Munshi Premchand’s Garib Ki Hai

I am from North India, speak Hindi as my mother tongue, so I have  a certain amount of familiarity with Hindi Literature. When that happens, chances are that you will be familiar with the name of Munshi Premchand. Great writer, especially of short stories. Possibly one of the greatest short story writers that ever lived, though that’s a generalisation I’d be hard put to justify.

Towards the end of my stint at FTII, I had a chance to read a collection of Premchand’s work- short stories, excerpts from novels, etc- that the late Mani Kaul had put together as a script for a movie about Premchand. This was shortly after Mani had made ‘Satah Se Uththa AAdmi’ based on the life and work of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh, another eminent Hindi writer. I had seen the bound script of that movie too- and yes that too was a collection of stories, poems and anecdotes. I do not know if that was the way Mani Kaul regularly worked or prepared for his movies, but it gave me a chance to read the story ‘Garib Ki Hai’.

I must confess that I was entranced, loved the story- it was so brilliantly cinematic. Nothing came of Mani Kaul’s Premchand project, I asked him about the story years later and he said ‘Do it by all means, I won’t get a chance to do it’. For the first time I quivered in my boots at the prospect of stepping where Mani Kaul had failed.

After FTII the move to Bombay came, along with domestic concerns and the need to earn a living and I kind of lost touch with my inner dreams. I did look for the story at various points, I even forgot the name but the story was etched in my being.

Now, years later I said I must look for that story and asked the local Hindi Literature knowing people to help me locate the story(and drew blanks). A bit desperate after local book shops drew a blank, I finally ventured onto Google, and sure enough a blog cropped up in Hindi that had all of Premchand’s stories. A few minutes later, I found the story- I knew from it beginning that this was it. Downloaded it, though it was a job to make the computer ‘read’ the story. Finally saved it as a ‘picture’.

Heart beating with trepidation, read the story again- oh yes it was all that I’d remembered and more.

So now I have the story, just need to write a script, find the money and make it- if only it was that simple!

A movie-‘Vicky Donor’

My nephew, who loves movies, finally got totally flustered by my sheer ignorance of contemporary Indian movies. So he gave me a pile of DVDs of movies to watch. I’ve just managed one in the past two weeks- Vicky Donor.

Lovely movie, enjoyed every moment of it. Beautifully written, effortlessly directed- keeping the focus on moving the story forward. No its not a masterpiece by any stretch of imagination, but its not a movie to be wished away either.

What strikes me, as the ‘outsider’ to movie world is the change in the way characters talk- they use a lot of English now, no one’s scared of the movie and its story belonging to a place and using local nuance. 

Of course because of its subject, this is a movie where sex and sexuality is ever present but in a pleasant straight forward manner. Its an enjoyable movie so it drives home the issues surrounding sperm donation pretty well, without getting squeamish about it.

Then there’s the cast where the seniors steal the show- Annu Kapoor and Dolly Ahluwalia are lovely to watch. Having worked with Dolly in the first short I ever made at FTII, it was great to see her mature as an actor.

I’m no judge of young actors, but the boy looked very good, hope he goes far.

Great to hear that the movie did superb business- so there’s hope for smaller movies. That’s the direction we’d take- scripted sensible movies.

More on watching TV

I sort of promised myself that I wouldn’t write about TV as that’s the source my livelihood. And it seems a bit unfair to talk about other people’s work as you are always talking from the standpoint of your own mode of working- which I would obviously think is the best!

Watched bits of fiction TV- the ‘soaps’ it must be said, not the ‘dramas’ or ‘reality shows’. The predominantly ‘family’ setting seems fine as it is so in India, but what’s fascinating is that despite the millions of different ways in which the power structures of families work, the chosen model on TV is the patriarchal one. The father or even more often the grandfather is the source of all power. Haven’t chanced upon one where the son or the daughter were the source of power, or a soap that portrayed as the power struggle as power transitions between generations. All you seem to get are fairly petty sounding rivalries between the ‘bahus’ of a household, or at best a saas-bahu situation.

Due to the predominantly female audience demographic, I guess the female domination of these long form dramas is to be expected. But what surprises is the almost sidelining of the male characters, or maybe the audience for these does not really want to see complex male characters. Much like male audiences of ‘action’ movies don’t appreciate complex female characters.

Interestingly the setting of all the serials seem to be lavish palatial houses- demanded by the audience the TV programmers will proclaim- the aspirational target of their audience. But to me, possibly as a filmmaker- all settings look like they’ve had a fresh coat of paint, everyone’s dressed like they’re going to a wedding- hair all set and un-creased clothes- a world that is very different from the human beings that populate our lives.

But maybe that’s the point of it all, every moment must live the ‘dream’, perhaps even more than movies.

Maybe I need to see a few more movies before passing comments on them- some of the new ones look very interesting- like ‘Barfi’.

Watching TV

In my mother’s place, where I’m currently parked, her care givers monopolise the TV. Which is fine as they are the ones who are,  there all the time, and since my mother can’t watch TV anymore, the caregivers are the ones making the choice of channels to watch.

The male caregivers want to watch news, mainly the Hindi news channels. I kind of find the channels a pain, their predominant tone of voice is shrill and their attitudes strident. Let me explain this a bit- there have to be more ‘tones’ in narrating news than ‘shrill’ and desperately urgent. It makes everything high-octane and results in you, the audience, eventually, not being able to distinguish between what is relevant and important and what is not. In the age of instant communications, this ability to ‘sort’ or prioritise the news for an audience is what a news channel or news source has to offer. Then you can decide for yourself whether to trust the news source or not. But out here, it appears that they’re all in the same mode! It’s the classic syndrome of more of the same.

And the talk shows, which seem to dominate the non-news programming, it sort of degenerates into shouting at each other within a few minutes, with the anchor/ presenter as a part of the whole thing. Its in the questions asked and the manner in which they are asked- its like they all know the issues are the same, so how do we present them in a manner so as to catch your attention.

More on this soon, have to log off for now.