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Mani Kaul’s Before my Eyes (1989). The film was produced by J&K tourism department but the end product by the legendary filmmaker left them so confused that the film was never properly showcased by them. It was supposed to be a tourism film but Mani Kaul made it without showcasing the usual sights of Kashmir. Most people would miss the genius of this film, but those who understand cinema would know what Kaul managed to achieve with the film.
With minimalistic human presence and a deliberate brooding consciousness of the geography of the place, the film like some dream of a child, traces the flight of a soul in paradise, there are sights and some sounds, it rises till the beauty materializes before your eyes and you realize it is not a dream, or is it.
The Hot air balloon works like a metaphor for dream in the film. Director hints at it when you see some people asleep in a Hotel room while a balloon rises from the window. You know you are dreaming because the western music mixes up with the local sights from a houseboat.There are vast mountains, greens, whites, wild brooks and broad rivers. You see a child running free. A man galloping on a horse while the moon rises. There is a garden, the (only) famous garden. You are alone in all this space.
mud, stone, brick and timber house, 1989
Traditional mud, stone, brick and timber houses in Srinagar, Kashmir, 1989.
photo © Randolph Langenbach.
Via:
T H E J O U R N A L O F T H E
A S S O C I A T I O N F O R
P R E S E R V A T I O N T E C H N O L O G Y
© APTI, 1989
Bricks, Mortar, and Earthquakes,
by
Randolph Langenbach
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Update 8th July, 2017:
Inder Kaw: […]this is very much our house and my father Pt. Hari Krishen Kaw standing at the entrance door after he returned from California in 1988. He is holding a cane and right leg slighted due to his surgery here in San Jose after an accident. In 1990 I met a Cal Berkeley Professor Randolph Langenbach (Also my facebook friend now) in Late Kulbhushan Gupta,s house in Oakland on a Christmas Party. After introduction and pleasantries, he inquired where I originally hailed from. Upon hearing Srinagar, he informed me about his spending two years there as Consultant on environment to Jammu and Kashmir Government and that his speciality was earthquake proof housing. He thought Kasmirian and El-Salvadorian housing were the best earthquake proof housings in the world. He explained something to do with Daji-Deewari, Viram (The long staff) and ductility etc. Upon parting he asked for my address so he would send me his research paper on the subject, he published.Three days later, a tight vanilla envelope arrived by mail and upon pulling the journal slowly from the envelope, the first thing what appeared on the glossy cover of the journal was “American preservation technology journal”, further thrust pulling the magazine out revealed the whole glossy cover page with journal name and this particular picture on the front page. […]
And BTW the house in question has been demolished by people who bought from us and a brand new structure erected taller than 4 stories house we lived in, informs my nephew Avinash Kachroo.
Avinash Kachroo The particular building of the group which formed the original household and works of Pt. Sahajram Kaw’s sons pictured here ceased to stand when I visited the very spot from where the picture was taken, in 2015 – effecting whatever little closure I needed on Kashmir (having born and raised out of Kashmir). The front building long dispossessed still stood, though extremely dilapidated.
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Travels in Kashmir by Brigid Keenan, 1989
Brigid Keenan originally meant this book to be a booklet on papier mache art of Kashmir, but once she started collecting material, as often happens in case of Kashmir, she got swept away in the flood its colorful history. So, instead she wrote a ‘general’ book about Kashmir. A book that picks the best bits about Kashmir and presents it beautifully.
The book revisits those old literally routes through which the west discovered Kashmir. It does this by presenting the interesting stories of early European visitors, most of them now famous because of their journals, but also some minor one and their little known travel diaries (some of them still not publicly available ). So we read story of George Forster travelling under guise of a Muslim and almost getting caught because in a moment of lapse he takes a leak while standing, like a man devoid of faith. And on other end we have the story of a Kashmiri tailor named Butterfly, maker of finest lingerie for British in India, who accidentally embarrassed his Memsahib clients when he brought out a catalogue carrying neatly sketched details of his comfy products and the names of the elite clients enjoying them.
Besides all this, what really makes this book stand out is that Brigid Keenan gives us the description and location of some heritage sites associated with British in Srinagar. Their playgrounds, their famous camp sites (Chinar Bagh), their church (All Saint’s Church), their graves (Shiekh Bagh) and their colony (Munshi Bagh). And much like the books of early visitors to Kashmir, this book too provides us a vital snapshot about the status of some old monuments and heritage sites of Kashmir. Reading this book we get to know their status as they stood in 1989 – already vanishing.
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Buy Travels in Kashmir: A Popular History of Its People, Places and Crafts
Bhands
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| Infotisement for 1987 Channel Four documentary ‘The Riddle of Midnight’ [LA Times article from 1989] Came across it on ebay |
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Pather Chujaeri, year 2001short film by Pankaj Rishi Kumar on Bhands of Kashmir
Zooni, the great film that never got finished
[Cross posted on my other blog about other thoughts that inundate my mind]
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| Dimple Kapadia puts on makeup as she gets ready to shoot for ‘Zooni’. A Kashmiri crowd, of mostly teenagers, looks on. 1989. |
Came across this beautiful image in ‘Mary McFadden: high priestess of high fashion : a life in haute couture, décor, and design’ [ at Google Books, check it out for her story about the film that never got finished]
In a New York Times article dated 1990 [link], she is quoted saying:
‘This is like a Cecil B. de Mille production, with 1,000 people in two village to dress. There are no records of how people looked, and no miniatures like other places. I took a melange of looks from the high courts of Persia and Suleiman the Magnificent in Constantinople, so they have more of a Persian feeling. The Mogul Empire had not yet influenced Kashmir.’
For much of late 1980s, Muzaffar Ali, back then already acknowledged a master filmaker for his cinematic rendering of Urdu novel “Umrao Jan Ada” (1905) by Mirza Haadi Ruswa telling the story of a 19th century Lucknow courtesan , was busy planning his next big project, cinematic rendering of the folklore surrounding 16th century Kashmiri poet-empress Habba Khatoon, known to her people as Zooni.
This film was going to be his masterpiece, a project so ambitious in its approach to the subject, an attempt so detailed in its planned execution that it would have been absurd to call it an Indian film at all. Who had heard of a well researched Indian film?
American designer Mary McFadden did the costume designs. Art historian Stuart Cary Welch was consulted for getting the feel of the era right. The two men behind Umrao Jaan’s musical soundtrack weaved something special for this one too: Akhlaq Mohammed Khan ‘Shahryar’ offered lyrics while Khayyam put those words to music. With his plans to shot the film on location in Kashmir, there was the need to capture the intrinsic beauty of the locale, its people and of the story on camera. The scenic beauty of Kashmir needs to be approached either with a certain restrain or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, with a feeling of Fanaa (not to be confused with that nasty ‘eye of needle meets I don’t know what’ film). Camera was handled by Basheer Ali, a new talent, a protegee of Ishan Arya, the cinematographer for M.S. Sathyu’s Garam Hawa (1975). You would have had to watch the film to know which way it went. The project had already taken some time in making. But it seemed like something worth waiting. Dimple Kapadia, was moving from her nadir of Zakhmi Aurat and on way to her zenith of Rudali. Maybe Zooni was going to be her zenith. Vinod Khanna was well past his peak and well passed his Osho days. But if he was still man enough to sell soaps, he was man enough to portray a king, he already looked the part, riding a horse in that popular soap ad, there was going to be much galloping in this film too (the age of galloping men was to end later with Khuda Gawah (1993) starring the better half of Amitabh-Vinod Khanna duo). Yes, there would have been fans and critics who would have judged their performance. There would have been verdict of the box-office. But we are getting too far. Who worries about the box-office while the film is still being made? (Don’t answer.)
The film never got finished even as all the songs had been recorded and a lot of scenes had been shot in Kashmir.
By the end of 1990, with the situation in Kashmir going from normal to bad to worse, to at one point seeming like the end, Muzaffar Ali must have got that terrible feeling in the gut that the film may never get finished.
Maybe it would have been just another film, ‘Oji he should have retired after Umrao Jaan. What point this Zooni? These indulgent directors, I tell you.’, that kind of thing and not something that Muzaffar Ali claims would have changed the history of India. Can films change history? Or maybe it would have been special. It would have found an appreciative audience. We may never know.
And perhaps this was the last Indian film to be called a Cecil B. de Mille kind of production.
A trailer of Zooni uploaded to youtube by Basheer Ali. In last couple of decades the world has got used to crisp images, only HD even on Rs.9000 camera. So the film was look dated now but at least the music can be digitally mastered. Song in the background ‘Rukh-e-Dildaar Deedam Daras Ko Aaye Preetam’. I read about this song at this blog post by Shahryar’s son about his father’s failing health. I do hope at least the soundtrack of this film gets released. But the way Zooni and Kashmir are intertwined. There is even little hope of that.
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Bombay film industry had long tried to make a film of Habba Khatoon. All attempts were doomed. First attempt was by Mehboob Khan in 1960s, it was going to star Saira Banu as the queen and Kamaljeet was the king. The project was shelved after Mehboob Khan’s death in 1964. Another attempt was made in 80s by Sanjay Khan who wanted to cast Zeenat Aman as the queen. The songs for the film were recored by Naushad with Rafi. The film was never completed and the songs from the film proved to be last collaboration between Rafi and Naushad.[song]
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