is a close and complete rapport with anyone. Kabhi Kabhie and Silsila were my ideas which we developed. Deewar was a complete script given by Salim Javed (Saleem Khan and Javed Akhtar). Trishul and Kala Patthar we worked on together. Mashaal was suggested to me by Javed and we discussed and developed it.

Except for Dharmaputra, you have not based any film on a novel.

I feel we don’t have good writers or stories in Urdu or Hindi literature. Copying English novels would be foolish. There is really a dearth of good writers.

What about Vijay Tendulkar, Mohan Rakesh… and others?

When the script takes the shape of a film then one realizes the extent of the risk. Why take the risk when one is spending big money? These scripts are suitable for small-budget films. The scripts have new ideas, but because the film is made in a small budget, the risk is reduced.

What do you think about small-budget films?

There is only good cinema and bad cinema. Everything finally boils down to commerce. A small-budget filmmaker will feel that he can take only so much risk and so he reduces his budget, takes his cast accordingly, calculates his likely earnings and is satisfied. A big-budget filmmaker thinks if he takes small people he will not get the kind of success he is spending for. All filmmakers finally come down to commerce. Even the art filmmakers.

What about the new language of their cinema?

I beg to differ. I have seen the work of Govind Nihalani, Satyajit Ray and Shyam Benegal and they are good but there are some filmmakers whose so-called new language of cinema is an insult to cinema language. Cinema is an art and it is a combination of all the arts. I must have some aesthetic taste for photography, dialogues, clothes, poetry, music, scripts, song, acting, screenplay, locations. I have no right to abuse this art. They just want to be different. People bold enough can change the language of cinema.

Have you seen their films?

I have seen them all. Ardh Satya, Junoon, Ankur, Manthan say something brilliant. They are not abusing language. The subject has to be good. Not the technical shots— that is gimmickry. See the last shots of Ankur. I take my hat off to Benegal. 36 Chowringhee Lane was good. Even Baazar said something.

You have been in the film industry for twenty-five years. What kind of memories do you have?

Twenty-five years is a long time. I have tasted the mixture of good, bad, indifferent, bitter and sweet memories. I have only one love and that is film. I don’t have many diversions except for poetry, music and reading. As long as I am making a film I am on top of the world. I have worked with everybody and it’s a matter of good luck that most of them have been nice and kind to me. I’m not involved in any politics or controversies; in calculations and manipulations. The moment I get my script and my casting, the other world fades out. I have pleasant memories and only a few which are bitter, but they are of a personal nature.

Back to the Movies

Posted on September 18, 2014 by admin

Pragya Tiwari revisits three films she grew up on to find that she can no longer love them as she once did.

Cinema is a gift that keeps on giving. Over time it becomes more than itself— a part of collective and individual memory, personal histories, common language; a phantasmagoria of images that reflect what we know of life, love and loss. There are films we go back to and films that find their way back to us. These journeys also measure the distance we have traveled as people.

The Dreamers

I was an undergraduate in Cardiff when I first saw Bertolucci’s The Dreamers. Set against the 1968 student riots in Paris, the film evoked everything I had learnt to idealize as a child growing up in post-Naxalism Calcutta. It fueled my belief that everything is political, that middle-class morality is anathema to imagination and that poetry is petition. It reminded me that it is important to rebel, to put your life on the line even if it counts for nothing. It also convinced me more than ever that there were answers to be found in the French New Wave and that films should only be seen from the first row. Six years later when I saw the film again it had shifted from being the manifesto of my life to a nostalgic mood piece. I had a more nuanced understanding of the past and of politics by now. This time around I saw Bertolucci less as an uncompromised ideologue and more as an artist who couldn’t tell the follies of youth apart from glory days. It made me question every generation’s need to romanticize its revolutions and wonder if we will ever know the truths of history. It also made me miss the comfort of being able to see the world in solid monochromes.

Pyaasa

I was 13 when I first saw Pyaasa and was instantly in awe of Guru Dutt’s character, Vijay— a great poet first rejected then exploited by an opportunistic, bourgeois society. It was around the time when I had begun to wonder why I identified more with male protagonists in most Hindi films than I did with the women. It must be me, I thought. I am different. Of course I was not. The problem, as I now see, wasn’t with me but with the abysmally shallow portrayal of women in most Hindi films. Even in the eyes of a master director like Dutt, a woman could either be a prostitute-fan or a changeable, greedy heartbreaker— both created as mere circumstances in the hero’s narrative, with no stories of their own. Over time I also began to see through Dutt’s fetishization of suffering, self-pity and victimhood a little. The world is what it is and it will give you ample opportunities to change your narrative. Ye Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaaye To Kyaa Hai is beautifully written, composed and shot. But it also signals clinical depression, which you ought to take to a doctor. I certainly wish Dutt had.

Casablanca

When I first saw Casablanca at the age of 18 it broke my heart. I wanted Rick and Ilsa to end up together so bad I began to feel the design of its narrative was intentionally perverse. How could anyone walk away from Bogart? For the life of me I couldn’t understand why Ilsa would leave with her husband, Victor. She still loved Rick, she said, then why should anything else matter? In my understanding of things love was one of life’s great causes and true lovers could never separate of their own volition. But of course, I knew very little of relationships then. Now when I see the film I can fill Ilsa’s silences with things she did not say. That romantic love is a luxury, an indulgent pleasure, so inconsequential in the larger scheme of life. That conscience is a greater cause than love. That loyalty has nothing to do with attraction. That the relationships you desire and the relationships you can sustain are usually not the same. That Casablanca is a place we must all visit but hold on to the letters of transit that will bring us back to reality and our larger purpose eventually.

Inside the Colourful and Disturbing World of Guddu Rangila

Posted on September 5, 2014 by admin

A profile of Guddu Rangila, one of Bhojpuri cinema’s most popular stars, known particularly for the offensive and lewd songs he sings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

“I think I should wear a shirt.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I nod.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These pearls of wisdom:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What does that mean?” I ask him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Explain?” I ask him

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then:

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

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

The Song in Her Heart

Posted on July 18, 2014 by admin

Here is TBIP’s pick of five Urdu poems by the actress Meena Kumari, with an introductory note from their translator Noorul Hasan.

Meena Kumari needs no introduction. As a matinee idol and diva of the mid-twentieth century, and despite her untimely death in 1972, at the age of thirty-nine, she remains a legendary heroine of what is known as the golden age of Hindi cinema. It’s not for me to elaborate that point.

However, not many know that she had a way of her own with the pen as well. Soon after her death, Gulzar sahib arranged for Hind Pocket Books to publish a collection of her poems. I chanced upon this slim paperback volume at the Howrah Railway station the same year and have had the pleasure of dipping into that now more than moth-eaten prize paperback for over three decades.

What struck me most about the poems was their amazing immediacy, their power to take you in without any fuss and bother. Plain as conversation Meena Kumari’s poems strike an uncanny intimacy or rapport with the reader. Her imagination hovers over a wide range of subjects from the very personal and idiosyncratic to the more objective though equally heartrending, as expressed in poems like ‘The Dumb Child’ or the ‘Empty Shop’. Hers is an art without artfulness. The sheer audacity of her statements is the raison d’être of her poetry. Her unadorned, screaming verse reminds me of snatches of Donne, Firaq, Wordsworth, and Ghalib. This is not to say that she is anywhere near the dizzying heights scaled by that august fraternity. Her poetry is slight, casual, a kind of intermittent adventure or a holiday she allowed herself from her self-consuming stardom.

As a poet she resembles her screen persona, coming across as a wayward, sensuous, sacrificial lamb kind of woman. Her imagery is soaked in the immemorial customs and traditions of an ageless India. Her voice is very often the tremulous, quavering voice of an invincible Indian woman in the direst of straits. She writes the poetry of ‘some natural sorrow, loss or pain/that has been and may be again’, of ‘some old, unhappy, (not) so far off things’, if you know what I mean. The overwhelming impression one is left with after reading this poetry is, in Firaq’s unforgettable words, ‘Maine is aawaz ko mar mar ke pala hai…’. She is a poet because she has an inimitable personal voice.

I never planned to translate her into a language she would have thought so far removed from her field of light. I used to see the odd poem of hers translated into English in lifestyle magazines or poetry journals. Initially I translated some as an experiment and after several readings I began to feel that there was something of the cadence and clarity of the original in those random translations. So I decided to translate as many as I could. It was very kind of the poet Jayanta Mahapatrara to have published a number of these translations in his journal Chandrabhaga (12/2005) with the kind permission of Gulzar sahib. It’s a strange coincidence that translations of some of Gulzar’s own lyrics appeared in the same issue of Chandrabhaga as well.

In trying to put these translated poems together in a volume I hope to contribute to conveying another image of Meena Kumari which deserves as universal an acknowledgement as her immortal image as the queen of the Bollywood firmament of yesteryears. Her flirtations with the pen are as seductive as her universally celebrated femininity and resourcefulness as an iconic Indian woman actor in film after unforgettable film for nearly three decades during which she could slip with ease and spontaneity from the role of a skittish Miss Mary to that of the soulful and haunting Pakeezah.

A chameleon actor she is, equally spontaneously, a ‘chameleon’ poet.

—Noorul Hasan

Ma’zi aur Ha’l

Har masar’rat

Ek barba’d shuda gham hai

Har gham

Ek barba’d shuda masar’rat

Aur har tariki ek tabah shuda raushni hai

Aur har raushni ek tabah shuda tariki

Isi tarah

Har ‘ha’l’

Ek fana shuda-ma’zi hai

Aur har ‘ma’zi’,

Ek fana shuda ha’l

Past & Present

Each happiness

Is a devastated grief

Each grief

A devastated happiness.

And each darkness is a raped light

And each light a raped darkness.

Likewise

Each present

Is an annihilated past

And each past

An annihilated present.

Aaj ka Insan

‘Ideal insan’ kitabo’n ki

Zakheem jildo’n ke waqt khurda safhat ki

Mahdood dunia mein muqaimad hai

Woh

Bahar ki dunia mein qadam nahin rakh sakta

Bas,

Apne boseeda workon ke jharokhe se

Tumhen dekhta hai

Ishar’e karta hai

Aur

Tumhen aziat mein jhonk deta hai

Man Today

The “ideal man” is imprisoned

In the closed world

Of the time-torn pages

Inside the hard covers

Of books.

He does not step out

Into the world

Just

Peers at you

From the cracks

In his tattered pages

And says

“Go to Hell”.

Suhani Khamoshi

Kabhi aise pursukoon lamhat bhi ayenge

Jab

Mai’n bhi usi tarah so jaungi

Woh khamoshi

Kitni suhani hogi

Maut ke ba’d

Agarche mahaz khala hai

Sirf tariki hai magar

Woh tariki

Is karb – angez ujale se

Yaqeenan behtar hogi

Kyonki

Mai’n

Un zindagion mein si hun jinhen

Har subah nihayat qaleel si raushni milti hai

Um’meed ki itni – si kiran ki

Sirf din bhar zinda rah saken

Aur jis din

Yeh raushni bhi na mil saki to – ?

Enchanted Silence

There will be a day

Of such tranquility

I shall instantly go to sleep

That stillness

Will be so enchanting

Even though

There is just a void

After death

Nothing but darkness

But that darkness

Should still be better

Than this precarious light

For

Mine is one of those lives

Lit by a measly light

Each morning

Barely enough

To last the day

And the day

Even this light plays truant

Then…?

Ghazal

Tukr’e-tukr’e din beeta, dhaj’ji-dhaj’ji ra’t mili

Jiska jitna anchal tha, utni hi saugat mili

Rimjhim-rimjhim boondo’n mein, zahr bhi hai aur amrit bhi

A’nkhe’n han’s di dil roya, yeh ach’chi barsat mili

Jab chaha dil ko samjhe’n, han’sn’e ki a’waaz suni

Jais’e koi kahta ho, lo phir tum ko ma’t mili

Mate’n kaisi ghate’n kya, chalt’e rahna aath pahar

Dil-sa sathi jab paya, bechaini bhi sath mili

Honto’n tak aate-aate, jan’e kitn’e roop bhar’e

Jalti-bujhti a’nkho’n mein, sadi si jo ba’t mili.

Ghazal

The day passed in fragments, followed by a tattered night

As far as you can spread your cloth, that’s your share of light.

The pattering raindrops are honey too, are poison

What a monsoon! My eyes were smiling, my heart cried

Whenever I try to hear my heart, there comes a mocking laugh

As though someone were saying: look, you’ve been defied.

Despite defeats and betrayals, I press on undeterred

When your heart is your companion, agony is your right

It took so many different forms before it could be spoken

The utterly simply thing in your cold yet smouldering eyes.

Chalo…

Chalo kahin chale’n

Ghoomti hui sarak ke kinare

Kisi mor par

Raushni ke kisi khambhe ke neeche baith kar

Bate’n karen

Chalo, kahin chalen

Apne-apne mazi ke

Nuche ghute gharaudon se doo’r

Kisi sookhe nal’e ki pulia par baith kar

Bate’n karen

Chalo, kahin chalen

Darawne jangal ki andheri pagdandion par

Ratjaga manayen

Zindagi ke har marhale par bahas karen

Jhagren

Dher sari bate’n karen

Chalo kahin chalen

Chalo!

Let’s Go

Let’s go somewhere

To some edge of the revolving road

And sitting

Under the shade of some

Pillar of light

Let’s talk

Let’s just go somewhere

Far from the ravaged shanties

Of our past

Just sit on the culvert

Of some dry canal

And talk

Just let’s venture out

And sitting on the pathways

Of the forests of the night

Let’s spend the entire night

Discussing all the imponderables of life

Quarrel

Talk our hearts out

Just let’s go somewhere

Come on! Be a sport

Let’s go.

Excerpted from Meena Kumari the Poet: A Life Beyond Cinema, courtesy of Roli Books. You can buy the book here.

Also read Inhi Logon Ne, on Meena Kumari and all that was lost with her here.

The World Before Her

Posted on June 17, 2014 by admin

The World Before Her explores the very distinct, very disconcerting universes of the Miss India pageant on the one hand and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s women’s wing, Durga Vahini on the other. On the surface they tell the stories of two different Indias but when you look hard, at length, similarities begin to surface. Both these spaces are inhabited by women seeking to carve a space out for themselves in a near misogynist society. Both these spaces are run by people seeking to colonise the woman’s body and use it as a tool to further a patriarchal agenda in the guise of offering them tentative independence.

The documentary was released in select theatres across the country after winning laurels at the Tribeca (Best Documentary Feature), Traverse City (Best Foreign Film), Warsaw (Special Mention, Documentary Competition), Guantanamo (Special Mention) and San diego Asian (Special jury Award) Film Festivals and winning Best Canadian Feature at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival (North America’s largest). Viewers and critics have lauded the film and director Nisha Pahuja is all set to take it to an even wider audience now. At this critical point in the journey of the film we asked Pahuja two important questions. (each question jumps to the corresponding video segment above)

1) What is the real aim of a film like this? Can all the energy generated from the responses to the film be harnessed for a more sustained, fruitful dialogue on gender rights in India? .

2) What are some of the ethical and moral dilemmas Pahuja dealt with while making the film? .

Her answers are fascinating and thought-provoking.

The Actor Who Prepared

Posted on April 2, 2014 by admin

Anirudh Nair ran the distance between the Bollywood dream and the Bollywood reality. Here is his story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vishal Bhardwaj – TBIP Tête-à-Tête

Posted on March 6, 2014 by admin

Makdee was more than Vishal Bhardwaj’s debut feature— it was a promise, a sign of times to come. Times when the line between art and commerce would blur, when we would be treated with real stories, our stories, told in a manner that befits a country obsessed with stories; when literature would enrich our movies again; when cinema will be magic again. Twelve years on Bhardwaj has come a long way in keeping that promise. Getting him to reflect on his journey is an exciting prospect except he strongly dislikes being interviewed formally. Getting him to talk is a Vikram-Betal act— ask him a question he really wants to answer and hope he begrudgingly will. An exercise worth it only because the answers are so very fascinating.

An edited transcript:

What do you think of when you think of your childhood the most?

What do I think? I think of my sports days, you know. Because I am a sportsman. I have been a sportsman so I remember that I used to wake up at 4.30 in the morning, even in winters, and I never missed my morning workout and my evening nets. So my life was around sports only.

Okay. You know, your dad wrote lyrics for a couple of Hindi films. I believe your brother also wanted to work in cinema in some capacity. When you saw the Hindi film industry through their eyes, what did it look like? What were the impressions? And did that either deter you or spur you to go and explore it?

I mean, cinema from outside or from someone’s eyes always looks glamorous.

No, no, not cinema. I meant the industry. Log kaise hote honge (How would the people be)? You know, when you are a child you imagine something.

Not imagine, because I used to come over here. I used to accompany my father. Every summer holidays, we used to be here for a month in that heat. So, we all were cinema crazy people and my father was friends with Laxmikant-Pyarelal (popular composer duo Laxmikant Kudalkar and Pyarelal Sharma). And, at that time, we were all vegetarians. So, on Tuesday, we used to go to his house for dinner, and see lots of film trials. So, it was like a glamorous world. Jitne logon ke contact me aaye toh door se toh sabhi acche hote hain (From afar, everyone appears to be nice). Because this was not my father’s first profession. So, this was fine, we used to come here for a month or so and my brother— he wanted to be a film producer without money, so that was the most difficult thing to do. You don’t have money and you want to be a producer. So he also struggled here for a long time. I remember watching trial shows of many big films like Taxi Driver of Dev Anand and Hema Malini, then Aetbaar I saw with Smita Patil. So, those kinds of memories are there.

And I remember seeing a film called Damaad. In that, I remember Mithun Chakraborty sitting down because there was some old lady. So he gave his seat to that old lady and he sat on the floor and saw the whole film from the floor. So, it was an exciting world. I was like a child.

Vishal, I wanted to ask you. A lot of things happened early in your life. You lost your father; you lost your brother. I believe your father was also involved in some kind of a land dispute jahan aap log rehte the (where you used to live). You chose… you had to make a critical choice between cricket and cinema— well, cricket and music at that point. Do you see these as turning points in your life?

Turning point? Actually I think the turning point, you realize once you achieve the success and you look back. Then you see it as a turning point, and at that point it could be a very disappointing turning point. And then you realize some kind of a screenplay is there, some kind of a destiny is there. So, that’s why I am a big believer of this thing called destiny. That whatever happens, happens for the best. I seriously believe in this because when I came to Delhi University to study, it was not planned. I was to play for my state. And I was selected. I was actually the Vice-Captain of my team. Somehow, some objection came because of some eligibility issue because I was repeating my 12^th(standard). So, some stupid rule was there that those who were repeating their 12^thcouldn’t be a part of the state team. So I couldn’t play and I dropped the whole year. And then I was so pissed off that I (thought), ‘I don’t want to stay in this state. I want to play for some other state.’ And that’s why I came to Delhi. And when I came to Delhi, my life changed. Suddenly I was exposed to the metro life, the people definitely behaved differently in a small town and in a metro city. My life changed, my friends changed. And because of that my taste changed. I discovered myself. So that was the main turning point, and everyone in my family was against that event, that I should go to Delhi and study. Everyone— my mother, my brother, it was only my father who was supporting (me). And financially, we were not in a very good position to send me, but somehow things happened and I landed up in Delhi. I was not a good student either but I got admission. I think that was the first turning point in my life. Yeah, that was the turning point because that’s where I met Rekha (Bhardwaj); I met lots of friends who were into music, poetry. And in those days, in 1980s, India was going through a very unique phase when ghazal was being rediscovered by the youth. It was the days when (Mirza) Ghalib was the rock star, and Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Sahir Ludhianvi, so it was a very unique period and one of the best periods of the last 60-65 years after Indian independence. I think that the eighties was a very unique period where the ghazal came back. And with ghazal, a lot of Urdu culture and the traditional things that came back to the youth of which I was a part of.

And theatre also, you were involved in theatre also.

Theatre was always there, but today’s youth, unko toh pata bhi nahin hai ki ghazal kya hai, Faiz Ahmed Faiz kaun hai, Ghalib kaun hai. Shayad hum bhi aise hote, humko bhi nahin pata hota (They don’t even know what’s ghazal, who is Faiz Ahmed Faiz, who is Ghalib. Perhaps we would have been like that too. We might not have known either). Jagjit Singh was a huge thing, or Pankaj Udhas, they were like… So, I think wahan se, uss ghazal se, uss poetry se, uss culture se meri grooming shuru hui. Aur wo agar main Delhi na aaya hota to shayad nahin hota wo mere saath. Toh Delhi aana meri liye bahut bada turning point tha (So I think from there, that ghazal, that poetry, and that culture started grooming me. And had I not come to Delhi then that wouldn’t have happened. So, I consider coming to Delhi as a huge turning point).

No. I was just smiling because of the conversation we were having before, and now you are giving Delhi so much of credit after…

And leaving Delhi was a bigger turning point. That’s why I was waiting for you to say this so I could say that leaving Delhi was the bigger turning point. Because had I been in Delhi, I would have been so stagnant because there was no scope for musicians in Delhi. Even now, I don’t think there’s scope for musicians in Delhi. Even the good recordings are done in Bombay and there was some kind of unprofessionalism in the Delhi music circle. I remember in one studio where I used to record, after seven o’clock, the recorder used to make his drink and he’s recording and drinking, even if you are recording Gita ke bhajan (devotional songs from the Bhagwat Gita). So, he’s having his drink. And I have no problem with that. Somebody can have a drink—Gita ke bhajan ho ya (be it the Gita’s bhajans or anything else)—but I am against that approach of unprofessionalism. So, I mean leaving Delhi was, and it was very difficult for me to leave because Bombay is very brutal. I remember when I first landed here, my brother had a small flat at Yari Road— Zohra Azadi Nagar, it’s called. And we were in that one bed and hall— if you say one bed and hall, the hall is smaller than your bedroom. But they say ‘one bed-hall’. It was a two room apartment where me and my mother and my brother with his girlfriend, they lived inside. And they… they don’t give you work. In Bombay you have to close your eyes and jump from the 120^th floor, then only the city accepts you. Otherwise you have no place over here.

I believe the first thing you composed, I mean professionally, as in it was put out, was when you were 19. Was that true?

Yeah. Actually in a way this is my 29^th or 30^th year as a film composer. Because when I was 19, my father’s friend, his name was A.V. Mohan. He was a big producer, he produced many films including Damaad, of the time I’m telling you about. So he was planning a film at that time called Vahem. And my father was arranging some kind of finance for him, which he couldn’t later. Out of that favour, that producer agreed to take me as a composer. Not agreed to, I mean he showed as a gesture, he was a nice man. But my father couldn’t arrange the finance. But he was a nice man. He said, “So what if you’ve not arranged it? He’s going to be the composer of the film.” And in 1984 I recorded my first song when I was 19 with Asha Bhosle. And that studio, there was a very big, famous studio called Famous Tardeo. Now they have an Axis Bank over there. A few days back I was travelling to Tardeo and I saw now they have a big Axis Bank branch over there.

When did you start taking it seriously? Being a composer, when did you start taking it seriously?

My father was writing songs for a film called Yaar Kasam. Funny names of the films, when I look back. He had written one song which I composed, you know ghar mein aise rehte hue. Sabhi tune bana lete hain, toh maine bhi tune banayi (you know, when I was at my house. Everyone composes tunes. So I composed some too). So then I came to Bombay with my father because that film ka mahurat, vagera hona tha (that film’s mahurat was taking place). Usha Khanna was the composer of that film. So we were sitting at the director’s place, his name was Chand saab. He was, again, my father’s friend. So they were having drinks in the evening. My father said, “He’s also made a tune, that song I wrote.” So like a kid, they were having drinks and (said), “Okay, gaana sunaao, tune sunaao (Sing that song; sing that tune).” So I sang my tune and they all loved it and immediately he made a call to Usha Khanna ji to listen to this tune. And I sang that tune to Usha Khanna and she said, “It’s so good. So meet me tomorrow.” And she said, “I’m going to take this tune and now I’ll develop on this. Do you mind?” I think I was so encouraged with that, and so was my father. For the first time I got the confidence that yeah, if a person, an artist of Usha Khanna’s calibre and stature is liking my tune and taking my tune, then maybe I’m good. That’s the first time I took myself seriously.

Aap ki kya umar thi uss waqt (How old were you at that time) ?

Around 18.

Did you have any formal training in music? Did you train in music at all?

No.

Who or what did you learn the most from when it comes to composing? Who taught you the most about composing?

Actually mostly self-taught. But as I told you when I was in Delhi University, there were a lot of musician friends that I had. There was a flute player who was a very good friend of mine called Thakur, who’s now no more. Being with him I learnt about Mehdi Hassan. I was not exposed to Mehdi Hassan. Then there was a friend of mine whose name is Deva Sengupta. He sang a few songs for me in Anurag’s film Paanch and later in No Smoking he sang one song. He was like the star of the University and he used to do professional shows even at that time. He was a ghazal singer, classically trained and he knew western classical as well and very good in both western and Indian classical. And I didn’t know anything about western classical. Indian classical, I had an idea because my sister used to learn sitar and there was something… Bhatkhande ki kitaab se main khud hi sa re ga ma pa dha ni sa, raag-vaag kar leta tha. And paagalon ki tarah main laga rehta tha toh mujhe idea tha (from Bhatkhande’s book I used to sing sa re ga ma by myself, and like a lunatic I used to keep at it, so I had an idea). But I knew nothing about western (music). So he taught me writing a chord chart and exploring a chord or understanding a western chord in one night. Because he had devised a method where he mixed both Indian and western things. And it was so easy for me, in one night I understood it. And in that one night I knew the western method of chord deprecation. So then I kept on learning, jo bhi mila main use seekhta raha (whatever I got I learnt from it). And it’s still going on.

Yeh toh learning ki baat hui (This was about learning). I wanted to talk about influences. You know you spoke about coming to Delhi in the whole phase of ghazals. I’m sure that must have been an influence in the way you compose your music. How have the influences changed? What are the new influences that you have allowed in to the music you have composed, over the years up to now?

It’s not the question of allowing. If something is good, it comes in and overpowers you. You are overwhelmed by those things. I was a great fan of Jagjit Singh and a great fan of Mehdi Hassan. Then Rekha…

Matlab their compositions also you mean?

Their compositions also. I mean Mehdi Hassan’s style of singing and Mehdi Hassan’s style of composing, is so, so good, so unique and so beautiful. The way he expresses a word, a line, a whole ghazal, it’s out of this world. Jagjit Singh’s expression of words, his simplicity. Then R.D. Burman’s chord applications, his whole approach to tune. So I’m a mix of all these things— Mehdi Hassan, Jagjit Singh, R.D. Burman. Then I loved Madan Mohan. Unki jo emotionality jo thi gaane ki, jo jis tareeke se sur lagaane ke tareeke the, jo unke notes ka combination hota tha, jo unke raagon ka jo combination hota tha. (The emotionality of his songs, the way he applied sur, the combination of his notes and raag). Then Salil Chowdhury, S.D. Burman and yeah, I think I’m a mix of all this. And then I devised my own thing. Somehow I explored myself and I made my kind of music. But I remained open. I still remain open about this.

I was a big fan and I am a big fan of Gulzar saab and I grew up on his poetry. In fact, my father used to tease me. He used to take some of Gulzar saab’s nazm (poetry) or some song and then criticise it purposely in front of me ki “What is this? Aankhon ki kya khushboo hoti hai (what fragrance do eyes have)?” And I used to fight with him, fiercely fight with him. And then I later realized that he teases me and that’s why he does it. But after this death, the ghazal was just emerging, then I read one poet and his name was Dr. Bashir Badr. He’s a great poet. The greatest poet of this century. And I realized that he lives in Meerut where my family was at that point. So I read his poetry and I remained with him. Even now I’m in touch with him. He has been the greatest influence in my life as far as poetry, culture and sensitivity is concerned. Even now when I’m lowest or down in my life emotionally, I just open his book and I feel calm. And every time I open his book I find some new line in that. That’s where I developed my taste for poetry and I discovered Gulzar saab. And his films songs suddenly I started hearing it and listening to it in so many points of view. Mera dost tha, uska naam hai Ankur Gupta. Gupta ji. Toh usko pata nahi kahaan se itna accha taste tha songs ka. Toh woh mujhe rare songs sunaya karta tha Gulzar saab ke jaise— Auron ke ghar mein rehta hoon, kab apna koi ghar ho? Usme ek expression tha ki— Kiraye ke ghar mein aisa lagta hai ki jaise main apne aangan mein moze pehen ke baitha hoon. (I had a friend, whose name is Ankur Gupta, Gupta ji. I don’t know how he had such good taste in music. So he used to make me listen to rare songs of Gulzar saab such as, ‘I live in someone else’s house, when will I have a place of my own?’ There was an expression, in that song which went like, ‘Living in a rented house feels as if I am in the courtyard of a house wearing socks)’. I can’t feel the floor because I’m wearing socks. These kind of expressions-

‘Din khali khali bartan hai

Raat hai jaise andha kuan

Sooni andheri aankhon mein

Aansoon ke jagah aata hai dhuan

Jeene ki wajah toh koi nahi

Marne ka bahaana dhoondta hai’

(The day is an empty vessel

The night like a bottomless well

In vacant, dark eyes

There’s smoke instead of tears

There’s no reason to live

I look for excuses to die)

Iss poetry ne mujhe itna zyaada affect kiya hai ki meri zindagi ka sirf ek hi dream tha ki main Gulzar saab ke saath at least ek gaana kar loon. Doosra dream tha ki Lata Mangeshkar mera ek gaana ga dein. With this dream I was living in Delhi. Aur Dilli mein ek recording studio tha. Uss waqt Gulzar saab Amjad Ali Khan saab ke upar ek documentary bana rahe the. Toh main uss studio mein apne chhote mote jingles record kiya karta tha. Woh [studio ka] owner Punjabi tha. Toh woh kisi din phone pe bola, “Haan Gulzar aa raha hai raat ko yahaan par”. Toh unhone jab phone rakha toh maine poocha, “Kaun aa raha hai raat ko?” “Arrey, woh hai na Gulzar, woh film director, woh yahan par aa raha hai raat ko Amjad Ali Khan ki recording karne.” Kisi ke liye bhi izzat nahin thi uske dil mein. Toh bajeere shaam ko aur sardiyon ki Dilli, December ki raat. Kadaak ki sardi pada karti thi December ko. Ab toh nahi padti utni. To main wahan baith gaya ki main aaj Gulzar saab ke darshan toh karke jaaonga. Toh nau, sadhe nau baje aana tha. Toh sardiyon mein log chale jaate hain idhar udhar. Mere session main baitha hua tha. Toh phone baja. Maine phone uthaya toh Gulzar saab the, bhaari awaz mein bole, “Hello, main Gulzar bol raha hoon. Mujhe rasta nahi mil raha hai.” Bada odd si jagah tha studio, Safdarjung Enclave. Toh Bengali sweets ki dukaan hai, Safdarjung Enclave mein. Toh unhone bola, “Main Bengali sweets se phone kar raha hoon.” Uss waqt toh mobile bhi nahi hote the. Maine bola aap wahin khade rahiye, main aapko lene ke liye aata hun. Aur maine kisi ko bataya nahin aur main unko lene ke liye chala gaya. Wahan se paanch minute ka walk tha. Uss walk me maine unhe bataya ki, you know, “I am a composer. I am a big fan.” Aur bahut log unhe aisa bolte honge but he was very nice and polite ki, “Bombay aao toh milna.” Phir yahan aa kar milne ki koshish ki toh badi mushkilon se… phir main toh yahan aa kar pehle do saal main job hi kar raha tha as an Area Manager. Finally I met him through Suresh Wadkar, jo mere dost hain, jo singer hain, unke kehne se Gulzar saahab ek T.V. serial ka gaana likhne ke taiyar hue jiska naam tha Daane Anaar Ke. Chitrarth (Singh) uske director the aur do log hain Delhi mein – Vinod Sharma and Mohan Paliwal – uss waqt Doordarshan se serial pass hua karte the na, bahut badi baat hua karti thi, ki humaara 13 ka serial pass ho gaya, humaara 26 ka pass ho gaya, humara 52 ka pass ho gaya. Toh unka 13 ka ek serial pass ho gaya tha aur unlogon ko mujhse gaana karane ke liye bola and maine somehow chakkar chalaya ki agar Suresh Wadkar Gulzar saab ko bol denge toh woh likh denge.

(This poetry affected me so much that I only had one dream in life that I record one song with Gulzar saab. Another dream was that Lata Mangeshkar would sing one song for me. With this dream I was living in Delhi. And there was one recording studio in Delhi. At that time Gulzar saab was making a documentary on Amjad Ali Khan. So I used to record some of my jingles in the same studio. The owner [of the studio] was Punjabi. So, one day he said on the phone, “Yes, Gulzar is coming in the night.” So when he put down the phone I asked, “Who’s coming in the night?” “You know that Gulzar, that film director, who’s recording Amjad Ali Khan.” He never respected anyone. It was the night of December. And Delhi used to be really cold in December. Now, not so much. So, I was sitting there thinking, ‘No matter what, I will see Gulzar saab and then leave’. So he was supposed to come at around 9 to 9.30 p.m. So people, in the winters, go here and there. I was sitting during a session and my phone rang. I picked up the phone and it was Gulzar saab on the other end. He said in his deep voice, “Hello, this is Gulzar. I can’t find the way.” The studio was at an odd place— Safdarjung Enclave. So there’s a Bengali sweet shop in Safdarjung Enclave. So he said, “I am at the Bengali sweet shop.” At that time there were no mobile phones. I told him, “Stand there. I will come to pick you up.” I didn’t tell anyone and I went to pick him up. From there, the studio was a five-minute walk. During that walk I told him, you know, “I am a composer. I am a big fan.” There might have been a lot of people [who would have told him this], but he was very nice and polite and he said, “If you come to Bombay, do meet me.” Then when I came to Bombay I was working as an Area manager in a company for the first two years. I finally met him through Suresh Wadkar, who’s a friend of mine, a singer, and Gulzar saab agreed to write a song of a TV serial, which was called Daane Anaar Ke. Chitrarth (Singh) was the director and there were two more people in Delhi— Vinod Sharma and Mohan Pahliwal. At that time, serials used to be approved by Doordarshan. It used to be a big deal – “that my [serial of] 13 episodes got approved by Doordarshan, my 26 episodes got approved by Doordarshan, 52 episodes.” So, similarly, his 13 episodes were approved by Doordarshan and they told me to compose a song and I somehow, through Suresh Wadkar, made Gulzar saab write a song for me).

That’s how I met him. We did that first song. Then he developed some liking for me and he got me my first successful song. That was for serial called Jungle Book, Chaddi pehan kar phool khila hai. So, that song became a hit and the company I was working in, which was a recording company called Pan Music, R.V. Pandit was the owner of that company and he saw my photograph with Gulzar saab in some recording studio and he called me, “What are you doing with Gulzar?” So, I had said I am becoming a music composer now, I have recorded a song with him. So he said, “Can you arrange a meeting with me and Gulzar?” I said, “Of course. But, for what?” He said, “I want to make a film on 1984 riots, whatever happened in Punjab.” So, I asked Gulzar saab, “Can I arrange a meeting?” And that’s how Maachis happened. And I got my first break. Such a long story.

Vishal, other than the films that you’ve done for yourself, films that you’ve directed, what would you say were your most exciting films as a music composer? Most exciting projects.

I think, Maachis, still remains my most exciting work because I had so much energy within me. I wanted the success so badly that I just blasted in that. So I think that work was very good. To an extent Satya was good. But I think the same kind of energy I felt again in Omkara.

You know, I also found your work in Paanch very exciting and I just thought it was, for lack of a better word, different from… like I remember hearing the cassette and then having to check who had done the music. Because my natural conclusion wouldn’t have been that it was you. I mean other than Akhiyan Chipki. Did you feel like that was departure for you in any way? Or little freer as a project in some way?

More than freer, I was very excited about it because it was not my kind of work. And it was Anurag’s first film and he showed me The Doors. And he said, “I want this kind of music.” And I was so excited to make a rock song and it was so ahead of its times that Main Khuda, that song, I feel so pained for that. Good you reminded me. That music, that film never came out. But it remained a cult film. But it’s available only to those people who… But I think, yeah…

Okay, I also wanted to ask you, before you made Makdee, you were doing a lot of films as a composer. Did you feel somewhere ki you were getting stagnated as a music composer? Or did you feel that you just weren’t getting the opportunities to grow as a music director? Which one of the two did you feel— if any of them?

I think the second one. Because I was not getting the kind of films I think I deserved. I was feeling stagnant also. And one thing apart from these two factors, which I felt, was I’ll be very less important in the industry if I don’t do something really out of the box. So that was the reason. Because I knew that I’ll be out of work in some time. And I’ll have to go back to television or advertising. And I wouldn’t be in the mainstream of this industry, of this media and I always wanted that. I always wanted to be in the limelight. I always wanted to be in the front. I always wanted to lead. Wanted to, not now.

Not now?

Yeah, not now. So that lutf (enjoyment) was at its peak, right? And that fire was… I’m a sportsman, I knew that if I don’t do something extraordinary, I’ll be out. I’ll be out of the team. I’ll be resting in the pavilion for the rest of my life. That’s how it started.

Tell me about the struggles about making Makdee. Particularly with the Children’s Film Society of India (CFSI). And do you feel now that you look back it was a blessing in disguise, that things didn’t work out very well with CFSI?

This is what I said at the beginning of the interview. When you look back you see the turning point as, “Oh that was the turning point.” When you’re going through that, you think that you’re in a mess. And this is the worst situation you can be in your life. Yeah because they rejected the film I showed. I think they didn’t even see it properly because the way they used to see the film is like on a 24 inch T.V. with windows open behind. And if you’re trying to work in shadows and darkness, less light… They didn’t get it; it was a rough cut. They didn’t get the film. “Poor chap”, they said, “This is not a film, this is not what we expected.”

So there’s a friend of mine called Krishna and he really turned out to be Krishna for me. That he gave me 24,50,000 (rupees) that time. I paid that money, bought that film back, for a year I kept working and somehow had it released and then everyone appreciated it.

Vishal, do you feel that the attitude that the CFSI had at that point that’s also part of the reason why we don’t, despite being one of the largest film industries in the world, don’t make enough children’s films? Is that part of the reason why, you think?

It’s the attitude with which they approach cinema. I don’t think… I think it must be happening with every government organization. Because the kind of material that they produce, it’s so boring, so bad. And the government doesn’t have that kind of drive in it. Government and politicians, they don’t have time to do something good for public interest. Bichare apni kursi mein, apne problems mein itne phase huey hain, apne scams mein itne phase huey hain ki (Poor things, they are so entangled in their own problems, scams that) they really don’t have time to do anything for the public. Parliament sits for one quarter of the time it’s supposed to sit. Toh kya kaam hua iss desh mein? (So what work really happened in the country?) It’s useless, in our lifetime we’re never going to see good governance for this country. So to talk about poor Children’s Film Society, it’s a very small thing.

Okay, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about screenwriting. Again, like you’ve not been to film school as such. What were some of the ways in which you taught yourself screenwriting?

Screenwriting is a… you can never learn. I mean you have to keep learning. I mean, it’s the most dicey form of cinema. You can never learn it. Every time you think that you’ve learnt it and you’ve failed next time. So I read lots of books like a book called The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri. And just three days before I read a book. I still keep reading. I read a book called Backwards and Forwards by David Ball. And suddenly I realized that what I was missing in my life. I mean, if I had got this book 10 years back, I would have made my films better. So it’s a very difficult thing to learn and understand and express, screenwriting. Because it’s like the story telling and then you don’t know where you fail. Character establish karne mein time nikal jaata hai, kabhi conflict aane mein der ho jaati hai, kabhi climax kharab ho jaata hai, kabhi plot point one kharab ho jaata hai, kabhi two kharab ho jaata hai. Kuch samajh mein aata nahin, jo kabhi achcha ho jaata hai, woh kashmas achcha ho jaata hai. Isiliye maine aaj tak hamesha collaborate hi kiya, writing mein (You need a lot of time in establishing a character, at times conflict arrives too late [in the plot], at times the climax is botched up and at times the plot point. Sometimes the plot point one hasn’t turned out well, sometimes the plot point two. It’s difficult to understand, and if at all things turn out to be well, it’s by accident more than anything else. That is why I have always collaborated in writing).

Because I’m so scared of writing alone. I think only my first film, which I wrote, Makdee, because usmein itna kam paisa tha, co-writer professionally aata nahin. Aur jo dost toh sab log busy the. Mera paas kuch chaara nahin tha. Toh main socha bachon ki film hai toh koi dekhega nahin. Main khud hi likh leta hoon (It involved such little money that I could not have afforded a professional writer. And all my friends were busy. Also, I thought since it’s a children’s film, no one will watch it anyway, so I might as well write it myself). Uske baad (After that) the more you work, the more you realize how illiterate you are in screenwriting. So that’s why I depend on Shakespeare, because I take his structure and I adapt it my way.

No but tell me something, is it something you enjoy? Do you enjoy the process of writing your films?

I mean there is no other choice because I enjoy making films. So if I have to make a film, I have to write it.

Why is that?

Because…

You’ve been a co-writer in all your films. But why do you have to be involved in the writing?

Otherwise I can’t direct. If the film is not internalized, the only way to internalize a film, the only process I know, is to write it. Otherwise I won’t know, if somebody else has written a character. I’m still not that mature a director where I can take somebody else’s work and internalize it. For me the process is that I have to internalize it and that process starts with when I sit and write it with my own hand and with my… or bounce it with my co-writer. But that’s the only way I know. I feel confident.

You’ve always… I mean after Makdee, like you’ve said, you’ve always worked with co-writers. How does that process work for you? Does it change with every writer?

With every writer, you know, you have a different style but one writer friend of mine, his name is Matthew Robbins. He’s from L.A. And I met him in one writing workshop in Kampala, where Mira Nair had arranged a workshop. We all were mentors. He was head of all of us. He has written a film for Spielberg also, called The Sugarland Express, very early films of Spielberg. He has written films for the guy who’s made Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo Del Toro. So we became friends in Kampala. And he came to India. And I wrote a film with him. With him actually I learnt a lot, the methodical way of approaching a screenplay. Still you fail in that also, but at least you know how to approach this beast. That you have to start by catching it from the horns or by its tail. Earlier you just go and just uska sar bhidaa ke aap lad gaye. Ya toh aap gir gaye lahu luhaan ho kar ya script gir gayi. Pehla toh ye hi nahin pata tha. Ab yeh toh pata hai at least light bujhake aur torch uski aankhon me dal kar poonch se pakad kar deewar par marna hai. Toh ho sakta hai ki aap jeet sakein, toh uss tarah ke kuch gur aur, ya how to approach. (Lock horns [with the beast] and either you fall down completely bloodied or the script turns out to be no good. Earlier I didn’t know all this. Now at least I know that I can switch off the light and flash the torch in its eyes, hold it by its tail and then bang it on the wall. If I do that, maybe there’s a possibility that I can win). Then I realized it’s like when you want to become a doctor, you go to a medical school. You want to become an engineer, you go to engineering school. But in cinema if you want to become a writer-director, you don’t have to do anything, just come. Hum toh bachchpan se, dil se writer hain, bahut bade writer hain, hum toh bahut bade director hain. Toh yeh jo cinema ko leke, jo logon ka approach hai, jo mera bhi raha. Main bhi toh aake seedha ghus gaya ki main director ban jaaoonga, main writer ban jaoonga (Most people think that they are born writers, directors. So a lot of people approach cinema like that, and even I used to think the same that if I just come to Bombay I will become a writer and director). Fortunately for me things… because I was intelligent enough to understand that I’m a fool. Some fools don’t understand that they’re fools, they are actual fools. So I’m very intelligent that I understood that I’m a fool. So I always had intelligent people around me, working with me, guiding me. So that’s how, you know, still, I am learning.

I have a bunch of questions on adaptations but I’ll start with this. There are so many forms of… Shakespeare ko har tarike se, har jagah, har kone mein adapt kiya gaya hai (Shakespeare has been adapted in every manner, everywhere). Two questions here. One of course ki, was there a sense of, did that make you a little wary or did that liberate you? Ki yaar sab ka ek alag Shakespeare ho sakta hai, mera kyon nahi ho sakta? Ek yeh sawaal hai. Dusra yeh ki what did you feel you had to add to that? Because it can also become a yeh sab toh kaha ja chuka hai? So what was it that made you want to adapt Shakespeare?

Actually to tell you honestly the truth, I thought nobody’s going to notice that I’ve adapted Shakespeare. And that was what I was made to feel by the industry people when I wrote Maqbool. So one of my financier friends, he told me, “If you want to make this film, please take out Shakespeare’s name. Because nobody will come to watch because literature is boring.” And I was somewhere, you know… and even I didn’t care for Shakespeare to be honest. I didn’t know who Shakespeare is, what his writings are. Because Shakespeare to me was a scary writer who haunted me in my school with The Merchant of Venice. And to me also, like anybody else, I thought that literature is boring, there’s going to be no drama in this. And in school you don’t even look at the drama, you look at the question-answer, what is this character doing, for what. So you miss the drama in school. When I saw Angoor and in that, in the last shot Shakespeare winks. And I realised, this is a story by Shakespeare, this is very dramatic. That was in my subconscious. I wanted to make a film on the underworld and I was looking for a story. I happened to read in a child’s book, in a very abridged version form of Macbeth. And I thought it’s a very good for an underworld film, so let me adapt it to… And I think somewhere it was Angoor I had in mind. So that’s how I started. And I didn’t realize that what kind of liberty I’m taking with such a great writer till my film was screened in Toronto (International) Film Festival on that premiere night when I was attending to the Q&A with the audience and the world press. And there were big filmmakers like, I knew Deepa Mehta. Like Deepa Mehta stood up and said, “Today I’m proud of India that a filmmaker has made such a beautiful film from my country. I’m so proud to be an Indian.” That really struck me. And then the kind of questions the press asked me. Fortunately they had loved the film and I realized— what if they had not liked the film? Toh mera kya hota? (Then what would have happened to me?) And I realized ki I mean Shakespeare ko leke, main aisa kar raha tha, jaise mere baap ki story hai. Maine kuch bhi change kiya uss mein (I was adapting Shakespeare’s story as if it’s my father’s story. I changed whatever I wanted to). I’ve made Lady Macbeth into the king’s mistress. But I think somewhere, I was very me. When I say I, I include Abbas Tyrewala. He was my co-writer. That we were very true to the soul of the film rather than the text. Soul of the play rather than the text of the play. And that encouraged me to do Omkara— Othello.

Do you sometimes miss that, for lack of a better word, a sort of carefree unknowingness? Do you sometimes miss that now? Because you can’t have that now, where you already know every film that you do will be scrutinized?

Yeah it is a problem because people come with their own screenplay in their head. They expect something. Then you’re told that your audience needs this, wants this, they expect this out of you, they take you so seriously. When I announced, when it was announced at one point I was considering doing Chetan Bhagat’s 2 States. I mean the kind of mails I got from that Facebook page I had for two months. And on my friend’s Facebook page that, “What has happened to him? He has come down from Shakespeare to Chetan Bhagat.” I mean this is stupidity. Chetan Bhagat has… he can write well, that novel is good. And I wanted to explore that frothy side of mine but it was such a strong reaction to my selection of that material. So I think obviously it’s a curse and this is very natural also. When people love you, they love your work, equal amount of people hate your work. So it comes in a package.

What is your approach to adaptation, one? And if you could quickly explain how the two (Ruskin) Bond processes have been different from the Shakespeare? Because you know, Bond is a living writer, he’s working right now, you know, again our milieu. So one or two quick differences that you can tell between the two adaptations.

Shakespeare, I mean his work is timeless. Therefore it is so relevant even now, every filmmaking country makes one or two films in a year about Shakespeare. So his dramatic sense is definitely very unique and timeless. So it’s very easy to adapt Shakespeare. With me fortunately, especially in Maqbool and of course with Omkara also, I never felt the burden of Shakespeare. I treated him as my co-writer, my invisible co-writer who has given me material and I say, “Thank you very much, but I want to change Lady Macbeth to the mistress of the king.” Because he is invisible, even if he is getting disappointed with it, he can’t tell. So I never looked at him, at Shakespeare like that. I looked at him like a friend who was…

The guy who winks at the end of the movie…

Yeah. And who has done a very good, decent job in his story. I treat him like that. But I’m the director finally. That’s why that burden was not there and now I feel little burdened. But the day I’ll make another Shakespeare, I’ll again be treating him like that, “Come back, we haven’t met for so long, let’s have a drink together and talk about the story. Do you have anything new to offer?” So that way, you know, I was fine. And that’s why if you talk to Gulzar saab, his point of view is that my films are not adaptations of Shakespeare. He says, “Just for cheap publicity, you say Shakespeare and because you want to have (the) publicity of Shakespeare, you want Shakespeare’s name attached to your work. Therefore you’re saying. But otherwise they’re not adaptations of Shakespeare, they’re original films.” So I don’t know whether it’s a compliment or it’s not a compliment. I don’t ask him because I don’t want to know. I take it ki okay it must be a compliment. But he says that.

As far as Ruskin Bond is concerned, Ruskin is actually like a friend. And I told you, I have a house in Mussoorie, where we share the same wall. And most of the time, you know, he’s… Sometimes on a wintry evening, he’s standing on his window and I go on my terrace for a smoke. So he says, “What are you doing?” I said, “I have a good malt.” He says, “Why don’t you offer it to me? I’m coming to your house.” So we actually sit and have a drink and we discuss. And even sometimes, when I’m not doing his stories, I bounce off my work with him. He’s like an encyclopedia of storytelling. Sometimes he takes out a book which is like 72 years old, printed in 1942 or 1946 and he just presents it to me ki, “ I think, I have marked this story called Cocaine, you go and read, you’ll get a good inspiration for your work. The kind of film you are doing, the kind of script you are writing.” The Blue Umbrella had a problem because it was a very short story and there was not enough material to turn it into a film. So some day a friend of mine, Minty Tejpal, who co-wrote that film with me, he came out with this idea ki…

What if it was actually stolen.

Stolen and the person comes with a red chhatri (umbrella). And then we made it like jo hamare folktale hain, ki wo seeyar pani smarang mein gir gaya aur aa gaya toh (in our folktales, where there’s a jackal that falls in the pond and then came back), we took that route. And in 7 Khoon Maaf he wrote it specially for me, before that was a short story called Susanna’s Seven Husbands. Then I asked him, I want to make it into a film can you write a novella for me? Toh it was specially written for me.

Okay Maqbool, you set it in the underworld, the Mumbai underworld. But it was not like the underworld films that were being made. It was still your underworld film. It was not… for us underworld films are… it was not Satya, it was not… How much research did you do and how much of it was… Was it a real Mumbai? How did you balance the real and the sort of ‘inspired’ Mumbai underworld?

It was not at all real underworld. In fact I was amazed that nobody noticed that. Because it was the underworld of the 1960s. That Abba ji kind of figure, was like a reference to Karim Lala or Haji Mastan. I had met Haji Mastan once, long back when I came to Mumbai around 1988-89. I happened to meet him. I went to his house, so I had that image. Then I met few police officers who did encounters, like that. But I think, what I did and what I generally do is I take a fantasy and treat it very really, in reality. That is what I keep doing. I take a fantasy and treat it in reality. That is what Maqbool’s underworld is. That is why Omkara is politicized the way it is. That’s what actually happens. It’s not that it’s totally fantasy. Like Omkara, there’s one scene where police is being frisked by the gangsters. And actually it happens, in one of the villages, if the police had to go in, the gangsters actually search, frisk police.

No, but in Omkara there was a lot more… Also, that was very real.

Yeah because that’s where I come from so I know it. But the Mumbai underworld you don’t know, it’s a fantasy for you.

Actually Mumbai underworld is a fantasy space in any case. You know the gangsters mimic their own screen versions and their screen versions. You don’t even know what is…

Yeah, you don’t even know who’s whose mirror.

Who came first, it’s a chicken and egg thing. Okay, now tell me a little bit about the choices of making Lady Macbeth, not Lady Macbeth but the mistress of the king. And the other one, of making the witches more active than passive. Just handing them more power.

Lady Macbeth, the reason was, because I thought, in a married relationship with a man and woman, which Macbeth had, I thought it’ll be so boring. Because it’s only being done for money. It’s only being done for power or for the lust for power. Because Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, they must have been married for a long time. And Lady Macbeth wants that power, that throne. So I thought that it’ll be so dry. So what if Lady Macbeth becomes a throne herself for Macbeth? He has to kill his father to get that throne and there will be a lust. A real lust, a romance hidden with lust. So I thought that will be so good to explore. That was the reason, to have romance, otherwise there’s no romance in a married relationship of 12-15 years and where they’re planning to kill their father. So it’s a different zone, a different tone, a different genre. So I didn’t want to treat it that way. I wanted to have a little passionate romance, throbbing romance between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. And the only way was to avert the obstacle of the king. The king is the obstacle. Which is… I thought that, because I was looking at the contemporary parallels of all the things in Macbeth. The first thing was witches. So I thought the cops in the contemporary world will make the best witches.

Yeah but what about making them more active? They’re not just predicting, they’re also in a way making it…

They’re making it happen, yeah. Again I told you, that I treated it as my story. That after a point I forgot about Mr. Shakespeare, that I thought the basic material is his, I’m… like Gulzar saab says, ki main uske zameen pe apni building khadi karke bol raha hoon ki yeh Shakespeare ki building hai. Toh Shakespeare ki toh sirf zameen hai, building meri hai, toh (that on Shakespeare’s land I am constructing my own building and I am saying that it’s Shakespeare’s building. But only the land is of Shakespeare, the building is mine) this is what he says. But I don’t like that. I want this building to be called Shakespeare Apartment. So I can sell it well.

Okay Omkara. How quickly did that choice of the adha-brahmin come to you, how quickly did that…

Because again I was finding it parallel to the Moor.

But there are lots of other parallels. I mean yahaan pe aur bhi parallels ho sakte the, jo aap explore kar sakte the (there could have been more parallels, which you could have explored). Of that psychology, of that…

Kyonki iss mein ek… Nahin! Nahin hota (Because there could have been one more… No! It wouldn’t have been possible). You tell me what is the parallel of a Moor? What will be a parallel of a Moor? I mean… there I think with a Moor, which I very smartly avoided is that he’s a… it’s to do with a skin colour. And the person who is complexed with his colour, with his looks and he’s more complexed with the beauty of his wife. So that’s where I realized okay, he is jealous of his wife. He’s jealous, not jealous of his wife, he’s a jealous man because he is complexed with his wife’s beauty. Because he doesn’t see himself as beautiful as he should. Which I think the beauty has got nothing to do with your looks. I think it is your inner looks which make you beautiful or not beautiful. So for that, I think that adha-brahmin where uski maa…father Brahmin tha, he’s…

You grew up in U.P (Uttar Pradesh). You are a Brahmin yourself. How much did your own… what you actually witnessed, how much did your own experiences and things that interested you about the politics of U.P., go into this film?

The characters actually, more than politics. Politics sabhi jagah ek si hai, but wahan pe (the politics is the same almost everywhere but there) politics has a muscle wing. So every political party has or had a muscle wing. One big gangster is affiliated with one party. That is what the politics was. Aur uske bahubali hote the. Ki ek bahubali yeh hai, uska bahubali kaun hai (They used to have chiefs. That he’s one chief, who’s the chief of that group)? Matlab they had their muscle wing. But what I used with my experience of living in western U.P. were the characters. Like Langda Tyagi ka character. That character was a senior to me in my school because I studied in a government college. And there we had students from all classes of society. So I’m very fortunate. At that time, I was very… later I was very angry, that I should have gone to some English medium and you know, where high class, people from the high class of society were there. But now I thank God, thank God I was there, because I could see so many people. Which I would have never experienced in my life. So Langda Tyagi was there, he used to carry a knife in his pocket and he was a gangster and later he became a very big gangster. And when I went to research, I came to know that he is a professor in a college now. So this was his growth. Then Ajay’s character, there was again a gangster called Rampal. When we were kids we used to go through Tyagi Hostel which was there in the film also. So all those characters I had seen in my childhood.

I want to talk a little bit about the… see Shakespeare’s universe has a very distinct moral universe also, very in tune with the Victorian times, right? How different is the moral universe of your films from Shakespeare’s? And what other things influence the moral universe of your films? Because morality and how you interpret that changes over time. The drama doesn’t but the morality does.

I don’t think morality changes. I don’t think morality changes because… and morality has a very strange point. I have a very strange point of view for this morality. When we are watching cinema we all become very moral. We must be doing the same wrong thing in our real life, but when we watch a film, we actually become very moral, that good should win. He is a bad guy, why did he do this? And it’s very natural that, it’s very strange that we become so moral. When we are watching film in a theatre or with bahut logon ke saath baith ke dekh rahe (a lot of people). We become very moral. So I think morality never changes. And the morality you are talking about, it has got to do with the filmmaker. Uski jo morality hogi, wohi screen dikhayegi (Whatever his morality is, you will be able to see it on the screen). What he thinks about women, what point of view he has on relationships, what way he treats kids, whatever he is in his real life, is shown on the screen.

Whatever he is or whatever he is interested in exploring?

He explores only those things which he is interested in. You keep going back. It’s like a domino thing, you keep going back and you’ll find the filmmaker only. He’ll only… because nobody will give his life for…

Something that he doesn’t…

Something that doesn’t interest him.

There were lots of ways in which Susanna’s Seven Husbands could have been interpreted. What was your first attraction to the… what was it that “Mujhe yeh explore karna hai (I want to explore this).” Kya tha usme, story mein (What was in it about the story)?

Usme I think the character Susanna, and the characters of the husbands.

And the idea of love? The very strange idea of love?

Uh…Yeah. I think what attracted me [was] the black humor part of that, that she kills her husbands. I liked the streak of that character, which actually attracted me. And it was so unusual, and it was based on a real character, Ruskin told me about that. So, I found it very fascinating that a lady who can kill, get married seven times, and kill her husbands.

Why did you think that the film didn’t do as well as should have really?

I think what I was hoping that, I was actually following Hitchcock’s line that thrill is better than the suspense, that we know that she is going to kill a person but how she’s going to kill a person, that process is interesting. And I think that didn’t work with people, that they knew that he’s going to be killed so they weren’t interested in the process, they wanted him to be killed as soon as possible. So, I think that episodic feel, which came, that didn’t work with people. For me, I think I still love that film. I think it was a very literary work of mine, where I put in the history of India through her husbands, and you see the Pokhran (nuclear explosion), you see 1984, and I think a doctor who makes killer mushrooms, so I think it was a very literary work of mine. The only thing which I am ashamed of in that is the makeup of Priyanka’s (Chopra) older look, which I hated and I was cheated by a foreign company who promised, we did tests in L.A. six months back, but the people who did the test didn’t come. It was a different team, which came, and there was so much at stake and we were in flow. Then I was promised by the special effects guy that we’ll do it in the post—that’s the easy way to get out, so don’t worry—but finally it couldn’t be achieved. But I think that wasn’t the reason that the film didn’t do well because it must be something else.

Was it also, did you feel that because you didn’t explain Priyanka’s character that people didn’t understand this character somewhere. They wanted a more directly moral tale for a woman. They didn’t get what was driving her? It wasn’t a black and white moral tale. Yeah, I mean she does turn to God in the end and all that but…

Yeah, I think because, two things for that. One is, there were explanations about her character but people don’t pay that kind of attention. It was very subtle…

It was. Ped ke neeche baith ke (sitting under the tree), when she’s saying why not just divorce them, why kill them, and she explains that. It’s an almost poetical explanation; it’s not a spoon-feeding explanation.

Yeah, and there was an explanation for that, where one of the servants, the three stooges, one of the… Jab wo bachpan mein school jaati thi to ek kutta bahut bhaunkta tha, jis galli se jaati thi. Toh usne apna raasta nahin badla, toh usne apne father ki gun le kar kutte ko uda diya. Toh Sahib raasta nahin badla karti hain, Sahib kutte ka bheja uda diya karti hain. (As a child, when she used to go to the school, a dog in one of the gully on the way used to bark a lot. She didn’t change her route; instead she used her father’s gun to kill the dog. So, Sahib doesn’t change her route, she kills the dog instead). So, she was like that, that was she had in that. She wouldn’t change her way; she would rather get rid of the person. And, she was looking for love, every time she was deceived in love. If you see all those marriages, she was betrayed in love every time and I think after one point, she became, to me, a psychopath. After the third murder, when after John’s character, I think she became a psychopath because when she kills the Russian husband she had a… she didn’t have to kill him, but I think by that time she had just started enjoying the killing. So, to me, she became a psychopath killer. And it was supposed to be black humour, which people didn’t get. So, it was supposed to be… and maybe Ruskin also blames me for that. Ruskin said that you have made it so intense that the black humour went out of the window.

Okay, I want to talk to you about Kaminey. What did you start with? It was a caper film, it was a sort of take on a very Tarantinoesque genre, it was a sort of… whatever, it was a hat doff to Bollywood clichés. What did you start with, where do you root those characters, where do you find those characters in the world that you wanted to root it in?

Again, it was like a fantasy put into reality. But, my starting point was to make a caper. To make a Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, Pulp Fiction, those kind of influences, so the starting point was that. And, then I wanted to have a little depth that why did these two brothers are at war… and yeah, I think that was my intention and that remained my most successful film so far.

Okay, Matru (Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola) intrigued me even more. Where did you find, again, there was that fantasy, there was this bi-plane out of Tintin, the cow, the socialist politics, the whole land grab thing? Where did the characters in Matru… come from?

It comes from Brecht’s play called Mr Puntila and His Man Matti. And Brecht took those characters from Charlie Chaplin’s film called City Lights, in which a drunkard man takes Charlie Chaplin home and he’s drunk and treats him like his best friend, and when in the morning he’s sober he kicks him out, forgets that who is this guy, why is he sleeping next to my bed. So, that was a starting point and of course, I think there was a left side of me politically, so it was an expression of my left…

So you were also trying, was it also something, like did you also want to explore (Emir) Kusturica’s idiom?

Yes, yes, Kusturica, because I gave homage to Kusturica at the end because I loved his films, Underground…

But, that’s how he treats politics, right? There are these characters that he’ll create but the way…

Yes, it’s treated like farce. Black Cat, White Cat; Underground; those films were a big influence on me.

I wanted to quickly talk to you about dialogue writing. Because that is something, you know, you do for all your films. Tell me about some of the pitfalls of dialogue writing? Tell me two secrets of good dialogue writing?

One secret you can acquire, you can achieve. The other you can’t. First is, which you can acquire and achieve is, never let two people agree in a scene. Even if they are saying the same thing, never let them agree. So that’s where the conflict comes and that’s where the fun comes. If there’s a conflict, people are interested, and if there’s no conflict, they are not interested then. If two people are fighting, they are interested, so, this you can acquire. Okay, three things. Second thing is, never, which I learnt, I’m not giving you a gyaan, but this is what I do. The second thing is, never say things directly, say it through some object. If I want to tell you something, I will tell you through biscuit— that why don’t you have this biscuit. I will start my conversation, I will say through, I will say it indirectly, not directly. That always has an impact. And third thing, which you are either born with it—you either have it or you don’t have—which is sense of humour. If you don’t have humour then you can’t be a writer and you have to be… the more wicked you are, the better dialogue writing you can do.

Casting. Especially when you have casted for smaller roles, character roles, it’s something you are really known for. Something that’s widely discussed about your films. One, is there anybody you consult or take advice from, when it comes to casting? Secondly, is there a director that you admire for their casting?

Now, we have good casting directors, who weren’t there before. In my case, that guy, Honey Trehan, he has been my assistant the day he landed in Bombay, he has been with me. And over the period of time, he became a big casting director. And, as far as my casting is concerned, I am never excited about stars who are working in my film. I am always excited about the side cast, who are working. So, I get a kick out of their performance not by the stars’ performance, so that’s why they become very important for me. Like Deepak Dobriyal in Omkara, or Chandan Roy Sanyal or the Bengali brothers in Kaminey, or like Bhopey Bhau. So they give me child like excitement. So that and the one director I admire for it, I think, (Quentin) Tarantino. His casting sense is out of this world. If you see the Kill Bill, that Bill’s casting, I mean, such a great casting.

Two things, like I said with dialogue writing, that you have learnt along the way with directing actors, be it stars or actors? Two things that you have learnt on the job, or three things that you have learnt on the job about directing actors? Some tricks that you have picked up.

Yeah, never ask them to repeat what they have done in the shot. If the shot is okay, and for some reason you have to do it, never ask them to repeat the same thing. And, I never spoon-feed them about what they should be doing. In fact, and that I came to know, because they have worked with many different directors. But when they work with me, am told again and again, especially many times by Priyanka, that when an actor comes and asks me that this is the scene and you have to go and sit over there, there’s a biscuit plate lying over here, and I have to come and sit over here. So, this is the scene. So, they ask me, if they ask me, that, “What should I do? Should I come from this door or that door?” I never tell them. I say, “It’s your character, you should tell me where your character should come from. Don’t ask me to think for yourself. You think and tell me. If I don’t like it, I will tell you.” So, if I do my first rehearsal, I tell no one what to do, I tell no one how to do, I just tell them, let them weigh themselves, and that’s where they get thrown off. This director is not telling us anything! This is my style of working. I never give directions. If I feel they are going wrong, I will tell them, “This is not the way. Your character should be doing this.”

Tell me, why did you turn producer? What was one big reason that you turned producer?

To have the power for the final product. Because I saw Gulzar saab suffering in Hu Tu Tu, then that producer after the release of the film, he went to the theaters and edited the film, the way he wanted. And, I saw him in pain, and when I became the director, then I realized that that’s the way you can kill the director. So, to avoid that day in my life I became a producer.

How much creatively… you know the kind of films you produce, which you are not directing yourself, how much do they have to be a piece of your own creative sensibility? And, how far would you say that, okay…

Yeah, it’s a very difficult thing to produce and I am stopping to produce anymore now.

Really?

Yeah.

Are you taking a break or stopping?

I mean, stopping for the time being. I don’t know, right now I am not in a mood to produce forever for anybody. Because it’s a pain.

What is it that gets to you about producing?

Because you are wasting your energies, you know. I can make my own films. Why am I doing it for others? This is the first feeling that came to me. Because I don’t do it for money. I never get money back. My films don’t make money, so then why should I be doing this? I should be creating my own work, why should I be doing it for others?

Have you gotten better at understanding marketing, or selling a film?

No, I don’t understand because even if I understand marketing better than the marketing people, the marketing people think that they’re understanding the marketing better. So it becomes a very difficult situation when it comes to marketing because they have preconceived notions about a film because they have set patterns that so many hoardings, hero should be there, the masses should come for this. So, it’s very bad, marketing, I mean, should be left to a filmmaker, which doesn’t happen because of the co-production thing. And the corporate has its own marketing wing— a bunch of fools, who know nothing about it.

What kind of aesthetics are you drawn to, when it comes to cinema?

Excellence.

I mean, I am not going to ask you to even explain that. You know, a lot of filmmakers have a thing for creating a partnership with a cinematographer. You know, whether it was (Jean-Luc) Godard or whether it was (Satyajit) Ray, they did that. You have not. You have worked with different cinematographers, you have repeated one. But you have worked with different cinematographers at different points of time. Why is that? I mean, is that because you did not find the partnership, or making the partnership doesn’t interest you?

I want to remain in a live-in relationship in my creative world. I don’t want to marry, so this is one thing. And because the problem with cinematographers is that they think that actually they are directing the film, the director knows nothing. This is the basic problem with most of the cinematographers because they are either failed directors or they didn’t have the courage to become a filmmaker, or they don’t get a chance to become a filmmaker. So that kind of arrogance, because they have a kind of power on the set. Because the scene has to be lit and then they say that, “I am not getting my meter correct. I need so much time.” They have that kind of power. So I have had a very bad experience in my first two films with my cinematographer, that’s where I thought I am not going to repeat my cinematographer. One reason because that cinematographer, he was a friend of mine, that he kept saying to everyone that he has directed those first two films, he (Bharadwaj) knew nothing about it. He knew nothing about the lens. True, on the first film I knew nothing about the lens, but by the second film, I knew everything, everything, but… and I felt very offended, I felt very offended with that, and to prove him wrong and prove to myself that I can work with any Tom, Dick, and Harry, and get my job done, and that’s why I started doing this. Now I enjoy… because it’s a very boyfriend-girlfriend, husband-wife, kind of a relationship between the director and the cinematographer. By the end of the film, he knows all your weaknesses and you know his, but the problem is he knows your weaknesses. So, the next time he knows how to manoeuvre you, how to manipulate you, and I just don’t like someone manipulating or manoeuvring me. So when you get on the set with a new cinematographer, by the time he realizes your weaknesses or problems, the film is over. That’s why I don’t and I won’t.

Do you allow yourself flourishes as a director? You know, like a painter, as one of those flourished strokes, which may not be needed but it’s a flourished stroke. Do you allow yourself flourish, just purely indulgent, as an artist, as a director, strokes in your films? I mean, indulgent in a way that would not spoil the story but your own, jaise keeda kehte hain, kuch bhi kehte hain, jaise bhi…?

Yeah, I think, all the creative people do that.

Not all, I think.

Yeah, but if you realize that it’s an indulgence then… you know, that’s why I am very conscious about what I do. I don’t like to do anything for the sake of intelligence, but now I think I feel I should have in few cases.

But why Vishal? I mean, the whole reason why you are doing this is because you have to enjoy it, right?

Yeah, yeah, but you know when the film comes to your final stages you become very insecure that whether it’s reaching what you wanted to say, whether it’s reaching or not, and I am very scared of one thing, which is boring people. Because I get bored very easily. Like if I am talking to you or if I do not like being in someone’s company, I feel that’s the most horrible thing. And I don’t want to do that to people, so sometimes it happens. But in few cases I am saying I should have been indulgent, like Irrfan’s (Khan) story in 7 Khoon Maaf, I think that’s the best work I have ever done in my life, but I butchered it because of my editor and I will remain angry with him all my life. Because that section was 20-25 minutes, 30 minutes long, or 25 minutes long and there was total poetry, no dialogue in that. The whole relationship was translated on the screen in poetry, using music and poetry. Still there’s no dialogue in the film in that story but that was long, and I should have gone with that.

Do you ever self-censor while making films for the fear of running into censorship problems?

No.

Never?

The thing is, I am always morally right when I am doing a film.

Haan, but phir bhi hassles bhi bahut hote hain na? (But still there would be a lot of hassles, right?) You are also a practical director, and a producer, so is there something where you say, I don’t need this yaar, forget I am not going to…

Nahin, ab problem aane lagi hai kyunki satellite deals mein woh maangte hain (Nowadays, there’s a problem because satellite deals need) U/A, so broadcasters have started blackmailing. That’s where the cinema is feeling a big hurt and we will realize it after five years. Because of that the filmmakers are forced not to do certain things, which is very wrong for a creative man.

You know, Vishal, I am very intrigued because you had an anti-smoking song, you had an AIDS awareness song. How do you feel about the regulation that says that you have to put a warning? Where do you think the line needs to be drawn? Do you feel like it’s fair game to say that there should be a warning every time someone, a character, smokes on screen? Or, the long ad that happens before…

Mera mann karta hai main jaa kar parda phaad dun (I feel like tearing the curtain). It is so inhuman. It is so stupid. It is so unnecessary. It’s like a fascist thing the health ministry is doing to us, the filmmakers. Because it’s not treated like fine arts, no? It is not treated like (one of the) arts at all. Abhi bhi nautanki tamashe ki tarah liya jaa raha hai cinema ko. (Cinema is still treated like a gimmick). Seriously lete hi nahin hain, kuch bhi ho cinema ke saath yeh kar do. Jaise har cheez film galat kar rahi ho. (They don’t take cinema seriously, whatever be the situation, cinema will be on the receiving end. As if cinema is responsible for everything wrong). Now this is really, really stupid. Isse bura aur kisi filmmaker ke saath ho nahin sakta hai, filmmaking community ke saath isse bura kaam nahin ho sakta hai. (That’s the worst that can happen with any filmmaker, with the filmmaking community). Now they are trying for alcohol also. That anytime if somebody has a drink, that (a warning will appear that) ‘Alcohol is bad’. I think kuch dinon ke baad yeh bhi karna padega ki kuch acchi cheezein jo kha rahe hain ki biscuit khana accha hai. Nimbu toh zada nahin khao (After some days, they will start showing that eating biscuit is healthy; don’t have too much lemon). That was my retaliation when I did the smoking song. That’s the way I retaliated to what they were doing ki zyada nimbu khaane se daant kharaab ho jaate hain magar cigarette peene se aap mar sakte ho (your teeth will be spoiled from a lot of lemons, but cigarettes can kill you). So, it is… I mean, I was feeling frustrated.

Vishal, you are a composer but the trend today is not to have songs as a part… matlab item numbers ho sakte hain, (you can have item numbers though) but songs as part of narrative, in a way they take the story forward, brings out the inner conflict that is becoming… Is that something you would regret if it went out of our cinema entirely?

No, no, I think I would rather like it. Because mostly, songs are not required in our films.

So, then what happens to the rich, absolutely rich treasure of lyric songs woh bhi toh chala jayega na uske saath (even that will go with it)?

Haan toh maybe uske saath non-film music upar ayega jiske liye (So, in that case, the non-film music will shine more), you were regretting. Delhi guys will have much more fun.

Yeah, but I don’t mean to have my life without Sahir Ludhianvi, without Gulzar..

But then Sahir Ludhianvi or Faiz Ahmed Faiz ne kaunse filmon ke gaane likhe? Ghalib ne kaunse filmon ke gaane likhe? Uss waqt toh Ghalib poetry kar rahe the…Toh aur cheezein upar ayengi na? Filmon ki wajah se aur cheezein upar aa hi nahin paati hai na. Film sab kuch apne andar absorb kar leti hain. Aap bahut bade poet hain, apne koi filmon ka gaana likha hai? Nahin likha. Toh aapke upar glamour hi nahin ayega. Dr. Bashir Badr ka naam bhi suna hai kisine, Dr. Bashir Badr jaisa poet nahin hua pichle sau saal mein. (What film songs did Ghalib write? At that time Ghalib was writing poetry. So other things would shine, right? Because of films, other things are not able to come up. Film absorbs everything. You are a renowned poet, have you written any songs for films? No, so you would not be glamorous. No one has heard of Dr. Bashir Badr. A poet like him has not been in our country for 100 years).

You touched upon the cinematographer, what about the editor? What is the balance? What is the secret of that relationship? What is the ideal relationship between an editor and a director? And have you ever found it?

No, I am still finding it. Yeah, editing ka bada hi tricky hai, woh donon hi confuse ho jaate hain aapas mein baat karte karte ki kya theek hai aur kya nahin theek hai. But, I think usme apne gut ke upar jaana chahiye. (Editing is very tricky. A director and an editor often get confused while talking to each other about what’s right and what’s not. So, in that case, one should go by his instinct). Which I will try in my next film. Sometimes it’s not working as a whole story. I mean, you come across with very strange choices when you are going for your final cut. Very strange choices. Some moments you would want that is not adding to the story, so it’s very, very strange, the choices that you have to make. And you would realize your mistakes after six months or one year, like I am realizing about 7 Khoon Maaf.

What would you want in an editor, ideally?

I am telling you it’s a very strange relationship between an editor and a director. But, what I want? That he should not contradict me. He should listen to me whatever I say. Not come with justifiable logics.

Come on! You know you also want that because otherwise you have no counterpoint at all. You are living with one film for so long. Clearly, you haven’t made your wish to Santa Claus about editors yet…

No, I am very happy with the editor I am working with right now, A. Sreekar Prasad. But one thing you hate about editors, when they read the script they don’t realize that it’s not needed. Once you have shot it, they say it’s not needed, so what were you doing? Were you sleeping when reading the script? So, this is one thing I hate about editors. They say it’s not needed. But, you read the script? Yeah. But now it’s not needed, so…

You know Vishal, the way we make political films in India, either it is a backdrop of politics or it’s a moral film disguised as a political film. Do you feel we have a mature political cinema in India? And, what kind of politics woven in cinema attracts you?

We can only make farcical cinema, as far as politics is considered because politics is farce in our country. Either we can make farce or we can make (it) very dark because there is no middle road. Most of the institutions are corrupt. Which good political films we have made? Koi bhi nahin. (Nothing).

What has shaped your politics?

I think social justice. I mean, if you are an artist, you can be an artist only if you are left. If your left is strong, only then you can be an artist, otherwise how will you take the injustice happening in society? If you are taking that, and you are still happy then you are not an artist. And only left provides you that window, which makes you see okay, that’s why you keep reacting with your left.

Why did you take a break from Shakespeare?

Because I am very scared of being slotted in something, and again, you know the fight within me, with myself, why can’t I say original stories? Why can’t I say original stories? For that I tried Kaminey so it’s because of that.

Why did you drop 2 States? You mentioned earlier that there was some opposition, but why did it not work out?

There were many reasons for that. One thing is that Shah Rukh (Khan), he developed cold feet, and then I thought it will be very insensitive of me to go and make this with somebody else. This was the main reason. Because we planned that film together, but then both of us, we thought that…then he thought that he shouldn’t be doing this, then I thought I don’t want to do this.

What attracts you towards romance? How would you like to explore romance? What kind of romance in cinema attracts you and how would you like to explore… Is there any way in which you would like to explore romance in your cinema?

I think the Ijaazat kind of film I want to make, because that is one of the most romantic films ever on Indian screen. Very beautiful film and that went unnoticed. That kind of romance where hawaldar ne ulta ek athanni de kar karke lautaya tha, usme meri ek chavanni padi hai, woh bhejwa do. Mera kuch samaan tumhare paas pada hai wo bhejwa do. I think that is one of the best romantic songs an Indian film has seen.

You know, you have explored your Kusturica’s idiom, your Tarantino kind of medium, (Krzysztof) Kieslowski, where you started off, you have always said that’s one big push you got towards cinema. How would you like to explore that idiom? What is it about that idiom that you would like to explore, if in future?

You know those kind of quiet films he made, which looked quiet on surface but they were screaming from within, that kind of quality of cinema I am really excited to make, and want to explore because Kieslowski’s films had this quality. To explore extraordinary conflict in an ordinary life is the most difficult thing and that’s what Kieslowski did in all his films. You see his (The) Decalogue, you see his (Three Colors:) Blue, White, Red— extraordinary conflicts in ordinary life. Otherwise, it is very difficult to create gangsters, it is very difficult to create politicians, or you know farce, or those kinds of films, very easy to make. But to explore that conflict in normal people, that’s the most important thing.

What is your ambition today as a filmmaker?

To create a very, very honest film, which (it) has always been.

Eye of the Beholder: Zoë Heller

Posted on February 24, 2014 by admin

New York based English writer and journalist Zoë Heller, 48, is the author of three novels: Everything You Know (1999), Notes on a Scandal (2003)—which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize—and The Believers (2008).

She was ‘Columnist of the Year’ at the British Press Awards for her columns in the Daily Telegraph in 2002. In 2009, she donated her short story What She Did On Her Summer Vacation to Oxfam’s ‘Ox-Tales’ project, four collections of UK stories by 38 authors.

Heller belongs to a family of screenwriters. Her father Lukas Heller had won an Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture for the thriller Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Her brother Carl Bruno Heller is the creator of the TV series Rome and The Mentalist. Her ex-husband Larry Konner has penned Hollywood screenplays such as Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Planet of the Apes and Mona Lisa Smile as well as the TV shows Boardwalk Empire and The Sopranos.

The only movie Heller wrote was way back in 1991. “I haven’t seen it since,” she says. “And I wouldn’t want to.” However, a film based on her book Notes on a Scandal, starring Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, written by Patrick Marber and directed by Richard Eyre, won rave reviews and was nominated for four Academy Awards.

In this interview, Heller speaks about the challenges of screenwriting and adaptation, reservations she had with the film Notes on a Scandal and a TV screenplay she is working on currently.

You wrote a screenplay for the independent film Twenty-One way back in 1991. Have there been any scripts or screenplays since?

I am writing now for HBO. Something for TV, but no films. I haven’t written for films since then. Because I come from a family of screenwriters…

I know, your brother (Bruno Heller) writes for TV…

My brother writes for TV, and he also writes for movies. And my father and my ex-husband and so on… First of all I’m aware of how difficult it is, and it’s never seemed to me that it was my métier. I actually like sentences and aspire to write good ones. The particular skills that screenplays require, it always seems to me like there are more architectural skills involved. And it is also a more visual medium, obviously. They always struck me as things that possibly, you know… if I worked really hard, I might become competent at, although I didn’t have a natural flair for it. However, I’ve had the very good fortune to be offered this work with HBO. And I need to pay the bills, so I’m trying.

How was your experience with that particular screenplay (Twenty-One)? Because it did go on to win a lot of acclaim. The film won awards, it was at Sundance and created quite a stir there.

Between you and me, I was a completely know-nothing ignoramus.

It was way back in the day.

I mean, I haven’t seen it since, and I wouldn’t want to. The screenplay, I can only imagine, was fairly incompetent. So that was a piece of immense good fortune. Somebody used to say, “Oh, you’re around the age of the person I want to make this movie about. You write it.” And the director—I wouldn’t say he dictated it to me—but he said, “Now I want a bit in which she utters a monologue about what it’s like having a boyfriend”, or something.

So the sort of skills I was talking about just now, about how you structure something. You know, were not in it at all. So I wouldn’t say that experience taught me anything. I neither brought any skills to bear, nor did I pick any up in the process. It’s the truth.

You didn’t work on the script of Notes on a Scandal ?

No. A great guy, a great playwright, Patrick Marber, wrote that script. They’re very keen these days that when they adapt a book, that they kind of keep the writer on the side. Otherwise you have the writer standing around saying, “Nooo, I hate it!” And that’s not good for the movie. They were very nice to me and they kept me abreast of what they were doing. As it turned out, I had a great friendship with Patrick and he said from the start, “You’re going to hate what I do. I’m going to take your baby and I’m going to tear it up and change it.”

But I like Patrick very much. I think he’s very, very smart. I understood that in order to adapt a book, you can’t do sort of an illustrated version. It’s turning it into a different medium. I have reconciled to that. So I watched them do that. They showed me a first draft and said, “Please give us your notes.” I innocently give them copious notes, which they then went ahead and ignored. I watched it with interest, and I thought that the movie that came out really worked on its own terms. If my book had ceased to exist as an independent object, no one could ever kind of go and look at the original document… I think I would be disturbed. Because the movie is so different. But my book is still my book and the film is something else. So I’m fine with that.

But letting go at that point, when you knew that somebody else would be working on the script. Was that a tough choice…

No…

…or was it something you were sort of (okay with)?

First of all, you’re being given… I mean at one level, as a writer there’s something magical about being given a cheque and not having to do any writing!

Absolutely.

And the other thing is, I think it’s particularly difficult to adapt one’s own work. I know some writers do. They even relish it. I think it would be… for all the reasons that I said, the whole business of having to tear up what you’ve done and rearrange and think about it in a completely different way. And of course, lose some of one’s favourite lines because it simply doesn’t work. They don’t work in the screen version. I think it would be quite painful. So I was very happy to not enter into that.

You mention not being very pleased with the happy ending to the movie, which was not the case in your book. How did they convince you? You mention sort of expressing your doubt about that, but then you were finally convinced. What did they say to convince you finally?

No I wasn’t convinced. I was talking to the producer. He was a very smart guy who made a lot of successful movies. And he said, “People aren’t going to put down… ”—I guess in those days it was 10 bucks—“…aren’t going to put down 10 bucks to go see a movie in which people don’t learn something.” It was a kind of a classic Hollywood homily about the idea that a movie has to have an arc, and the characters have to go through a journey and be better in some sense at the end. Of course, literary fiction doesn’t actually keep to quite the same rules. My feeling is that I’m not sure that all independent movies have to keep to the same rules either. I don’t think he persuaded me exactly, but I said, “Okay, you’re going to make a different kind of a movie.”

You also mentioned about not being very sure of how Barbara came across in certain places. Could you elaborate on that? What did you mean by that?

I felt that I had written about, obviously, an awful woman, and a woman going slightly nuts. But she had a real story to tell and a real complaint about the plight of a middle-aged woman who had no role and wasn’t seen by men or women. Who felt herself to be invisible. There was a sort of, if you like, a feminist moral in there somewhere about what happens to women who don’t offer pulchritude or beauty, who reach a certain age. (Women) who don’t have the status of marriage or children.

I felt that in the movie she was a much more straightforwardly crazy villain. And her sexuality was much more unambiguous. I never wanted to say she’s a lesbian. I felt that she was sort of truly sexually ambiguous, that she was sort of retarded sexually. She wanted sex with intimacy with anybody. She wanted intimacy with anybody. Her most passionate feelings had traditionally thus far historically been with women, but you couldn’t really pigeonhole her in that way. The movie, it seemed to me, was much more straightforwardly…she’s a crazy, repressed lesbian who’s got the hots for Cate Blanchett. Again, I completely understand why you might have to be a bit more straightforward.

Also when you have lesser time…

Yeah.

Would you put that down to the script or Judi’s (Dench) portrayal?

No I don’t think it was Judi’s portrayal. In fact there was a wonderful moment on set when I think Judi sometimes felt… I don’t want to put words into her mouth but I think she found it quite difficult playing that character because it felt a bit, at times… You know, she’s a very attractive woman and they made her…she had to wear a special wig that showed her scalp.

It was overdone.

Yeah. And I remember there was a moment on set where she was going through drawers with especially revolting underwear. Grey, vast panties. She said, “Just because I’m an unpleasant person? I might actually have attractive underwear.” My reading of that was there was some sense in which she wanted to say, “I’m not mean and vile and repulsive all the way through.” If there was anything that slightly upset me, it was the sense that they had made her repellent in precisely the way that Barbara, the character in my book, most feared. That she was regarded as a repellent creature.

When one thinks about what book is good to be made into a movie, what book is a good book to adapt…have you thought about it, especially coming from a family of screenwriters? Are there any other parameters besides the fact that, ‘Hey, this is a really good book’?

I still don’t understand now in retrospect why Notes (on a Scandal) lends itself to other treatments. I mean subsequently people have said, “Can we turn it into an opera? Can we turn it into a stage play?” And to be frank, I think it’s because it has a very strong melodramatic dimension to it. With The Believers, which I think is going to end up not being turned into a movie, it strikes me as really not the kind of stuff of which movies are made. It’s very…

It’s socio-political in that sense…

Well that’s fine. It feels like one of those great Italian movies about dynasties and also about politics. I just think it’s very ‘talky’.

That’s funny because I thought The Believers, especially considering its twists… there’s the protagonist, and then you find out little bit into the book that the person goes into coma… The way things move in The Believers, I would think it would be very exciting to see it in a script. It might not be as much of an internal journey as the other book, but the fact that it’s dynamic and there are all these characters… Would you feel that it would be better for something like a mini-series or television, maybe? Now that there’s good work happening in television…

Here’s the thing. The truth is I don’t ever think about these things. I am wary of thinking about things in those terms because the next step would be that as I am writing a novel, which I’m doing at the moment, I start thinking, “Hmm. How would I do the second season of this? Does this lend itself to…” You know what I’m saying?

Yeah I understand that.

And it’s enough to try and write reasonably well in one medium without sort of…

Thinking about the other medium.

People will say, ”And who would you cast?” As if one has been writing it with the casting in mind, and I really don’t. As I said, I’ve always recognised my limitations. I don’t think of myself as a movie and TV person in that sense. So I leave that to people who have the expertise. Now of course, writing a TV script, I’m having to think about all those things. It’s a real challenge, it’s a real intellectual challenge writing a TV script and having to consider all kinds of different things. One has the, sort of, leisure as a novelist. You know, point of view and being able to write inside people’s heads and all of that stuff. But there is something glorious about, you know, you do a day’s work and you’ve got twenty pages of dialogue and you’re like, “Wow!” If you’re trying to write a half-hour comedy, if you can get the hang of it, and I’m not underestimating how difficult getting the hang of it is… wow, you know? It seems just like a holiday from the whole pace of writing a novel, which moves so slowly.

You also mentioned that after a writer’s book gets made into a movie, there’s this other extent of fame and recognition that a writer achieves.

No I absolutely mean it though. It is a revelation.

But what does that do to a writer? The fact that your book gets made into a movie— what are the pros and what are the cons, if any?

It is a revelation that movies mean much more to people in general than books do. You can go on scribbling and being recognised in your own field for many, many years. Notes on a Scandal was, relatively speaking, a small movie. A small kind of independent movie. (But) to my dying day, it will be the thing that people mention first off most of the time. It’s a little humbling. You recognise your place in the great hierarchy of the arts or the media. That’s the main thing. I don’t think it has any sort of corrupting influence. It doesn’t make me think, “Oh, I’m going to try and write another one.” I recognise it as a once in a lifetime thing.

You’ve also spoken about literary characters that you were interested in, and they were complicated characters. In an earlier interview you’d mentioned nasty characters. You mentioned characters like Peter Pan, Humpty Dumpty, Alice in Wonderland, Elizabeth Bennet— who is a complicated character. Have there been any cinematic characters you’ve particularly been fascinated by?

The movie I was passionate about recently, really the best movie I’ve seen in the last decade was A Separation, the Iranian movie. I want to see it again and again. It has these dimensions of a Russian novel, and I feel like I want to go back and look at it and see how they did it. There are a lot of the things I loved about that, and it’s a perfect example of the sort of thing that interests me. Usually with movies, modern Hollywood movies, within the first act you establish who you’re rooting for and who’s the baddie. And I kept trying to do the same here, “Okay, oh the Islamic fundamentalist is the baddie. No, oh the wife is the baddie.”

And every time, some more complications would be added. There were layers and layers and layers, and everyone was trying to do their best in that movie. This fantastic tragedy was unfolding in, as it were, slow motion. I found it completely compelling. It was such a beautiful miniature. No car chases, no nothing. Also no self-indulgence, no bourgeois discussions about the affairs of the heart. No adultery. Just a beautiful movie and such fantastic observations of human nature. No villains. Just complex human beings.

There are just a few questions you need to answer quickly. Which was your first film-related obsession which you remember? Something you saw as a child?

You’ll have to remember the name of it. It’s a French adaptation of Cinderella (Donkey Skin, Peau d’âne ) in which Cinderella was played by, I think, Catherine Deneuve in a donkey’s skin in the forest. I saw it once in a movie house and then I got the book of the film. It absolutely obsessed me.

A book to film adaptation that really shouldn’t have been done? One that was a real disaster when you watched it, after you read the book.

You’ll have to give me examples. I can’t think, I can’t think. I can tell you one thing. One adaptation that I think is better than the book is Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I think that’s a better movie than the book is. I know there are lots, but I just can’t think of one now.

A writer whose biopic would definitely be A-rated? Very sensational, very scandalous. Extremely interesting and titillating.

Don’t know.

It could be a writer from the past.

All the obvious ones are so boring. Casanova… I can’t think, I’m so sorry. I’m not being clever.

What’s the one thing a book can really achieve that a movie can’t?

Interiority.

And the one thing a movie can achieve that a book can’t?

Well what I can’t do that a film can is just the beautiful landscape. I can never describe landscape and I keep saying, “Can’t we just have a picture here?”

Rani Pink

Posted on February 19, 2014 by admin

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