Book Review: Urdu Memoirs

A short book review published in India Today:

Yeh Un Dinoñ Ki Baat Hai: Urdu Memoirs of Cinema Legends by Yasir Abbasi; Bloomsbury India; Rs 699; 448 pages

Here's a bit of film trivia: which Indian actor (other than Rajinikanth) worked as a bus conductor? Would it help to tell you he was originally called Badruddin Qazi? Or that he landed his first major role because Balraj Sahni suggested he enter Guru Dutt's office pretending to be drunk? Or (last clue) that his inebriated act was such a hit that he later named himself after a popular whiskey brand?

Yes, it's Johnny Walker.

Yeh Un Dinon Ki Baat Hai: Urdu Memoirs of Cinema Legends is full of such tales. Editor-translator Yasir Abbasi's excavation of old Urdu film magazines lays out a new matrix of origin myths, loving details and vicious gossip involving not just actors, but directors, writers, singers and lyricists from what used to be called Hindi cinema.

Some get to tell their own stories, which means elisions and self-aggrandisements or, at least, careful public presentations of the self. Johnny Walker is keen to establish that he's really a teetotaller. Writing in Shama magazine in 1981, the 1940s star Veena lists the many famous films she almost did: Anmol Ghadi, Udan Khatola, Mughal-e-Azam, Jogan, Mother India, even an abandoned early version of Mahal. Dharmendra mentions a close "friendship" with Meena Kumari, but completely avoids his role in ending it: "it never occurred to me back then that one day she... let's just leave it at that."

Others are described by friends and admirers, or by writers who happen to be friends and admirers. So the brothers Ganguly (Ashok Kumar and Kishore Kumar) get a tribute from the actor Iftekhar, Hindi cinema's once-perpetual police officer. The composer Naushad tells of the director K. Asif's grand ways, including the tale of how Bade Ghulam Ali Khan was persuaded to be Tansen's voice in Mughal-e-Azam. Dialogue writer and playwright Javed Siddiqui has a charming fanboyish piece about working with Satyajit Ray on Shatranj ke Khilari. K.A. Abbas writes with acuity about Raj Kapoor, for whom he wrote many films: "If he loves just himself, then why do all of us still love him? Well, that's because there's something else that he places even before himself -- his work, his art."

The crisscrossing narratives sometimes produce a Rashomon effect. Eg: Dharmendra's coy elision is matter-of-factly undercut by Nargis, who frankly appraises Meena Kumari's passion for him and her heartbreak when he left. Whether reading that piece, or Ismat Chughtai on the singing star Suraiya, or the memoirs by Nadira, Shyama or Meena Shorey, it's clear that the Hindi film industry awarded its actresses particularly lonely, difficult lives.

I have many quibbles with his translation, but Abbasi has done film buffs a service.

Published in India Today, 18 Jan 2019.

Page-turner from the past

My Mirror column:

Thinking about Dilip Kumar, who turned 96 last week, as I leaf through a book of Urdu film memoirs now translated into English

Dilip Kumar and Madhubala, who played Salim and Anarkali in Mughal-e-Azam

Last week, I started to read a new book called Yeh Un Dinon Ki Baat Hai: Urdu Memoirs of Cinema Legends, a collection of pieces from Urdu film magazines that have been selected and translated into English by Yasir Abbasi. Also last week, on December 11, actor Dilip Kumar turned 96. 

Dilip Kumar, born Yusuf Khan in Peshawar in 1922, has long been known as an Urdu aficionado, so I was hopeful that he might feature in the book. I was thrilled to find that there was actually a piece by him. Published in the Delhi-based Shama, it was a thoughtful reflection on his ‘King of Tragedy’ image. “I was declared a ‘tragedian’ at a time when I was still in the process of refining my skills,” he writes.

For Abbasi, a cinematographer and “lifelong film buff”, the book is clearly a labour of love, combining a nostalgic appreciation of Bombay filmdom with a desire to archive a lost world of Urdu journalism. By following each translation with a sample paragraph from the original essay, transcribed in Roman, the book offers a delightful little bonus to many readers like myself, who cannot read the Urdu script but are perfectly capable of understanding the words. 

But this also means opening up the translation to rather wider scrutiny than usual. To return to the Dilip Kumar reminiscence, for instance, it slips up in that single sample paragraph. “I believe real tragedy leads to a kind of sadness that permeates a person’s soul, making the individual stand out in a crowd,” reads Abbasi’s translation. But here is Dilip Kumar’s original Urdu: “Ya’ani andarooni wajood mein kucch aisi udaasiyan taari hon ki aadmi bharay mele mein bhi akela nazar aaye.” I’d say that “bharay mele mein bhi akela nazar aaye” here was meant to suggest that the tragic individual would have a profound air of solitude: he would appear alone even in a crowd.

Despite this, I was glad to read Dilip Kumar’s brief account, which revealed a man able to step away and scrutinise himself, both as an actor and a human being, in a way that would be rare in any era. He begins by pulling up those who equate tragedy with sentimentality. Tragedy, he says, goes beyond “superficial catastrophe” (though again, this is not how I’d render his “satahi qism ke haadsaat ki bharmaar”). His list of emotional markers is fascinating, because it maps a whole social -- and cinematic -- universe: “parting with the beloved, going bankrupt, betrayal of friends, or being disowned by the family”. (Again, the original ends with “makaan-jaaydaad se waalid ka be-dakhal kar dena”, which I’d have translated as “being disinherited from family property by a father”).

I was also struck by the remarkable honesty with which he spoke of his depressive tendencies — we must remember that he was writing for a mass Indian readership in 1973. He says he consulted psychologists in England, who suggested he take a break from melancholic roles. Taking on SMS Naidu’s comedy Azaad (a remake of the director's 1954 Tamil film Malaikkallan, starring MGR) upon his return to India, he says, was a professional decision made for psychological reasons.

But while Dilip Kumar straddled Hindi cinema like a colossus (others in the book make many references to his aura, his linguistic skills and professionalism), what Yeh Un Dinon Ki Baat Hai makes clear is that his personal life also remained grist for the gossip mill. It comes up in all kinds of ways: as sly rumour, as tragedy, as professional hazard. An amusing instance of this is Dharmendra in Shama in 1977, where he cites Dilip Kumar’s affairs with co-stars as part of his aspirations: “Before I stepped into the world of films, I had heard a lot about the Raj Kapoor-Nargis and Dilip Kumar-Kamini Kaushal pairings. I too would fancy forming a similar duo with someone.”

His affair with Madhubala had a more tragic aftertaste because they separated on an acrimonious note (her father was, according to Dilip Kumar’s 2014 autobiography, not opposed to the wedding as much as keen to add Kumar to his money-making assets) — and because Madhubala died young. Madhubala seems to have other admirers: Nadira’s account here informs us that Premnath’s only true love was Madhubala, and the character-actor and later villain Ajit describes her after she dropped out of Naya Daur as “the wilted Anarkali who had been abandoned by Salim”. But other actresses could remain unsympathetic: the actress Veena’s version has Madhubala telling her during Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi that Dilip Kumar was her husband, and later, that she only married Kishore Kumar “[t]o annoy Dilip Kumar”. 

Among the last references to the thespian in the book is about how Ruby magazine went after the story of Dilip Kumar’s second marriage in 1982, when his vehement denials turned out to be false. But while it did not shy away from salacious or critical commentary, the Urdu magazine seems to also have offered a space for film folk to present themselves in their own words. Dilip Kumar's gift for words, of course, gave him an advantage here. Even in that tiny piece, he managed to suggest his perfectionism: “A misra [line of a poem] by Firaq saheb sums it up aptly for me: Akseer ban chala hoon, ki aanch ki kasar hai [I’d turn into an elixir, if only I could simmer a little more]." He may well have fulfilled that hope.

Published in Mumbai Mirror, 16 Dec 2018.

Painting the Stars

Today's Mirror column:

FilmIndia's memorable covers reveal the intertwined history of advertising and journalism, art and cinema.

Among the page-turning pleasures of Sidharth Bhatia's luxuriously-produced new volume, The Patels of FilmIndia, are the pictures. The Patels in question are editor Baburao Patel and his much younger wife Sushila Rani, who together ran FilmIndia, the country's most popular film magazine for much of the first half of the 20th century. At its best, the magazine seems to have been an irrepressible mix of witty one-liners, scathing reviews, bizarre rants -- and of course, industry gossip. But it could never have achieved its popularity were it not for the remarkable images - often in full colour - that appeared in its pages. 

The founding of the magazine in 1935 was the result of a collaboration between Baburao - who had worked as a film journalist for something called Cinema Samachar, and also made five films in the period 1929-1935 -- and a man called DN Parkar, who owned a printing press called New Jack. An offshoot of Prabhat Studios, New Jack had become a lucrative business based on Parkar's monopoly on printing anything the Pune-based film production house brought out: posters, handbills, books. "He knew Baburao and they decided to launch a film magazine; their rationale was that since they had a press, and paper was easily and cheaply available, venturing into publishing made sense," writes Bhatia. "BB Samant and Company, another child born out of Prabhat, had the rights to the publicity of the film company and could be relied upon to give ads." 

From the start, it was clear that production values were going to be high. The launch issue, dated April 1935, was priced at 4 annas. Printed on high quality art paper, it had a rather spectacular hand-painted cover image with a woman's face in a rectangular frame, and the rest of the space devoted to a painted backdrop showing a kind of grand Indian crowd scene: bullocks, camels, turbaned men with spears, caparisoned elephants and a palm tree. The woman was Nalini Tarkhud, the heroine of V. Shantaram's film Chandrasena - which was advertised on the inside pages. 

Soon, FilmIndia's beautifully hand-painted covers began to themselves double up as advertisements for particular films - sometimes much before they arrived in theatres. In one fascinating instance, the January 1946 cover announced Mughal-e-Azam with a rather lovely painting of Prince Saleem picking roses in a garden. May 1946 and July 1946, too, were devoted to illustrations of K. Asif's Mughal-e-Azam. Yes, you read that right - 1946! It seems that Asif first planned to make the film in that year, with an actor called Chandramohan and the then-upcoming Nargis. Except Chandramohan died before shooting could begin, and the film was finally completed (with its now-legendary cast of Dilip Kumar, Madhubala and Prithiviraj Kapoor) only fourteen years later, in 1960. Those FilmIndia covers from 1946 are probably among the last surviving reminders of the film that might have been. 

In October 1944, the FilmIndia cover was a eye-ball-grabbing colour illustration of a giant hand, reaching out to disrobe a distressed young woman in a golden crown and the gleaming bratop that would later become the staple costume of mythological Hindu females in Amar Chitra Katha. The image was publicity for the film Draupadi, produced by New Huns Pictures (Huns as in swan, not Attila) as a launch vehicle for Sushila Rani, whom the already-married Baburao had assiduously wooed and finally married. 

Sometimes the cover could even be given over to an actual product. The February 1946 issue, with a properly 'Oriental' couple (seated next to a brass surahi of wine and a rather incongruously modern Western-style loaf of sandwich bread) announced Panama Cigarettes as that which "Would have completed Omar Khayyam's Paradise". But although the magazine was unabashed about the tie-up between film publicity, product advertising and film journalism, Baburao was publicly adamant from the start that his reviews of films would never be coloured or prejudiced by advertisers. Writes Bhatia: "Advertisers who did not like this policy were welcome to take their ads elsewhere, he declared." 

The other noteworthy thing about these covers, of course, was that they were painted. Sabina Gadihoke, among others, has pointed out that the artists often took photographs as their reference points to produce realistic likenesses of the stars. But the standards of printing at the time did not allow for photographs to come out well enough. Gadihoke quotes Alyque Padamsee, who joined the advertising agency Lintas in the 1950s, as saying that copywriters had to be careful not to put lines like '"This is what Lux does for my complexion," says Mala Sinha', "because poor Mala's face would look like a poached egg." Often photographs had to be enhanced - dull studio backdrops enlivened, cheeks made rosier, lips reddened - for the requisite glamour to appear in printed colour. 

The artists credited most often on FilmIndia covers are DD Neroy and SM Pandit. The talented Sambanand Monappa Pandit (b. 1915) was among a new generation of artists who had graduated from the JJ School of Art in Bombay, and was much sought after. Like many of his ilk, SM Pandit simultaneously produced film-related work, product advertising and calendar art. Pandit's work is a stellar example of the cross-fertilization of style between Bombay cinema and the popular print representation of characters from Hindu mythology: the stars became more like gods, and the gods became more romantic, more sexualised. But that is another story.

Published in Mumbai Mirror, 6th Sep 2015.