Bombay Talkies: To the Four Fathers

At last, we get the real Karan Johar. Constrained only by time and not by seven figure ROI concerns, Johar finds his voice. Sure, there are flaws. Take the openly gay Avinash (Saquib Salim). He is refreshingly different in some respects. He isn’t effeminate. He doesn’t want to be tagged by his surname. “Avinash what?” , his boss enquires. “It’s the what that screws things up”, he responds. And yet, so often does he flash his sexuality-badge that it overshadows his other selves.  In effect, he has simply swapped surnames, not shunned them. He might as well go by “Avinash Gay”. Also, maverick irreverence is all very well, but an openly gay man who relentlessly hits upon his love-interest with scant regard for time and place simply reinforces the “despo” stereotype. This is a recurring theme in Johar’s minority characters (Kurbaan’s Muslims come to mind); they come across more as projections on a single, defining axis rather than as multi-dimensional characters.

That being said, Johar’s film is richly layered elsewhere. The hollowed out marriage between Gayatri (Rani Mukherjee) and Dev (Randeep Hooda, outstanding) and Dev’s trapped, tormented sexuality are handled with an adult sensibility that is rare in Hindi cinema. The looks that Gayatri and Dev give each other convey a mutual exasperation beyond repair. In interviews, Johar has often expressed his dissatisfaction with marriage as an institution; he at last puts his movie where his mouth is.

Cinema isn’t central to Johar’s plot, the way it is to the other three. And yet, it circles Johar’s film in interesting ways. Gayatri’s last line, “I hate lies” is loaded with irony given that she edits a film tabloid. And it is the street urchin’s rendition of a film song that finally forces Dev to come to terms with himself.  Johar finds new meaning in “kisii ke itne paas ho, k Khud se duur ho gaye”.  Above all, he seems to remind us that we cannot dismiss cinema as lies; its truths can often expose us to the lies we live.

For a variety of reasons, Dibakar Banerjee’s segment is the finest of the four. First, by choosing to base his film on a Satyajit Ray short story, Banerjee reminds us of the huge Bengali influence on Hindi cinema. Second, the story revolves around an ordinary man’s (literal) brush with stardom. He is the protagonist, not the star. Purandar (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) doesn’t have much going for him. He’s looking for a job (but has entrepreneurial ambitions based on eggs from a pet emu he keeps) and some dignity, eager to shine in the eyes of his wife and sick daughter. By happy accident, he’s chosen to appear – ever so fleetingly - in a movie. All he has to do is bump into the hero, exclaim “aye!” and walk out of the frame. But for Purandar, this is his to be or not to be moment.

In the pivotal scene where Purandar rehearses for his big moment, Banerjee pays homage to theatre (Kusumagraj’s Natasamrat). Facing his Hamlet-like existential dilemma, Purandar is visited by an apparition (Sadashiv Amrapurkar) of his father figure (a la Paresh Rawal in Oye, Lucky!). He must now face his failings and his ambitions (represented by the emu mulling about). Purandar’s memorable cameo in the movie-within-the-movie is not only an ode to an everyman’s resilience, it is also a bow to the countless theatrewallas who have enriched Hindi cinema in ways that stars could not have done.

 Banerjee’s film is the only one that alludes to the non-Hindi (Bengali and Marathi) cultural influences of Hindi cinema. It plays out as a classic Chaplinesque tragicomedy:  In his eagerness to share his moment of glory with his daughter, Purandar forgets to collect his fees for the cameo.  We know how much he needs the dough; he is too high to care. Nawazzudin Siddiqui sinks his teeth deep into the part, using body language and dialogue delivery to perfection. This one makes you smile, cry, feel and think. What more could you ask for?

Zoya Akhtar’s tale is less ambitious but equally heart-warming. A brother and sister help each other fulfil their little dreams, outsmarting their simple-minded father. The little guy (Naman Jain, delight to watch) wants to grow up to be Sheela (she, of Sheela kii jawaanii) and dresses himself up in his sister’s clothes and mother’s makeup, earning a slap from his father. Akhtar’s silent scenes capture the pain of a childhood dream denied, as when the dance instructor shoos the little hanger-on away.

Anurag Kashyap’s short has its strong flavors, but is overcooked in parts. A young man, Vijay (Vineet Kumar Singh) from the dusty hinterland is seeking an audience with Amitabh Bachchan for his sick father’s sake. Kashyap’s greatest success lies in mapping out the huge distance between a star and his worshipper. How inaccessible Amitabh is to a man who has a lot in common with the star (his looks, his hometown and his most famous screen name)!  Alas, Kashyap overshoots too often. The opening pee-jokes seem forced, a self-conscious peddling of brand-Kashyap bawdiness.  Still, with notable help from Vineet Kumar Singh, he makes our heart go out to the “outsiders” eking out a living in Mumbai.

The coda, “apnaa Bombay Talkies”, with a battery of stars obliging us with their presence in a lazily written and composed track is jarringly out of character for a film that looks at cinema from our perspective. And the merrily penned title track (Swanand Kirkire, I guess?) “yeh khilaaRi nah buuRhaa huwaa”  is anyway a hard act to follow. Blame this one on the promo designers.

It’s interesting that a common thread running through the four films is fathers disappointed in their children. Consciously or not, these four children of Hindi cinema have given us their takes on the generational shifts that have characterized Hindi cinema – each generation of filmmakers imbibing and rejecting various traits of the previous one.  Vive l'evolution!

Ishqiya: Sex and Sensibilities

(First published at Desicritics)

Abhishek Chaubey's Ishqiya opens with a shot that will rank among the most sensuous ones in Hindi cinema. The camera zooms in on a half asleep Krishna (Vidya Balan), as Rekha Bharadwaj's husky voice breaks into a couplet on the end of longing. The aesthetic here, as in much of Vishal Bharadwaj's work, is that of the finest Urdu poetry and literature. Indeed, the two male perspectives on love, personified by Babban (Arshad Warsi) and his Khaalujaan (Naseeruddin Shah), respectively mirror the majaazii (figurative/sensual) and haqiiqii (real/spiritual) layers of meaning in Urdu poetry, the name Krishna underscoring the bhakti element.
Babban's sexuality, then, is overtly carnal - he reads Hindi soft-porn, likes catchy numbers, frequents whorehouses, and plays peeping Tom on Krishna (though she knows this, and is simply seducing him). A line in word-czar Gulzar's penned to perfection ibn-e-Batuta could well be a description of the fly-by-night playfulness of Babban: "uR uR aawe, daane chuge, uR jaawe chiRiyaa phurr". It takes an actor of Arshad Warsi's cool and acumen to endear such a character to the audience.

Babban's Khalujaan, by contrast, is a man of refined sensibilities, an old-school romantic who cherishes the Hindi film melodies of Jaidev and Hemant Kumar. The closest he comes to voyeurism is listening in on Krishna's riyaaz. Krishna is something of a goddess to Khaalujaan; he even refers to her as "Krishnajii". His song is "dil to bacchaa hai jii", excellent in its composition (Bharadwaj's use of the accordion gives it that old world charm), its poetry ("saaree jawaanii qatraa ke kaaTii, peerii meN Takraa gaye haiN") and its picturization (Chaubey's camera seeks out the beauty in simplicity, the girl on a bus, the cook chopping almonds in a dhaabaa - just the sort of imagery that proves that the Hindi film song can be a thing of beauty when it's done right). So when Khalujaan sees Krishna boogie woogie with Babban to a Mika Singh number, in Babban's clothes at that, it isn't just jealousy he feels; it's also the inevitable disillusionment of a romantic who has seen his ideals in tatters - Krishna's sacrilegious fall from grace. Naseeruddin Shah's finesse as an actor comes through in the expression of this disillusionment and loss on his face. How fitting that the very same tragedy of a hopeless romantic was writ large on the very same face, two mentor-generations ago, in the climax of Gulzar's Ijaazat!

This tug-of-war of sexualities, and its result, are reminiscent of a Manto short, wherein a civil servant's bourgeois double standards on sex prevent him from meeting the advances of a village belle, who is eventually whisked away for a roll in the hay by a truck driver with no such qualms. Like Manto, Chaubey, Bharadwaj and co-writer Sabrina Dhawan subvert Khalujaan's romanticism to expose his attraction to Krishna. "So your love is love, while mine is lust?" asks a justifiably indignant Babban - the haqiiqii is the majaazii, and attraction is attraction even when it's dressed up as poetry. Neither are the writer-trio content with fitting Krishna into one of the male moulds of Eros or Agape - she's a woman with a bit of both and some. When Khalujaan complains, "You can never tell if a woman is a houri or a whore", Krishna shoots back, "Who are you to call me names?"; and later quips to Babban, "(Khaalujaan) can't swallow the truth; it's stuck in his throat". From an iron-willed urban mother in Balki's Paa to an earthy seductress here, Vidya Balan emerges as the most intelligent actress in present day Hindi cinema.

The sexual politics play out in the UP hinterland where politics of another kind are prevalent. In a clever shift of perspective, we're shown how the city world must appear to those outside its privileges. "In the city, you pelt a mongrel with a stone, and hits a crorepati", we're told. Here, too, there is the Mantoesque use of sex (the S&M kind, no less) to expose the seamier side of respectable society. I've said this before but it bears repeating. Bharadwaj's cinema, and Chaubey's in his footsteps, is centered on characters who don't usually figure in the urban viewer's main stream of consciousness. That the proceedings are peppered with top notch humour is simply a result of the meticulous craftsmanship of Chaubey's team of writers. They're well aware of the serious business that comedy is. Sure, the idiomatic wit and the foul language get our laughs, but they also serve to evoke empathy. Thus, unlike most Hindi films, here we're laughing with the characters not at them. In Ishqiya, Bhopalis with kohl-lined eyes aren't comic garnish (who can forget Jagdeep as Soormaa Bhopali ?); they're the dish itself.

In his production house, Vishal Bharadwaj has created an ecosystem where stories of the dusty landscapes of villages and small towns tend to flourish. To tell such stories is, in itself, a political act. But to do so in a manner that the viewer also gets her money's worth of entertainment takes genius. The Hindi film viewer has for too long been held captive to the mindset that films are either meaningful or entertaining. Ishqiya reminds her that they can be both.

A Radically Skeptical Ramayana

(First published at Desicritics)

An epic has something to offer to everyone. Its spectacular range of characters, situations and emotions allows for a multitude of interpretations. Its tragedy, of course, is that blind men will insist on what the elephant looks like. A radically skeptical Ramayana, which is what Aubrey Menen imagines Valmiki to have written, is not for those who insist upon the One Authentic Version of the epic. The Valmiki Menen imagines is the voice of an Indian Enlightenment whose skeptical realism is nothing short of shocking (even to yours truly godless). Here's how Menen thinks Valmiki's ilk would address us:

“We have nothing against this elaborate toy you call civilization. It is very pretty, especially when all parts are in working order. We do not suggest for a moment that you pull it to pieces and start anew. We do not suggest you do anything at all. So far as we are concerned, our only wish is, with the greatest good will, never to see your face again. If you are curious to know what we propose to do, we shall endeavor to explain, but not very often. We intend to set about the proper business of a human being, which is the improvement of his own soul. In this you cannot join us because you cannot call your souls your own. Since you depend every minute of your existence on everybody, you yourself are nobody. However, we will agree, in parting, that you are a jolly good fellow."

(At one point, Valmiki likens our habit of building societies to a gnat-like insect's act of creating beautiful and elaborate stones in the sea - a likeness that evolutionary psychology would bear out, I think.)

In Menen's view, the Valmiki Ramayana was written in this irreverent vein but Brahmins later sanitized it, depriving it of its piquancy in the hope of making it palatable. (In the following, read "Valmiki as imagined by Menen" for "Valmiki". Of course, I could just write "Menen" but I'm much more intrigued by the Valmiki that Menen wants to resurrect.). The Brahmins' version of Valmiki is that he was a brigand who stole and killed, and was outlawed for these crimes. But, Menen warns us, this could also be because Valmiki's "verses scanned better than anything the Brahmins could ever write."

The entire Ramayana that ensues is garnished with such delightful jabs at propriety, both in its prose and in its narrative elements. Thus Dashratha is described as a rotund, unattractive, hedonistic king who "was loved by all his subjects, and he loved certain of them in return, especially if they were women". Being such a king, he naturally spends most of his time in his harem, leaving the administration of the kingdom to the Brahmins. Ayodhya, as described here, comes pretty close to a liberal-democratic monarchy, warts and all. Thus, the king is a functional head and the Brahmins hold the strings tied to this head. (I don't think Valmiki would be surprised to learn that in our time, the people get to choose their functional head as well.) Valmiki's satire attacks the hypocrisy that is the hallmark of political rhetoric. For instance, Ayodhya’s impartial judges are described as men who have proven their expertise in manipulation of the law; or just before Rama’s army attacks Lanka, both Rama and Ravana propose “peace treaties” that are tantamount to the subjugation of the other side. And there are sexual politics too. Manthara, the woman who poisons Kaikeyi's ears, is Dashratha's spurned concubine; and Kaikeyi extracts Dashratha's promise to send Rama away on an exile through blackmail: she threatens to go public about the king's non-performance on their wedding night.

This emasculation of power is very much in keeping with Valmiki's brand of iconoclasm and it returns even more provocatively when Ravana enters the scene. In this account, when Rama, Laxman and Sita are camped at Valmiki's hermitage, Sita takes long walks and meets up with Ravana a couple of times before she's taken to Lanka. Her reason? She's bored by the intellectual Rama and all the philosophizing at the hermitage. "He loves me", she tells Laxmana matter-of-factly about Ravana, and wistfully wonders if anyone would notice if she never returned from her walks. We understand, as Laxman does, her alienation and the hint of attraction she feels towards Ravana, if only because he is everything Rama isn't.

Laxman is a born fighter - the brawn to Rama's brain, he's always baying for a battle, and is himself not too happy with the daily doze of discourse at Valmiki's hermitage. So, seeking a skirmish in the woods, he chances upon Ravana and picks a fight with him. Ravana retaliates by attacking the hermitage. The odds are naturally in Ravana's favor; he has soldiers and all Rama and Laxman have are hermits. Seeing this, Sita, ever the smartest of the trio, walks up to Ravana and agrees to accompany him to Lanka if Rama and Laxman are spared. As she later explains her decision to Laxman,

"I made up my mind when your bowstring snapped...You looked around and I saw your face and I said to myself, 'Laxman's getting ready to die'...It wasn't very difficult to make up my mind, but I had no time to explain - especially to Rama. He was never an easy man to explain things to."

Valmiki's Sita isn't a sacrificial sati; she's much more - a woman who knows exactly what the need of the hour is. She does save Rama from imminent death and defeat at Ravana's hand, but she is human and all the more admirable, accessible and venerable for it. It is fitting then, that in this account, she is seduced by Ravana. There's remarkable candor and clarity of mind in her confessional dialogue with Laxman:

Sita: "I'd have been a heroine. I meant to be. I meant to kill myself rather than keep my promise [to Ravana]. I think I would've killed myself if he'd come at me as I expected, all drunk and brutal. But I hadn't allowed for one thing."
Laxman: "He played a trick on you, eh?"
Sita: "Yes, Laxman, the oldest trick of them all. He just said that he loved me above everything else in the world and that he would never force me to do anything I did not want. I was pleased at first. Then I was sorry for him. Then he kissed me. Then I wasn't a heroine any more."

The friendship between Laxman and Sita is a tender and true one. As seen above, some of the most personal and disarmingly human lines in the book are the ones uttered by Sita when she confides in Laxman. It's Laxman who makes Rama realize that Rama has wronged Sita and not the other way round.

If Sita is Valmiki's heroine, Rama is very much his hero. On the eve of his exile, Rama is a naïve, cerebral prince. The general opinion of him is that he is "generous, warmhearted, loyal, well-meaning, intellectually brilliant, idealistic, and a damn fool". Valmiki's skeptical realism turns out to be the perfect philosophical antidote to Rama's jejune idealism. In true storytelling spirit, the narrative is interspersed with pithy parables that Valmiki narrates to Rama. My favorite is the one with a locust who insists on reading all the important scriptures; his guru agrees to educate him provided he gives up eating leaves. After a while, the locust is naturally unable to keep his end of the bargain. (The locust is a clever choice because reading voraciously is to gorge on the leaves of a book.) The parable directly attacks Rama's quest for the meaning of life in books, reminding him (and us in these Twittering times) that information isn't knowledge, and knowledge isn't wisdom. Here's Rama acknowledging his debt to Valmiki upon returning to Ayodhya from his exile:

"Looking at the city of my birth again brings back to me something of my youth - the time that is, before I had the melancholy advantage of your wisdom."

And here's this "melancholy advantage" at work:

"[Rama] next thought that he might make a great study of the laws of his country and produce a code which would endure for a thousand years, the Code of Rama the Wise: but he remembered the locust and tempered his ambitions."

This is a matured man indeed. The trial-by-fire he holds for Sita is just a theatrical act of political appeasement, a charade where the fire is a fake "Egyptian fire" that looks like fire but doesn't burn at all; all it manages to do is to put out the wildfires of gossip. And this is the only possible trial that would be fair to Sita, vindicating her innocence; anything else would be a de facto guilty plea.

The most important lesson Rama learns from his hardships in exile and under Valmiki's tutelage is the sobering lesson - it could be said - of all good literature: we are fallible and imperfect. Seen as such, the Ramayana (literally, "the travels of Rama") is a wonderful coming-of-age journey, a Making of the Mahatma of sorts. (At some level, it is also a deeply satisfying classical comedy). This ripening of Rama also redeems the Ramayana from Valmiki’s bleak cynicism; the book rises above wisecracking political satire to become an epic story of human triumph. Valmiki’s literary genius is that he is able to give his narrative an ending that is not only happy but also profound because it turns his skepticism inward. After all, Rama’s return to Ayodhya as its king is a man’s return to the messy business of civilization (at its helm, at that) – a graduation, a leap of faith - and by granting Rama the possibility of redemption within the framework of civilization, Valmiki is, like all seasoned skeptics, acknowledging the limitations of his own outlook.

One wonders if such a Ramayana could be published in today's zeitgeist. Exploiting our desperate yearning for a Ram-rajya, militia crop up in Rama's name and large cut-outs in political processions portray him as a fiery, blue superhero with a bow and arrow. But that wasn't Valmiki's hero. Valmiki's hero was a man who was great because he learnt that he was imperfect and chose to step back into life with this wisdom - a humble skepticism diametrically opposed to the proud certitude of his self-proclaimed champions. Sita's tryst with Ravana may offend the machismo of those who created the warrior-god in their image, but Rama was far more sentient than they are. He knew better than to mistake Sita's independence for her dissolution, and would never place the burden of her character on her chastity. How could he be threatened by Sita's individuality when that was what saved him? A man who first nearly lost his life, then nearly lost the love of his life, and in the end emerged humbled by the experience, is certainly worthy of worship - as is the woman who saved him. The real richness of Indian culture lies in the multi-layered texture of stories like theirs. Let's preserve it, shall we?