in bits and pieces
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Bakshi Ghulam Mohamed, a mute and perhaps an unwilling witness to one of the funniest ‘log cabin’ sequence from Indian Cinema, listening in on ‘a storm outside-a storm inside’ innuendos being passed between Saira Bano and Shammi Kapoor in Junglee (1961). Don’t tell me that should have been Sheikh Abdullah.
After Doordarshan Centre was established in Srinagar in 1972, a number of tele-films were made. These first few films were about things that all Kashmiris used to cherish, mytho-memories and words of their Habba Khatoons, Rasul Mirs and Badshahs. Among these tele-films Habba Khatoon by Basheer Badgami was probably the most popular and famous. The film had Reeta Razdan as heroine in the role of poet-queen of Kashmir and Ghani Khan as King Yusuf Chak. The songs were sung by Shamima Dev (who later went on to be Azad [previously]).
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This much I know from ‘A History of Kashmiri Literature’ by Trilokinath Raina. But till recently I hadn’t see any of these films ( who knew a few of them were shown in Kashmir Film festival organised by Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in 2009 [.pdf of Films Schedule]).
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This morning [thanks to Mrinal Kaul] I came across the famous Habba Khatoon.
Uploaded to Youtube by 44x4x4x [who given his profile picture there, a painting called ‘A Beauty of the Valley’ by G. Hadenfeldt, found in ‘The Charm of Kashmir’ (1920) by V.C. Scott O’connor‘ , is probably already a reader of this blog or someone who somehow found a part of it. I big thanks to the uploader for sharing].
From – ‘R.D.Burman The Man, The Music'(2011) by Anirudha Bhattarcharjee and Balaji Vittal.
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The two Kashmir words were finally passed off in the song to mean I love you and I need you.
The film starts with a man welcoming a recently orphaned young son of his sister into his family. The man’s young daughter takes a special liking for the orphan boy. The plot is set for a childhood romance that will blossom in youth. The local bad boy of the village with perhaps a linking for the girl grows an instant dislike for the boy. How the world conspires against them and how their love survives, that in a nutshell is the premise of the film
On the surface of it, there isn’t anything new to this story written by Ali Mohammed Lone, a man with literary background. It is plot of countless Hindi films. But it is the social background, the Kashmiri culture, within which this simple story is told, its music, the idioms of its language and the gesticulation of its people, that all add various unique delicious layers to the experience of watching this story unfold on screen. Even to a Kashmiri viewer it offers layers of ecstatic wonder, layers that the interested viewer can devour to his contentment in each viewing.
Although nothing much is known about the film’s Director, Jagi Rampaul and the Producer, M.R. Seth, this film was considered path breaking enough back in 1964 to win a President’s Silver Medal. Generations of Kashmiri people remember this film for some great performances by lead cast: Omkar Nath Aima as hero Sulla.Sultan, Mukta as heroine Sarye/Sara, and an outstanding act by Pushkar Bhan as villian Barkat. But most of all this film was remembered for its use of folk songs and some beautiful new Kashmiri songs written by famous poet-writer-painter artist G.T.Santosh and set to music by great Mohan Lal Aima. For generations this film has been known as the first Kashmiri film ever made.
What now follows is not a review of the film, it’s something else, it’s how the film interact with memories.
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The opening scene of the film when Rajab arrives in the village to check up on Sultan.
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| Children playing Hopscotch or Sazlog in Kashmir, taken by James Ricalton in c. 1903, |
Rajab, known fondly as Rajab Kaka or Rajab Uncle, distributing sweets, maybe Shirin or Nabad, sugar candies, to children of the village.
After burying Sultan’s mother, Rajab Kaka takes Sultan alongwith him back to his village. As they start of, a woman hands him Kulache for the journey and beseeches him to take care for the motherless child.
Sara, the daughter of Rajak and Sultan hit it off instantly. Meanwhile…
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Sara’s brother Razak is chilling out with Barkat the bad boy. Barkat spots the Pandit boy, Poshkar walking with a stack of hay on his back. Just for fun, Barkat flings his cigarette bud onto the load on Poshkar. As Poshkar slowly and without knowing carries a blaze on his back, the bad boys laugh out at the scene.
Sultan and Sara reach the spot, Poshkar gets rescued by Sultan. With this episode Sultan makes a friend, the Pandit boy Poshkar.
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| ‘Myane Bhagwano’, O my God. Poskar’s cry on realizing that his stack was on fire. |
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| ‘love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave’ |
The boy and the girl grow up, already deeply in love.
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| ‘Batt’e Aaprawun’. Sara feeds Sultan. |
Barkat fumes.
Sara and Sultan will marry each other, is an eventuality even hinted by old Rajab Kaka.
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| Notice the headgear on the woman who walks into Poshkar’s shop to barter an egg |
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| A Kashmiri woman drawn by drawn by H.R. Pirie in around 1908 |
The only comic sequence involves a woman who walks into Poshkar Nath’s shop to barter an egg. In a demonstration of typical Kashmiri humour, Poshkar Nath quip’s about the size of the egg.
After the joke, the stage gets set for the gloom to descend. Barkat starts poisoning Razak’s ears, how the village people are not saying nice things about Sara and Sultan. Razak, in a round around way tries to reign in his sister, but Sara snubs him. Razak goes to his father complaining about relation of Sara and Sultan. Razak seems more worried about the fact that Sultan can stake a claim on what he believes to be his property and land. Rajab Kaka tries to put some sense into his son, but the worms of doubt get laid into his mind too. After a villager also asks him about Sara and Sultan, the father feeling ashamed, publicly lashes out at Sara.
Now Barkat plays he next move. Using his minions, he takes the matter to village panchayat with the purpose of throwing Sultan out to village.
As the minions start to take control of the panchayat’s proceedings, Pandit Poshkar Nath moves in to defend the case in favor of his friend Sultan.
The matter ends with Poshkar Nath not only stopping Sultan’s excommunication but using his wit even manage to get a ruling that Sultan has a right to the property.
Barkat isn’t very happy with this outcome. The object of his immediate anger is Poshkar.
Barkat plans to destroy Poshkar by looting the supplies coming in from city for Poshkar’s shop. As the plan is being executed, Sultan comes in at the last moment and fights off the looters.
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| ‘Kal’e Thol’ – Sultan’s Kashmri Headbutt. The only other genuine Kashmiri combat move involves throwing a Kangri over the opponent’s head. I have actually seen my father perform this artistic maneuver many moon ago. |
After this the forces that try to seperate Saran and Sultan only get stronger. Sara sees a storm coming. She shares her worries with her friend, the wife of Poshkar. [There voices drowned in the gurgling of the stream.]
Meanwhile, Poshkar Nath tries to talk sense into Rajab Kaka who now seems to be dying of guilt. Rajab Kaka admits that he still loves Sultan like his own son but it’s the voice of the villagers that he fears.
The lovers grow sadder. Razak sings his love’s lament. Rajab Kaka dies. Razak get’s into mounting debt due to his gambling habit. Barkat makes his next move. Sara knows what is coming her way.
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| A Kashmiri Hanji woman with Kanz and Muhul.1904 |
She talks to her friend about the fate that has befell her.
She asks God for help.
The village bard sings. The visuals get poetic.
Sara gets buried under autumn leaves of Chinar. Harud, autumn is upon the village and upon Sara. Play of seasons is constant theme in modern Kashmiri literature. This scene pays dues to that theme.
Razak finally gives in and to settle his debts, agrees to marry-off his sister Sara to Barkat.
Sara’s Mainz Raat arrives. Before the night, she meets Sultan one last time. Sultan bemoans his fate, swears over his love and respect for Rajab Kaka. Sultan bemoans his orphan status.
He tells her he is happy for her. He tells her maybe it wasn’t meant to be. He asks Sara why isn’t there Henna, Mainz , on her hand.
The film gets its title from this sequence. It’s the most significant scene of the film.Sara’s Mainz raat is symbolically arranged by her lover Sultan when he puts bangles around her arms and wishes her happiness.
Sara is married off over the sound of Kashmiri wedding song. [At this moment my mother walks into the room, without asking what I was upto, goes through my cloths singing the song from the film. A song about Mainz.]
The brilliance of Mohan Lal Aima’s use of music shines through. He was at his peak back then. Even the use of background score for someone the scenes is well ahead of time and imaginative. And the music is just not limited to folk, there’s contemporary film, with a distinct Indian Cinema touch of the ear and there is classical Indian music setup. [I will be posting a Soundtrack from the film sometime soon. A cleaned up sound extracts from this film]
Sultan looks on.
Barkat get a wife. He is infuriated at seeing those bangles around Sara’s wrist.
He knows he has caged a bird.
Now, having again lost all his possessions, Razak realizes his follies. He is repentant.
We now see a new side of Sara’s personality. There is residence. She fights with her husband over the state of his brother. She wants Barkat to help Razak out. Barkat too notices this side of Sara’s personality. He who used to flick knives is now beaten by the verbal lashing of his wife.
He gets a quasi heart-attack. We now see a new side of Barkat’s personality too. Strong, evil Barkat now comes across a weakling afflicted by consequences of nature. He, the corrupter of simple village folk now sees cure, refuge in city, the capital of corruption. It’s a textbook Indian film situation but to see Srinagar at the seat of corrupt requires a present Kashmiri viewer to really challenge his senses.
Srinagar is the waterdown version of big bad Bombay in this social setup.
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Barkat acts like an a Kashmiri version of Devdas. He wants to drink as much alcohol as there is water in the ocean. Definitive Devdas inspiration. He smokes, drinks and gambles. Back then when Srinagar wasn’t yet cleansed, among other things Srinagar still had vice centers like gambling den, drinking joints and cinema hall. Now these are only private pleasures in the city.
Sara now shows another facet of her personality. She now weeps for her husband.
Over the grave of her father, she cries for husband and wishes his return. Her two brothers, Razak and the Pandit brother Poshkar Nath console her.
Now, Sara, the woman who used to tie threads on Pir’s mazaar for fulfillment of her love, grabs a black veil and prays to Mustafa, the head of all Pirs.
The beauty of it is that this transitions is presented so logically that it takes imagination to conjure up conflicting natures of her personality.
She is delighted when Sultan volunteers to find and bring back Barkat from the city.
Sultan grabs Barkat from a den and brings him to Sara.
Barkat is dying. He is repentant. He wants the bird be set free.
Barkat dies.
Earlier in the movie on being asked by Poashar Nath about getting Sara married, Rajak Kaka had said that by the end of Harud, autumn, Sara will be happily married off.
The season has changed. Harud is over. We hears the songs of reaping.
We see Sara and Sultan together working the field, reaping. We see a new sun rising.
A couple of years back, when Kashmir again started churning inside my head, I remembered this film. Given the state of film archives in India, I never thought I would be able to watch it again. I felt the loss of this film.
“The first film Maanziraat was released in 1968. It was directed by Pran Kishore, featuring Omkar Aima as the hero and Krishna Wali as the heroine, with Som Nath Sadhu, Pushkar Bhan and others as the supporting cast”
~ Came across this interesting bit in ‘A History of Kashmiri Literature’ by Trilokinath Raina. In the original credits Pran Kishore Kaul is mentioned as Assistant Director. Also the lead actress is named as ‘Mukta’. But from what I have heard, the actress as almost certainly Krishna Wali. Pandit community is so small that I have actually heard about the tough days that the woman had to face in her real life.
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[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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In 1952 Dina Nath Nadim on a visit to Peking gets to see Chinese classical opera, White Haired Girl. He is impressed with the format and believes that it could very well work for a Kashmiri story with Kashmiri folk music. 1953, only a year later, drawing inspiration from a popular Kashmiri legend about change of seasons, he comes up with Bombur ta Yambarzal (The Narcissus and the Bumble Bee). That year this opera is staged for the first time at famous Nedou’s Hotel. Acclaimed to be first of its kind in the entire country, it proves to be a roaring success among the public who can’t keep themselves from singing the songs from this original production. Quasi propagandist context mixed with genuine folk music, a popular story that everyone knows, earnest socialist fervor triggered by promise of a new political change, another new beginning – this creation of Nadim, not yet disillusioned, offers it all. It is a significant achievement.
An achievement significant enough to draw a special audience. In 1955 the show, that has already had a few re-runs, is again put up at Nedou’s Hotel for special guest – military leader and Marshal of the Soviet Union Nikolai Bulganin who is accompanied by First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev. At the end of the show, the two political giants offer Nadim a hug each. The story was believed to be allegory on American Capitalism and Soviet Socialism.
That was the story of ‘Bombur ta Yambarzal’ this far.
Nadim was joyous that day.
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| Dina Nath Nadim, the artist, between the two colossus Khrushchev and Bulganin. 1955. Found this rare photograph (by Anatoliy Garanin) at RIA Novosti website. Dina Nath Nadim stood unidentified, unmarked, with his crew. [Came across this photograph thanks to Autar Mota ji] |
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| Update: July 7 2013. Another photograph of the event. Via: Photodivison India [Update: July 29,2013 Details about the performers in the photograph sent in bt readers] |
This great interest of Russians in a Kashmiri story wasn’t sudden. It was cultivated. In 1955, on a diplomatic goodwill mission for USSR to Kashmir, Uzbek communist leader Sharaf Rashidov, a name that in later years would be called ‘a communist despot’ and a few years later would be called ‘a true Uzbek hero’, came across Dina Nath Nadim’s modern re-telling of an inspiring old Kashmiri story. By the end of 1956 Rashidov was already out with his interpretation of the story in a novella titled ‘Kashmir Qoshighi’ ( also known as Song of Kashmir/Kashmir Song/Kashmirskaya song) acknowledging Nadim’s work.
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Much dwelling, much seeing, much tasted from pleasure and burning the teacher has asked the schoolboys,whose young eyes were alert, and mind just spriad it’s wings for a long-distance flight:
– Where the wisdom of people originates?
– In experience, – one has answered.
– In thought, – another has answered.
– In connection of experience and thought, – third has answered.
And again, having thought, the teacher told:
– The experience of the man dies together with the man, the mind of the man dies together with the man. For the tam of ours is short! The wisdom of the people originates in memory of the people. It is – ocean, from which the mining flows and springs becoming on the way the rivers are born. Memory is the consequent of wisdom and it is the reason of it. But where the memory lives and what gives it force to pass, enriched, from century to century, from past times to times of future?
It is a figure on a wall and a picture on a canvas.
It is a line on an stone and book.
It is a fairy tale, tradition and legend.
It is a song and music.
In them memory of people, which widening the beaches, flows from breed to breed, in them is wisdom of people, which as all the inflaming plume, is transmitted from breed to breed
~ lines from Rashidov’s Song of Kashmir (via this interesting Russian article)
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By the start of 1960, the dream was already over for Nadim and many of his friends. The poets were coming to term with new realities, promises broken and perhaps their own role in the events of past. Making a departure from his earlier ‘progressive’ style, in his 1959 poem Gassa Tul (Blade of Grass) Nadim wrote*:
This blade of grass
Like me
Soft silk when sap was there
Bowed to the sun and waved with the wind.
In winter nights its roots were lost.
Robbed of its sap, it stood erect,
Dried up, stiffened with false pride,
Changed in kind, having outlived its day.
Blow on it, it crumbles;
Step on it, it is dust;
Show it a flame and
Ashes is all.
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1965 was the year of second Kashmir war between India and Pakistan. It was also the year when USSR’s famous Soyuzmultfilm studio produced an animated film called Наргис. Soyuzmultfilm excelled at producing animated fairy tales and other popular stories targeted at children, but for Наргис the story came from Rashidov’s Song of Kashmir. Interesting the film retained the original Kashmiri names of all the characters sketched originally by Dina Nath Nadim, all the names except Yambarzal who is given the popular name Nargis, the name of this film.
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| Nargis |
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| Bombur |
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| Wav |
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| Harud |
With the birth of Doordarshan, by mid-1970s, animated films from Russia made appearance on Indian television science, they would keep up such appearances for decades to come even after the fall of USSR and Soyuzmultfilm getting devoured in capitalist market.
In his early 1970s poem Hisaab Fahmee (Know the Science of Number) about a man whose account balance has gone haywire, Nadim laments*:
It never became four,
At last I saw only a cypher,
One round zero,
Now shrinking, now swelling again,
Like breathing in and out.
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* translated by T.N. Raina
In 1941 when Pandit Nehru’s young niece decided to join the film industry not only did Yashodhara Katju become the first Kashmiri heroine of silver screen but perhaps one of the first woman from a good family to set foot in the not so good film industry – an event that was certainly newsworthy.
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| Film India, August 1941. From FilmIndia Magazine collection generously shared with me by Indian film enthusiast Memsaab who runs one of the best blogs on Indian Cinema. |
Text from the news-piece:
Well-known Society Girl Joins Indian Films
Miss Katju, niece of Pandit Nehru Comes to National Studios
Fourteen year-old Yashodhara Katju comes from a famous family of Kashmir Brahmins who have settled in the United Provinces for generations.
Well connected by ties of blood and friendship with some of the leading families of U.P. Yashodhara is at present studying in the Senior Cambridge class and in addition happens to be an accomplished dancer, having taken an extensive training under some of the best dancers in the country. She is reported to be a fine exponent of the Manipuri and Kathakali schools of dancing.
Her first screen role is likely to be in “Roti” a social picture directed by Mr. Mehboob for the National Studio.
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| Yashodhara Katju. Film India, August 1943 |
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Interestingly, right next to that news-piece was an ad for Afghan Snow cream. One of the biggest name in beauty creams in India right until the 1970s.
Vidhu Vinod Chopra, for all his love of Kashmir and for all his childhood spent in Kashmir (he was born in Kashmir) and as a step towards the ‘right’ direction (remember it was released in the year 2000), made MISSION KASHMIR. One fails to understand how could he make a movie like that and still feel good about himself. He could feel good because that is how the things work in India; we only make filmy blinded righteous Nationalist movies. Our movies just like our mythologies are supposed to have a moral. A conflict has to become a myth. The Hero has to save the nation. Heroine has to sing and dance deep in side dingy caves in front of hundred bearded ‘extra’ men who carry plastic guns in hand and sticky grins on their faces, all this while the heroine tries to seduce Osama and make him forget about Nuking India.
On this relative scale, Vidhu Vinod Chopra must certainly be rating himself highly. But, didn’t his movie have the same elements. A Super Villain (Jackie Shroff playing Hilal Kohistani) who whispers evil words into the innocent ears of an angry and confused young boy, while the boy is carrying the injured Villain on his shoulders, asking him to wage Jihad. While the scene is very symbolic, it again presents a belief that is very common —The Pakistani Islamic Warmonger befooling the ‘innocent but angry’ Kashmiri in the name of religion and making him carryout their dirty tasks. Only this time the idea presented is in symbols in a scene that reminds one of Vikram Vetal (a radio show that at one time was very popular in Kashmir). The idea itself is not new. This idea is the accepted average limit to which a common Indian is willing to naturalize the Kashmir conflict. Besides this, the movie has The Super Army man, the Super Mother, the Super villainous plot (I must say that Kargil conflict was also a super villainous plot. At times Kahsmir does go into Super mode) and everything else that could be Super.
Isn’t he the maker of the film An Encounter with Faces that was nominated for an Oscar in the short, non-fiction film category in 1979. Couldn’t he make a different movie about Kashmir? Why is Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi doing a film about Kashmiri Children called Kashmir Afloat, while the Indian filmmakers are sitting on their golden ass, brooding over what all-great Intellectual filmmakers brood about things like, “Is a heroine of size 36D going to help my film, about street children, get more money on the opening day or should I take a frail newcomer and show her (yet!) plum ass in a dramatic slow motion! ”
But, then things do improve with time or rather the scene does evolves.
Remember the religion less movie Jab Jab Phool Khile. How can anyone make a movie like that? Shashi Kapoor is a Boatsman who loves Nanda, a women from mainland India. Anybody making a movie about Kashmir should have known that the Boatsmen in Kashmir are Muslims of a separate tribe who claim ascendance right to the Prophet Noah, the supposed builder of the greatest boat ever built.
Is religion a problem in the movie? No, religion is one big yarn and India is a one big happy family.
Yahaan(2005) at least gave religion to its main characters. Although I must say that the character of Adaa (played by Minissha Lamba) must have grown up living in a Nutshell just like Thumbelina to have fallen in love with a Hindu Army Man. She must have walked out of her Nutshell one day and stepped straight into the movie. And just like Shakespeare’s Miranda, fallen for the first man that her eyes ever fell upon. One big yarn…the height of things…a tall tale. In Kashmir, a true film buff would call it “Afarwat kiss’hi !” (Possible origin of word: Afarwat mountain in Kashmir), a term used for tall tales that people tell once in a while.
Mani Ratnam’s Roja at least had a screaming wife who cries that she doesn’t care about the Nation, just give her the missing husband. Of course, then the preaching starts and the happy end.
Roja was made in 1992, just years after the trouble in Kashmir started (1989). Maybe, it was too much to ask from the director. One would have had to be foolishly brave to have said something substantial at that time. Try to say something meaningful and then let it be used as propaganda by the other side. Only movies made during the conflict/war are propaganda movies, Nationalistic movies, and patriotic movies. The conflict has to end so that people can make something out of it…begin to analyze what happened… what passed. We need Distance in time and space. However, one can always cash in on the conflict and make a filmy movie about the conflict giving no thought to the actual subjects. Make it entertaining, appealing, alluring, sleek, demonizing, anglicizing, Nationalizing or downright vulgarizing the life of people caught in the conflict.
We are poor people; we do not have enough silver space for all the conflicts to compete for the screen time. While Kashmir suffers from wrongful depiction on the Screen, I guess other places like North Easter India (with its own set of problems) suffers from almost no depiction in the mainstream Bollywood Cinema. Again, the usual suspect Mani Ratnam tried his hand at it with Dilse (1998), managing to create just a great song n dance sequence atop a slow moving train and some memorable music thanks to A. R Rahman ( Bulleh Shah went pop that year and a whole new breed of people can to know of him).
Maybe, it’s too much to ask of main steam movies and their makers. However, even these movies mean something… must mean something. Someone from North East has fewer or maybe no Jab Jab Phool Khile to trash. Don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad.
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| Poster of a Malayalam film in Kochi, Kerala. |
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Also, read: Film talk about Kashmir
‘Rajesh Khanna – Bombay Superstar’ documentary was broadcast as part of ‘Man Alive’ series on BBC 2 in 1973. And was later repeated in 1982 as part of the ‘Festival of India’ that took place that summer in the UK. Rajesh Khanna was the biggest movie star of India.
The documentary has been diligently converted from VHS and uploaded to Youtube by Pavitra66.
It was the fourth part of the video that caught my attention. Shooting of a Mumtaz-Rajesh Khanna movie in a Kashmiri village.
Enjoy the sound!
Broadway near the Army cantonment area,
Neelam at the back of the Civil Secretariat,
Shiraaz at Khanyaar,
Palladium and Regal at Lal Chowk,
Naaz near Iqbal Park,
Shah in Qamarwari,
Firdaus in Hamwal,
Khayyam near the chowk of same name.
Then there was:
Heaven/Hewaan in Anantnag,
Thimaya in Baramula,
and Samad/Summer Talkies in Sopore.
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Kapra in Sopore
Amrish/Regal Talkies at Residency Road:
Regina cinema of Baramulla
Marazi cinema in Kupwara
Heemal at Handwara
Nishat at Anantnag
Zorawar Theater on Srinagar-Baramulla Highway near Pattan,
run by army
These thanks to commenters (see below). Now the total is about 19.
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Image: Remains of Palladium Cinema Hall, Lal Chowk, Srinagar. June, 2008. Burnt down in 1992.
