Game of thrones

My Mirror column:

Despite its '70s sarkaari aesthetic (Akbar Hotel's modernist Mughalia and Doordarshan-style songs), Kissa Kursi Ka is a piece of our cinematic past that speaks uncannily to the present.

“Main pratigya karta hoon ki ya toh bhrashtachar ko khatam kar doonga, ya khud khatam ho jaaunga [I swear that I will either wipe out corruption, or be wiped out myself],” announces the nation's supreme leader, thumping his chest in emotion as a roomful of parliamentarians clap obligingly.

Seem familiar? Here's another scene from the same film: the Great Leader is terribly under the weather. He lies in bed, complaining of various sorts of discomfort. His physician can find nothing wrong with him. He asks the Great Leader's private secretary -- who goes by the darkly ironic name of Deshpal -- if the GL has inaugurated anything recently. No, muses Deshpal, but there's something on the schedule. At the very mention of an inauguration, the Great Leader jumps up, cured.

Watching the brilliant Manohar Singh's performance in Kissa Kursi Ka in mid-2019 produces a strange sense of the uncanny. Fact can often feel stranger than fiction, more so when fiction manages to presage fact. In this case, it feels like it's done so by four decades. Kissa Kursi Ka was submitted to the Central Board of Film Certification in April 1975, but it did not see the light of day until 1978, after Emergency had been lifted. (Interestingly, Amrit Nahata made the film while still a Congress MP, though he became a Janta Party member soon after.)

Even if it hadn't had its reels infamously destroyed by Sanjay Gandhi (under the supervision of his yesman VC Shukla), Kissa Kursi Ka wasn't the sort of film that was likely to become a big hit. Now freely available on Youtube, Nahata's political fable has the bizarre quality of seeming even more apt in 2019.

Nahata used the tale of a poor man coached for an electoral win by a small coterie of kingmakers to depict what democracy can look like in a poor country at the mercy of power-hungry politicians. Many scenes are simplistic, but effective. In one, the new President is visited by an industrialist who “wants to solve the problems of the poor.” “Give me 10 crores,” he says, “and I'll set up one factory to make small cars. Another to make toys, to keep the people amused.” Leader Saheb initially balks, but since Garibdas donated five lakhs to his campaign, he is "mortgaged" to him. (The reference to the people's car factory acquired a bizarre layer when the Maruti factory became the site of the film's burning by Sanjay Gandhi).

Later, the transformed Manohar Singh, having gone from Gangu the jamura's grimy ganji to a maroon suit and Meerschaum pipe worthy of the 70s villain, decides that the country must be distracted from his economic failures. He makes a secret visit to the neighbouring kingdom, Andher Nagri, not to make peace but to propose a 15-day war. “Pandrah din ki ek ladaai ho jaye. Tum deshbhakti ka bhaashan dena, hum bhi deshbhakti ka bhaashan denge.... Deshbhakti ka yeh nasha paanch saal toh chalega hi. Our seats will be safe another five years. Then? We'll play another tournament.”

“Janta ko busy rakhna zaroori hai,” agrees primary kingmaker Meera (an unrecognizably youthful Surekha Sikri, enjoying herself to the hilt). The strategy is apparently foolproof enough to succeed even forty years later. Where demonetisation fails, Balakot will work.

To make its point, the darkly comic KKK steps away from the realist path. One of Nahata's favoured techniques is animation: for instance, the kursi throws off the President who's spinning excitedly 

around on it. The chair then delivers a set of eight commandments about how she should be treated: she assumes divinity, demanding worship. Like Mrinal Sen's Chorus, which presciently released a year before Emergency, KKK also uses real footage of marching boots, soldiers at the border and assemblies of protestors.

But the film's most overused form is visual allegory, casting Shabana Azmi as an annoyingly gendered personification of the country's populace. Azmi as the mute “Janta” spends the film in a fetching yellow blouse and green sari with a big Telugu-style bindi, as if she's walked out of her debut film, Shyam Benegal's Ankur (1974). Awakened from slumber by the new leader's promises, Janta is oppressed but hopeful -- only to be crushed each time she takes his new schemes at their word.

Perhaps the most chillingly resonant part of KKK is Ganga Ram's speech in Parliament, addressing members who are losing confidence in his fake promises: “Yaad rakhiye, you have not made me president. The people have. And the people are with me.”

Even as the country collapses around him, the Great Leader remains convinced by his own fictions. “I want to know what I've done that has been so bad for the country,” he whines and then preens. “Every developing country has to go through troubles. My country, too, is on the path to progress... Today we are not poor, backward, weak. Not one person is unemployed today. Everyone has been admitted in the army or police. Our janta is now filled with a new josh, a new swabhimaan. Isliye desh ki janta mere saath hai. Ab aap ko faisla karna hai ki aap kiske saath hain [Now you have to decide, who are you with]?"

The crazed Manohar Singh points at the leader of the opposition, but really, he's looking at all of us.

 

Published in Mumbai Mirror, 14 April 2019