An ode to Bombay cinema

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bollywood@100?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love and renunciation in Amrapali

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

A leaf from another era

Vyjayanthimala owned the film as Amrapali

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

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

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

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

At her sensuous best in Tumhe yaad karte karte

Tadap yeh din raat ki

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

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

Surrender at the feet of Buddha

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

Choreopgraphy by Gopi Krishna proved to be a high-point

The climax scene

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

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

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

The uninhibited passions of Bobby

Sometimes, dialogues, which sound very ordinary, are the ones which become a sensation. What is so special about the line “Mujhse Dosti Karoge” delivered by a 16-year-old Dimple Kapadia in Bobby? Watching it after many years, the movie, with its simple story, still retains an element of exuberance and freshness. Bobby definitely is not a movie of my generation. We had prophets of love in the likes of Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, Main Ne Pyar Kiya, DDLJ, Dil Toh Pagal Hai and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. But certain things never change with time and Bobby had those unchanging  elements in the right place.

 Rishi Kapoor designed his own  costumes for Bobby

 

 The bikini shot became a talking point after the release

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

Mujhse Dosti Karoge?

 

 Mujhe kuch kehna hai

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

 Dadima kehti hai ache ghar ki ladkiyan shaadi se pehle family room mein nahi baithti

 

Finally, he has got his girlfriend

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

 

 The polka dotted top worn by Dimple became a fashion statement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 The famous motorcycle chase sequence

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

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

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

A few Bata club thoughts about SOTY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yash Chopra: Love is Life

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

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

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

 

Waqt - pompousness at its best

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

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

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

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

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

modeled on the poet Sahir Ludhianvi

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

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

Sridevi at her best in Lamhe

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

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

Kal aur aayenge naghmon ki khilti kaliyan chunne wale

Mujhse behtar kehne wale, tumse behtar sunne wale,

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

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

Love is life, Life is forever....

Welcome back Hawa Hawai!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Utsav: A seductive celebration

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

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

Enamoured by the presence of Vasantsena

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

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

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

Mrichchakatika - the cart of gold

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

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

Female bonding in the song Man kyun behka 

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

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

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

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

Catty Kareena

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

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

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