Sholay (1975) - The First Review

It was a lot of fun translating this early review of Sholay from the Hindi, published in the Delhi based magazine Sarita in 1975. Sarita, a popular magazine since 1945 was always read for its serialized fiction, short stories, non-fiction pieces and articles based on social, and lifestyle issues and continues to thrive. In this review of the film that would later become iconic, the anonymous writer excoriates nearly everything he/she sees. There is neither pussyfooting nor excessive deference to the film and its makers and is a piece of history itself.

Review of Sholay in Sarita, 1975

Producer: G P Sippy

Director: Ramesh Sippy

Main Actors: Dharmendra, Sanjeev Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan, Hema Malini, Jaya Bhadhuri, A K Hangal, Satyen Kappoo, Leela Misra, Amjad Khan

Former police inspector Thakur Sahab (Sanjeev Kumar) is in need of two such thugs who could trounce fifteen or twenty assailants at a time. Thakur Sahab knows that Viru (Dharmendra) and Jai (Amitabh Bachchan) are such lowlifes, but they are full of courage and steeped in humanity (All hail writer duo Salim Javed). Both brave men reach Thakur's village. It's inevitable that there should be someone to ferry them to the village. So, this time, there is a 'tangewali', Hema Malini (Basanti), and Hema's mare 'Dhanno', who seems quite well-trained, and fills the role of Hema's sister or friend. The remaining story of the dacoit Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan) is an Indian adaptation of a masala mix made up of bits of 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid', 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' and 'The Secret of Santa Vittoria'.

The film is just about OK until the interval, and, to an extent, entertaining. But after that, it seems that the director of this 'khichdi' film and its writer duo Salim Javed are afflicted with seizures of fights and violent bloodletting. But the fact is that these scenes of fighting and violence are both lifeless and unexciting. 

There are several sets inspired by Hollywood films, but these are largely ineffective. This is because Indian set designers have not yet learnt to mimic solid masonry with walls made out of paper. In the story, a water tank has a prominent role, but it is difficult to understand how water rises to the tank, as the village has neither electricity nor diesel engines. And where does the water go from this tank? There are several examples of such ridiculousness in the film.

Considering the kind of films that Sanjeev, Dharmendra and Amitabh are acting in today, it is difficult to take them seriously in their various roles in 'Sholay'. Dharmendra and Amitabh neither look like thugs nor horses for hire. Seeing Dharmendra's bare chest or his arms does not put you in mind of his character in 'Phool aur Patthar'. Now he looks like a Hindi-film actor quite full of himself. Amitabh is quite striking in his white clothes, and is even effective to an extent, but he most certainly does not look like a killer for hire.

Sanjeev is considered an actor with a remarkable 'range', but in 'Sholay' he completely fails in his efforts to become like (Hollywood's) Omar Sharif. The sounds emanating from his throat are like the characters speaking from those haunted house type of films.

And what can be said about Hema Malini and her constant 'Yaani ki' and 'Yunhi ki'? She neither looks like a young girl nor like a full-grown woman.

In other roles, Hangal and Satyen Kappoo reprise their usual crying/chest beating acts resembling fifty-year-old antique chachajis, mamajis and nanajis, with their cloying 'Kaise ho beti?' style. The new villain Amjad has not made up his mind whom to ape - his late father Jayant, or Dilip Kumar, or Pran or Premnath. Of course, his bellowing makes the 70mm stereophonic sound system quite meaningful.

There is a lot of strength in Dwarka Divecha's camerawork. In any case, Salim Javed take stock of all their earlier successful films to concoct a new screenplay. Director Ramesh Sippy has been quite effective in some portions of the film. But watching so many rubbish parts one does not feel that such a man (or woman) can be a film director at all. Rahul Dev Burman's music misses the point. Anand Bakshi's lyrics are more of the same old stuff.

In summary, 'Sholay' stands because of sone technical competence. Otherwise, it is quite a crime to spend a crore of rupees on this rubbish film, and all those who made these films are accomplices to this crime as also those who, goggle-eyed by its advertising campaign, went to see it with such enthusiasm and returned home wringing their hands in regret.

Between stillness and movement: remembering Gieve Patel by Sampurna Chattarji

Between stillness and movement

Remembering Gieve Patel (18 August 1940—3 November 2023), the poet and the person

Sampurna Chattarji 

Poet Laureate Gieve Patel reads from his Collected Poems at NCPA, 12 November 2022, photo courtesy: Tata Literature Live Festival

It is 2008. I am en route to the Mussoorie Writers Festival organised by Stephen Alter. What is making me slightly dizzy with disbelief is not the excitement of reading from my first ever poetry book in the company of stalwarts—it’s the fact that I am to travel from Dehradun airport to Mussoorie with Gieve Patel. I am nervous. I know his work. I have studied it. My father has taught it. I have heard and met him at poetry readings in Bombay. But to travel together by car? What if he finds me insufferable? What if I find him aloof? I am nervous. 

I am stupid with nervousness. When we get off the airplane and find each other near the baggage carousel, the infectious grin sets me at ease, right away. The car is waiting. Gieve tells the driver to take it easy up the slopes. “I have restless legs syndrome,” he says to me. “We’ll have to stop often, so I can get out and walk around a bit. It will slow us down; I hope you don’t mind. But first, we need to get ourselves a good breakfast!” 

And so begins my first real interaction with Gieve, on that memorable ride to Mussoorie, conducted at a leisurely, companionable pace that disarms me entirely. I relax. There is no pressure. No pretentiousness, no pose. We speak, we share silences, we nap. We stop, often. Sometimes I get out and walk with him. We eat, we drink coffee. By the time we pull into Mussoorie, darkness has fallen, the hills are ablaze with jewels of light. We park our bags, and a person with a flashlight leads the way to Stephen’s house, where all the other writers are already gathered for a welcome dinner. We take a steepish shortcut through the darkness between the trees. Gieve follows the circle of light as nimbly as I do. He shows no signs of fatigue, chipper and dandy as ever, in a thick grey sweater that I will begin to recognise over the years. We ring the bell and enter a house full of laughter and warmth. Stephen welcomes me graciously (we are meeting for the first time) and embraces Gieve. They are old friends. As I cup my cold hands around a glass of hot toddy, I wonder how one car-ride can make me feel like we are old friends too. 

 

With Gieve at the Mussoorie Writers Festival 2008

That was Gieve. The one who made the youngest, shyest person feel like a friend in a matter of hours. The one who saw and heard you with the same attention he brought to his practice as a doctor, an artist, a poet, a playwright and a teacher. 

It grieves me to have to use the past tense. On the 3rd of November 2023 he passed away, at a palliative care centre in Pune. In the run-up to this day, his daughter Avaan had kept me updated, sending reassuring messages, strong and serene in the knowledge that her father was supported, loved, at peace, without (too much) pain. When the news came, a bunch of us poets and translators had just emerged from a festival at the NCPA (National Centre of Performing Arts) in Bombay. I had been expecting it any day now, but how could ‘any day now’ be that soon? He was gone.

Later, the cold clutch of grief melting within the warm circle of people who lived by what they believed in—the power of the word, the arts—I looked up at the sky and thought, he would have approved. That this is where my mourning began, at the site of celebration, where almost exactly a year ago, he received the Tata Literature Live! Poet Laureate Award for 2022—23. 

When Amy Fernandes, the festival director, had asked me if I would write the citation and be in conversation with Gieve at the award ceremony, it was as if I had received a prize myself. In the run-up to the event, we met, spoke, planned over email and breakfast. 

 

5 November 2022, prepping at The Knead Café, Kala Ghoda

    

I had a lifetime of questions. Gieve had a lifetime of patience. We sifted and sorted, shaping the event so that the audience would get a glimpse of his oeuvre in the short span of 30 minutes allotted to us. And of course, there would have to be poems! I had a mile-long list of favourites, from which we picked and planted, we finetuned, until the choreography was down to Gieve’s approval: ‘As we used to say in the old days: “tip-top”!’

I remember that evening, the 12th of November 2022, as if it were yesterday. The backstage bonhomie, Gieve immaculately formal, and gleamingly impish; the waves of applause and laughter from the audience as Gieve read and spoke; how he was able to turn the stage into a drawing room, both intimate and expansive. I remember reading the citation with only slightly trembling hands and heart: 

For five decades, Gieve Patel has been looking for the ‘possible light’ beyond the century’s punctured and bruised skin. He has embraced the people ‘with needle, knife and tongue’; he has observed the city (almost always Bombay) with humour and horror; he has listened to the ‘subterranean splinterings’ between pain and pleasure; he has distilled and absorbed meaning and matter into ‘mind and heart’.

All of this Gieve Patel has done with a poetry of profound sympathy for the underdog; a healthy suspicion of ‘fluent victories’. His moments of truth come to us in hard-hitting flashes of hard-won insight, cutting us to the quick, teaching us how to relearn tenderness, how to acknowledge our carnality, corporeality, and chaos. He enables us to continue asking that despairing question— “How do you withstand, body?” He shows us our inconvenient, irreverent relationships with a ‘Mirrored, Mirroring’ God who merits unsolemn prayers and (un)scheduled appointments!

[…]

In recognition of the mind that has reflected on ‘The Ambiguous Fate of … Being Neither Muslim nor Hindu in India’; the heart that has stayed alert to the ‘thin continuous cry that hounds the universe’; the poet who sees himself as a ‘profane monk’ on a wayward pilgrimage with words—we are delighted and honoured to announce Gieve Patel as the 13th Tata Literature Live! Poet Laureate, 2022-’23.

 

 

I remember hoping I had encapsulated everything he meant, not just to me and so many younger poets, but to the world of Anglophone poetry. Today, I know it was not nearly enough. Neither the citation (which Gieve told me was the ‘most spectacular Dassera gift’ I could have ever given him) nor that ‘tip-top’ conversation. We had meant to continue it, deepen it, I had so many things that I wanted to know more about. 

In January-February this year, Gieve mailed to say he would love to take our plan forward, to have that in-depth discussion and get that long-deferred long interview down, whenever I could make the time. The fact that I could not make the time is a regret that I will not get over. His kind words in the last email (in May) saying he absolutely understood if I had too much to handle already should console me. But they don’t. Not yet. Maybe never. And so, I return to the poems. To the things we did speak about. 

MOVEMENT // STILLNESS.

Gieve’s way of knowing the world through poetry was never static. As his lines moved, the mind moved. And yet, how calm, how calming the words, ‘be still long enough and it may trace us to a level’. Between stillness and movement, I marvelled at the way he gauged the distance needed in order to translate ‘reality’ into poetry. He never simply reported it—he balanced the centripetal/centrifugal movements of his mind while maintaining its centre of gravity firmly in the real. Through an immersion in chaotic outer movements, he was able to bring those ‘finely shaded’, finely organised ‘inner movements’ to the light. I’m thinking here of a poem like ‘From Bombay Central’ where the jostle of riding cheek-by-jowl with humanity is accompanied by an inner silence: 

I sink back into my hard wooden

Third-class seat, buffered by

This odour, as by a divine cushion.

And do not suspect that this ride

Will be for me the beginning of a meditation

On the nature of truth and beauty.

For me, Gieve’s was a particular poetics of empathy as a function of looking. A.K. Ramanujan, with whom he had such a special friendship wrote ‘Watch your step, sight may strike you blind in unexpected places’. Gieve looked closely, tenderly and unflinchingly at the brutalities and tortures of the world—and refused to go blind. How did he sustain the act of looking? 

COMMUNITY // COLLABORATION

In his poems, the flesh was often where the poem was born. The poem called ‘Cord-cutting’ is about birthing a child. Equally it is about looking keenly even as you ‘divide your eyes and try to capture an altered feature’.

That dividing of the eyes—a kind of singular two-fold attention—was at the heart of his two-fold commitment as a lifelong practitioner of poetry: the poet as individual artist, the poet as part of a community. 

 

Gieve Patel (fourth from right) after the Hope Street Poets reading, 2014.

        

In Bombay, that participation was not limited to the poetry community. Apart from very vivid memories of Gieve reading, listening and engaging thoughtfully and wittily, at numerous poetry gatherings over the years, I have very fond memories of Gieve travelling all the way to Juhu to see the films my husband was screening at Prithvi theatre—Pasolini’s Trilogy of Life, Derek Jarman’s adaptations of Shakespeare’s sonnets and The Tempest, and Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II.

He was always receptive, endlessly absorbent. While trawling through old emails as a way of shoring up grief, I found an exchange on Russian translators that dates back to July 2016. We had been talking of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and while he admitted to being a ‘creature of habit’ who might prefer to re-read Constance Garnett, perhaps it was time to be ‘adventurous’ and try out the zip and zing of the Richard Pevear-Larissa Volokhonsky duo that I had told him about. 

When he had his solo show at Gallerie Mirchandani-Steinerucke in January 2017, he invited not just my husband and I, but my parents as well, not forgetting to add: ‘alas, there is no lift, and it is a steep climb’. A tiny detail that made all the difference: the climb would be impossible for my father with his heart condition, and knowing just how long the schlep into town is for us from Thane, Gieve wouldn’t have wanted my dad to make that trip for nothing. Thoughtful and considerate, ever the gentleman, he equally relished ‘shenanigans’ (a favourite word) and revelled in a playful wickedness. 

MISCHIEF // IRREVERENCE

The poet as mischief-maker is not often appreciated. Evident in poems like ‘Carrying bras and panties to the NCPA’, I love the way his poems can also play tricks on those of us who would rather both poet and reader be seen as perpetually sober and solemn human beings! Never a ‘believer’ in the conventional sense, who but Gieve could have written:

A Variation on St. Teresa

Whenever You withdraw

only a little way from me I

immediately

fall to the ground.

I wait upon

the strings You hold. In

this equation whatever

to make of love? And

of any independent

performance of a glorious

kind? My limbs

at best may be infused

by an outer force; and so

inconsolably

I await Your storms: screaming

seas, ripping gales, clouds

tumbled across the mouths of valleys

spewing lightning, with trees

shaken like rattles

in a child’s fist!

These then, at last, do move me.

Yes, I am moved,

indeed I am, I am.

As are we, with him. There is a turning point in the poem—as there may well be in life—which is not amplified into epiphany, but simply acknowledged as mystery. In a poem like the one below, which broaches the question of ‘God’, there is his trademark humour:  

The Difficulty

In the beginning

it is difficult

even to say,

‘God’,

one is so out of practice.

And embarrassed.

Like lisping in public

about candy.

At fifty!

Gieve’s relationship with the sacred and the profane hinged on that turning point, creating a door we could swivel ourselves through. In his translations of the seventeenth-century Gujarati mystic Akho (or Akha Mahadev) his irreverence makes a case for a different kind of faith—one that is scathing in its exposure of hypocrisies:

His acquaintance with Hari—nil. 

       But he sits decked in ochre, 

       guru’s garb pulled from a bag of tricks.

As snake goes visiting fellow reptile’s den, 

       disciples saunter in 

       to exchange a lick on the mouth with him, 

       then slither homeward again.

Too many such gurus in the world! 

       Small chance, says Akha, 

       they could give you a hand, 

       reach you across.

*

Turban tilted rakishly 

to hide the bald spot, 

but how will that mask 

the godlessness in your heart?

Such dandy twirled whiskers! 

Such fancy tripping speech! 

Fool! Death tomorrow 

thumps on a slackened drum.

Your charade goes poof, 

a miserable fart. 

Akha says: Rotted doors 

fall apart.

*

This is 

       Bhakti without Knowledge: 

       a dog barks when he hears 

       dogs barking,

each howling after the other 

       in a rhapsody of belief. 

       Has someone cared to ask 

       who’s seen the thief?

So claim what you will 

       to have known or learned. 

       Akha says: You will go wrong

With scalpel gaze and palpable touch, with a single phrase like ‘the skin is soul-deep’, Gieve could subvert our notions of depth and surface and bring the body back into our contemplation of the spirit. 

I last met him on the 15th of September, a precious appointment at Hinduja Hospital made possible by his daughter whose phone the call came from. Expecting Avaan’s voice, I was blown away by Gieve’s voice instead, chipper as ever, piping “Guess who?” It was he who said, you can come today, any time, a visitor’s pass would be left for me at reception. I went. Rather I flew. There he was, small and bundled under the covers. I dared not breathe. He sat up, coughing, and slightly shivery. He asked for a sweater. And there it was, the grey sweater, being tenderly draped around his shoulders by Avaan. “I know that sweater!” I found myself saying, and suddenly all three of us were laughing. I had been tense as a trip-wire, wary of wearing him out, conscious that my need to see him was far greater than any help I might extend. In minutes, Gieve had defused that tension, turning that hospital room into a drawing room, intimate and expansive, introducing me to his doctor as a friend and a poet, a gracious host who made me feel at home. 

He asks about my husband. He speaks of how he can see the sky from his bed. His hospital clothes are spotless white. Before I leave, I do something I never do, not even with my parents. I touch his feet. Outside, I look at the sky, up at the building, across the waves to Worli Sealink. It is, I know, the first and last pranam. Pain lifts, sorrow descends. A profound trickster, a profane monk, Gieve’s time may be up on this earth. But not in the minds and hearts of each one of us who loved him and his work. 

Time’s Up

When it’s time then

to pack up,

to say goodbye,

(bye-bye!)

I would like

my

soul

carried away

 

to the Thither .. ha!—

by transport

none other

than

Indian Railways: a

third-class carriage

with open windows

on a day

not

too crowded.

                       ________________________________________________________

All poems reproduced from the Collected Poems of Gieve Patel (Poetrywala, 2017)

A short version of this tribute first appeared in The National Herald

Ibn-e-Mariam hua kare koi (Ghalib, translated by Mustansir Dalvi)

Ghalib by Sadiqain, 1969

Ibn-e-Mariam hua kare koi

by

Mirza Ghalib

Ibn-e-Mariam hua kare koi

Mere dukh ki dawa kare koi

Shaaraa-o-a’in par madaar sahi

Aise qaatil ka kya kare koi

Chaal jaise kadi kamaan ka teer

Dil mein aise ke ja kare koi

Baat par vaan zubaan kat-ti hai

Woh kahe aur suna kare koi

Bak raha hoon junoon mein kya kya kuch

Kuch na samjhe Khuda kare koi

Na suno gar bura kahe koi

Na kaho gar bura kahe koi

Rok lo gar ghalat chale koi

Baksh do gar khata kare koi

Kaun hai jo nahin hai haajat-mand

Kiski haajat ka ravaa kare koi

Kya kiya Khizr ne Sikandar se

Ab kise rehnuma kare koi

Jab tavaqqo hi uth gai Ghalib

Kyon kisi ka gila kare koi

Here is Abida Parveen's rendition of Ghalib's Ghazal 'Ibn-e-Mariam hua kare koi'

Oh, for a son of Mary to be

translated by

Mustansir Dalvi

Oh, for a son of Mary to be

The one to redress my melancholy

The one who wields letter and word of law

How shall we deal with an assassin like this?

He struts like an arrow, in a bow pulled taut

Oh, for someone to pierce my heart like this!

The tongue is cut just as word takes wing

He speaks, but is there anyone to hear?

I rant incoherently in frenzied passion

I hope, dear Lord, no one hears me now

Do not listen to words spoken in malice

Do not respond to words spoken in spite

Show the wayward the correct path

Forgive those who transgress against you

Who amongst us is not in need?

Who amongst us can assuage them all?

Recall how Alexander was treated by Khizr

Who now can be truly considered a guide?

When there are no more expectations left

What is there to complain about, Ghalib?

Translation and Transliteration © Mustansir Dalvi, 2020, All rights reserved.

Rahiye ab aisi jagah chal kar (Ghalib, translated by Mustansir Dalvi)

Rahiye ab aisi jagah chal kar
by
Mirza Ghalib

Rahiye ab aisi jagah chal kar jahaan koi na ho
Hamsukhan koi na ho aur humzabaan koi na ho

Be-dar-o-deewaar sa ik ghar banaaya chaahiye
Koi humsaaya na ho aur paasbaan koi na ho

Padiye gar beemaar to koi na ho teemaardaar
Aur agar mar jaaiye to nauhaa-khwaan koi na ho



Come, let us find a place to live
translated by
Mustansir Dalvi

Come, let us find a place to live
Where we will find ourselves alone
Where no one speaks our tongue
And our thoughts are our thoughts alone

Come, let us have a house about us
Without walls or doors
Where there are no neighbours
And no one to guard our home

Should we be stricken down with malaise
We’d find neither doctor nor nurse
And should we come to the end of our days
No one would sing elegies over our grave




Translation and Transliteration © Mustansir Dalvi, 2020, All rights reserved.

Amitabh Bachchan, Vinod Khanna and Rajinikanth- three careers in retrospect

Amitabh Bachchan, Vinod Khanna and Rajinikanth

- three careers in retrospect

Amitabh Bachchan was a part of my growing up years, 

which is why I will never watch Sooryavansham

The transformation of the angry young man into the smug patriarch is tragic for hard-core fans of the actor, who turns 75 on October 11.
Published in scroll.in Oct 11, 2017 · 01:30 pm

For two days during the summer vacation of 1977, I stood in the advance booking line to buy tickets for Amar Akbar Anthony. I did not succeed. Such was the hype that people had lined up in the early hours, much before I sauntered in hoping to see Amitabh Bachchan as Anthony Gonsalves before everyone else. Despite being a multi-starrer with Rishi Kapoor and Vinod Khanna, both of whom could easily headline their own films, this was all about Bachchan.

While I did go home empty-handed and did not watch the film for several weeks thereafter, I did not mind too much. My time would come. Until then, I satisfied myself with the radio programmes on Vividh Bharati, those 15-minute advertisements for the film, full of dialogue, song snippets and Ameen Sayani.

The adulation for Amitabh Bachchan started with Bombay to Goa and gained momentum with Zanjeer. At that time, we did not even realise that there were two ‘chs’ in his name. For us, he was the bee’s knees and was always referred to in the rushed and compressed “Amitabachan!” The young Jamaal in Slumdog Millionaire, covered in shit and holding up the unsoiled photograph of his hero, gets the pronunciation right exactly as I remember it from my schooldays. This metaphor for the unsullied leading man of our youth is apt. By the time Sholay and Deewar were released, Amitabh Bachchan could do no wrong.

I was in complete thrall of both man and image in the mid-1970s, as were many of my peers. We were just hitting our early teens and had the role model we were perhaps unconsciously searching for. The rebellious but upright angry young man channelised our angst at our school teachers, our parents and every authority figure around us. We were genuine fans, devouring information on Bachchan through the radio, though film magazines that we leeched onto waiting our turn at barbershops and exchanging gossip more made-up than real. Our eyes were willingly stabbed by the flashes of lurid, hand-painted, largely unsophisticated posters that were the norm at the time.

And, of course, we watched every Amitabh Bachchan movie that was ever released (and the whole back catalogue) on Doordarshan on Sundays, from Saat Hindustani to Bansi Birju to Ek Nazar to Raaste ka Patthar to his early Hrishikesh Mukerjee films. We watched in disbelief his villainous turn in Parwana and his rather wimpy presence in Reshma aur Shera, and cheered his herogiri in Hera Pheri and Khoon Pasina. We watched movies even if Bachchan had a blink-and-miss cameo, as in Kunwara Baap or Chala Murari Hero Banane. We watched him in some of the direst movies ever made in Hindi, such as Besharam (which seemed to have been scripted on the sets and has Sharmila Tagore covered in shoe polish in one scene) and Zameer (where it is unclear whether he is Saira Banu’s long-lost brother or love interest). We realised that some of these movies were drivel, but all we wanted was Amitabh Bachchan. The story came second.

Amar Akbar Anthony did change our perception of Bachchan as an action hero. This phenomenon has been described by several commentators before, but after his turn as Anthony bhai, Bachchan became “a one man industry” (a phrase apparently bestowed upon him by Francois Truffaut). As Anthony, he was action hero, romantic lead, and comic relief all in one. No longer the smouldering, brooding presence filled with self-righteousness and suppressed violence, Anthony was a chameleon and became whatever you wanted him to be as long as (to paraphrase Hobson) he was Amitabh Bachchan.

From this film on to this day, with few exceptions every film is a meta-film, a showcase for the variety show for the superstar he had become. Bachchan prefigures Rajinikanth, a hall of mirrors, with multiple reflections, all of the same person.

It has been correctly said that the Bachchan phenomenon rang the death knell for several character actors, especially comedians who always had their fixed space in the multiple narratives and vignette-filled montages that structured most mainstream Hindi films. Every Bachchan film was so dominated by the colossus that he subsumed everything into himself. The poor fellows in their waning years turned to direction, such as Deven Varma, Jagdeep and Mohan Choti. The makers in turn followed into oblivion, tail between legs.

And yet, Amitabh Bachchan reigned supreme in the eyes of his fans. His films now were fan fodder and kept everyone satisfied. We knew that even when he acted in ensemble films such as Trishul or Kala Patthar, the focus was solely on the central performance. All the other roles existed, for better or worse, to prop him up.

But then, sometime between Coolie and Mrityudaata, something changed. It was as if Amitabh Bachchan had been kidnapped and replaced by a lookalike also called Amitabh Bachchan. His roles were tired re-treads of bombast and exposition, doing and saying things he really did not seem to believe in, dressed up in costumes that bordered on the ridiculous, like Laal Badshah or Toofan or the truly, truly atrocious Ajooba.

Whether this was due to the after-effects of the Coolie accident, the onset of myasthenia gravis, the Bofors accusations, the self-imposed exile of five years, or the abject failure of his company Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited and its attendant financial liabilities, the later films weaned us away from starry-eyed fandom with alacrity. For the first time we began to question what was willy-nilly handed to us. Had the great man lost his mojo?

Amitabh Bachchan’s finest performance during this time, his swansong almost, was as a postman in an advertisement for the soft drink Mirinda. Here we saw the very best of Bachchan in under a minute – his commanding presence, his mellifluous recitation and impeccable comic timing as he reads out a postcard to a hapless villager from his wife with the news that she is leaving him for another man. Through rhymed verse and innuendo, we realise that the other man is none other than the postman himself. No tagline for an advertisement had greater weight: “Zor ka jhatka dheere se lage.”

With this delightful exception, our growing disenchantment with the one-man industry reached a tipping point with Mohabbatein, in which Amitabh Bachchan presented to us his newly crafted bearded look and unbridled patriarchal pig-headedness which, in an earlier and better time, would have been the domain of Rehman, KN Singh or Murad. Bachchan’s role was metonymous with all that was wrong in our increasingly conservative society. Was our disgruntlement a sign that we were growing up ourselves? A reaction against the decreasing space for inclusivity and cosmopolitanism – a space that was once occupied by Bachchan? Where did the rebelliousness go? Who was this dodgy daddy/uncle type figure who was borderline distasteful?

Mohabbatein was not a one-off role. Bachchan seemed to find increasing comfort as a patriarch full of misogynistic bluster and self-righteousness. This was evident in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, Waqt, Viruddh, and several other films. The outsider was now domesticated, assimilated in the mainstream, the upholder of some of the most venal values.

Around the time of his resurgence with the success of Kaun Banega Crorepati, we also saw Bachchan increasingly in print and on billboards and television hawking all manner of products from noodles and mango candy to cement and real estate. There was once an angry port worker who asserted, “Main aaj bhi phenke hue paise nahin uthaata.” Now it seemed to be all about “Bangla, gaadi and bank balance”. It was not that we begrudged Bachchan his earnings from endorsements. We just questioned the products. Jewellery? Infant clothing? Hair oil?

Yet, Bachchan continued to appear in a handful of roles that were challenging and enjoyable. Aks gave us glimpses of his former angry persona, while Paheli had a very interesting comic cameo. Perhaps the best of Bachchan’s current roles is Paa, which subsumes both his persona and his voice and shows us the potential of what he could have been if Amar Akbar Anthony had never happened.
On the other hand, we have to contend with his award-winning roles such as Agneepath, in which his stylised acting and exaggerated accent grates like nails on a blackboard, or the absurdly conceived mentor figure in Black, whose efforts at taming a deaf-mute girl consist of berating her by shouting at the top of his voice.

The later Amitabh Bachchan is a very real disappointment for an acolyte of the former Amitabh Bachchan. Not for us the appellations of Aby Baby or Big B: he is the once and forever Amitabachan. It hurts to see him play the roles that once would have ideally suited Om Prakash (Baabul, Piku). The movement from the daddy to the daddu roles may be a natural progression for an emasculated angry man, but it is disappointing to see him find such comfort in it. There is perhaps no sadder creature than a former fan.

Which why I may be the only Indian citizen who, despite its 24/7 ubiquity on all film channels, has not yet and will perhaps never watch Sooryavansham.

Vinod Khanna conquered Hindi cinema by just being there

When not playing the villain, Vinod Khanna played straight man to the more garrulous co-stars.
Published in scroll.in on May 03, 2017 · 05:00 pm

Before Gabbar Singh, there was Jabbar Singh.

Not a grumpy, grungy, paunchy dacoit on the run from the police, but a smartly turned out young man with a twirled-up moustache, clean-shaven cleft chin and a black tikka, a daakuon ka sardaar, who laid down his own law at the end of a double-barrel gun. Before Amjad Khan, there was Vinod Khanna. A leading man/villain to face off a leading man/hero Dharmendra. It would be easy to be confused, watching Raj Khosla’s Mera Gaon Mera Desh, to decide on whose side you would rather be. This was the film that made Khanna a marquee star. Graduating from his several turns as a conventional bad guy, it would only be a few films before he would become one of the most sought after leading men of the 1970s.

And yet, one could argue that becoming the good guy emasculated him. In his early roles as an antagonist he inevitably chewed more scenery, and had more eyes riveted on him than on whichever hapless protagonist he was cast against, whether Manoj Kumar, Vinod Mehra, or even Dharmendra and Rajesh Khanna. Not since the heyday of Pran was Hindi cinema blessed with a youthful bad guy of immense charm and swagger, one who could deliver threats with an edge and a smile.

One wonders what direction Hindi cinema in the ’70s would have taken had Khanna remained with the dark side. Look at Mere Apne, a two-antagonist film, in which Khanna as the gang leader is still remembered for his intensity even though he is cast against the usually bombastic Shatrughan Sinha.
Khanna was cast with Amitabh Bachchan in Hera Pheri, Khoon Pasina, Amar Akbar Anthony, Zameer, Parvarish and Muqaddar Ka Sikandar. In all these films, except the last one, there are no real villains to pose a significant challenge to the heroes. Imagine the possibilities had Khanna been cast as the villain in each of them.

Why is Vinod Khanna so fondly regarded upon his passing, while still making us feel that there could have been more to him? As a leading man, he strode the ’70s with other colossi like Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra and Shashi Kapoor. In nearly 50 of his 140-odd films, he was cast with another hero or with multiple heroes. Apart from the six with Bachchan, he made two films with Feroze Khan and Randhir Kapoor, three with Shashi Kapoor, five with Rajesh Khanna, six with Jeetendra and seven each with Dharmendra and Shatrughan Sinha. Almost all his significant hits came from some of these films.

Here’s the rub. When not playing the villain, Vinod Khanna, Adonis, heart-throb and ladies man, retreated into the scenery, playing straight man to his more garrulous co-stars. In most of his roles, he is the upright do-gooder, the head of the family or a police officer, serious and sacrificing in nature, a witness to the shenanigans of more expressive scene stealers. Slightly boring, in fact.
This self-effacement is the leitmotif of Khanna’s career and can be seen even when he is cast in women-centric films. As the stoic spouse alongside Hema Malini in Meera and Rihaee, in Lekin with Dimple Kapadia or in Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki opposite Nutan and Asha Parekh, Khanna subsumes his role to that of a foil, allowing the women to take centerstage, and by holding back, allowing them to shine.

His solo roles were rarely blockbusters, but they have some of his best performances. In Gulzar’s Achanak, almost a one-actor film, he can be seen in virtually every shot, and is a good example of character development as a cuckolded army man who murders his wife and her lover and goes on the run.

Among the many roles Khanna has played as police inspector, the best by far is in Inkaar, a police procedural inspired by Akira Kurosowa’s High and Low, a story of the misdirected kidnapping and rescue of a child who belongs to the servant of a rich man. The climax is a long chase, and his quest to find the villain (Amjad Khan) and the ransom money allow Khanna to shine as a realistic action hero.

Among the many loving remembrances after Vinod Khanna’s death on April 27, filmmaker Paromita Vohra described his screen persona best, as one of “unhurried hotness”. He could capture both your gaze and imagination but with suaveness and cool. It is a persona more suited to the ’70s, when the leading man was one of a film’s characters and not its raison d’être, a protagonist in a quotidian setting who could still do extraordinary things.

My favourite Vinod Khanna film embodies all these qualities. In Imtihan, he is cast as a college teacher. Leaving a rich father, he departs from home to the stirring song Ruk Jaana Nahin and ends up as a teacher in a college filled with long-haired, wide-collared and bell bottomed delinquents. Over the course of the film, he reforms them and finds himself and his lady love. This was an action film without much filmy action (one fight scene in the end) that kept moving, with Khanna in the most canonical role of his career. There is nobility in his bearing and a dignity that he holds on to despite the adversities he has to undergo. Imtihan was one of his few solo hits.

It may be counter-intuitive, but the most famous role of his career, as Inspector Amar in Amar Akbar Anthony, is the one that probably led Khanna down the slippery slope to retirement. Typecasting at its worst, we find Khanna once again as the straight man to slapstick Amitabh Bachchan, feeding him lines that would be answered by memorable retorts (Robert? Kaun woh fast bowler Andy Robert?) in a movie that is less a narrative and more a variety show.

Khanna had the least to do in this burlesque that allowed both Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor to take centerstage. He does little other than react and is the least proactive in driving the pace of the film. His own slapstick turn as a one-man band in the climax is completely unbelievable, given his dour persona throughout.

Bachchan, on the other hand, consolidated his superstardom with a big-top performance – performances really – as hero, lover, fighter and comedian, killing once and for all the need for the mandatory parallel comedy track in Hindi films.

Movies after Amar Akbar Anthony would be more and more crafted as vehicles for superstars who were the narrative rather than part of it. Little wonder then that Vinod Khanna found it best to quit movies for his spiritual quest with Osho.

Rajinikanth in Hindi cinema: 

We awaited his wanton assault on our senses and were not disappointed

We look back on the Tamil superstar's Mumbai years.
Published in scroll.in on Jul 25, 2016 · 11:04 am

There is a moment in the Kabali trailer where the Superstar walks down a corridor with henchmen wearing a lethal Manila shirt. With one deft flick he sweeps back the trademark mane and I was, like Proust, transported back to the misbegotten days of my youth, the eighties. In that politically incorrect and not yet meta-charged period we were uncomplaining consumers – from the highs of the cricket World Cup victory to the lows of B-grade Hindi cinema. We absorbed it all, and accepted that Hindi cinema was no longer obliged to follow any rules, of history, cinematography, color, or continuity. Scenes assaulted our senses like “just one damn thing after another”.

Two men bestrode our screens in that period, overturning the traditional pantheon of filmi heroes with a story arc – Mithun Chakraborty and Rajinikanth. Rajini’s arrival on the shores of popular Hindi cinema (Andha Kanoon, 1983) followed Kamal Haasan (Ek Duje Ke Liye, 1981). While Bombay’s film world had already embraced female actors from the South for several decades, the debut of male superstars needed a more fortuitous positioning. But both fitted in oddly into the established system. Haasan did better with his edgy romantic roles, and the occasional directorial deviation (Chachi 420, 1997), while Rajinikanth was always difficult to slot.

In our Hindi filmi consciousness, Ranjikanth first made a dent in 1980, not as an actor but as a name, Billa. This was the Tamil remake of the Amitabh Bachchan blockbuster Don. Billa had other associations for us, as the man, who along with his cohort Ranga abducted and killed the Chopra siblings from Delhi in 1978, a case that had caught the imagination of the country in the years before carpet-bomb media. Billa was no name for a hero for an Amitabh Bachchan copy. While we sniggered about these Tamil fellows having no sense of cultural association, Rajinikanth would nonchalantly and unselfconsciously make another movie in 1982, called Ranga.

And then, of course, came the jokes.

Rajinikanth’s reputation preceded his debut in Bombay cinema – he of the swirling hair, the twirling cigarette, and the twerking sunglasses, whose iconic entry scenes, slo-mo and fast-mo fist fights and somersaults were laced with sound effects and punch dialogue that broke the fourth wall. With Andha Kanoon, we awaited his wanton assault on our senses, and were not disappointed. Enter Vijay Kumar Singh, man in black. As he walks around his childhood home (where, inevitably, his parents and sister have been raped and/or murdered) we see Rajinikanth’s POV. Unlike ordinary mortals, his vision is all fish-eye. His gaze is so intense the whites of his eyes turn red as we watch and he smashes a block of RCC kept right in the middle of the room for the sole purpose of smashing it. In declamatory tones, he promises revenge, but while Hindi film folk would raise a mutthi bhar matti as attestation, Rajini does more – he picks up and pulverises a fistful of concrete.

How can we assess the career of the Boss in Hindi cinema?

In movie after movie from 1983 to 1995, Rajinikanth pressed all the right cinematic triggers that would send his Tamil fans into Pavlovian frenzy, but this somehow worked only fitfully in Bombay. One reason for this ambivalence may be that Andha Kanoon, while a big hit, relegated him to Amitabh Bachchan, who despite only making an extended cameo remained centre stage. Bachchan also got to sing the title song. Rajinikanth ultimately would come across as a hit-man. Hindi cinema loves its stereotypes, and Ranjikanth would be offered few roles as leading man. He became an eternal sidekick, and more than once a “sachcha Musalmaan” sidekick (much in the mould of Shatrughan Sinha when he transited from villainy into good-person roles in Khan Dost et al.). Rajinikanth would be the faithful number-two man to Bachchan in Geraftaar (1985) and Hum (1991), and later to everyone from Shashi Kapoor to Raj Kumar to Govinda.

In order to garner brownie points, Rajinikanth had to oblige all by dying dramatically. With apparent lack of irony, in Gair Kanooni (1989), he dies twice in the same film, once as Aadam Khan and then as Akbar Khan. Both deaths are through a combination of stabbing and electrocution, in the latter case in Govinda’s arms, reciting the Kalma. And to bury irony once and for all, in Geraftaar he dies (as inspector Hussain) in Bachchan’s arms, reciting… the Kalma. It is unlikely in his current meta-avtaar, Rajini fans would accept something as mediocre as dying from their demigod.

In the days before his deification (not only by his fans but by our hysterical national television) Rajinikanth was happy to be an ensemble actor, an untenable position today. He would be subject to the role and the narrative, not embody the narrative, the text, the subtext, the denotations and connotations as he does today. Wafaadar (1985) and Chaalbaaz (1989) are both essentially comedy films. As Anupam Kher’s servant Ranga (!) in Wafaadar, the future “Thalaivar” acquiesces to all sorts of atrocities meted on his posterior. Surely if the Rajini bhakts today were to see Anupam Kher laying on Rajni’s bum with a swagger stick or giving him a swift kick in the youknowwhere, he would sincerely have to rethink his current domicile.

Rajinikanth would have starring turns in standalone B-grade films like Gangvaa (1984) and John Jaani Janardhan (1984) but they barely caused a flutter. He probably foresaw, quite early, his limited future in Hindi films and stopped after Aatank Hi Aatank in 1995. This too was an ensemble film based on The Godfather in which Rajinikanth played the role of Sonny Corleone. Hindi films were changing too, and his over-the-top turns had little mileage. Before long both global and indie sensibilities would make serious inroads and the appearance, storytelling and even acting would transform. Even mainstream Hindi film stars (the Khannate, for example) would have to change their ways.

The Superstar’s Hindi-speaking fans have had to wait for his Tamil films come to these shores in their dubbed versions, and through these filtered lenses have seen his rise from superstar to SuperGod. But even his most diehard acolytes would have noticed how, since his last five releases or so, right until Kabali, Rajinikanth has become completely subsumed in his own created image.

Becoming the Once and Future Thalaivar has come at a cost. Rajinikanth is now his own Chitti, the robot from Enthiran (2010) that his maker struggles so hard to contain.

Tranquility Base Bombay: My Role in the First Moon Landing

Tranquility Base Bombay: 
My Role in the First Moon Landing


20th July 2019
When we were kids, ‘Apollo’ meant the Gateway of India. The harbor around the Gateway (we still board boats to Elephanta and Alibag from here) was known to all as Palwa Bunder, of which the word Apollo was an angrezi corruption.

Palwa, as any fule kno, is Hindustani for Mystus Vittatus, a fish found in the waters off Bombay. Ergo, Apollo Bunder. Not much later, I knew Apollo to be the Greek God of the Sun, son of Zeus, whose (pater et fils) shenanigans I read about and observed in my copy of Homer’s Iliad- the comic book version by Classics Illustrated.

All that changed after Apollo 11. Fifty years ago, on 20th July 1969 when I was five, NASA's Apollo Mission put man on the moon. If ever there has been a BC and AD moment in the history of the human race, this is it. Nothing before nor since has equaled this achievement, and I am happy to say I was part of it.

Some memories help you root yourself in the past. Some are unreliable, but compelling. For me the most compelling of all the memories I have of early, very early childhood, is one where I hear people (probably at home) insisting that man can/will never step on the moon. In the fog of this memory, July 1969 takes center stage.

Of course, at my age, at the time, I had never heard of either the American or the Soviet space program. Sometime after, and I was still as little at the time, I remember sitting in the garden outside my uncle Dawood’s farmhouse in Shirol, near Kasara, gazing up to a completely lightless sky, except for the incredibleness of the Milky Way, and watching a star mark its arrow-straight course overhead. A moving star! My uncle had a name for it: ‘Spootnik’. What was that? A satellite, he said. That didn’t make things any clearer, but still I loved the show.

Of course, after July, the news was all around. Men had landed on the moon. We even knew their names, vivid and evocative- Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin. Images of spacesuit shod, glass visor (reflecting the blackness of space) wearing astronauts were all around us. In newspapers- the Times of India, in the Sunday Standard, in the Poona Herald, in the Illustrated Weekly of India, on the walls of restaurants, on Volga ice cream wrappers and on the covers of firecracker boxes during Diwali. Apollo 11, Astronaut, Armstrong, Aldrin, America all became Indian words.

My role in the success of the moon landings came soon after, on the 24th of October, 1969. 

On that day, five years and ten months old, I found myself in Bombay, stationed at the turning outside the Crawford Market, under Lockwood Kipling’s marble murals, where the D N Road swings to Carnac Bunder. I was one among a huge crowd, lining both sides of the road. My uncle Musta-ali, whose finger I had held on to for the short walk from Bhandari Street next to Masjid Station (the Carnac Bridge end) to our current location, hoisted me up on the railing at the first roar from the mob.

Flanking motorcyclists in white uniforms formed the avant garde. The cavalcade arrived soon after, dark cars, as I remember, and in one of them three red faces in suits, their arms out, waving. Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin. As they swept past us, I looked at them, they looked at me, and I waved back and waved and waved.

The Cavalcade that took the Apollo 11 astronauts though Bombay on October 24, 1969

[Photo: Time Life Pictures/NASA/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images]

That night, my uncle and I went to the Azad Maidan. After their momentous encounter with me, all three astronauts had been ferried there for a much lesser event- the jaahir satkar by the Government of Maharashtra. 

https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/830169/view/apollo-11-worldwide-tour-bombay-october-1969

That night, Azad Maidan was festive. All of Bombay had turned up. Neither astronauts nor officials were in sight. A replica of the landing craft Eagle had been made, perhaps in plaster, perhaps by makers of Ganesh idols, I don’t know. From the Eagle, an Astronaut was forever descending on to the Azad Maidan’s turf- just one small step away.

On one side of the tableau, exactly like during the Ganapati season, a film was being screened on a stretched white cloth. It was a documentary on the Moon Landing. I watched amazed as the astronauts somersaulted in the weightlessness of their capsule, where down was up, where they attempted to suck blobs of water out of the air. I can’t vouch for these last memories, I may have seen these in the film of the event called ‘Footprints on the Moon’ that was shown in cinema theaters not long after. I do remember the documentary being shown, though.
 

Indian First Day Cover commemorating the visit of the Apollo 11 astronauts to Bombay
Photo Source: www.indianstampghar.com

The vividness of that day has stayed with me. It is one of my earliest, sharpest and most enduring memories that I cherish to this day. We in our fifties are getting on in years now. We predate television, we predate computers, we bloody predate man landing on the moon! 

Today, as I track the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary on the telly, on my phone, on my laptop, on Netflix, I am filled with nostalgia. I gaze at ‘Buzz’ Aldrin and  Michael Collins, alive and  still kicking, I shout at the screen: ‘I saw you, man, you waved to me.’  Then I google for the precise date when, in their whirlwind tour, the astronauts came to Bombay for their tryst with me.

I was five. I was there.

Mario Miranda's impression of the day, from SPAN, December 1969