While his boss is screaming at him, an LIC agent checks the picture of an old lady that flashes across his mobile screen. Later, the agent rings a bell and the same old lady opens the door.
“Nomoshkar, Agnes D’Mello?” asks the innocuous-looking, smiling LIC agent.
The moment the woman confirms, “Ek minute,” says the LIC-agent-cum-contract-killer and pulling out his silent pistol, shoots her in cold blood.
Before leaving, he whips out his phone to check whether he had killed the right person, and calmly steps out.
For people who still have not guessed, he is Bob Biswas, who personally renders me speechless every time he shoots people dead, smiling in an innocently-creepy way after his humble ‘Nomoshkar’.
The scene where Bob Biswas shoots Agnes D’Mello dead. Still from the movie—Kahaani.
A psychopath, Bob Biswas, played by Bengali actor Saswata Chatterjee, is an integral character in the 2012 thriller Kahaani, starring Vidya Balan.
Bob is not your quintessential villain who has a vicious laughter, a fit body and evil expressions. In fact, he is an ordinary man with a paunch, who goes to the office during the day, wears huge glasses and can easily disappear in the crowd.
Bob’s character is now getting its own movie starring Abhishek Bachchan and as soon as the news broke, social media pages were flooded with excitement. Finally, the fans will now get an insight into Bob’s life.
Like Bob Biswas, Hindi cinema has given birth to terror-inducing and vicious villains, malefactors and assassins who have left a lasting impact in the minds of movie enthusiasts with their impeccable performances.
Here are seven other villains, who we feel, have left a mark on the history of Indian cinema:
1. Lajja Shankar Pandey: Movie—Sangharsh
The scene where Ashutosh Rana dressed in a red saree, screams madly at a scared Preity Zinta is nothing short of a nightmare.
Lajja Shankar Pandey is a character in Sangharsh who kills young children with a hope to become immortal.
Rana’s performance is remembered as one of the most intensely-portrayed one and is engraved in the list of the most iconic villains, ironically immortalising the character.
Rana’s ghastly role in the Kajol-starrer Dushman as Gokul Pandit, a serial rapist and murderer, is also unforgettable.
2. Gabbar Singh: Movie—Sholay
Dialogues of Gabbar Singh from the 70s superhit movie Sholay are probably the most imitated dialogues transcending all generations.
Even if you have not seen this Ramesh Sippy action-drama, you must still have come across Gabbar’s loud voice and notorious laughter somewhere on television.
Essayed by late actor Amjad Khan, the character took a lot of time and effort to be perfected by the dream team of Salim-Javed. No wonder, actors like Danny Denzongpa, Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjeev Kumar were in the race to play Gabbar.
Know more about the life of Gabbar aka Amjad Khan here.
3. Mogambo: Movie—Mr. India
As soon as you type Mogambo, Google will complete the rest of the sentence for you “. . . . khush hua”.
Amrish Puri did not conform to the stereotypical image of a movie hero and thanks to that, Hindi cinema got to witness him play some of the most memorable bad guys.
But of all the roles, Mogambo from Mr India, stands out.
Amongs all the villains in the world of bollywood, Mogambo still remains the most villainous of them all. Source: Bollywood Art project/Facebook
Interestingly, actor Anupam Kher was the first choice for the role. Though upset initially on being replaced, Kher later confessed that the makers of the film took the right decision.
“When you are dropped from a film then generally an actor feels bad, but when I watched Mr India and saw Amrishji’s work as Mogambo then, I thought the makers of the film took the right decision by casting him in their film,” he told IANS.
Actor Saif Ali Khan turned out to be a surprise element in Vishal Bharadwaj’s Omkara—an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello. After playing a metrosexual man in movies like Hum Tum, Dil Chahta Hai and Salam Namaste, Khan wowed people with his body language and perfectly-delivered lines in the local dialect of the interiors of western UP, outperforming his co-actors in several scenes.
Treacherous, cold-hearted and manipulative, Tyagi walks with a limp and plays revenge games with Kesu Upadhyaya (Vivek Oberoi) and Omi Shukla (Ajay Devgn).
5. Rahul Mehra: Movie—Darr
In the long list villains in the cinematic world, Shahrukh Khan too has left his mark.
Way before Shah Rukh Khan conquered millions of hearts across the world with his charming and relatable roles, he was every woman’s nightmare as an obsessive stalker in Yash Chopra’s Darr.
Shah Rukh Khan’s character in the movie is so obsessed with Kiran (Juhi Chawla) that his intentions turn malicious and murderous, hell-bent on killing the man Kiran was in love with.
This is not the only film where Khan played an antagonist. Who can forget the scene in Baazigar where he pushes Shilpa Shetty from the terrace of a building to her gruesome death?
6. Isha (spoiler alert!): Movie—Gupt
In a movie full of villains, Kajol takes the crown.
Throughout this whodunnit, audiences are left guessing the identity of the mysterious killer.
Is it a politically-driven murder, money dispute or it is really Sahil (Bobby Deol) who killed his step-father for publicly insulting his girlfriend Isha (Kajol)?
I remember how my elder sister refused to speak to her best friend for months after she revealed the name of the murderer. And she was not the only ‘unlucky’ one to get the spoiler.
In a major plot twist and against everyone’s expectation, Kajol turns out to be the killer who ruthlessly stabs people who come in her and Sahil’s way.
It was a very bold move on Kajol’s part for shedding the heroine image and playing a villian in the beginning of her career.
7. Makdee
Witches have always been villains. And Shabana Azmi played one to the T.
In and as Makdee, Shabana Azmi managed to convince cinemagoers, especially children, of a world where witchcraft was still alive.
With her long nails, demonic look, evil laughter and hatred for children, Azmi is unrecognisable in the movie.
She transforms Munni (Shweta Basu) into a chicken after she enters her house due to a prank. So, her identical twin Chunni agrees to bring a chicken daily in hopes of getting her sister back.
Released in 2002, Vishal Bharadwaj’s directorial Makdee definitely gave sleepless nights to many who feared entering a dilapidated building alone, even during the day.
Whenever there is massive public unrest against the government of the day, celebrities in India are often put in a tight spot, because both fans and the government elicit their support. It’s a difficult choice to make, whatever their personal beliefs.
So, when former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency in June 1975, the government’s spin doctors were working non-stop to facilitate support of this decision and enlisted the help of celebrities.
While many of them followed the government-approved line, some notable film personalities chose not to go along with this severe policy, which drastically curtailed civil liberties.
Some of them paid for their principled stand in a big way.
Take the example of legendary actor and playback singer Kishore Kumar.
Besides rejecting an invitation to perform at a Youth Congress rally in Mumbai, he also turned down the then Information & Broadcasting (I&B) Minister VC Shukla’s request to make and participate in advertisements promoting Sanjay Gandhi’s 20-point Economic Programme launched just after the imposition of Emergency.
In response, Shukla did what most petty votaries of governments do, which is direct public broadcasters like Doordarshan and All India Radio to ban all songs and films that feature him.
This was a tactic not only meant to intimidate Kumar but others in the film industry as well.
Kishore Kumar (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
In fact, according to journalist Ranjan Das Gupta, legendary singer Manna Dey had told him, “[Mohammed] Rafi even questioned [Sanjay] Gandhi how he, being the grandson of a great man like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, could indulge in such an act.”
At a time when there were very few avenues to reach mass audiences, this was a crippling blow. At no point did he ever retract, and the ban was lifted only a year-and-a-half later when Emergency ended, and the Congress government was booted out of power.
Similarly, stars like Dev Anand and Shatrugan Sinha also had their films banned on Doordarshan. The government, in fact, threatened Sinha that he would be implicated in the Baroda Dynamite Case if he didn’t campaign for the party in Bihar.
Dev Anand, however, went beyond refusing the government’s invitation and publicly spoke out against Emergency with his brothers Chetan and Vijay Anand.
“The pro-Emergency lobby enforced strict discipline amongst the masses and the rank and file of the government offices through certain legislative measures. It did a lot of good for the country. But, the fact was that the soul of the people was smouldering, their spirit stifled by an iron hand,” wrote Anand in his autobiography, ‘Romancing With Life.’
Dev Anand (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
“They were dying to break the shackles, and the lava inside them was gathering momentum, soon to explode into a spluttering volcano. It just needed a single matchstick to light up. And the matchstick was provided by Indira Gandhi herself,” he added.
In response, the government came down particularly hard on Anand and set up multiple hurdles during the shooting of his film, Des Pardes.
But he was fearless and spoke out on public platforms with support from fellow members of the film fraternity like Pran, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Danny Dengzongpa and Sadhana.
During a public speech at Juhu beach in Mumbai, he directly attacked Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay for their dictatorial behaviour. He even formed a political party called the National Party at the time to take on the government.
Then, of course, there was legendary actor and director Manoj Kumar, who many had initially seen as a supporter of the regime because he had managed to convince VC Shukla into clearing the epic film Sholay, despite the government’s reservations.
However, he was against the Emergency from the start and soon his opposition to it was out in the open.
“One morning, I received a call from the I&B Ministry to direct a pro-Emergency documentary written by Amrita Pritam. I point-blank refused to direct the documentary and even asked her directly if she had sold out as a writer,” he said, speaking to the Sunday Guardian.
An apologetic and ashamed Amrita Pritam asked him to burn the script.
When the time came for the release of his film, Shor, it was surprisingly telecast on Doordarshan two weeks before its scheduled release. Naturally, when the film was released in theatres, it flopped.
Another film of his, Dus Nambri, was also banned, but Kumar wasn’t going to take it anymore from the government and spent weeks challenging it in court. He eventually won the case and became the only filmmaker in the country to win a lawsuit against the Emergency.
Going beyond the likes of Dev Anand and Manoj Kumar were National Award-winning actresses like Snehalatha Reddy, who not only spoke out against the Emergency but also actively participated in the underground movement that sought to undermine the government.
She was arrested for her troubles and booked under the draconian MISA (Maintenance of Internal Security Act) on trumped-up charges and held without trial for eight months in Bangalore Central Jail. There, she endured inhumane conditions, torture and suffered a debilitating illness that eventually killed her five days after she was released from prison.
There were other famous film personalities like V Shantaram, Uttam Kumar, Satyajit Ray, Raaj Kumar and Gulzaar, who spoke out against the Emergency as well.
Satyajit Ray refused to accept Indira Gandhi’s request to direct a documentary on her father, Jawaharlal Nehru. Considering not just his popularity at home, but his international standing, there was no way the government was going to touch a filmmaker of Ray’s stature.
At a time when artists didn’t have multiple avenues to screen their work to massive audiences, it took real guts for a handful of them to stand up to the vindictive regime and their policies.
More than four decades later, it’s time for us to honour them once again.
A hero falls in love with the heroine. Since he crosses hurdles and challenges to ‘get’ her, her world revolves around him. In the end, he ‘rescues’ her from all worldly atrocities and they live happily ever after. Pick any film from Bollywood, decode the plot and you will see the ‘cinderella-isation.’
However, this is not to say that the glamorous industry has not witnessed path-breaking female-centric roles. There are but a few.
Smita Patil in Bhumika (1977), Rekha in Ijaazat (1987), Shabana Azmi in Fire (1996), Madhuri Dixit in Lajja (2001) and Tabu in Astitva (2002) are some of the staggering examples.
A paradigm shift was witnessed in the past decade, where filmmakers wrote meatier roles for women, celebrating womanhood. Actresses on their part also took ‘bold’ decisions (sans relying on exposing their figures) and believed that Indian audiences would accept this new wave of feminism.
Spoiler alert, here’s a look at seven such films that also went on to motivate writers to ideate and actresses to demand better roles.
Right from her entry, Vidya Balan gives you an impression of just another pregnant lady who is very careful while sitting on a chair and entering a taxi.
What one also sees is her determination to find her missing husband even if it means hacking a computer system or breaking into an old government office. It is only towards the end that the audience sees that it was she who was driving the entire narrative of the film.
As we worry about her safety from the spectacled man with a creepy smile, Mr Khan who wants to use her as a scapegoat and the serial killer on the loose, she turns out to be an agent who is out to kill the killer.
Balan’s character, the breathtaking climax and emotional ride is something that will forever be etched in Bollywood’s cinematic history.
Playing an autistic girl without being the butt of jokes and proving that a disabled character is not someone who only shouts like a ‘retard’, Priyanka Chopra Jonas delivered one her finest works in Anurag Basu’s Barfi.
The film came at a time when the industry was still male-dominant, and heroines were eager to be a part of the Rs 100-crore club. Though there are no dialogues for the then 30-year-old Priyanka in this film, her adorable yet determined expressions do the work.
Be it her love for Nanu (maternal grandfather), her affection and possessiveness towards Barfi (Ranbir Kapoor), her disgust for muck on shoes, Jhilmil comes out as a courageous figure who is ready to take on life as it comes.
Hats off to Priyanka for venturing into unknown territory with so much grace and conviction.
Rajouri-based, (a residential neighbourhood in Delhi) Rani cannot contain her excitement to get married to her love-interest Vijay (Rajkummar Rao) in the opening scene of superhit film, Queen. But little does the young bride know that her dream of being his wife will come crashing down only because Vijay thinks she is naive and uncool.
After being distressed for a couple of days, Rani (Kangana Ranaut) decides to go on her honeymoon to Europe, alone. Rani’s transformative journey on the trip is gradual but steady. Her self-confidence restores with her postponing her return ticket.
What follows is Rani dancing her heart out in a club, burping loudly, driving a car, showing her cooking skills, kissing a stranger, living with four men and finally dumping her fiance because compromising on her individuality is no more acceptable to her.
Kangana Ranaut’s character did not have to fight evils of society, go against her parents or rebel without a cause to discover her true self and shatter patriarchal norms that slide in subtly every once in a while. It was like she found her new self while retaining who she was, and this, in my opinion, is an example of brilliant character development.
Rani Mukerji gave a finesse performance in Mardaani, a film that addresses sex trafficking.
Shivani is a fearless cop who is out to bust the trafficking racket and rescue girls, one of whom happens to be her daughter’s friend. Besides being mentally strong, she is also physically fit, a trait that is very rare to find in a female character. She keeps her emotions aside when necessary and fights nasty goons.
It is amazing to see Rani in a new avatar with her no make-up look. It was indeed a bold move on her part to shed her ‘heroine’ image and carry the film on her shoulders.
Though the film leaves you with a heavy heart, it also establishes faith towards the police department and respect for female cops.
Calling out your relative for sexual harassment is never easy. So it is no wonder that many such cases of abuse and assault go unreported, all to retain the family’s prestige. Director Imtiaz Ali addressed this topic in Highway, starring then-newcomer Alia Bhatt.
After playing the glamorous student, Shanaya in Student of the Year (2012), Alia shocked everyone, including the critics, with her character Veera, in Highway. Who can forget her powerful monologue where she lets out years of suppression in front of her family!
She breaks free from the conditioning to be poised and graceful in public, and like Rani in Queen, discovers herself and feels liberated even though she is in captivity.
It is very rare to see a raging character like Veera in Indian film cinema, an industry where girls and women are all about sanskar and traditions.
Ye paani hai, ye aag hai Ye khudi likhi kitaab hai Pyaar ki khuraak si hai Piku!
This excerpt from Piku‘s title track sums up Deepika Padukone’s character in the Shoojit Sircar directorial.
An architect by profession, the C R Park resident is fierce, unapologetic, ambitious, caring, and independent. Piku may not be the definition of an ideal Indian daughter but she is certainly a daughter every father wants.
Not conforming to the principles set by others, Piku does not marry, and one of the reasons is her ‘Baba’ (played by Amitabh Bachchan). She breaks the stereotype that only a son can take care of his parents and normalises singlehood.
From praying in front of her mother’s frame every time she leaves the house to making firm decisions in her personal and professional lives, she is the perfect amalgamation of modern and traditional.
The father-daughter road trip from Delhi to Kolkata surely touched the chords of our hearts.
After giving spectacular performances in films in like Chandni Bar (2001), Astitva (2002), Maqbool (2003) and Haider (2014), Tabu proved yet again that she will always be the queen of ‘grey’ as Simi in the 2018 thriller, Andhadhun.
The film revolves around Akash (Ayushmann Khurrana) who wants to build his name as a pianist by moving out of India and playing blind. A victim of unfavourable circumstances, he comes in contact with Simi, a housewife of a yesteryear superstar.
In the turn of events, you see Tabu, a step-mother, being an accomplice to the murder of her own husband. In the next scene, she effortlessly throws her old neighbour from the building to erase suspicions. Simi then falls into a trap and is blackmailed for money by Akash, who has seen her commit the heinous crimes.
Mind you, at no point in the film, does Simi feel victimised, guilty or vulnerable.
Tabu’s flawed yet honest character is strong or at least pretends to be. With no insight into her past, one can only guess the reasons behind her not-a-single-flinch expression while killing the poor lady.
Though as an audience, we can differentiate between right and wrong, accepting Simi as the film’s antagonist is challenging. Personally, this is one Bollywood ‘villain’ that I rooted for. Writing strong and honest female characters is not a difficult task if actresses are courageous enough to play flawed characters. It is no wonder that director Sriram Raghavan kept Tabu in mind while writing the script.
“Main Khullam khulla aaj yeh izhar karta hoon…. aadmi hoon aadmi se pyaar karta hoon..”
It is a sign of evolution in Indian cinema when a popular actor and a household name like Ayushmann Khurrana openly declares his love in a popular 80s track, ‘Pyaar bina chain kaha re’.
Sporting a sparkling top with shiny bell-bottoms, the remixed song is a part of his upcoming film Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan. The film is a progressive attempt towards addressing homophobia and raising awareness on same-sex love.
Indian cinema has produced several productions revolving around the LGBTQ+ community in the past, but a majority of them have been niche, reaching a small segment of the population.
But what makes Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan significant is its attempt at bridging the gap between society and the queer community with the casting of a mainstream actor! The trailer strikes the right chord with reality where the protagonists normalise homosexuality for parents and relatives, who, in turn, dismiss same-sex love as a ‘disease’.
Here are six other Bollywood films that have portrayed homosexuality realistically:
Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga comes off as a quintessential love story packed with songs, dances, one lead actor and one lead actress set in a small town of Punjab. There is melodrama in the house as the family is convinced that Sweety (Sonam Kapoor) is in love with a Muslim guy (Rajkummar Rao).
The twist unfurls when Sweety confesses that the real ‘siyyapa’ is that is she is in love with a girl.
What follows is Sweety fighting the taboo to break society’s shackles.
Along the way, the narrative highlights the emotional trauma, including alienation, loneliness, and shame that the queer community goes through for coming out of the closet.
Hats off to the filmmakers for choosing to portray a lesbian love story in mainstream cinema, something that is rare for the silver screen.
Professor Ramchandra Siras of Aligarh Muslim University was suspended after he was caught having consensual sex with a rickshaw puller. He filed a case in the Allahabad High Court in 2010 against the suspension and won. However, days after the court verdict, he died.
Based on this true story, director Hansal Mehta came up with Aligarhin 2016, starring Manoj Bajpayee as professor Siras, and Rajkummar Rao, a journalist who brings out the professor’s story.
The film explores the ruthless discrimination in society, and what it means to be queer. It has no larger-than-life dialogues or dramatic scenes, and yet, it manages to gauge the audience with occasional silences, and a constant emphasis on how labelling everything is not necessary.
Directed by Shonali Bose, Margarita With A Straw portrays the efforts of a woman at exploring her sexual identity.
The film revolves around Laila (Kalki Koechlin), an Indian woman with cerebral palsy, who falls in love with a blind Pakistani girl (Sayani Gupta). Laila is an unapologetic teenager who refuses to be ashamed about her condition and does not accept an award for it.
She shares a close relationship with her mother so much so that she lectures her mother for invading her privacy while she is watching porn. At one point in the movie, she also confesses that she is a ‘bi’ to her mother.
Laila’s journey from being a protected teenager in Delhi to a liberated woman in New York, discovering her sexual orientation is what makes this worth a watch.
After including glimpses of homosexuality in Dostana, Student of The Year and Kapoor and Sons, Karan Johar’s short in Bombay Talkies is a brilliant effort at mirroring the reality of our society. Innumerable people are trapped in loveless marriages, living in the closet, as homosexuality is forbidden in India.
The short film stars Randeep Hooda who plays husband to Rani Mukerji. A meeting between Randeep and Saqib Saleem instantly sparks an attraction between the two who find excuses to bond with each other. The sexual tension between them eventually leads to a kissing scene post which Randeep, a middle-aged man, is left with confusion and angst.
Mukerji eventually discovers his sexual orientation and ends their marriage.
It is notable to see how Randeep, like most of the closeted people, tries to save the marriage either out of fear or society’s inability to accept homosexuality.
Set in Goa in the late-90s, My Brother Nikhil, directed by Onir, is inspired by a real-life story. Featuring Juhi Chawla (Anu), Sanjay Suri (Nikhil) and Nigel (Purab Kohli), it addresses AIDS and homosexuality in a very dignified way.
Swimming champion Nikhil is diagnosed with HIV (not because he is in a relationship with a man). On finding that he is gay and HIV positive, an array of insults follow from his parents and friends. His sister Anu and lover Nigel are the only two people who support him.
The narration deserves a special mention, which normalises a gay relationship, where the two partners fight, cry, laugh and even express jealousy. Laced with occasional humour, heart-wrenching scenes, and terrific performances, this film is relevant today.
Deepa Mehta’s Firewas way ahead of its time by exploring a relationship between two married women, “People hadn’t seen such a film — sadly, in these 20 years, hardly any films have been made on same-sex relationships. For India, it is definitely a landmark film,” Nandita Das tells Indian Express.
The Indo-Canadian drama starring Nandita Das and Shabana Azmi was opposed vehemently across the country. Several shows were disrupted and movie theatres vandalised. Finally, after an uproar from feminist organisations, the film ran without any trouble.
The story revolves around Sita (Das) and Radha (Azmi) whose husbands choose celibacy or mistresses over their wives. This leads them to form an intimate, passionate relationship amidst a close-minded society.
The intricately woven scenes showcase how subjugated women in a patriarchal society find solace in each other and eventually develop a physical relationship. The film also comments on the suppression of female sexuality where women are no more than objects to satisfy their male counterparts.
Thirty-odd years ago, an English film on the staid old Doordarshan channel (remember, it was the only one), was an event.
When the papers announced that the offering on a certain Friday evening was that classic Disney cartoon film, Jungle Book, my sister and I scarcely believed our luck. It was a late-night screening, and so permissions had to be sought in exchange for promises made (‘Yes, we will finish our homework on Saturday morning and hit the books on Sunday too!’)
And so, the three of us–my sister, an old uncle who happened to be visiting, and I–waited with bated breath for the spectacle to unfold.
When it did, it was a crushing disappointment. It wasn’t the animated feature.
This Jungle Book had real people, and a strange name rolled off the credits–Sabu! His name in capital letters appeared in a bigger font than the others that were listed below him. Clearly, he was the lead actor, something of a star even.
My sister and I were crushed. Our old uncle wasn’t. He slapped his thighs in glee and exclaimed, “Oh my god! It’s Mysore Sabu!”
My sister slunk off to catch up on her sleep. She didn’t deem Sabu worthy of keeping her up. My uncle and I watched on. I remember not being disappointed at all.
In retrospect, Sabu’s Jungle Book, a celebration of empire and colonialism, appears dated. The ‘exotic’ Indian sets and the European actors who had been ‘blackfaced’ to resemble the Indians they were portraying, belonged to a time long gone. Yet, in that overly white, racist, and condescending cinematic world of the English films of the 1930s and 40s, Sabu, the Indian boy, made his mark.
Sabu was the first Indian to ‘make it’ in Hollywood, long before Priyanka Chopra, Om Puri and Irffan Khan became noted actors in the west. Even inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. Now forgotten, in his time, Sabu was the go-to actor for exotic Indian and Asian roles.
His beginnings were innocuous. He was born in 1924 in Karapur near then Mysore. Many sources cite his full name as Sabu Dastagir. But that appears to be erroneous. Selar Sabu or Selar Sheikh Sabu was his actual name. His brother, Sheikh Dastagir, went to Hollywood with him and somehow, owing to a mix-up of immigration forms, their last names got interchanged. And so, for Hollywood, he was just Sabu, his full name was never mentioned.
Sabu’s mother, it appears, died when he was young, and in 1931, his father too passed away. The six-year-old boy went on to serve in the elephant stables of the Maharaja of Mysore, and later as a mahout.
In 1934 or 1935, Robert Flaherty was in Mysore filming for Elephant Boy and spotted ten-year-old Sabu, in all likelihood, sitting on an elephant. And that’s how he was drafted into the film.
Flaherty was something of a cinematic pioneer. Among other things, he was the maker of Moana (1926), often described as the ‘first documentary’. It is likely that Elephant Boy too was intended to be a documentary, but the film’s producer, Alexander Korda, had a costume drama in mind and handed over the production to Zoltan Korda, his brother.
Elephant Boy proved a big hit, with much of the praise reserved for Sabu, described by critics as a “complete natural”.
Zoltan brought Sabu to London, filmed him with elephants borrowed from circuses and zoos, and in 1937, a very different Elephant Boy, based on a Rudyard Kipling story, hit the screens. O’Flaherty and Korda went on to share the Best Director award at the Venice Film Festival that year, and the film, while garnering mixed reviews, was a box-office success.
Sabu was on his way.
The Kordas were quick to recognise Sabu as someone who could draw crowds and signed him up for more films. The Drum, the Kordas’ first colour film, followed in 1938. In keeping with Sabu’s persona, it was again an exotic Indian offering, featuring him as Prince Azim who befriended a British lower-class drummer boy. The film sparked controversy in India as many were upset about the depiction of Indians.
In 1940, Sabu starred in The Thief of Baghdad, a lavish production. Shot in both England and the US, the movie was the Kordas’ biggest US hit and even won the Academy Awards for special effects, cinematography and art direction. Director Michael Powell said that Sabu had a “wonderful grace” about him.
Next up was The Jungle Book in 1942, shot extensively in Hollywood, also a success.
His contract with the Kordas now completed, Sabu stayed on and signed up with Universal Pictures. He was now something of a star in the industry.
He appeared opposite Maria Montez in Arabian Nights (1942), White Savage (1943), Cobra Woman (1944) and Tangier (1946). In 1944, he also became an American citizen and enlisted in the US Air Force, even flying World War II missions as tail-gunner. It was a time when most Hollywood stars were aiding the war effort. Given that it was the war, Sabu probably felt the need to affirm his identity as an American citizen. For his services, he was awarded the distinguished flying cross.
Amidst all this, it was clear that his acting career was stalling. In Tangier, he was reduced to playing a supporting role. Presumably, his typecast image of an exotic Asian man began to work against him after a while. Given his looks, he could not hope to be cast as a mainstream American character.
In 1946, Sabu went back to England and starred in Black Narcissus (1947), based on a Rumer Godden novel, in which he played a young prince. His co-star was Jean Simmons.
Another film soon followed–The End of the River (1947)–in which he was the lead star. This story was set in Brazil and Sabu played an Amazonian native, Manoel. But it performed poorly, and Sabu went back to Hollywood.
His next film, The Man-eater of Kumaon (no resemblance to the Jim Corbett book beyond the title), was released in 1948. That year, Sabu began filming The Song of India. On the sets, he met Marilyn Cooper, who played a small role in the film. Sabu and Cooper married the same year.
Given the heights that Sabu had reached in the early 1940s, the ‘50s weren’t very kind to him cinematically. By all accounts, he appears to have built a successful career in real estate in LA with his brother even as his film career waned. He continued to play the same exotic Indian/Asian roles with turban and faux jewellery in film after film, many of them low-budget European productions. There were films like Hello Elephant (1952), The Black Panther (1956) and a 1957 production entitled Sabu and the Magic Ring, all attempts to milk his typecast exotic Asian persona. He also did a brief stint with the Harringay Circus.
In the mid-50s, he came to India and was considered by Mehboob Khan to play the role of Birju in Mother India (1957), a role that ultimately went to Sunil Dutt. Some reports mention that given the fact that Sabu was a US citizen, he could not obtain a work permit in India. He was never to act in an Indian film.
In a comeback of sorts, he played Dr Lin Chor in Mistress of the World (1960) and also starred in Rampage (1963).
While there are clear issues with imperialism, orientalism and sexism in watching many of these films today, they can be viewed as products of their time and one can marvel at the Indian mahout who became the first international Indian star.
On December 2 1963, Sabu died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California. According to his widow Marilyn Cooper, Sabu had a complete physical exam just a few days before his death, at which time his doctor told him, “If all my patients were as healthy as you, I’d be out of business.” Thus, his sudden death of a heart attack at the age of 39 came as even more of a shock than it would have been otherwise.
His daughter, Jasmine (born 1957), went on to have a successful cinematic career as an animal trainer, dying young in 2001. His son, Paul (born 1960), embarked on a successful music career, working with David Bowie and Madonna, among others.
For his 2020 calendar collection, G Venket Ram, a Chennai-based photographer, roped in twelve famous personalities from the southern film and dance industries and adapted masterpieces by Raja Ravi Varma into photographs.
Featuring Shruti Hassan, Samantha Akkineni, Ramya Krishnan, Shobhana and Lissy Lakshmi, the exquisite photographs which recreate iconic paintings like ‘Woman Holding A Fruit,’ ‘There Comes Papa,’ or ‘The Maharashtrian Lady,’ have left viewers in awe.
While the actors look resplendent, and the photoshoot was no-doubt meticulous, its interesting to note that Ravi Varma’s connection with films can be traced way back in the pages of history, with another stalwart—Dadasaheb Phalke.
In a way, Varma was the unsung hero behind India’s first film Raja Harishchandra. We took a walk down the memory lane to resurrect the untold story!
A trusted employee and companion
In 1894, Ravi Varma was at the peak of his popularity. For the first time in the country, perhaps, a painter’s art was no more restricted within the four walls of his studio and his closely-knitted circle of connoisseurs.
Varma’s paintings of Hindu goddesses were replicated in bulk and worshipped at almost every Hindu household, especially in South India.
From advertisement pamphlets to high-end exhibitions— his works unbridled entry everywhere in the daily life of an average Indian.
It was at this juncture that he decided to make his art further ubiquitous, and set sail towards Bombay (Mumbai). At Ghatkopar, he established a press which used oleography and lithography for mass printing of his paintings. At that time, his press happened to be one of the most innovative in India, featuring a horde of cutting-edge machines.
A young photographer named Dhundiraj Govind Phalke was one of Varma’s most trusted employees at the press when it came to perfecting the craft of photo-litho transfers of his art. Gradually, Phalke became one of his most trusted companions.
Ravi Varma’s generous gesture
Unfortunately, tragedy struck in the form of Bombay’s infamous plague epidemic at the turn of the century that claimed over millions of lives. His printing business went downhill following the crisis, and by 1899, it became deeply debt-ridden.
In 1901, the press was sold to Fritz Schleicher, the German technician associated with the company for supplying machinery.
After selling the property, Ravi Varma decided to offer Phalke, his favourite employee, a considerable share of the sales proceedings. He was well-aware of Phalke’s dream to work on movie-making and provided the necessary support, both financially and morally.
Dadasaheb Phalke
Ravi Varma’s influence on Phalke’s filmmaking
On 3rd May 1913, Raja Harishchandra, India’s first full-length feature film directed by Phalke, was released at Coronation Cinema in Mumbai. For the first time, the Indian audience witnessed the magic of the motion picture.
Its impact was tremendous—Phalke went on to become Dadasaheb Phalke, the father of Indian cinema, and the film is considered by many to be the foundation for the film industry in the country.
It is argued that Ravi Varma’s grand gesture helped Phalke produce his dream project, and film historians have continuously reiterated the unmistakable influence of Varma’s paintings in Phalke’s movies.
From lightings to set decor, the mythical characters in Phalke’s movies often resembled Varma’s paintings. In fact, Raja Harishchandra opens with tableau, which is most probably inspired by Ravi Varma’s portrait of a king with his wife and son.
Phalke remained an ardent enthusiast of Raja Ravi Varma till his last day. The amalgamation of their creative geniuses gifted India with some of the best pieces of art till date.
Last month, a friend of mine from Assam who is a cinephile, shared an interesting video clip of a young man exhibiting an array of martial arts skills on the sets of the period drama ‘Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior’ released earlier this year.
Playing star actor Saif Ali Khan’s stunt double in the film, the young man in question was flawless in his presentation. Further research revealed that he is Montu Deuri, a martial artist and actor from the Nam Deuri village in Assam’s Jorhat district.
Deuri, who is 23, has featured in multiple Assamese (Suspended Inspector Boro and Local Kung Fu 2) and Hindi movies (Saaho, Mardaani 2, Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota).
Before a career in the film industry, however, Montu, who is Black Belt First Dan in Taekwondo, was a national-level fighter winning multiple gold medals in domestic tournaments. He is also a Red Mongkol in Muay Thai and expert practitioner of Kung Fu.
With not enough money in sports, he decided to take the plunge in Assamese cinema. But this choice wasn’t borne out of desperation. It came from a genuine love of action films.
“I never thought that one day I would work on a Bollywood set performing martial arts. Growing up, I loved watching action films like the cult hit ‘Tom Yum Goong’ starring the legendary Tony Jaa. Of course, Jackie Chan is another favourite, but Tony Jaa was the ultimate action hero for me,” says Montu, to The Better India.
Montu Deuri
Love for the game
Coming from a rural agrarian family living deep in the Brahmaputra Valley, his parents and relatives were initially dead against the idea of learning martial arts. But his determination to learn never wavered.
“My family only had a bicycle, which my father would use to transport crops to the local market. After school, I would cycle 20 km to Jorhat city, and travel back home for the same distance. My friends and I managed to keep this a secret from my family for months, but eventually, they found out. There were days when I would not get the cycle because of my father’s work, so I’d ask my uncles to lend their cycles to me. They would scold me, but eventually give in,” he recalls.
It was in Class 9 when he began learning Kung Fu under the tutelage of Abinash Baruah, an instructor at the local Manchuria Kung Fu Academy in Jorhat, who was kind enough to let Montu learn for free because he knew how long he had travelled and the effort it took.
After more than three years of learning Kung Fu, he transitioned to Taekwondo, where he earned his stripes as a (first dan) Black Belt certified by the Kukkiwon, which is also known as World Taekwondo Headquarters, in South Korea. He needed it to compete at the Nationals.
Winning medals at the Nationals brought him much fame back in his home village with his photograph appearing in the local newspaper, but no money. Calling it a “challenging time” in his life, he decided to pursue his passion for martial arts, learning Muay Thai from Rakesh Meitei, a Manipuri, who in 1999 became the sport’s first Indian instructor.
It has been nearly nine years since Montu first began learning martial arts. Despite participating in a few privately organised tournaments and earning anywhere between Rs 10,000-Rs 20,000 in each one, he admits to having taken a lot of beating.
But what attracts him to these combat disciplines despite the real threat of serious injury?
“What I love about martial arts is understanding the craft and technique behind the fighting. There is so much untapped knowledge in these disciplines. You not only learn about fighting, which I love but also about yourself. Moreover, a dedication to learning martial arts brings discipline to your life,” he says.
High flying Montu Deuri
Transition to cinema
“I seriously began considering a career in films after the release of popular Assamese film ‘Local Kung Fu’ directed by Mumbai-based filmmaker Kenny Basumatary, which was released in September 2013. Seeing other actors from my home state performing fight sequences on screen, I thought ‘this is something I can do as well,’” recalls Montu.
Nearly a year later, his cousin, who lived 300 km away in Guwahati, called him for an informal gathering of martial arts enthusiasts and practitioners in the city. There, Montu found an opportunity to demonstrate his unique skill set, and present at this get together was Utkal Hazowary, an Assamese actor and professional martial artist who had acted in Local Kung Fu.
Suffice it to say; he was impressed by what he saw.
“He took my phone number and a demo video I had made showing my skills and forwarded it with my contact details to Kenny Sir. One evening at home, I received a call from him asking me to come to Guwahati and make a short fight video. I was so excited at the prospect of meeting him that I arrived in Guwahati three days before the scheduled meeting in October 2015 and stayed with a friend,” he says.
After they shot the video, Montu returned home again to further his training in Muay Thai. Nearly a year after that shot film, Kenny gave Montu his first big break with a role in ‘Local Kung Fu 2’, the sequel and an action adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors.
The movie changed his life. Receiving a great response from cinema-goers all over the state, Montu had finally realised his dream of appearing on the silver screen.
“When I saw the demo clip, I understood he had some real fighting chops. When I met Montu in Guwahati, we shot a short fight video just to see how he would do. Initially, he was very stiff and shy. So, I called him again and reshot that video. When I came back and started working on my film Local Kung Fu 2, his confidence had dramatically increased. He was much better on the screen, so we cast him as one of the main villains in Local Kung Fu 2,” says Basumatary, to The Better India.
Since then, Montu has gone onto work with Kenny in the 2018 release Suspended Inspector Boro and has recently concluded shooting for Local Utpaat. “Kenny Sir has been a real mentor without whom I would have never found work in Assamese films, never come to Mumbai and do the things I love. He has played a massive role in shaping my career, offering me financial help and emotional support whenever I needed it,” remarks Montu.
The top notch fighter!
Bollywood Dreams
Sometime in December 2017, a few months after the release of Local Kung Fu 2, Montu visited Mumbai for the first time with Kenny.
“I took him to Mumbai because for someone with his talent there are more opportunities there than in Assam,” says Kenny.
Montu lived with Kenny and for two months gave martial arts training lessons to other aspiring artists before landing a minor gig doing stunt work with Bollywood actor Varun Dhawan for an awards ceremony.
“But one day, I got a call from Kenny Sir’s assistant telling me about an audition for a movie called Mard Ko Dar Nahi Hota Hai. I auditioned and landed a small part in it as a fighter. It was my first screen appearance in a Bollywood film. Following this movie, I worked in Saaho again as a side fighter finding screen time and in Mardaani 2 before landing a role as Saif Ali Khan’s stunt body double in Tanhaji. But beyond playing his stunt double, I was also given work training the fighters in this film,” he says.
He even got a call to work in ‘Uri: The Surgical Strike’, but at the time his schedule was full working on Suspended Inspector Boro. Nonetheless, Montu admits that at no point in his life before leaving Assam did he ever think that one day he would play the stunt double of a popular Bollywood actor and even give him cues on set.
“There is no question Montu is a proper fighter. His talent is world-class. He is as good as the famed Tony Jaa. As a trained fighter, his body language is correct and perfect for fighting. I have learnt a lot from him also. After training with him, my footwork, overall body posture and movements have become much better,” says Kenny.
But screen fighting is very different from real-life fighting.
“On screen, you need to exaggerate your movements a little bit and do all your punches and kicks from a safe distance or in a controlled manner so that nobody gets hurt. Finally, your reactions to getting hit have to be very good. This is why even for small villain-type roles, we never take anybody off the cuff. We always audition them and check out their reactions. Only if their ‘getting hit’ reactions are good, we take them because it makes a massive difference to the scene,” argues Kenny.
“Montu has all these qualities. He is a real-life fighter, very good on screen, and his reactions have been very good since day one. He is the complete package. Besides, he is very creative when it comes to fight movements, fight choreography and shot taking. Often, he comes up with some brilliant ideas. He is made for this stuff,” he adds.
Learning & Growing
“Working on Tanhaji was an incredible experience. I learnt so much from those on set, particularly from the German technicians who choreographed some of the massive fight sequences with sword fighting in the climax. I picked up a few skills along the way about action choreography, filmmaking and directing. I also learnt so much from director Om Raut, who looked out for me. He helped me obtain a membership card from the Movie Stunt Artists Association, without which I couldn’t perform stunts on set,” he says.
Besides playing Saif’s body double, Montu would also walk him through some of the stunts he needed to do. However, the high-risk stunts or those Saif couldn’t do, were left to Montu.
For an eight-hour gig as a stunt double, he received around Rs 10,000 per day. As a martial arts trainer, he earned about Rs 1 lakh per month. The agreement Montu signed was for eight months. While he earned a decent sum working in the film, there remained a serious risk of injury with broken bones and fractures.
But on big-budget sets like Tanhaji, Montu claims that medical expenses borne out of any injury on set was handled by the production team.
“Besides injuries, there is always some tension about not getting regular work as well. But with my training and skill set, I am confident that it will not be a problem. Yes, I do hope that one day I land a lead role using my skills in martial arts. For the time being, such opportunities are hard to come by in this regard, but there is no harm in dreaming,” he says.
Kenny also believes that Montu is lead man material.
“He is definitely a leading man material. What we need to do is find someone with the right kind of finances to back a project worthy of his skill level. There is a Cambodian film called Jailbreak. That’s not a very high budget film, but from start to finish it is one fight sequence after another with a few breaks in between. That film is almost shot entirely in one location. If we could do something at that level here in India, Montu would be great at it,” he says.
A few weeks ago, I watched ‘Bulbul Can Sing’, a coming-of-age film directed by Rima Das, about three teenage friends—Bulbul, Bonnie and Suman—and how they navigate love, life, friendship, questions of their sexual identity and an overbearing society.
Akin to her previous work ‘Village Rockstars’, which won the National Award for Best Film and became India’s official entry for the Oscars in 2018, ‘Bulbul Can Sing’ is rooted in the daily rhythms of rural life, and is an incredibly heartfelt and spell-binding take of what it means to grow up.
My favourite sequence comes at the very end when Bulbul and Bonnie’s mother, who is grieving her daughter’s suicide, are alone together on the banks of the Brahmaputra, as the sun sets and its rays pierce through the darkened clouds gathered above them.
Seeing Bulbul despondent, Bonnie’s mother says, “Don’t worry. If you listen to people, your life will be ruined. Do what your heart says.”
What follows is the appearance of a beautiful rainbow.
Speaking to The Better India, Rima (38) describes the process of filming this sequence.
“The place is about 15 km from Chhaygaon, my native village. It was a miracle that this scene even happened. It was a sunny day when we reached there, but soon after, it became very windy and cloudy, and we thought it was going to rain. But the weather changed, and magically a rainbow appeared. Nature came to our rescue,” she says.
This sequence encapsulates nearly everything I love about Village Rockstars, and Bulbul Can Sing.
In both films, the camera beautifully captures the bucolic landscape of rural Assam. There are lingering shots of ponds, trees, leaves, grass, paddy fields, the sunshine sparkling through the clouds, village homes and evocative close-up shots of people who inhabit this picturesque land.
“There is no storyboard, and through these shots, I was simply observing life,” she says rather nonchalantly.
However, what augments the aesthetics of these shots is the emotion it expresses—hope. After a series of tragedies induced by an overbearing society through the second half of the film that ravages the life of the main protagonists, what we witness is the defiance of two women worst affected—Bulbul and Bonnie’s mother.
Despite losing her child thanks to the fallout of another incident that involved Bulbul, both characters are brought together by love, empathy and finally defiance when Bonnie’s mother says, “Do what your heart says.”
The appearance of a rainbow right after that dialogue reaffirms that hope.
Poster for Bulbul Can Sing. You can now watch the film on Netflix. (Image Courtesy Facebook/Rima Das)
Hope is also an ever-present theme in Village Rockstars, which centres on 10-year-old Dhunu harbouring dreams of starting a rock band with her friends despite living in poverty.
While we see Dhunu fashioning a guitar out of waste styrofoam in the early sequences of the movie, it closes with her strumming an actual acoustic guitar that her mother has gifted her, out under a setting sun on the paddy field. Surrounding Dhunu are her friends who can’t hide their joy.
Village Rockstars Poster. You can now watch the film on Netflix. (Image courtesy Facebook/Rima Das)
Hope & Bridging The Generational Gap
In Bulbul Can Sing, what I found was a story-telling process that was quiet, restrained and gentle. The first half is free-flowing because that’s how life is, according to Rima.
“When you’re free, everything is beautiful. But in the second half, society enters their lives through a moral police squad and villagers who deem Bulbul and Bonnie’s budding romance with their lovers as ‘immoral’, and suddenly their life changes. That’s why the first half of the film is full of life, and suddenly it changes track in the second half because it’s not about what these young people believe, but what other people in society think and how they impose their thoughts,” says Rima.
In some ways, she admits that it is a reflection of what she observed while growing up in school, college and in her personal life.
“I had initially intended for Bulbul Can Sing to be a love story. But this changed because of an incident I had heard about in a nearby school where three girls were rusticated. I realized nothing much had changed from the time I had grown up with respect to moral policing except now that they have an additional instrument in the form of social media. When I saw the video of them (the girls) being shared on WhatsApp groups, I felt a deep sense of sadness. That’s when I changed the story of Bulbul,” she recalls.
I was initially unsure about Suman’s character, but once the narrative changed, his character developed. He is the only one among the cast who is that way in real life. His family treats him as a boy, but he suffers taunts from people in the village and school for embracing his feminine side.
Similarly, Dhunu in Village Rockstars also subverts gendered expectations and norms by playing with boys her age and climbing trees. Despite taunts from others in the village which her mother wards off, her spirit remains unencumbered.
“There is definitely a gap between young people and adults, which is increasing. The older generation needs to understand how the young see their world, and young people must understand how the older generation thinks. Although I do have a viewpoint, at no point am I trying to put too much of myself and message out there, but leave it open to the audience to find their meaning in my work,” she says.
I was struck by how hope in both films seemingly rests in the hands of women or in the case of Bulbul Can Sing also in men embracing their feminine side.
Shillong-based filmmaker Dominic Sangma, whose second feature film ‘Rapture’ made its way to Cannes last year, feels the same way.
“When I watched Village Rockstars, I was completely blown away by her style. Rima Das is an important voice not only from the Northeast but India as well. As a filmmaker, her natural ability to observe life and capture its fine nuances on screen is remarkable. She innately seems to understand how people react to certain situations in life and manages to recreate it on-screen perfectly,” he says.
Her films capture the daily rhythms of rural life. (Photo courtesy Facebook/Rima Das)
Employing non-actors to evoke life on screen
Both films heavily employ first-time actors on screen. In Village Rockstars, the cast is entirely made up of non-actors from her native village of Chhaygaon in Assam’s Kamrup district, including Dhunu, who is Rima’s cousin.
Similarly, Bulbul Can Sing also introduces three new faces on screen—Arnali Das as Bulbul, Banita Thakuriya as Bonnie and Manoranjan Das as Suman.
Except for Pakija Begum, who plays Bonnie’s mother, the entire cast comprises non-professional actors.
“It’s remarkable how she handles non-actors and brings such powerful performances out of them. As a filmmaker, you need to create a certain environment around your set to evoke such performances on screen. This is something I want to learn from her. Despite its simplicity, there is also an element of genius in how she writes for a film. It’s not easy for the non-seasoned actors to articulate, but the dialogues just flow so seamlessly. The best part of Rima’s films is that nothing seems written on a piece of paper or contrived or set to a script. The words just reveal themselves on screen,” says Dominic.
Working with children and non-seasoned actors. (Photo courtesy Facebook/Rima Das)
When I asked Rima how she selects her cast, she said that it is a very spontaneous, authentic and organic process.
“Sometimes, I just went with my gut feeling and instinct to cast all the characters. For both films, I did not take any auditions. In essence, this was an exploratory journey. It was not at all a stressful process. They were just there, and all I needed to do was recognize them,” she informs.
Rima has had significant acting experience in the past. Unable to relate to certain scripts, she would feel stuck performing them. That’s why, during her filmmaking process, she tries to make her actors comfortable, confident and give them easy lines to perform.
“When I write dialogues, I say them aloud to myself, emote, and understand whether these lines are easy to articulate or not. For both films, the only crew member I had was my cousin Mallika Das, and so we had enough time. My films didn’t have regular shoots, where things had to be done on a specific deadline or in a hurry. If I am telling a story of children or teenagers, you have to know them well. You cannot make something superficial,” she says.
She also notes that working with non-seasoned actors gives her greater freedom as a filmmaker. In her first feature film Antardrishti (Man With The Binoculars’), she worked with seasoned and professional actors.
“See, there are different limitations and strengths of working with seasoned and first-time actors as well. But it wasn’t a conscious decision to cast non-actors in my films. It was a spontaneous process. When I made my first short film working with non-actors in 2009, I knew nothing about anything as a filmmaker. I hadn’t even seen a close reel camera or even touched it before. When I met children in my village, I just started and didn’t approach them as actors or non-actors. But for films like Village Rockstars, it was also intentional in a way because I knew that making it would take time. I needed that liberty as a filmmaker. If you cast professional actors, they have other projects, limited time and so on. No such limitations working with non-actors in my village,” informs Rima.
With Bulbul Can Sing as well, it was not a deliberate move to cast non-actors except Pakija Begum. Despite limited screen time, Pakija was brought in to play this role because Rima needed an actor that she could push to express certain difficult emotions.
“I could not pick someone from my village and push them. With seasoned actors, they know tricks of the trade and can work towards those emotions at a personal level. I wanted an actor with depth. For example, that scene with Bonnie’s mother and Bulbul, I wanted someone who had experienced life and said those lines with conviction. With non-actors, I have to put in a lot of effort,” she says.
Nonetheless, shooting Bulbul Can Sing was difficult because of the massive success that came with Village Rockstars. She had started shooting the film towards the end of shooting Village Rockstars. Before the latter premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and exploded on the international scene, she had already started shooting Bulbul Can Sing.
Moreover, both films were primarily shot in Chhaygaon, and it was a challenge to ensure both films didn’t look similar. Although for Bulbul Can Sing, she did some shooting in nearby villages, ‘80 per cent’ of it was done in the same location where Village Rockstars happened.
Last year, Rima Das made her appearance as a panelist at the ‘India Pavilion’ of the Cannes film festival. (Photo courtesy Facebook/Rima Das)
A Self-Taught Filmmaker Who Is Changing The Game
How she managed to elicit such brilliant performances out of first-time actors has a lot to do with her incredible journey into filmmaking. Growing up in Chhaygaon, Rima harboured dreams of becoming an actor.
Despite clearing her National Eligibility Test (NET) after her Masters in Sociology at Pune University, she moved to Mumbai during the early 2000s to pursue that dream.
The dream was big, but even reaching a casting director was a lot of trouble, particularly without the internet. She recalls being innocent and naive about the business of filmmaking in Mumbai.
“During school and college in Assam, I did very well as an actor. When I ended up in Mumbai, however, I missed that spontaneity and fear began to rule me. I did some acting workshops in Mumbai and some theatre too, but through the process, I remember thinking to myself, I used to be a good actor. How did I become so conscious of myself?” she recalls.
Till 2013, Rima was one among many struggling actors in Mumbai. She was offered bit roles, but they were so inconsequential that she couldn’t even recall them herself. The dream of becoming a film star was beyond reach.
“I realized that it was hard to get roles. Instead of seeking them out, I decided to make my own movies and act in them as well. That was my plan. But when I made my first feature film Antardrishti (Man With The Binoculars), which was shot with a Canon DSLR camera in Kalardiya near Chhaygaon, it was so difficult to do both. I wasn’t happy at all with the results. I believe my film suffered because I wanted to act in it myself. I couldn’t completely focus on both aspects working with a very small crew. Until my first film, acting was a priority, but then my focus shifted completely towards making films,” she recalls.
Direction was easier for Rima because she had bought a camera, which she calls “my weapon,” and didn’t have to depend on anyone to make her movies.
“Rima has also completely changed the way we look at filmmaking as well. I’m a film school graduate, and we are trained to look at it like a collaborative process—we depend on others to fulfil certain aspects like editing, costume designing, screenwriting and producing. But she does everything from writing the script to directing, camera work and costume designing to editing all by herself. She has made filmmaking such a personal endeavour,” says Dominic.
The process of making a film is a deeply personal endeavour. (Photo courtesy Facebook/Rima Das)
Rima says that this is because she did not know how to separate each of these roles or that she needed to hire someone different to manage each of these tasks.
“As I did not go to a film school, I saw making films as a whole. It was not like I shouldn’t do casting, writing screenplays, doing camera work, editing or doing art direction. I didn’t see making movies like it. When I watched films, I saw all these elements coming together to create one overall experience,” she says.
Fortunately, her first film, Antardrishti, was very well received on the international film festival circuit with screenings at the Mumbai Film Festival and the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia in 2016, besides winning a couple of state awards. What this initial success did was give her hope that she was going in the right direction.
“With Antardrishti, I had to hurry things because of the limited budget, small crew and financial circumstances. However, with films like Village Rockstars, I had the liberty that I didn’t have earlier. Sometimes, I would be on location, and there was no shooting because certain things weren’t happening. So, the process of casting and the close bond I established with the actors in a deeply personal work helped me. These films are a reflection of myself,” she says.
It took her three years to make Village Rockstars—she started shooting in 2014, and the film premiered in 2017. Shooting for Bulbul Can Sing began in 2017. In three years, she premiered Man With The Binoculars (2016), Village Rockstars (2017) and Bulbul Can Sing (2018).
Her films are travelling the world on the film festival circuit. (Photo courtesy Facebook/Rima Das)
Influences & Acclaim
“When I watched Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali in 2007, it made me believe that this is how you can also make movies. Growing up, making films didn’t feel like a realistic objective since I had known commercial cinema to be too big and expensive with massive budgets. I never thought I would make movies and it wasn’t a realistic dream for me,” she says.
But watching films by the likes of Ray, Federico Fellini, Majid Majidi, Ingrid Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky and Wong Kar Wai, amongst others, helped her realize that she can one day go back to her village and make films steeped in realism; and that they need not necessarily have dance sequences, songs, or a big budget.
Influenced by such auteurs, it’s no surprise that her films have a non-linear plot.
“As I grew up, I stopped enjoying linear films, where I know where the story is leading me. I like non-linear films that surprise you,” she says.
And who would have thought that one day, films with non-linear storylines, shot in rural Assam by a self-taught filmmaker could take Indian cinema to the world?
“We don’t make films for ourselves. We need an audience to watch them and connect with us. It’s the ultimate goal for any filmmaker. I saw a Rima before Village Rockstars, who was also unsure about herself and her work. But great films will find their way to a large audience and people will accept it commercially as well. She even broke away from the norms of approaching sales agents, distribution and did it all by herself. People today want to watch her films after Village Rockstars because she has become a global name,” says Dominic.
She recalls dealing with all the praise that came with her films. “It was madness,” she says, recalling the innumerable interviews, award functions, film festivals, and speaking events, particularly in her home state after Village Rockstars, which became the first Assamese film to win the National Award for Best Feature Film in 30 years.
It has been a remarkable personal journey for Rima Das. (Photo courtesy Facebook/Rima Das)
“My phone is still like a public telephone, but I cannot switch it off or change numbers because these films are my babies. I need to take care of them,” she laughs.
But she also acknowledges what the global acclaim has done for her.
“Whoever survives, they are heroes. Hope is what keeps us moving forward. In my life, I have gone through many hardships, and I consider myself a survivor. That’s why Bulbul Can Sing is also a metaphor. Although Bonnie was a better singer, Bulbul sings her life song because she survived with whatever happened. My work is a reflection of life. I remember in difficult times, when I thought there was nothing left in my life, only songs, movies and books helped me overcome my troubles. For anyone who watches my films, I hope some moments can help and motivate them, but more importantly, make them feel something. It’s not that I want to send a definitive message, but I want people to look forward to life,” she says.
(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)
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If you are a resident of Mumbai and a Bollywood fan, then Bandra might be one of your favourite go-to spots in the city.
Apart from housing the Khan trio – Shah Rukh, Amir and Salman Khan and multiple people from the film fraternity – Bandra is also known for its stunning murals of Bollywood actors.
From the 230-foot mural of Amitabh Bachchan’s iconic look from Deewar near Mount Mary, Dadasaheb Phalke’s mural on the MTNL building that can be spotted from Bandra-Worli Sea Link to the latest one of late actor Irrfan Khan in the bylanes of Waroda Road, fans are often spotted taking selfies with eye-catching murals.
Ranjit Dahiya, from Sonipat, Haryana, is the artist behind Bollywood murals. Bringing alive movie stills or pictures of actors, he attempts to deepen Mumbai’s association with Bollywood.
Ranjit Dahiya
“In 2009, when I moved to Mumbai I was disappointed with the ‘filmy’ city. I had imagined visible differences between Mumbai and other cities of India. Instead of posters of celebrities, all I could see was pollution and cramped buildings. That was my triggering point. Through street art, I decided to bring the celluloid world closer to commoners like me,” Ranjit tells The Better India.
Ranjit started his painting career as a whitewasher at the age of 16; did his Masters in Graphic Design from National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. He worked at a couple of companies as a graphic and interface designer before committing to street art in 2012.
Love for Street Art & Bollywood
Alongside a 9-5 job, Ranjit would often go around with his other artists in Bandra to practice street art.
This is how he landed his first stint to recreate a film poster for a film festival in Paris. He made a huge wall painting for the film Sarkar Raj in 2010. This was Ranjit’s breakthrough in street art.
Two years later, he started his venture Bollywood Art Project (BAP) to transform the city into a Bollywood memorial. He also took up freelancing projects for additional income.
Being a huge fan of Bollywood movies, it was difficult for Ranjit to choose his first-ever mural, “From Sridevi, Smita Patil, to Rishi Kapoor, I wanted to draw all of them at once. But then, finally, I chose Anarkali from Mughal-e-Azam. When I saw the movie in colour, I couldn’t take my eyes off the gorgeous Madhubala. I took permission from a 2-storey building on Chappel road and there was my first mural,” he shares.
Since then, Ranjit has made close to 50 murals across multiple cities including Delhi and Chennai and even in the United States, in South Carolina. His list boasts of actors like Nadira, Sridevi, Rajesh Khanna, Rishi Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Saira Banu, Amrish Puri, Guru Dutt, Waheeda Rehman, Smita Patil and so on. One of his favourite paintings is a still from Pyaasa of Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rehman.
Ranjit spends anything between Rs 40,000 to 20 lakh on the paints, labour, food etc per painting.
Though there are no monetary returns, what keeps him going?
“My love for cinema,” he quips. “I save every penny I can and sometimes when I am lucky, I get sponsorships. More than money, it is the love and appreciation for my art that excites me to paint a mural. As a whitewasher, I had never imagined that I would meet Nawazuddin Siddiqui one day.”
Ranjit has over a hundred names in his list of actors and movie stills that he wishes to paint, including his favourite actors, Raj Kapoor and Shah Rukh Khan, “I hope to meet Shah Rukh one day, not as a fan, but as an accomplished artist. That would be a proud moment for me.”
Vikramaditya Motwane’s stunning directorial debut, Udaan (2010) played a significant role in rejuvenating the spirit of realism of Hindi cinema.
Produced by Anurag Kashyap, this landmark coming-of-age film set in the steel city of Jamshedpur, chronicles the life of Rohan Singh, a teenager with a talent for poetry, who successfully rebels against his dictatorial and often ruthless father.
It’s a film about love, loss, aspiration, friendship, brotherhood, rebellion, and more importantly, the spirit of freedom.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of a film which captured the imagination of millions. Speaking to The Better India, Rajat Barmecha (31), who played the role of Rohan (it was his debut film) looks back at the journey towards the role of a lifetime, and after.
Getting the part
Born on 24 April 1989 in Ladnun, a village in Rajasthan, Rajat grew up and went to school in the national capital, where his father ran a business.
“Bollywood ruled the Barmecha household, and my father is responsible for my inclination towards acting and cinema. When my brother, sister, and I were little, he took us to watch films in the cinema hall every weekend. He has continued the practice till this day, and watches practically every new release,” recalls Rajat.
Rajat was barely 18 when he arrived in Mumbai to fulfill his life-long dream of becoming a Bollywood star. For around a year and a half, he found work appearing in a series of TV commercials before hearing about auditions for an Anurag Kashyap film from his elder brother Vicky, and a friend.
Looking for someone to play a high school boy, the casting team had initially chosen not to even take Rajat’s audition since his ‘look’ at the time didn’t suit the role. A fortnight later, however, he received a call back from the casting team, who told him that Vikramaditya Motwane, the film’s director, wanted him to give a screen test.
“The first screen test I gave for Udaan, in 2009, was awful. But there was something Vikram liked about me and asked to meet me in person. At the time, Vikram used to work out of filmmaker Nikhil Advani’s office. I met him there, had a small chat, and we really got along. After that, he asked me to give a few more screen tests. One day, we worked on some scenes for four-five hours. Finally, I did two scenes that Vikram really liked. After performing these two scenes, I was regularly called to Anurag’s office,” recalls Rajat.
There, Rajat would spend quality time with Anurag, Vikram, his wife Ishika, and the rest of the film’s cast and crew. They would ask him to read poems, listen to music, but he still didn’t know whether he got the part. One fine day, Vikram called him for a walk in and around the Aram Nagar area. There, he confirmed his part in the film.
While Rajat’s desire to become an actor was driven initially by a fascination with the Hindi film industry and the name, fame and money associated with being a big star, working with Vikram and Anurag had a massive influence on changing the way he approached cinema.
“For a newcomer in the film industry without any personal connections, all you know about cinema is what you see on screen, but you know nothing about the technicalities or the craft. Vikram changed all that for me. He is my acting and filmmaking school—in fact, my entire foundation as an actor rests on what I learnt from him. When we were shooting Udaan, if I had any doubts about the process, Vikram would patiently answer them after work was over for the day. I haven’t attended a single acting workshop, or received any formal training of any sort, and when people praise me for being a natural performer on screen, I give all the credit to him because he taught me how to do that. Today, whenever I meet any other director, I always compare that person to him,” he says.
Rajat Barmecha (Photo courtesy Nirali Shah)
Shooting for Udaan
Besides working with such a stellar filmmaker, Rajat also shared the screen with two legends of Indian television in Ronit Roy, who plays his abrasive father, and Ram Kapoor, the benevolent uncle. It was an experience he cherishes till this day.
‘I loved working with both of them and they were extremely kind to me. It was my first film and those two were legends in Indian television. But they never made me feel as if I was a young guy just starting out. The entire cast and crew of Udaan felt like a family. There was no hierarchy. I remember there was only one Cafe Coffee Day in Jamshedpur at the time, which was right under the hotel where we were staying. Whenever a break day came, we would all chill together at CCD or at the hotel. It was like a family getting together every day,” he says.
As actors, Rajat feels that Ram and Ronit are very different.
“Ram is someone who knows his lines so well and in detail that he would not even miss a word. On the other hand, although Ronit knows his lines, he improvises on screen. He is very spontaneous. I have ended up becoming more like Ronit because I don’t remember my lines too well, but improvise and understand the feel that is required to emote them. Vikram was never crazy about us actors sticking to our lines. For him, it was about getting the emotion and feel right,” recalls Rajat.
Made with a budget of Rs 3 crore, Udaan released on 16 July 2010, to rave reviews, capturing the imagination of everyone in the film industry and the entertainment media. Whoever he met during parties and award functions, including the likes of Amitabh Bachhan and Karan Johar, heaped praise on his performance.
After an impressive debut, however, Rajat completely went under the radar. Apart from a cameo in Bejoy Nambiar’s Shaitan (2011) and a series of short films, including the National Film Award-winning The Finish Line (2011) directed by Akshay Roy of Meri Pyaari Bindu (2017) fame, we didn’t see much of him.
When asked this question, he talks about the paucity of quality scripts and roles that came before him.
“The offers I got post Udaan were similar to the film, and the scripts weren’t interesting enough. Also, I didn’t get that many offers from big directors as well because I was much younger at the time and wasn’t a star in the conventional sense. Whatever the script, all producers needed was a star. That dynamic still exists, but it’s much better today. Today you have Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who can play the lead actor. Back then, it wasn’t possible,” he says.
Was it just a question of bad timing that he didn’t get the sort of roles he was looking for since Hindi cinema at the time was primarily driven by star power and big budgets?
Today, actors like Ayushmann Khurrana, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Rajkummar Rao, Bhumi Pednekar and Kangana Ranaut are telling stories with tighter scripts and great attention to characterisation that are steeped in realism. Their films are telling stories from beyond the metropolises, of a small-town and rural India, and they are doing well commercially.
If Udaan had released in say 2015 or 2020, one can make the argument that it could have been a bigger hit, and thus opened more doors for actors like Rajat.
But it’s an argument he rejects straightaway, and approaches this question very differently.
Rajat Barmecha (Photo courtesy Nirali Shah)
“Yes, it’s a much better time for smaller films today. If Udaan had been released in 2005, it would have been a disaster. No one would have seen it. However, had it been released in 2015, I would not have been able to play that role because of my age. So, I believe that 2010 was the perfect year for the film to release. Hindi cinema was changing and Udaan was one of the films that catapulted that change. It was a Rs 3 crore film that went to the Cannes film festival and received such widespread love and acclaim. I was also at the right age when I played that character. Maybe in 2015, it would have been a bigger hit, but I wouldn’t have been the person to play that role. Everything happens for a reason and the timing for Udaan was perfect. I have no complaints there,” he argues.
However, he also notes that It depends on how you are launched as an actor. Getting launched by big banner production houses, he admits, helps land more roles. Having said that, Rajat is adamant that he wouldn’t change a thing. If he had to do it all over again, he would still choose to do Udaan as his debut film.
Udaan Film Poster
Life changing moment
Five years ago, Rajat’s life changed completely because of two reasons. The first was watching the 2007 film ‘Into The Wild,’ which is based on a book of the same name by Jon Krakauer, and narrates the story of a young graduate, who decides to renounce all his possessions and hitchhike across America.
The second was the emergence of the web series format and OTT platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hotstar and Viu.
“Sometime in 2015-16, my entire perspective towards life changed. Before, I was heavily caught up in work and materialistic things. But that changed when I watched ‘Into The Wild’. It inspired me deeply, and got me into travelling and backpacking. At the same time, the web series scene in India started to pick up. In 2016, I starred in a Hindi web series called ‘Girl in The City’ followed by a few more projects. It was a good space for an actor like me. Those who were making films were the same people who were making web series. The quality was more or less the same, but it was just on a different medium,” he says.
Last year, he acted in a show called ‘Hey Prabhu’ directed by Shashank Ghosh, who had previously made ‘Veere Di Wedding’. In the show, he plays a social media star with a massive fan following online, who one day discovers that he has erectile dysfunction.
“With the advent of streaming and OTT platforms, I am definitely getting better projects. Besides, during the lockdown I wrote my first feature film script. I want this to be a Netflix original. Before I pitch the script, however, I will be sending it to Vikram for feedback, and we’ll see how that goes. Nonetheless, films are my first love, but I don’t want to compromise on the kind of work I do,” he says.
Working on these web series has allowed Rajat to live comfortably in Mumbai, while also allowing him to pursue his other passion, which is travelling. In the past five years alone, he has done over 50 solo trips all over India and Europe. In fact, if you visit his social media accounts, here’s what his bio states: “What do you do for a living? I Travel! So how do you make money? Aah…For that I Act.”
“Acting and solo travelling are two passions I can never let go of. These are the two things in this world that can make a night owl like me wake up at 6 AM and get excited. I try to maintain a balance between the two, but I sometimes end up doing more travelling. Acting is not merely a profession for me, but something that genuinely makes me happy. It’s more than a source of income. I wouldn’t give up either travelling or acting to do the other. Whenever I am not working or busy shooting for something, I am travelling,” he says.
Rajat Barmecha (Photo courtesy Facebook)
Every trip, according to him, is more about the people you meet and the experiences you have rather than the country or the place. “These experiences teach you so much as an actor and a human being. As a person you grow when you travel. Once this lockdown gets over, I just want to pack up my bags and travel once again,” he admits.
I suppose it’s impossible to keep a free bird caged forever. The same spirit of freedom that drove his character in Udaan is what guides his life today.
And honestly, there is no better way to live it.
(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)
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From the days of silent, black-and-white films, there has been tremendous progress in every aspect of filmmaking. Even the numbers have grown exponentially. Tens of thousands of feature films, documentaries, TV serials, and commercials are made every year, making it an industry worth billions of dollars.
But the one thing that hasn’t changed is the waste generation and the silent damage to the environment! It is in the use of plastics on props and sets, and smoke from action-packed scenes, increasing carbon footprints by the globetrotting crew.
Sadly, including the viewer, no one notices or talks about this.
“Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life,” said Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, known for films like Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown, High heels etc.
(L) The Boeing 747 replica created for the film Neerja. (R) Production Designer Aparna Sud at work
He aptly described the role of cinema in our lives. Producers of this profit-making industry will go to any length to ensure that the celluloid world transports us into a Utopia.
For any historical film, huge sets are maintained in a pristine condition until the shoot is complete. Artificial and aesthetic weapons are made. It is reported that for the epic fight scenes in the film Baahubali, nearly 10,000 weapons consisting of swords, helmets, and armour, were created. To make them lightweight, production designer Sabu Cyril got them made in carbon fibre instead of steel, which is recyclable, whereas carbon fibre isn’t.
What happens to the temporary sets or other paraphernalia once the shooting is complete?
“With minute detail, we had constructed the replica of a Boeing 747 plane which was hijacked in 1986, for the film Neerja,” says Aparna Sud, the production designer. Since the film was released in 2016, the ‘aeroplane’ has been lying in a heap in Nitin Desai’s famous ND film studio near Mumbai.
Sukant Panigrahy creating an installation from e-waste.
Sud has won several awards, including the Filmfare, Zee Cine Award, and an International Indian Film Academy Award for this film’s production design. Although she loves her job, she regrets the waste generated by her work.
“At the end of the shoot, we just pay Rs 3,500 per truck of waste, and our responsibility ends! Some items like iron and wood may be retrieved by the kabadiwalas, but the rest of that waste goes to landfills,” accepts the set designer.
Like other production designers, she too retrieves many items from her sets and stores them to be used in other shoots later.
Another award-winning production designer, Sukant Panigrahy, says, “Many times, I tried to initiate a dialogue with the officers at the Film City (Dadasaheb Phalke Chitranagari) in Mumbai about starting a waste management centre on the premises. But the talks never concluded. Even when I was working with Yash Raj Films, I tried; the problem was accepted, but it was never given serious thought.”
Art director and designer of films like Chak De! India, Dev D, Tashan, Ek Tha Tiger, Panigrahy has started waste recycling in his capacity. More than a design director, he wishes to be known as an installation artist and collects reusable items like pipes, nuts, bolts, and flex sheets from his film sets. Some of these were displayed at the 2013 Kala Ghoda Art Festival in Mumbai.
(L) An installation made by Panigrahy from auto parts. (R) Panigrahy with a Pegasus installation
Set materials like Flex sheets aren’t recyclable and damage the environment extensively. They are painted, used as backdrops on film sets and name boards for shops or advertising hoardings. They are made of PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) and don’t decompose.
Other items used in large quantities are plastic cups, plates, small mineral water bottles, hand tissues used in makeup and supari packet wrappers.
Besides these materials, carbon footprints are added when the crew goes on location hunting or visit the location to shoot. Large generators are used, and the damage is greater in an action film due to the use of smoke, which harms the air quality.
“We have to accept that some kind of waste will be generated on the film sets, with damage to the environment, but the new trend is to minimise the damage as much as possible. A lot of things depend on the story; for example, if the story is based abroad, then one has to fly. But that part is minimised if it is based in India,” explains Ravi Popat. He’s the award-winning art director of the Gujarati film, Hellaro.
Luckily for Popat, Hellaro’s story was Kutch-based. So, he used local material to build 15 Bhungas (traditional houses of Kutch, Gujarat) and labourers, with minimal waste.
(L) Art director Ravi Popat on the set of Hellaro. (R) Shooting on Hellaro‘s sets
Another new trend is to rent equipment from local outlets even when shooting abroad, except cameras. Even the support crew and actors are hired locally. This not only cuts costs but also reduces travel miles. The crew, including directors and actors, have also started replacing plastic water bottles with flasks which are refilled from common storage units.
To reduce travel miles and damage to the environment, big guns in the industry with no financial restraints, use VFX (visual effects) and CGI (computer-generated imagery) to get the required effect. For example, 90 per cent of the action and scenic beauty of Baahubali was created on VFX.
“There is increasing use of this technique. And if done well, only experts can identify that it is not a real location. We have expertise but fall short on finances. Hollywood films have immense budgets which help their films look better with these new techniques,” says Ramesh Meer, the chief creative director and CEO of the FX Factory.
In nearly five decades, he has made hundreds of films, including Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Pardes, Don and television serials and commercials.
Stills from Ravi Popat’s Hellaro set.
Meer agrees that the increasing use of VFX and CGI will reduce the damage to our environment. In fact, in the latest film, War, a majority of the chase scenes between Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff in the Arctic Circle were done on VFX and CGI.
Although many in India are using this technique, others are strapped for finances and depend on real location shooting. And they are the ones who need to be careful.
Meer says that VFX and CGI will be preferred if budgets are increased, which will help decrease the waste and carbon footprints.
In Hollywood, special NGOs like the Ecoset and Earth Angles are hired by filmmakers to manage their waste. The Indian film industry needs to wake up. People like Sud, Panigrahy, Popat are willing to work, and all they need is a little help from the film fraternity.
‘Black Lives Matter’ protests broke out across the USA last week after a Caucasian police officer’s action resulted in the death of a black man, George Floyd. Floyd’s death is widely-attributed to racism in America, which has seen hundreds of such cases over the decades.
These protests slowly spread to other countries like the UK and Australia.
Meanwhile, in India, after many celebrities tweeted their support for ‘Black Lives Matter’, the widespread colour discrimination that exists in India took centre stage.
However, the condemns and appeals backfired, especially in cases of those who had endorsed fairness creams in the past. Many pointed out how celebrities with a huge fan base were setting wrong examples by promoting a change in skin-tone if you are dark.
Actor Abhay Deol too called out actors for their ‘wokeness’ in a series of Facebook posts highlighting the taglines of beauty products which include ‘white glow’, ‘fine fairness’, and so on.
“Fairness creams in India have evolved over the years, from being fairness creams to now using euphemisms like “skin brightening/ whitening”, or “lightening creams”. Most brands no longer want to be associated directly with being termed as ‘fairness creams’. So now we have brands selling “HD glow”, “White beauty”, “white glow”, “fine fairness”, and so on,” he wrote.
India’s obsession with fair skin has prevailed for a long time (some even call it a colonial hangover). The widely held belief that beauty is directly proportional to how fair you are is reiterated through customs, matrimonial ads, beauty product ads, and films.
In fact, one of my colleagues at The Better India narrated how she was asked to stand in the last line of her school choir when she was barely ten because of her skin colour.
So, how does one get rid of the deep-rooted mindset without witnessing a brutal attack like the one in Minneapolis? Does India too need its own ‘Black Lives Matter’ to awaken the masses?
Probably one way to start is by standing up against skin-toning endorsements considering India’s fandom with celebrities. Something as simple as refusing a fairness product ad will send out a strong message to millions of Indians who look up to celebs.
And this isn’t to imply that no actor has spoken against the blatant privilege of fairness.
Here are ten Indian actors who stood their ground and refused to propagate that having a fair skin is a gateway to success and emphasised that all colours are equal.
Indicating that actions speak louder than words, one of the reigning superstars of our country, Ranbir Kapoor, reportedly refused to collaborate with a fairness cream company. Though he did not openly make any statement against fairness brands, he let his action do the work.
He turned down an offer of whopping Rs 9 crore for a day’s shoot as per the report.
This was at a time when the actor had already established his position in the film industry. He could have taken the offer but he stood for what he believed.
She is one of the rare actors who does not mince her words and stands for what is right. Among all her fearless opinions, an event in 2017 won many hearts. The actor pulled out of an event as soon as she realised that it was being sponsored by a fairness brand.
“I agree it was a last-minute call, but when I found out that I would have to pose at the event with fairness brand in the background, I decided to take my name off the event. I have actually lost quite a few films because of being fair, so I will not propagate fairness in any way,” she told Hindustan Times.
Ironically, the event in Jaipur was about propagating women’s rights!
3) Kubbra Sait
When successful actors think twice about their brand image or rubbing big companies on the wrong side, Kubbra Sait does not shy away from being vocal.
Known for her role in Sacred Games, this fairly new actor, not only openly refused to associate with a product but also used her position to bring about a change. She refused to retouch her skin while shooting for an ad.
Reacting to Abhay Deol’s post, she commented, “I can speak for me. when the brand … approached me to be a part of their campaign, I was excited. When I saw the list of products, we spoke amongst ourselves. Masaba (Gupta), Kusha Kapila and I. We spoke to the brand as one team and refused to be tagged with the products that had anything related to brightening/lightening of the skin. Even the digital cover we did was not a retouched photograph.”
Actor-director Nandita Das has been known for criticising Indian’s obsession with fairness. Time and again, she has called out the film industry’s pre-conceived notions about having a fair person in the lead role.
“When there is a role of a rural woman, or a Dalit woman, or the role of a slum-dweller, then my skin colour is fine. But the minute I have to play an educated, upper-middle-class character, invariably someone comes up to me and says ‘I know you don’t like to lighten your skin, but you know this role is of an upper-middle-class educated person’,” she says.
Several years ago, Nandita Das launched a campaign called ‘Dark Is Beautiful’ to end prejudices against dark skin colour. She even came out with a 2.5-minute powerful video titled India’s Got Colour.
Kalki Koechlin is another actor known for her unconventional roles and outspoken public presence.
When a fairness brand approached Kalki, she turned them down as she believes that beauty is not to be associated with skin colour.
“I don’t think there is anything wrong with being fair, but it has become such an obsession in our country that it is all we look for in beauty. There are so many stunning people who are dark-skinned and it should be celebrated. I would love to have a product that makes me darker,” she told Hindustan Times.
Making jokes or passing casual remarks about issues that affect our society is not okay. It is important to understand that one cannot get away with racist comments in the name of humour. It is important to point it out and the ensure is not repeated and that’s exactly what actor Tannishtha Chatterjee did in 2016.
She lashed out against a comedy show called Comedy Nights Bachao, which airs on Colors TV, after being at the receiving end of racist jokes about her skin colour.
“I was actually looking forward to be roasted… the only thing they could roast about a dark-skinned actress was of course her dark skin. They could identify me only with that. I could not believe I was sitting in a nationally televised comedy show in 2016 in Mumbai amid such regressive (I can’t call it humour), and blatantly racist content,” she wrote.
“Even considering that dark skin is a joke comes from that very deep prejudice. And I tried to explain why this is not personal and it is a larger issue about what our mindset is. And why cracking jokes about deep biases in our society is irresponsible. And that it is not a question about apologizing to me, but propagating this idea and continuing with this mindset in the name of comedy is what is hugely problematic, specially because it is a popular show on a nationalized Chanel,” she added.
“This is Indian colour. We can’t go to foreigners and ask them why they’re white, and if they know that they will get cancer because of it. We can’t look at them and think we want that. That’s their skin colour and this is ours. Africans have their own colour too and they are beautiful,” said South Indian actress Sai Pallavi on rejecting an ad to promote a fairness cream.
Pallavi, who subjected her sister to eating certain fruits and veggies to get a ‘fair complexion’ in her childhood, rejected a Rs 2-crore advertisement, thus putting a strong message in south India’s film fraternity, where white skin is an obsession.
“I’ve tricked Pooja (her sister) several times. She liked cheeseburgers and had a complex that she wasn’t as fair as I am. When we stood in front of a mirror, she would look at my face and then at hers. I noticed this several times. So I told her that if she wanted to become fair, she should eat fruits and vegetables. And she did. She doesn’t like fruits and vegetables at all but she still ate them because she wanted to be fair. I felt very bad about that, the impact it had on a girl five years younger than me,” the actor said.
Calling out fairness cream brands for their regressive and deeply disturbing nature, Singer Sona Mohapatra recently hailed the government’s decision to propose a bill banning racist ads.
The singer shared how she had stood her ground against launching a baby care product around fair babies when she was working as a brand manager for a leading FMCG firm.
“Many years ago when I was a brand manager for a leading FMCG firm that was on the verge of launching a new baby care range, once again the positioning idea for the brand’s campaign that was being presented most strongly by the consumer research teams was around ‘fair babies’. I remember putting my foot down and refusing to sanction that campaign despite a lot of people in the team trying to convince me about how we need to give the consumer what they want and that it was my job to be most concerned about the best business and most money that the company could make. Truth is there is something called corporate responsibility and even individual conscience and consumerism cannot fuel all our decisions,” she said.
It is not easy to sail against the tide in our film industry but Anushka Sharma has always taken the unconventional route. When it came to the topic of fairness cream, she did not back step. Instead, she admitted that she would never promote such products.
“I would not endorse products that propagate racist and sexiest (beliefs)….and propagate social taboo. I don’t want to endorse products that propagate fair skin and all. I will not propagate anything that says this is right or wrong,” Anushka Sharma said at an event of a leading shampoo brand.
When actor Sonal Sehgal shifted to Mumbai to act in the glamour industry, she was a part of an ad for a fairness cream. She took up the ad that paid her house rent. However, soon she realised her problematic decision after her domestic help asked her which cream would make her look fairer.
“I suddenly understood that I had failed Gangu (domestic help) and millions of gorgeous, dusky women across the country, including my own sister, by becoming a part of the mafia that undermines their self-esteem,” she told The Logical Indian.
After working in a few films, she went to New York and studied filmmaking, but the domestic help’s question never left her and on her return, she made a short film, ‘Dancing In The Dark’. The film exposes the fairness cream market and its prejudices against dark-skinned people.
With these Indian actors publicly questioning the implications of unhealthy colour obsession and skewed notions of beauty, there is a way to educate people and bring about a change.
It is high time we cut out the racism that all of us are a part of.
“Kitne logo ne daanta mujhe. ‘Ladkiyan bhi cricket khelti hain? Beta, padhayi-likhayi bhi karte ho kya?’(I was scolded by a lot of people. ‘Girls also play cricket? Do you even study?).”
Before Jhulan Goswami (39) carved a spot as one of the fastest bowlers in the history of women’s cricket, she battled misogynistic taunts from both relatives and society to make her international debut at the age of 19.
The former captain of the Indian women’s cricket team was born in Chakdah town of West Bengal’s Nadia district. Previously a football fan, she developed a passion for cricket after catching the 1992 World Cup on TV, following which she started playing the sport with boys in her neighbourhood.
An Arjuna Award recipient, Jhulan also became the second Indian woman cricketer, after Diana Edulji, to be conferred the prestigious Padma Shri in 2012.
In 2016, she was ranked first in the ICC Women’s One Day International (ODI) bowling rankings. It was on 7 February 2018, though, that she helped India make cricketing history by becoming the world’s first woman cricketer to have an astounding 200 wickets to her credit in ODI cricket.
Now, Bollywood actor Anushka Sharma is set to portray Jhulan’s inspiring underdog story in Chakda Xpress, directed by Prosit Roy and produced by Clean Slate Filmz, the venture owned by the actor and her brother. The film, slated for a Netflix release, is being touted as the first biopic on a woman cricketer.
“At a time when Jhulan decided to become a cricketer and make her country proud on the global stage, it was very tough for women to even think of playing the sport. This film is a dramatic retelling of several instances that shaped her life and also women’s cricket,” the actor said in a statement issued by the OTT platform.
‘No regrets about what I chose’
Jhulan’s journey began in a two-room house with a tin roof in Chakdah, where she grew up with two siblings and her parents. In an interview with FemaleCricket, she pointed out that daughters of Bengali middle-class families are traditionally expected to pursue the extracurricular activities dancing and singing, and what she wanted to do was considered “unusual”.
She began playing the sport with boys in her aunt’s locality, and recalled how they weren’t keen on having her join the team. “They wouldn’t let me bowl, would say your ball is slow. That’s how I developed this urge to bowl fast,” said Jhulan, who for many years clocked a bowling speed of 120kmph, which was, at one point, the world’s fastest.
As the small town didn’t have enough sporting facilities, Jhulan convinced her parents to let her go to a coaching centre in Vivekananda Park in south Kolkata. But she faced resistance from her extended family, who questioned why a school girl should be permitted to travel to another city by herself.
In an episode of Breakfast with Champions, she recalled how it was a huge challenge for her to make her orthodox relatives understand her aspirations at a time when women weren’t associated with cricket in India. But with undeterred support from her grandmother, she could win them over.
“Kitna bhi mummy, papa, uncle, aunty log chillaye mujh par, at the end of the day koi bhi grandma ke upar ja ke baat nahi kar sakta (No matter how much my parents, uncles and aunts scolded me, nobody could override my grandmother’s word),” she said.
And so, Jhulan began travelling in local trains for as many as five hours for daily practice sessions that began at 7.30 am — a move that impacted her education.
“It was really difficult, as the ground was very far from my house, and I had to prioritise between my education and cricket. Because if you focus on school too, you feel sleepy, drowsy and [unable] to concentrate. From 4.30 am to 5 am, I had to wake up, catch the train, walk to the ground, and then do heavy training there, before again rushing back, at which point your mind is unwilling to concentrate on anything. So, somewhere down the line, you have to choose what you’re truly passionate about and I have no regrets about what I chose,” Jhulan told WomensCricZone.
Jhulan has also been vocal about her gratitude to her first coach Swapan Sadhu, who travelled all the way to Chakdah to convince her family to train her. She said he once told her, “Maine itne ladki log ko cricket sikhaya lekin aapke jaisa high-arm bowling action kisi ka nahi dekha. Uske baad agar main aapko support nahi karta toh ek waste of talent ho jaata. (I’ve taught so many girls how to play cricket, but never seen high-arm bowling action like yours. Had I not supported you despite that, a talent would’ve been wasted).”
‘Team India is not just…’
After completing her training in Kolkata, Jhulan joined the Bengal women’s cricket team. It was in 2002 that she made her international debut in Chennai, in a one-day match against England.
She played an instrumental role in the Indian women cricket team’s victory over England in a pivotal test series in the 2006-2007 season. This ultimately led her to win the ICC Women Cricketer’s Award, in a year when no Indian male player had bagged any individual award.
In 2017, Jhulan also beat Cathryn Fitzpatrick’s records to become the highest wicket-taker in women’s ODI history. Notably, the former Australian cricketer was one of the driving forces that led Jhulan to pursue cricket.
In an interview with The New Indian Express, Jhulan noted how it didn’t matter if at times, the stadiums were empty, or a man’s accomplishments were placed above her team’s.
“All you see is the opponent holding the cricket bat and the stumps you need to knock out. Team India is not just the roaring sound of 1.3 billion voices cheering and praying. Sometimes, it is one girl from Chakdah playing a game of cricket with her team shaking, screaming for, and rising together when the stumps are finally knocked out,” she said.
After Prithviraj Kapoor made his pact with god at the Gateway of India, he asked the Victoriawalla to take him to a hotel. He did not know a soul in this city, nor did he have a single address. The driver left him at Kashmir Hotel, opposite Metro cinema, where he got a room for five rupees a night. The next morning, he asked the manager of the hotel where the nearest film studio was. Aware by now that his seventy-five rupees would not last very long, he walked to Imperial Studios on Kennedy Bridge, near the Royal Opera House.
The studio belonged to the legendary Ardeshir Irani, who made India’s first talkie Alam Ara.
As Madhu Jain detailed in her book Kapoors: The First Family of Indian Cinema (2005), Kapoor’s iconic 70-year career, “from the silent era to technicolour and 70 mm”, began at the gates of this very studio. It wasn’t just him – icons like Mahboob Khan and Sulochana too shaped their career trajectories under Ardeshir Irani’s guidance.
Irani is widely regarded as the ‘father of Indian talkies’, and has several firsts to his name, the most famous being India’s first talkie Alam Arain 1931.
In 1933, he made Lor Girl, the first-ever sound film to be made in Persian. Set in post-World War I Iran, it features a couple that escapes to India to find solace from the lawlessness that had taken over their homeland. It was the first time an Iranian movie had featured a woman in the lead.
Irani also went on to direct Kisan Kanya (1937), India’s first indigenously made colour movie, based on a novel by Sadat Hasan Manto focussing on the poor plight of farmers.
It is said that Ardeshir had always been a dreamer – a man looking to find his place amid something bigger, something better. Throughout his career, not only would he achieve his dream but also shape Indian cinema as we know it today, almost a century later.
Irani launched the careers of many stalwarts, including Prithviraj Kapoor
Venturing into the unknown
Born on 5 December 1886, Khan Bahadur Ardeshir Irani was the son of Iranian immigrants who had arrived in India towards the end of the 19th century to escape religious persecution. He began his professional career as a teacher, and briefly, a kerosene inspector.
Hoping to achieve bigger goals, he soon shifted to following in his father’s footsteps, taking up a business of selling musical instruments.
His dreams would find stronger footing when he won a lottery of Rs 14,000, a big sum in those times. This gave him the finances to step foot in the film industry, and he began as a small-time film distributor, putting up movies in ‘tent cinemas’ with projectors. He did so with Abdulally Esoofally, an early film entrepreneur with who he would go on to have a long working relationship.
“This started a cinema-viewing culture,” said researcher and writer Sharon Irani. “Tent cinemas were set up in maidans, and then inside old theatre houses…much before cinema halls and multiplexes came into existence. Before the ‘tambu’ talkies, ‘lavani’ and ‘tamasha’ had been sources of entertainment…but tent shows changed the way you entertained in those times.”
Tent cinemas changed the movie going experience (Source)
In 1905, Irani became the Indian representative of Universal Studios, showcasing Hollywood movies to the average Indian audience. He soon began running the Alexander Theatre with Esoofally, and it was here that he learned the ropes of filmmaking and producing. This, coupled with his great admiration for Dadasaheb Phalke, pushed him to foray into the field for the first time in 1920 when he produced Nala Dayamanti.
The same year, he would establish his Star Films Limited, a studio that launched the career of Fatma Begum, Indian cinema’s first woman director. He later set up Majestic Films and Royal Art Studios. The latter became famous for romantic movies set amid fantasy lands — like Naharsingh Dakoo (1925), set in a fictitious kingdom and following the journey of a kind-hearted bandit who exposes the treacherous doings of the minister and his wife.
In 1926, he set up Imperial Films Studio, where he made over 60 films. It was this studio that forever changed the landscape of Indian cinema with the release of Alam Ara.
Of the inspiration behind the movie, Ardeshir told film historian BD Garga, “About a year before I set upon producing Alam Ara, I had seen Universal Pictures’ Show Boat (1929), a 40% talkie, at Excelsior. This gave me an idea of making an Indian talkie film. But we had no experience and no precedents to follow. Anyhow, we decided to go ahead.”
Alam Ara set the precedent for the kind of movies Indian cinema would go on to make – complete with dancing and singing (seven times, to be precise). “With the release of Alam Ara, Indian cinema proved two things — films could now be made in regional languages that local viewers could understand; and that songs and music were integral parts of the entire form and structure of the Indian film,” wrote scholar Shoma Chatterjee.
It wasn’t such Indian cinema that benefitted from his work. After Alam Ara, he released Lor Girl, and his presence in the Iranian film industry found even more importance. He produced works like the 1934 romance movie Shirin & Farhad and even found himself in front of the camera as an actor in the biographical drama Firdowsi (1934). He made films in Hindi, Gujarati and Marathi to Telugu, Burmese, Farsi and English.
Irani also worked on Iranian films like Lor Girl (Source: Wikipedia)
He made movies up until 1945, with some sources saying that the number in his repository touched a whopping 200 films. After the Second World War began, Irani thought it was unsuitable to continue making movies in such tumultuous times, and suspend film production. His last film, Pujari, was released in 1945, and he died on 14 October 1969, at the age of 82.
‘Father of Indian talkies’
Alam Ara’s success had dealt a heavy blow to the silent film era. Before sound was introduced in movies, actors could mask their poor diction, but the advent of talkies changed the game completely, especially for Anglo-Indian actors, who had somewhat dominated the industry up until that point.
Moreover, introducing sound in cinemas meant that the industry had to reimagine the very idea of filmmaking – existing systems of production and exhibition could no longer suffice.
“Producers, the country over, were either transforming their old studios or building anew, in a raging tearing manner, to house the new order of things,” observed the Indian Cinematograph Book in 1938. Silent projectors were replaced with sound equipment, and theatres were made soundproof. ‘Hindustani’, an amalgamation of Hindi and Urdu, subsequently became a popular language in Indian cinema. And finally, Indian films found precedence over American and British movies, a feat filmmakers had been trying to attain for many years prior.
Alam Ara, a lost film today, has been credited with changed the landscape of Indian cinema (Source: Cinemaazi)
Irani also unknowingly ushered in a new way of making movies with artificial lighting. At the time, films were shot in natural light, which left the cast and crew at the mercy of unpredictable weather. His decision to shoot indoors under heavy light would eventually make way for shooting indoors, a practice that proved to be economical as well as convenient.
Today, Indian cinema produces around 1,800 movies a year and is nothing short of a global enterprise. It’s the lavishness and the extravagance of it all – majestic locations, fantastical plotlines, songs, elaborate costumes, and the like – that attracts an audience from over 90 countries.
It was Irani’s ambition that set the stage, so to speak, for the cinema we know and love today.
Lata Mangeshkar, the ‘Nightingale of Bollywood’ has passed away on the morning of 6 February 2022.
The veteran singer was admitted to a Mumbai hospital in early January this year after she tested positive for Covid-19 and was also diagnosed with pneumonia. She was born in 1929 and was 92 years old.
In a career spanning seven decades, Lata Mangeshkar recorded over 27,000 songs in 36 regional and foreign languages. Lata Didi, as she was respectfully known, was also bestowed with several prestigious awards including the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award. Didi was the second vocalist to ever receive it, after M S Subbulakshmi.
With melodious and soulful hits like Dafli Wale, Pyar Kiya Toh Darna Kya, Dil To Pagal Hai, Luka Chupi, Lata Didi enraptured the country with her ability to sing in the rare third octave.
But did you know Lata Didi’s original name is Hema? She was renamed Lata based on a character ‘Latika’ from her father’s play, BhaawBandhan.
Lata didi was born into a family of artists. Her father, Pandit Deenanath Mangeshkar, was a classical singer and theatre actor, who discovered her singing talent.
Deenanath ran a theatre company that produced musical plays where Lata started acting by the age of five.
Lata’s ability to sing Raag Puriya Dhanashree helped him discover her singing talent. Speaking to Stardust, she recalled, “It so happened that once my father asked his shagird (disciple) to practise a raag while he finished some work. I was playing nearby and suddenly a note of the raag that shagird was rendering, jarred. And the next minute, I was correcting him. When my father returned, he discovered a shagird in his own daughter.”
Lata’s father said to her mother, “We have a singer at home. We never knew it.”
At five, Lata started working as an actress in her father’s Marathi musical plays, also known as ‘Sangeet Natak’.
Lataji learned music from stalwarts like Aman Ali Khan Sahib and Amanat Khan, apart from her father. She recorded her first song in 1942 for the Marathi film, Kiti Hasaal; but it never saw the light of day, as it was edited from the film. The song was called Naachu Yaa Gade, Khelu Saari Mani. Although Natali Chaitraachi Navalaai is known as her Marathi song debut.
The oldest of five siblings–Meena, Asha, Usha and Hridaynath, Lata shouldered the financial responsibility of the family after her father’s death in 1942.
When she first entered the film industry as a playback singer, she was rejected. At the time, singers like Noor Jehan and Shamshad Begum ruled the roost. She was told her voice was ‘too thin’ for the time, in comparison to the heavy-nasal voices that belted hits.
Her major break came in 1949, with the song Aayega Aanewala from the film Mahal. She turned a sensation overnight with the song that not many can muster the courage to croon.
Her fame has hardly dimmed ever since.
Famously, in 1962, when Lata Didi sang Aye Mere Watan Ke Logon to salute the martyrs of the war against China, PM Nehru told her she had moved him to tears.
The legendary singer’s fame goes far beyond the shores. In 1974, Didi became the first Indian to perform in the Royal Albert Hall, London. She has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate by six universities, including the New York University.
France conferred its highest civilian award (Officer of the Legion of Honour) on Didi in 2007.
In 1999, the perfume Lata Eau de Parfum was launched in her honour. Didi also designed a collection called Swaranjali for an Indian diamond export company, Adora. Five pieces from this collection, when auctioned at Christie’s, earned £105,000 which Didi generously donated to the relief fund for the Kashmir earthquake in 2005.
Her last recorded song was in 2015 for an Indo-Pak gay love story. From 1942 to 2015, she worked as a playback singer for 73 years.
Perhaps her legend can be summed up in the following anecdote – when questioned about his inspiration to make music, an urban legend says composer SD Burman allegedly replied, “Give me a harmonium, give me Lata (Mangeshkar), and I will make music.”
We share our deep condolences for this loss to the nation.
“Oru kadha sollata sir? (Shall I tell you a story, sir?)” asks Vedha, essayed by actor Vijay Sethupathi, every time he shares a snippet of his life in the 2017 neo-noir thriller Vikram Vedha.
The man behind this popular dialogue, K Manikandan, too, has many snippets from his life to share. For him, being an actor was ‘far-fetched’, he says, because rejection in the film industry was a constant.
Manikandan is the man behind the popular dialogues of Madhavan and Vijay Sethupathi starred Vikram Vedha.
“There are a lot of people who would put you down in the first meeting itself. I lost interest in acting because of the constant rejection and insults,” he said in an interview with The Hindu.
But his talent speaks for itself today, with his effortless performance in Se Gnanavel’s Jai Bhim (2021). The film — in which he portrays the role of Rajakannu, a member of the Irular community (a Dravidian ethnic group) — tells the story of a custodial killing based on a real-life incident that took place in 1993. Jai Bhim, which has been shortlisted for the Oscars this year, depicts the struggles of minority communities in the face of severe caste discrimination.
The epic closing scene of Jai Bhim, which has been shortlisted for the Oscars this year.
Gracefully donning many hats
Needless to say, Manikandan is a man of varied talents. While his name has been attached with several acclaimed movies, his journey began as a mimicry artist. The inspiration to pursue the craft, he says, was his mother.
“My mother is very talented. At every family gathering, she will perform mimicry, imitating family members and get uproarious laughs. She’ll naturally create an audience around her,” he told Film Companion.
At the age of eight, he knew he wanted to chase the same high. His tryst with mimicry began with imitations of his grandparents, and later, film comedians.
The 33-year-old was raised in a slum tenement on Greenways Road in Chennai. “Playing cricket, flying kites, all my happiness was here,” he told Film Companion. Being the first-generation graduate in his family, he set out to find employment after finishing his engineering degree. But his heart always remained with the world of cinema.
“A popular reality comedy show turned out to be the platform for me,” he told Deccan Chronicle. Unwilling to participate at first. Manikandan was pushed by his friends. Eventually, he was the show’s first runner up.
From hereon, he realised that his talent lay in his voice. He went on to become a radio jockey, and his introduction to films came as a dubbing artist. “I have dubbed for most of the actors in Tamil cinema,” he told The Hindu.
Over the years, he worked as an assistant director in over 20 movies. His directorial debut, the telefilm Narai Ezhudhum Suyasaritham (2015), was screened at several international film festivals. He was also a scriptwriter of the superhit Ajith starrer Vishwasam (2019).
In 2016, he played a small role in Nalan Kumarasamy’s Kadhalum Kadanthu Pogum. In fact, it was this film that turned his fortunes. His dubbing job would offer him around Rs 200 a day, just enough to cover his basic expenses. Things changed, of course, when Kumaraswamy roped him in for the role.
Manikandan received his first notable role in Pa Ranjith’s political-drama Kaala as the son of Rajinikanth.
Manikandan received his first notable role in Pa Ranjith’s political drama Kaala (2018). Later, he played the lead role in Halitha Shameem’s Sillu Karupatti (2019) and Aelay (2021). He also appeared in the critically acclaimed anthology film Paava Kadhaigal (2020) in a small but powerful role.
Manikandan as Lenin in Pa Ranjith’s Kaala and Rajakannu in Se Gnanavel’s Jai Bhim.
Manikandan sums up his journey in his own words — “When I see myself as an astral projection, I’m always amazed at my courage. Look at this guy, who has had the courage to go this far, despite having been broken so many times before.”
During the closing ceremony at the 2004 Athens Olympics, recording artists Antonis Remos and Anna Vissi sang a rendition of a popular Greek song called ‘Mandoubala’.
Originally sung in 1959 by the prominent singer of Greek pop music (Laïkó) Stelios Kazantzidis, and written by the lyricist Eftihis Papayiannopoulou, the song was inspired by a movie they had watched of the legendary Indian actress Madhubala. The song, which was about a lover’s call for his lost beloved, was also inspired by a song ‘Aa Jao Tadapye Hain Arman’ from the 1951 film Awaara starring Nargis, who some say was even more popular in Greece during this time. (Images above of Madhubala and a young Stelios Kazantzidis courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
A loose translation of the song reads: Madhubala / love me sweet/ I long for you to come near me again/ Since I am lost I call your name with pain/ Madhubala, Madhubala.
Such was the popularity of the song and the actress Madhubala, it was the first record in Greece to sell 1,00,000 copies. Nargis and Madhubala were objects of several songs and poems that not just waxed lyrical about their beauty and grace, but also how the characters they portrayed expressed emotions that resonated with the suffering Greek masses.
And how they suffered! In 1923, following a devastating war between Greece and Turkey (1919-1922), both sides signed a “Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations”, which resulted in the exodus of over a million ethnic Greeks from Asia Minor, Eastern Thrace, the Pontic Alps and the Caucasus in exchange for approximately 400,000 Greek Muslims who went the other way. Still recovering from losing their homes, these refugees had to further endure World War II and a bloody civil war in which thousands of Greeks died.
Sadly for those who made the long trip back ‘home’, their fellow countrymen didn’t exactly roll out the welcome wagon. Instead, they were pushed to the margins in the slums and refugee camps on the outskirts of major cities like Athens and Thessaloniki, working blue-collar or informal sector jobs, and living in unhealthy and oppressive circumstances.
Nargis (Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
As Nate Rabe, who writes regular columns for Scroll.in on music and art, explains, “In the hashish dens and coffee shops around these settlements, the refugees sang a new style of urban blues. Called Rembetiko it was played on oriental instruments like the bouzouki and tzouras and told stories of injustice, longing, addiction and hope for a better future. Though the middle classes rejected the refugees and their music, it caught on in the cities with many singers gaining national popularity. By the 1950s, in a process not dissimilar to the blues morphing into rock and roll, Rembetiko was transformed into Laïkó, the pop music of Greece.”
Around the early 1950s, there was another cultural phenomenon that was about to hit Greece—popular Hindi cinema. This was the handiwork of a small group of film importers who took a chance on Bollywood movies that were cheap on the international market.
Helen Abadzi, a Hindi speaking Greek educationist, who co-authored a fantastically researched book titled ‘The Revelation of Hindi-Style Songs in Greece’ alongside Manuel Tasoulas, wrote:
“These Hindi-language films aired in both first and second-tier theatres with no subtitles or vastly altered and often inaccurate ones. Over two decades, more films aired and their influence embedded in the popular music of the time.”
The titles of these films were often changed, while subtitles were written catering to local sensibilities, but these films caught on with the Greek masses left on the margins. The Greek elites, meanwhile, looked down upon the masses for their newfound taste in Hindi cinema and music, as they often looked westwards for ‘culture’.
During the late 50s/early 60s, 100+ Bollywood movies had been screened in Greece and Cyprus across many popular theatres, Hindi songs were rendered in their native language, and Nargis/Madhubala became household names across the country surviving a civil war. (6/13) pic.twitter.com/oRU9wniGif
The book highlights how movies like Mother India, Awaara, Shri 420, Ghar Sansaar, Laajwanti and Paapi witnessed long lines outside cinema halls as ticket seekers gathered. More than the language, it was the themes of these movies that caught the attention of ordinary Greek.
The Paperclip, a Twitter account that brings stories from India and beyond, notes in a recent thread how the masses latched onto themes of the “unrelenting crush of poverty, a fast-changing society, new roles for women…the glamour and fantasy all captivated the heart.”
This thread adds that as India itself was still recovering from the horrors of Partition, much of the Hindi cinema it produced revolved on themes that “blended into the lives of suffering Greek families, abandoned children, poor factory workers, and immigrant labourers living in abject misery—who could see themselves on the silver screen desperately seeking a ray of hope.”
What struck the Greek masses most about Madhubala and Nargis and the films they starred in was their portrayal of pain, according to Helen and Manual. According to the book they co-authored, movies like Mother India, for example, were such a hit among the Greek masses because “the ability of these heroines to express pain made the beautiful and haunting songs that they sang instant hits”. As they go on to write, “It was only natural that the emotions of the poor Greeks would be expressed through those very same melodies.”
And artists like Stelios Kazantzidis expressed the same emotions through his melodies inspired by these Hindi songs. As he once said, “I sing for the poor, the immigrants and the suffering people, who can’t go to the expensive clubs. They regard my music as their Gospel.”
Capturing the pain of exile and migration into art, his biggest achievement according to this obituary in The Guardian “was to express, singlehandedly, the undiluted social and emotional upheaval that Greeks went through after the second world war and the ensuing civil war.”
Going beyond the popular Greek music genre of Laïkó, Helen notes how the “imitation and inspiration from Hindi created a specific class of songs called to this day ‘Indo-prepi’ (Hindi-style)”. In a bid to “Hellenize the songs”, Greek composers “often speeded them up, simplified sections where they could not reproduce the trained voices of the Indians, and changed instruments, using the string instrument bouzouki.” Although some songs were “hasty improvisations, others were good, some possibly better than the originals.”
Over time, her research captured a total of 105 Greek renditions of songs featured in Hindi movies. Little did many Indians know at the time how Hindi cinema left such an indelible impression on the Greek working class. It’s this unique meeting of cultures that finally played itself out during the closing ceremony of the 2004 Athens Olympics.
A rendition of the original Mandoubala song was performed by Antonis Remos and Anna Vissi at the closing ceremony of the Athens Olympics, 2004. What an immortal tribute to Madhubala, the Aphrodite from India. (12/13) pic.twitter.com/lQMFzMLBSM
Grateful viewers often take to YouTube’s comment section to thank Thomas (Tom) Daniel for bringing their favourite movies back to life. Some recall old memories of what struck them about these films. Some relate their years-long struggles to locate the masterpieces, many of which are rare and not available in adequate quality. Some recall the songs that resonated with them, and some celebrate the actors who made the movies what they are today.
It’s not just that Tom, a retired fisherman, finds classic old Indian movies and uploads them onto his channel, tommydan55. These videos go through hours of rework and restoration, where the 73-year-old collates bits and pieces from all over — old VHS tapes, DVDs, downloaded videos, VCDs, and the like. “The goal of this channel,” he writes under one video, “is to restore films as much as possible to their condition when projected in the movie theatres of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, or Lahore, 60, 70, 80 or more years ago.”
On average, the septuagenarian, a resident of Hawaii, dedicates around 40 hours to restore one film. So far, his channel has amassed over 80,000 subscribers, and he has restored around 200 films in Hindi, Urdu, and more recently, Bengali. But for an American with seemingly no connection to India barring two visits in the 70s, where does this love for reviving old Indian classics come from?
Thomas Daniel is a 74-year-old from Hawaii (Source: Thomas Daniel)
Around 15 years ago, Tom watched the milestone film Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulaam (1962) for the first time.
“For an American for whom this was his first classic Indian film, it was very exotic,” Tom tells The Better India over email. “Although Guru Dutt, like Satyajit Ray, is perhaps more accessible to westerners because they were both heavily influenced by American and other non-Indian films, SBAG is still very different from classic US films…Minoo Mumtaz’s dance is justly famous as one of the greatest Indian songs and dances ever. And I think Meena Kumari is a great actress. The idea of a village bumpkin coming to the household of a wealthy zamindar, learning the lonely wife’s story, and telling it in the film is a brilliant concept. It sounds plausible, and one is completely drawn into the story and gets lost in it like The Wizard Of Oz, I’ll never forget it.”
The first Hindi movie Tom ever watched was Sahib Bibi aur Ghulaam. “I was hooked,” he says. (Source: YouTube)
The magical realm of cinema
Tom’s father was in the Army, and as is common for such families, he moved around a lot. Born in Fort Benning, Georgia, he spent most of his school years in Arlington County, Virginia, where his father worked at the Pentagon. “But I live in Hawaii, and have for more than 50 years now,” he says.
He says he didn’t go to movie theatres much while growing up. “Two films I remember to this day were the ones I watched with my parents. One was White Christmas with Bing Crosby, known even today for its title song. And the other, perhaps also known for a song — Que Sera Sera, sung by Doris Day — was the [Alfred] Hitchcock movie The Man Who Knew Too Much. I heard it just a couple of days ago, and I almost choked up,” he recalls.
Movies like the Wizard of Oz, he adds, influenced not only him, but all Americans of a certain age. “It was shown on US television once a year, and for several years, I didn’t miss it. My grandmother had a whole series of Oz books, and I read them all. They were marvellous escapism for all young boys and girls.”
Source: Flickr
When Netflix arrived in the late 90s, Tom expanded the ambit of his film exploration, especially classic ones. He went through movies from across different countries, including Japan, Germany, France, and China. “Then I decided to tackle India, knowing nothing about its films. I stumbled upon [modern Indian studies professor] Philip Lutgendorf’s Indian review site.”
It was here that he discovered Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, which he rented off Netflix. “And I was hooked,” he says. “I loved American musicals with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, or the Busby Berkeley musicals and all Indian films were musicals. Guru Dutt’s films integrated songs and dances better than most.”
Around nine years ago, Tom restored his first Indian film — Sohrab Modi’s historical production Pukar (1939). “It was from a VHS tape that a friend sent to me,” he says.
Behind the scenes
He further explains that because the film was taped from British television, it showed the movie at 25 frames per second (FPS). Meanwhile, movies shown in theatres are usually screened at 24 FPS. “PAL (phase alternating line) parts of the world — including India and Europe — create their television shows and DVDs at 25 FPS, which usually involves something called PAL speed up. The films speed up by about 4 per cent, and the audio usually becomes a semitone higher. It goes out of tune. I slow films back to 24 FPS and put the audio back in tune,” he notes.
He says he uses AviSynth, a video post-production tool, and Audacity for the audio.
“I don’t have access to the $20,000 software programmes that Hollywood film studio restorers use,” he says. “But they’re working with digitised reels of film, and not old VHS tapes, VCDs, DVDs, and videos downloaded from all over the place. In short, many of my sources are garbage. But I do what I can with them. Over the years, I’ve got better at it, and I can do things using AviSynth that those Hollywood guys can’t do with their fancy software.”
To further explain what goes behind the restoration process, Tom points to ‘Howrah Bridge – Before and After’, a video on his homepage that he uploaded about three years ago. Besides the FPS and audio, he also adjusts the aspect ratio and removes logos.
“For millions of Indians who don’t understand the Hindi language of most of these films, and many millions elsewhere who might want to know more about Indian movies, English translations are provided whenever possible,” he explains in the video, adding that around 90 per cent of his videos are subtitled with the help of eager contributors.
He also combs through these films three separate times, frame by frame. He removes scratches, dirt and other artefacts on the frames, and tries to smooth over missing frames, with special attention to the opening credits. Then, he fixes the brightness and darkness levels, corrects volume levels, edits the subtitles to near perfection, and then reviews the final product carefully to weed out other errors.
“Some things can’t be fixed with AviSynth filters,” he notes. “In those cases, I have to fix individual frames, sometimes several, using a photo editor. I extract a film frame, stick it into the photo editor, do what has to be done, and then put it back into the film. It’s time-consuming, but some of the stuff I do can improve a film, or a part of it, tremendously.”
Here’s an example of a song from the 1949 film Andaz, which Tom says had suffered from serious chemical decomposition.
Grainy and poor quality content can put off even the most ardent film connoisseur. DVDs and CDs often retain large logos, flickering, poor quality frames and the like, all of which Tom is determined to do away with while restoring movies.
Moreover, even as increased focus is given to colourising Indian classics, the state of old films with low budgets and less successful theatrical runs remains abysmal. The Hindu states that presently, India has the lowest survival rate of cinema (8-10 per cent). “This is even though cinema, its images and sounds, stars, singers and stories inundate our everyday life and imagination. But when it comes to its preservation or archiving, attention and care are strikingly lacking,” the report adds.
The beauty of Tom’s channel lies in the fact that these movies do not exist behind barriers of paywalls, and are not limited to physical screenings. While comprehensive compendiums like Indiancine.ma exist to provide digitised versions of old films, tommydan55 proves as a bridge to connect nostalgic Indian audiences with the cinema they loved and grew up with, with only the click of a button.
A repository of rare Indian gems
Corey Creekmur, director of the University of Iowa’s Institute of Cinema and Culture, told Caravan Magazine that Tom’s uploaded version of Kaagaz ke Phool (1959) was the first time a widescreen version of the film was made available and had been “long reported lost, and never previously available for home viewing”.
Meanwhile, Tom says, “I judge the rarity of a film by the number of times it has been stolen by other channels. There are countless films and songs on other channels that started life on mine. Some channels are built almost exclusively from my videos.”
Some gems on tommydan55 include the 1936 remake of Sarat Chandra Chatterjee’s Devdas, the pre-Partition blockbuster Khazanchi (1941), Brij Rani’s 1951 film Damad, historical drama Pyaar ki Baatein (1951), and Meena Kumari’s Daera (1953), which is said to be loosely based around her own love story with co-star and director Kamal Amrohi. Tom’s repository also includes Rattan (1944), which is credited for cementing Naushad Ali’s place among the top music directors of the country.
Besides Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam, Dev Anand’s cult classic Guide is one of Tom’s favourite movies. However, strict copyright laws have prevented him from uploading restored versions of these movies. From his channel, he picks Baazi (1951) and the 1958 crime thriller Howrah Bridge.
“One of my favourite genres is film noir. With them, there’s no real good or bad guy, no white and black. The cameraman’s lighting becomes very important, as much of the story is told through the lighting. Baazi is one of the best examples of that. It’s a film where Dev Anand came into his own.”
“Howrah Bridge is also one of my favourites,” he adds, “partly because of KN Singh’s presence as the bad guy, and mostly because of Madhubala. I’m among those who think she was the most beautiful woman to ever grace the Indian silver screen. And like Marilyn Monroe, her beauty sometimes kept her from being credited for her acting abilities.”
Of his love for Indian cinema’s music, he highlights the video for Udhar Tum Haseen Ho from Madhubala and Guru Dutt’s Mr and Mrs 55 (1955). “I think Guru Dutt makes a good partner to Madhubala. This is one of the best love songs in all of Hindi film history, in my opinion.”
As great as Tom’s work is in restoring Indian films, it does not come without its own set of challenges, the most bothersome of which are copyright issues, he notes. He is often served copyright notices by Indian companies. Since he began uploading Bengali films, he says he has been served several notices by Angel Digital, a media company.
This, he notes, was particularly cumbersome while uploading Sharey Chuattar, the 1953 Bengali comedy film. “Try and find another complete version of the film,” he tells me. “There are plenty of songs and scenes and even a ‘mini’ version of the film. Angel shuts the complete film versions down. But I was able to fight them off.”
Source: YouTube
Such threats and notices from large production and media companies do not deter Tom, who often sends counter-notices in return. For Sharey Chuattar, he says he was served 10 “fraudulent” copyright claims. But after a few months, he was able to win the right to have the film viewed on his channel.
“It’s funny because when I began working on it, I only knew that it was rated highly on IMDB and that there was no version of it on YouTube. But I quickly realised the movie was a gem. The media company fought long and hard to keep me from making it available, but I have the law on my side.”
Tom also runs tommydan333, a YouTube channel where he uploads old Indian and Pakistani songs. He also owns tommydan22, or the ‘Edwina channel’, dedicated to Edwina Lyons, an Anglo-Indian background dancer in the 50s.
Remember the iconic song from the Amul ad that went, “Mero gaam kaatha parey…”
The song that brings instant nostalgia was originally part of a film named ‘Manthan’ (1976). It was one of the largest crowdfunded movies financed entirely by the dairy farmers of Gujarat.
A classic directed by Shyam Benegal and written by renowned playwright Vijay Tendulkar, Manthan talks about the White Revolution that originated in rural Gujarat which resulted in the formation of India’s homegrown dairy brand — Amul.
It was Dr Verghese Kurien, the father of the White Revolution, who approached Benegal to make a film to tell the story of the empowered milk cooperatives of Gujarat.
When Benegal quoted around Rs 10 to 12 lakh for making the movie, Dr Kurian requested the dairy farmers if they can accept Rs 6 instead of Rs 8 for each packet of milk. Thus around 5 lakh farmers contributed Rs 2 each, thereby producing a feature film narrating their own story.
So here’s how Manthan was made, which went on to win a National award in 1977:
As we approach the world-renowned Cannes Film Festival later this month between 17 and 28 May, which will take place in France, cinema aficionados across India will be looking forward to their favourite films and celebrities making an appearance. Over the years, Indian films have made their mark on this global platform.
(Above image is a poster of the film ‘Neecha Nagar’ directed by Chetan Anand)
Last year, it was independent filmmaker Payal Kapadia’s ‘A Night of Knowing Nothing’, which won the Oeil d’or (Golden Eye) award for best documentary. Going back further, the Irrfan Khan-starrer ‘The Lunchbox’ (2013) won the Critics Week Viewers Choice Award, also known as Grand Rail d’Or in 2013, while director Mira Nair won the Camera d’Or (best first feature film) and the Audience Prize at the Cannes for ‘Salaam Bombay’ in 1998.
Satyajit Ray’s classic 1955 film ‘Pather Panchali’ was awarded the ‘Prix du document humain’ prize at the 9th Cannes Film Festival (1956). Ray, however, found inspiration to make his first film from another classic titled ‘Neecha Nagar’ (1946) directed by Chetan Anand, which was the first Indian film to bag the top prize at Cannes then called the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film (now called Palme d’Or) in 1946.
After all, the Palme D’or was introduced only in 1955. Here’s the story of this remarkable film.
Director Chetan Anand (Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
Finding inspiration in social realism
In his autobiography, legendary stage and film actor Balraj Sahni recalls the first time Chetan Anand spoke about his plans to direct a film back in 1943 in Bombay (Mumbai).
“You know, I am not at all keen on acting. What I want to do is to make a realistic and purposeful film. I have decided to call it Neecha Nagar. I shall show in it the economic struggle waged by the different classes of our society and I am not going to make any compromise with the box office. In fact, right now, I am working on its scenario,” Anand told him.
Both Sahni and Anand were members of the nationwide Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), a left-leaning cultural organisation which had a tremendous influence on early Indian cinema. With other alumni including actor Prithviraj Kapoor, filmmaker Bimal Roy, poet and lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi and film music composer Salil Chowdhury, the IPTA sought to promote themes related to the Indian freedom struggle while also attempting to bring about a cultural awakening among Indian masses through art stepped in social realism.
One of Neecha Nagar’s co-writers, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, had once written a letter to MK Gandhi back in 1939 pleading with him to “give this little toy of ours, the cinema, which is not so useless as it looks, a little of your attention”. Inspiration for the film, however, came from the film’s other co-writer, Hayatullah Ansari, founder of the Urdu daily Qaumi Awaz, who wanted to adopt Russian dramatist Maxim Gorky’s 1902 play ‘The Lower Depths’.
Shooting for the film began in 1945 on a shoestring budget backed by producers Rashid Anwar and Chetan Anand, who was also a director. This was a year when the freedom movement was hitting a crescendo and nationalist sentiment was deeply felt among masses of fellow Indians.
For the people
The plot of the film is rather straightforward and an allegory for British colonial subjugation. Sarkar (played by actor Rafi Peer), an articulate industrialist who lives in a palatial estate, wants to construct a housing project on low-lying swampland. To achieve his goals, Sarkar plots to drain the swamp and divert its water through a sewage line that flows into the low-lying ‘Neecha Nagar’, where the poor live. Quite naturally, the village rises in protest. Sarkar breaks their unity through time tested methods like bribes and threats, amongst others.
Thanks to the toxic waste that now flows through their village, an epidemic breaks out. With no options left, the helpless villagers are compelled to visit a new hospital constructed by Sarkar. Balraj (Rafiq Anwar), a college-educated man leading the campaign against Sarkar, is having none of it and asks people to boycott the hospital even if it means losing their loved ones.
After Balraj’s sister Rupa (Kamini Kaushal) dies, the villagers find inspiration yet again to challenge Sarkar’s nefarious acts. Their struggle receives a flip when Sarkar’s conscientious daughter and Balraj’s friend, Maya (Uma Anand), agrees to join the struggle against her father.
Although there is no direct reference to the British, everything about the movie points towards an indictment of British rule from the ‘brown sahib villain’ with a name like ‘Sarkar’ (meaning government), a hero ‘Balraj’ who wears a Gandhi cap and advocates non-violence and a scene where many torch-carrying protests came together in formation to depict a rough map of India.
In addition to the actors mentioned above, the likes of Zohra Sehgal, who had a small part, and legendary sitarist Ravi Shankar, who composed the film’s score, made their cinematic debuts. Following Partition, Rafi Peer returned to Lahore and started his theatre workshop.
Despite critical appreciation, the film’s commercial fortunes suffered. As per some accounts, it was on the insistence of former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru that the distributors released this film. Perhaps the audience wasn’t invested in the story or many were put off by the popular yet misleading notion that this was an ‘art film’ even though it was for the masses. Some accounts even suggest that the producer left for Pakistan after Partition and thus the film bore the brunt of the heated political climate.
In short, the film was a commercial failure. Chetan Anand, the film director, wouldn’t find work until his younger brother Dev Anand made his mark as an actor, following which they launched Navketan Films, a production company. Even then their first two films flopped before their first commercial hit came with ‘Taxi Driver’ in 1954. In the meantime, the reel for Neecha Nagar went missing while its negatives were burnt down in a fire. The reel was only found years later at a junk shop in Kolkata by Satyajit Ray’s cameraman Subrata Mitra, who bought it for just Rs 100 and saved it for posterity by depositing it at the National Film Archives of India.
Today, the movie is available on the streaming platform Mubi. Cinema aficionados can watch the film and appreciate the work it did in promoting Indian cinema on a global scale.
