The mirror betrays its age. Faint brown veins spider against the glass, lending one’s reflection a sinister appearance. The bulb-holders around the mirror are missing several bulbs, giving it a gap-toothed appearance. I imagine all bulbs in place, lighting up as the late Nargis preens at this mirror, pinning up her hair stylishly to one side, framing that sharp profile in readiness for her next scene. Down these corridors, with the unpleasantly green paint now peeling off in patches, down these worn stairs, the wood now concave where most feet have stepped, she would have gracefully gone, into the spotlight and into cinematic history.
Once the fiefdom of the man who gave
With so much glamour breathing through its walls, I expect a building that lived up to the gloss of Bollywood. Something shiny and well maintained. But I am met with a solid, school-building-like structure, mundane windows stained with bird-droppings, a simple entrance, and a wood-paneled notice board (announcing, among other things, a salary hike back in 2008, for head carpenters to now receive Rs 902 as wages, up from the previous Rs 801) much like we had in college. The digital clock looks out of place above it, like the afterthought it probably is.
A huge hall, known as “stage” or “floor” by those in the trade, is bare save two large, ancient pedestal fans. One cools down a laborer, whose yellowing vest sticks to his skin as he takes a break from sorting the planks that will form a set for the next shoot. I park myself in front of the other as I look around. This one, stage no. 3, is the largest, at 122 by 115 feet, and a ceiling 55 feet off the ground. I crane my neck to peer to the top. Makeshift corridors fashioned from wooden planks form the grid from which lighting will be set up and adjusted. The language here is unique, I’ve heard. On an earlier visit, I was laughingly told by film-maker Anuradha Tandon, ‘You know, “Baby ka mundi kaatke upar latka de,” which suggests beheading a child and hanging it from the ceiling, actually means taking a small spotlight (baby), covering it up to minimize the light it throws, and suspending it from above!
Padmashree Mehboob Khan’s velvet-upholstered office too is untouched. The walls contain awards and commendations, including the Nomination Certificate for Mother India at the Oscars. A framed letter dated 30th October 1952, from Cecil B. deMille, President of the Paramount Pictures Corporation, compliments Khan on Aan and says it reveals the “tremendous potential of Indian motion pictures for securing world markets.” Prophetic words.
Up on the second floor of the office building, large offices contain the skeletal 18–20 staff members of the Studios. Cardboard file covers try their best to contain bulging sheafs of papers, with labels like “TDS Challans & Certificates”. Piled to the ceiling are bundles of scripts, posters, trade magazines and paperwork. Plastic cans teeter all the way to the top, each containing negatives for memorable names like Anmol Ghadi, Najma, Anokhi Ada and others. The can colors, once bright, are now fading, just like the studio itself. “Can you ever locate anything?” I ask, taken aback at the carelessness with which these are kept. Rajendra, the Bookings Manager, shrugs and says casually “Haan, mil jata hai.” He tentatively picks up a bundle of magazines, seemingly for the first time, and disinterestedly remarks, “These are all old trade magazines, you know, that keep coming.” Huge, handmade posters of the same movies lie folded in half, yellowing along the crease. What about Mumbai’s humidity and natural wear and tear for these papers? He shrugs again. Later, in the study of Iqbal Khan, Managing Director of Mehboob Studios and son of the late Mehboob Khan, I ask the same question and am shown a pink stationery file of clippings from
Obviously, the past is on its own here. It is the present that matters. With 80 percent bookings, the studio is in demand, though it’s not all Bollywood. “Ads make up three-sevenths of our revenue,” cites Khan. And suddenly he turns the tables on me, asking, “What percentage is that?” Stumped, I grope in my head, dividing 3 by 7, that’s errr, ummm, “42 percent,” he says complacently. “In fact, the music recording studio is now just another stage, where we shoot commercials. We couldn’t afford to modernize the equipment; the Klang Bauer machine was outdated. So, rather than spending 5-8 crores upgrading our studio, we have just stopped music recordings here. Producers can rent the room for their ad-film shoots.” That hall where orchestras lovingly recorded memorable music, most often composed by the lively Laxmikant-Pyarelal, that would have
But Iqbal Khan has had to be practical to keep the studio going. When his sons inherited the studio after Mehboob Khan’s death in 1964, they also inherited a 5-lakh mortgage on the property, a debt of 28 lakhs, and a court battle with their stepmother. Renting out studio space was the only option. In those days of desperation, truant producers who tried to get away without paying rent found that their film’s negatives were held ransom by Khan till they coughed up the money due to him. “My father built this up from nothing,” Khan confesses, “with Aan, he captured world attention. Though Awaaz and Paisa hi Paisa failed, he made up for it with Mother India but then he destroyed it all with Son of India.” Mehboob Khan had been a stubborn director and producer, and built Mehboob Studios in his own name to serve as the staging ground for his cinematic vision. His legacy survives, some of it half-built, including a brick structure he began constructing for a “must-have” helicopter shot. He died before that, and no one saw any point completing the building. Doesn’t Khan want to construct something else to utilize the space? “No,” the old gentleman responds firmly. “I don’t need the space, so why spend money on it?”
Asked about improvements and renovations, he is non-committal. I suspect there isn’t much on the cards unless it is deemed essential. And indeed, why should they bother? Mehboob Studios is doing fine. Though small-budget producers prefer low-cost shoots elsewhere and the Chopras and Johars wing away to foreign lands, a steady stream of producers films here. For the forthcoming Hrithik and Aishwarya-starrer Guzarish, producer Sanjay Leela Bhansali booked one floor for seven months straight. At rental rates of roughly Rs 65,000 per shift of nine hours, this was a welcome booking. Iqbal Khan invests in no marketing, promotion or publicity. He prefers to let word-of-mouth guide producers to his gates. A new source of revenue has emerged - renting out the studio as a venue for exhibitions and events. Iqbal Khan is pleased as it takes care of overheads worth nearly 5 lakhs per month. “We make profits,” he states modestly.
If the clients are happy, I can hardly complain. In its out-of-shape realness, Mehboob Studios carries on. The Bookings Manager is endlessly on the phone, talking business, as he shows me around. Perhaps these barely-maintained surroundings – masked, wrapped and decorated to create glitzy images that hold millions spellbound – actually help keep the stars grounded, right here on earth with the rest of us.
“Censorship is neither possible nor desirable,” asserts Dr Jayasankar, Professor, Centre for Media and Cultural Studies at Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences and a founder-member of Vikalp. He cites the famous example of the blank editorial in the Indian Express during the Emergency as the perfect act of silent defiance. “Who decides what’s right? It’s the idea of a less powerful ‘other’, one that cannot handle the truth, that is problematic,” he explains.
It was precisely to give this “less powerful ‘other’” the freedom to choose what it watched, that Vikalp was born. The Campaign Against Censorship – a group of Indian film-makers committed to freedom of expression, reacted strongly when the Censor Board inserted a certification clause just for Indian entries in 2004’s Mumbai International Film Festival. Angry protests forced the authorities to withdraw the clause, but the censorship remained – film-makers soon realized that the selection committee rejected the politically sensitive, controversial films anyway, despite the fact that many of these had travelled to foreign festivals and won awards and appreciation. Rakesh Sharma’s Final Solution (dealing with Gujarat’s communal massacres after Godhra in 2002), Sanjay Kak’s Words on Water (which explores the struggle over the Narmada dam), and Anjali Monteiro and K.P. Jayasankar’s Naata (about two men working for conflict resolution in Dharavi,
A constructive protest
Vikalp: Films for Freedom, began as a six-day festival that screened the rejected films and some more, as film-makers withdrew even their selected entries from MIFF, preferring to screen them at Vikalp instead. “We received a lot of threats to stop us from screening the films,” recalls Dr Anjali Monteiro, another founder-member. She continues, “What was interesting was that even some of the MIFF jury members came to watch the movies we were screening!”
“Vikalp means ‘an alternative’,” says Anand Patwardhan, renowned documentary film-maker (
“It is not an organization; it is a movement,” clarifies Patwardhan. This loose-knit collective, functioning over e-mails and Yahoogroups has given audiences access to documentary films in
Encouraging debate
Today one can easily disseminate films over the web – so is Vikalp’s role really crucial anymore? Attend a screening and you would know it is. Vikalp’s USP lies in the opportunity and space it creates for discussion. The film-maker is almost always present, encouraging and answering questions after the screening. The latest session (in January) screened Anand Patwardhan’s Prisoners of Conscience, in which political prisoners of the Emergency narrate their experiences. “Unfortunately, these things still happen,” says the film-maker, which means that an entirely new generation could relate to a film made over three decades ago, resulting in a heated post-screening discussion.
Victoire Guena, Cultural Coordinator at Alliance Francaise, Mumbai, where most screenings take place, says that the 72-seater hall is usually packed for Vikalp screenings, with people spilling over on to the carpets as well. “We welcome people to
Jayasankar puts it succinctly: “We are all taught to read and write. But we need to be taught to read images.” How true. As we interrogate, as we learn to apply ourselves and infer truths from the images we see on the screen, we are the more powerful “others”, not the “volatile” communities reacting to speeches and books and films on their face value, but digging deeper and making informed decisions. That is the only way to take a stand. After all, that’s how it all began.
Vikalp organises screenings of documentary films across Mumbai. Entry is always free. The next screenings are:
An actor of her caliber can’t be confined to one role. And Broken Images doesn’t try. In less than an hour of stage time, Shabana Azmi bewilders and stuns with many shades to her stage persona: good, bad, shrewd, cunning, lying, vulnerable, pitiable, helpless and neglected. It’s only a human urge, when watching a story unfold, to find one person on whom to pin our sympathies. While I’m still trying to decide who I should feel for in this play, Shabana says, “The best feedback I got for this role was that the audience can’t make up their minds who the victim is and who the victimizer. I am pleased with that because Girish (Karnad) has built in enough ambiguity to make it a shifting equation.” Ah. So we are not meant to decide. I may as well just go with the flow as I watch acting so spontaneous it seems effortless and natural.
But this spontaneity didn’t come easy. Shabana, who has also acted in international productions at
Arundhati Nag, Padma Shri recipient for 2010, played the protagonist in the Kannada and Hindi versions of the play. Shabana admits that watching her made it easier to play the Image in one single take. The unusual thing in the execution of Broken Images is the presence of the “Image”, a recorded version of herself seen on a large TV screen on stage, opposite which Shabana acts. Usually actors watch their recorded performances to rate their performances by their own, exacting standards. So was it not hard, not to mention distracting, to act with and react to herself? Here, she acknowledges that her sister-in-law, Tanvi Azmi was invaluable. “A very fine actor, Tanvi played both parts during my rehearsals, so that when I actually had to act ‘opposite’ myself, I knew what to expect. And frankly, I find the Image completely different from anything I have done so far, so she surprised even me!” All that preparation paid off, and the shoot, for which they had budgeted two days, was done in a single take of 44 minutes! “Had I gone wrong in the 43rd minute, we’d have had to do the whole take again,” Shabana points out. Not the sort of tension many would handle with such élan.
Since she has mentioned these mediums, I draw Shabana away from the play in question, asking about cinema and theatre in the larger context. The Padma Shri awards have just been announced; there are 20 awardees in the Arts category for 2010 while just 10 years back there were only seven awardees. Does this indicate a growing recognition of the arts’ contribution towards change in society? Shabana agrees, “About time, don’t you think? All art has the possibility of creating a climate of sensitivity in which it is possible for change to occur.”
If art can do all this, I am further tempted to ask my next question: there has been a burst of interest in Islam in the last decade and everyone wants to understand and depict their perception of Islam – its followers, its philosophy and its misuse by extremists. Can Indian film and theatre really contribute towards this understanding? “There have been attempts by film, though theatre, I am not so sure,” she muses. “To handle a subject as complex as this you need an in-depth understanding of the issue. It works in Khuda Kay Liye, which was technically weak but well written. Firaaq was a sensitive film that managed to stir you without manipulating you. But if the film just uses the issue as a peg on which to hang a routine story, it ends up doing more damage than good.”
Given that Shabana is one of those who firmly believe in doing good, she has worked to help slum dwellers over the last 25 years. As leader of the Nivara Hakk movement, Shabana ensured that 12,000 homes were built, free of cost for slum-dwellers evicted from Mumbai’s
THE REVIEW:
BROKEN IMAGES
Written by Girish Karnad
Directed by Alyque Padamsee
Produced by Raell Padamsee
Cast: Shabana Azmi
Running time approximately 55 minutes
The play opens with Manjula Sharma, a college teacher and extraordinarily successful first-time English novelist, seated in a television studio and telling us about the storm her success has generated. Coolly, she refutes allegations of being a money-grabbing, opportunistic writer who betrayed her first language, Hindi, to write in English. The tension between the glamour of English literature and the step-sisterly treatment of Hindi language novelists is finely nuanced and brought forth by a now defensive, now offensive Manjula, as she flaunts the huge publishing advance and the unexpected fame she has received. Inordinately pleased for having smoothly hit out at her critics on television, Manjula prepares to leave the studio. That is when the live TV screen flickers to life again, an Image of Manjula staring out from it as it engages the author in conversation. Thus begins a riveting dialogue, eliciting truths as it goes along, that eventually strips Manjula down to a reality she has always known and denied.
The confessions the Image extracts from Manjula through simple but incisive questions reveal much about the complexities of human relationships, the love-hate bond between siblings, the significance of intellectual companionship in a marriage, and the irreversible consequences of a lie told so often, it becomes the truth, even to the one who utters it. When we create an Image of ourselves for the outside world, we run the risk of the Image dominating over our sense of self, and that is what Broken Images brings out – not in a soft and subtle way but with the brutality of a reflection that tells the truth and will not be silenced.
Along on stage throughout, Shabana Azmi is not so much an actor as she is Manjula herself: Torn, self-interrogating, and devastated as she gives voice to the truth she has subconsciously been aware of all along. More than watching a performance the audience witnesses the many protective layers around a celebrity peel away till she stands exposed, for our pity and our judgment.
The TV screen on stage has its own significance. To quote Girish Karnad, the playwright, “New technologies whisper to us in shimmering figures, seduce us with moving lines, colors and luminosities. Softwares speaking through microprocessors mould our tastes, question our judgments, persuade us to take their messages as our own, so that simulation furnishes us with copies more real than normal reality.” And so this play turns reality on its head, blurring the line between good and bad, selfish and selfless, lies and truth, and the self and the other, making it all seem one. The play is, in director Alyque Padamsee’s words, “A masterpiece about self-delusion and phantom images.”
For fans of Shabana Azmi the stage actor, don’t watch this play expecting anything like Tumhari Amrita or Kaifi aur
Upcoming shows of Broken Images:
MUMBAI
