How I learnt to mind the gap

My address really was to blame.  Pali Hill, Bandra, Mumbai in the 1960s was idyllic … a glamorous but quiet Beverly Hills. Green and leafy with neat bungalows – the monstrous highrises hadn’t yet come into the frame yet – it was a hilly suburb, far from the madding crowd and only minutes away from the sea. Union Park, the quaint colony that I resided in had a fair share of movie folks. Baddie Pran – couldn’t get a sweeter, warmer and nicer gent – headed the list.

Director Amiya Chakravarty (Daag, Patita, Seema) M Sadiq (Chaudvin Ka Chand, Taj Mahal) were also part of the neighbourhood along with corpulent comedian Gope, but he soon popped it, (reportedly) at the Race Course when his horse appeared to have had a polite difference of opinion with him about the direction to pursue!

A little away was Meena Kumari and Kamal Amrohi and a little further was the one and only Dilip Kumar. Sunil Dutt and Nargis also soon joined this gang. For a kid in love with Hindi films, this was truly heady stuff. So between Elvis (don’t forget Pali Hill and Bandra was hugely Catholic and Goan-driven) and Shammi K, life was yahoo all the way.

Dad had to go and spoil it all. He junked his cool Hind Lever job to move to Kolkata as head of Communication – Ad & PR – for Dunlop India. That was bad news for me. A planet away from the bindaas, fun-filled, cosmo, laid back, cool and easy, apolitical, non-intellectual/cultural space, this new City spoke a lingo I just couldn’t figure out. Che and Ray, Truffaut and Fellini, Bergman and Kurosawa, Vietnam and Lal Salaam. Who were these guys and what the hell was going on?

   

Where were my precious Shammi and Sadhna, Dev and Nutan, Rajendra and Saira, Joy and Asha? I got busy assembling like-minded people (movie junkies) but I had clearly underestimated female guile of the Bong kind.
In the name of getting me to understand the ‘real Kolkata’, this clever, gorgeous, doe-eyed, dark, culturally-driven girl – both of us were all of 17 – introduced me to the Film Society/Club phenomenon and with varying degrees of threat, persuasion and seductive baits, got me hooked on both her and the ‘other’ cinema.

I don’t think she gave a damn about the masala stuff I took her to although she made the right noises.

Suddenly I found myself falling headlong in love with Ray, Ghatak and Sen as well as fabulous commercial fare crafted by the likes of Tapan Sinha, Tarun Mazumdar, Ajay Kar and Asit Sen. Also with the magic of the Uttam-Suchitra team.

This experience offered me an amazingly new perspective, injected a welcome schizophrenia that empowered me with the ability to see and enjoy different genres, categories and types of movies – from Shammi K to Soumitra C – without heading for a shrink.

I learnt to see and judge every film through different prisms. Ray and Ghatak, Benegal and Adoor needed to be seen and judged with a different benchmark than Shakti Samanta, Prakash Mehra or Manmohan Desai.

This clear demarcation continues to shock a lot of purists (“How can a guy love SRK and Buddhadeb Dasgupta at the same time, for chrissake?”) but I remain cool…

Today, as I look back at that sultry morning show in Mumbai all those years ago when, bunking school with a group of pals, seated in the front row in Lido Theatre in Juhu, watching mesmerised the flamboyant and devastating hero of our childhood, Shammi K doing his number with a young Saira in Junglee, the thrill returns. Is it still the same when I see Rowdy Rathore? To a large extent (the puritans will faint!) YES!

Indian cinema has come a long way from the time Dadasaheb Phalke made Raja Harishchandra and unleashed the genie to create magic in darkened halls in year 1913. From the dominance of the fantastic Khans to the strike-force club of Messrs. Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee and gang to the breakaway indie group in passionate pursuit of their own thing miles away from Bollywood, Indian cinema has indeed come a long, long way indeed.

Only one thought troubles me. Despite our gigantic volume, why do our films remain such insignificant specks on the world stage?  Why are they perceived as nothing more than quaint, exotic, oriental, sing-dance tamashas to be indulged and forgotten? Why aren’t we sought after, respected and saluted as we once were when Ray and the others walked tall in world cinema?

If China, Iran, Korea and Japan can do it, why can’t we? We have the talent and technology, nuances and narratives.

Where do we go wrong?  Why don’t we even register a blimp in any radar outside the diaspora? I await the
unspooling of that glorious dawn...