Tag: humra quraishi

Categories
Cinema@100

‘Pakeezah and Umrao Jaan were first made in Pakistan’

Pran Nevile, the man with a passion for musical tribute concerts, talks about organising a music concert night in Pakistan.
by Humra Quraishi

Pran Nevile is passionately obsessed with the bygone era. For one reason or another, this retired diplomat is rather fascinated by the past, and the dominant personalities of the day. This is amply evident from the volumes that he has authored: Love Stories from the Raj, Nautch Girls of India, Beyond the Veil, Rare Glimpses of the Raj, Stories from the Raj: Sahibs Memsahibs and Others, K.L. Saigal: Immortal Singer, and Lahore — A Sentimental Journey.

pran nevileIf one were to move from the books he has authored to the musical programmes he holds, then once again, what strikes you is his focus on stars, singers and performers of yesteryears — right from KL Saigal, Suraiyya and many others who have left a mark on generations of filmgoers. Credit goes to Nevile for putting together ‘gems’ from old music albums, recordings and more.

Pran Nevile, the man
As a retired civil servant he could have sat back and relaxed with the comforts that come with retirement, but he chose to pick up a pen and write. “No, no typing on computers for me,” he once told me. “I have written several books with my pen.”

Nevile is rather obsessed with the bygone era and the characters who flourished then. His focus is on that period, and even the musical programmes he arranges focus on yesteryear stars. Each of these musical evenings has seen a packed auditorium with the audience sitting lost in nostalgia.

Perhaps he is able to strike a chord because he carries a welter of emotions within, something which probably started when he was forced to leave Lahore as a very young man. As he writes in his preface to his book on Lahore, “This book on the Lahore of my days was conceived in the lonely dining room of Hotel Astoria in Geneva in November 1963. I was having breakfast when I heard someone calling out to me in Punjabi, `Motian aleo, Hindustan de o ke Pakistan de?’ (Prince of Pearls, are you from India or Pakistan?)’

“I looked back, responding promptly, `Bashao aao baitho, main Lahore da han‘ (Your Royal Highness, please come and sit down, I hail from Lahore). In no time we became very friendly, a blend as it were, of ghee and khichdi (clarified butter and curried rice) and talked about our glorious city. The conversation released a flood of memories deeply impressed on my mind for decades. I have tried in these pages to commit them on paper.”

The Pakistan angle

And what is refreshing is that in the epilogue, written after he revisited Lahore after several decades, in 1997 and again in 1999, he does not indulge in bitterness or Pak-bashing.
Recently, on May 16 to be precise, I spoke to him in the backdrop of Nawaz Sharif coming to power in Pakistan. Was there, I wondered, a chance of improvement in Indo-Pak ties, and does he plan to take his musical concerts across the borders to the country of his birth?

“I plan to go to Pakistan around September this year,” he said, “and in all probability, I plan to show this documentary I have made there. It is called Indo Pak Musical Journey.”Pakeezah
He chatted on about the similarities in the cinema of the two countries. “When in India we made the film Anarkali, they later made the film in Pakistan with the same title. Then Pakistan made Pakeezah and Umrao Jaan, before these films were made in India (see pic on right). One Pakistani film, Naukar Woti Da, was copied in India totally, scene by scene. The only thing they did was change the title from Punjabi to Hindustani, making it Naukar Bibi Ka.”

I asked him how the common people of both countries could relate and co-exist, and he said, “The bureaucracy doesn’t seem interested in people connecting. What happened to those earlier talks of ‘no visas for senior citizens’? There are so many over 60 years of age keen to visit each other’s countries. All those promises of people visiting each other from across the border…the bureaucracy is not really bothered to see this happen.”

(Pictures courtesy www.thehindu.com, www.lahorelitfest.com, bollyspice.com) 

Categories
Enough said

All things bright and beautiful

A new book on the ancient Indian ‘shringara’ tradition brings to mind all that’s best in our beautiful country.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

I believe that our lives in the good old days were simple and good for our overall psyche. Those ways should be brought back. Our food and lifestyle, our ideas of beauty, even the very fabric we chose to wear next to our skins jelled with the climate and our living conditions.

Cottons and khadi are apt for our summers and the humidity, yet we ditch them for synthetics and polyesters. This brings to mind an incident, several years ago, when Delhi- based art historian Jyotindra Jain had gone to meet writer Mulk Raj Anand. The first thing that the writer did was to send Jain to the nearest Gandhi Ashram so that the latter could change his clothes – his trousers and synthetic shirt – and slip into a more comfortable and suitable khadi kurta pyjama!

Another thing to bring to mind my present preoccupation (for this column) with healthy living and beauty, was writer Alka Pande’s alka panderecently published book, Shringara – The Many Faces Of Indian Beauty.

Right on the front cover is this overwhelming photograph of Indian woman clad in ethnic clothes, while the back cover has a woman from a bygone era getting her somewhat bare body massaged; she is in a semi-Kamasutra pose, but as you sift through the pages, you understand that the underlying theme is shringara. The book takes you through shringara in verse, paintings, architecture, form and figure.

As Pande elaborates, “As an art historian, I’m often asked to define beauty in a word, phrase or even as a concept. I see beauty essentially as a value connected to the perception of different alternative aspects of human emotionality. When we perceive something that is in harmony with nature and generates a feeling of joy and pleasure within us, we describe it to be beautiful…”

shringar of the ladyShe adds, “Today, the cultural diversity of India faces the pulls and pressures of tradition and modernity, rural and urban, folk and classical, and most importantly, local and global. Shringara, too, faces the challenges of perception, where the beauty of adornment and the beauty of ugliness are two sides of the same coin…this is a time to ask important  questions on the concept of beauty: Has the morphology of the old nayika been given up for more westernised perceptions? Has there been an Indian renaissance, apart from path-breaking initiatives of AK Coomaraswamy and Rabindranath Tagore? Who are the new patrons of Indian art?”

What I took away from this book was not just the easy flow of words, but also the pictures and graphics that merged seamlessly with the narrative. It nudged me to introspect, perceive more, think of all that’s beautiful in our land.

(Pictures courtesy alkapande.com, www.exoticindia.com)

Categories
Cinema@100

‘Bollywood filmmakers have budgets, not sensibility’

Actor Farooque Sheikh speaks on the malaise of money dictating quality in our cinema, when dedication and passion actually should.
by Humra Quraishi

farooq sheikhFarooque Sheikh was the eternal reel sweetheart, the man with more than good looks and a formidable acting talent. He did few films, but made an impact with each one, before moving on to do theatre and television and making a mark there as well.

For somebody who seems to be so soft-spoken on screen, Farooque Sheikh in the flesh comes as a bit of a surprise. He minces no words, spares nobody in his criticism. Recently, he took up the cudgels against the Tamil Nadu Government in favour of Kamal Haasan’s Vishwaroopam, which the Government banned from release despite certification from the Censor Board. “Of what use is the Censor Board if the Government is going to Talibanise films and filmmakers in this fashion?” Sheikh had famously thundered on TV.

I met and interviewed the actor twice, once in the 1990s and then in 2005 when he was speaking at a seminar here in New Delhi. He’d been his usual outspoken self and did not hedge around questions. It is refreshing to find film personalities like him who are not much bothered about political correctness.

Sheikh had a lot to say about the Hindi film industry, and how hypocritical and money-crazy the current generation of filmmakers are.

“Successful filmmakers in Bollywood today have big budgets, but no sensibility or sensitivity. Cinema has become totally commercial, a Farooq Sheikhcommodity to be sold,” he said. “There are no film producers today like K Asif and Guru Dutt and Bimal Roy, or even Mehboob sahib. Mehboob sahib had no money, yet his passion drove him to make films. Bimal Roy lived in a rented accomodation all his life. It took MS Sathyu a full 20 years to repay the loan he took to make Garam Hawa. That level of commitment is missing in today’s film producers. Today, film producers simply go by whether the film will be a box office hit. Maybe because there are too many business interests involved.”

We soon began chatting about stereotyping of communities in Indian cinema. He became quite animated on this subject. “Community perceptions in our films have always been about stereotypes. The Christian girl is a girl dancing or wearing short skirts with signs that she is a ‘fast’ girl. The Parsi is always shown as blundering. The Sikh is either a soldier or a man constantly eating parathas; nobody on screen shows him like Manmohan Singh.

“In the case of Muslims, the characters are hardly believable. Why do they portray the Muslim man always in a lungi and a vest? Or he is a gaddaar. As a token, one of them will be very patriotic so that the entire community is not misunderstood. The other stereotypes, with 300 aadabs in one film and women wearing ghararas or cooking kormas, are also absent in real life Muslim households.”

farooque shaikhHe added that since cinema was popularly perceived to be an entertainment medium, so whatever was shown on the big screen was automatically assumed to be something that need not be taken seriously. “So nobody complains about these stereotypes.” He was also quick to point out that television does have a bigger impact on people’s lives than cinema, and that things shown on TV have sometimes been life-changing in villages.

Who, in his opinion, held out some hope as a filmmaker? “Anand Patwardhan,” he replied. “He has fought the system. And fighting the system is not an easy task.”

Watch a trailer of the charming Chashme Buddoor starring Farooque Shaikh and Deepti Naval:

 

(Pictures courtesy movies.ndtv.com, www.indianetzone.com, www.santabanta.com, www.thehindu.com)

Categories
Enough said

When aerial surveys don’t help

What do our politicians try to accomplish by taking aerial surveys of disasters? Shouldn’t they be on the ground, helping?
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

No, Sir, aerial surveys won’t do in the Uttarakhand region. You cannot view disasters from so far away, from such a safe place. You have to be there, amongst your people.

It’s disgusting how VVIPs are touring the devastated region in a detached manner, even at this stage when thousands have been killed. And it’s more than disgusting to know that even now these political creatures are conducting aerial surveys. As representatives of the people, they ought to be right there on the ground, ferrying essentials, supplying food and medicines or even helping in the rescue operations.

But they opt to sit far away, in safe environs, and write bogus speeches. I have a feeling that these same speeches are routinely used and re-used in every successive calamity; it is possible that professional speech writers have penned these speeches, conveying the right dose of sorrow and political statement, while leaving room for minor changes, as the calamity may be.

Another disaster struck the Kashmir Valley recently, and it also attracted its own set of VVIPs. During their two-day visit to the Valley, one hoped that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi would visit the families of those sitting in the ruins of their homes, shattered by the recent earthquakes that had hit the Kishtwar/Doda region. Seemingly no speeches were written for that aerialinteraction, for none were made. Also, there were no statements from the duo on the recently re-opened case of the 1991 mass rapes that took place in Kunan Poshpora, the village of Kashmir that was witness to several women were raped in one night. Till date, the tragedy has been camouflaged and watered-down in several ways, but today, the villagers of Kunan Poshpora are no longer scared of a backlash and what the establishment can do against their vocal protests. The villagers are boldly speaking of how those rapes were completely hushed up by the Government and its agencies.

There has also been complete silence on the rape and murder of two Shopian women – Aasiya Jan and Niloufer Jan. The two young women were murdered in 2009, but till date, have received no justice. The culprits have not yet been arrested, and there has been no hue and cry over the cover-ups in the investigation. I recall, during the summer of 2010, when family members of those two women wanted to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was on a two-day visit to the Valley, they were not just halted but also detained in a police station located in the very heart of Srinagar city. They were released only after the PM had left the Valley. And this is not a lone example – this happens every time a top politician visits the area and the naïve ones looking for justice want to meet them.

rahul gandhi gives a speechAt times I wonder: why can’t these announcements of special packages be made from New Delhi? Why should these ‘leaders’ travel all the way when they cannot meet or interact with the commoner? Anyway, these packages mean little for the average citizen, since their benefits rarely reach the masses.

In fact, each time a VVIP from Delhi schedules a visit in the Valley, there is a mood of gloom that quickly spreads. For the average citizen knows he has to sit indoors, ordered to stay away, traffic is moved or halted – everything comes to a standstill while the visiting dignitary is there. If our politicos are not going to actively help the people, why should they hamper their movements?

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.deccanchronicle.com, www.theunrealtimes.com, www.indiatimes.com, blogs.reuters.com)

Categories
Enough said

Citizens fight back against injustice

The days of people quietly accepting atrocities by the State are long gone – now they’re combating injustice with information.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his wife, Lyudmila, made a rather dignified announcement, which put a formal end to their marriage. It was known before the announcement, that the two were rarely together, and that they had been dragging the marriage along for years.

What impressed me was the manner in which the announcement was made. The couple is middle-aged, yet they didn’t let their age come in the way of their decision. To part at 60 cannot be easy.

Just pause and think of how we, in India, rarely take this step at age 60 and beyond, preferring to keep up the sham. We pretend everything’s fine, we are comfortable portraying a reality that doesn’t exist. We can keep up the pretence for years. That’s just who we are.

And because we are so happy propagating a private lie, we are happy lying in the public sphere as well. Even as parts of North India are being wrecked by the monsoon, with hundreds being killed in flash floods and landslides, our politicians are doing what they do best – nothing. Political leaders from across the board should currently be a part of the relief operations in affected regions, putting to good use the sarkari and non-sarkari brigades they nurture. But what are they really doing? Conducting aerial tours, sitting far away and giving boring speeches.

Some politicians are otherwise engaged in justifying fake encounter killings or arresting innocents. In Lucknow, activists are protesting outside the UP State Assembly, against the khalid mujahidillegal arrest and killing of Khalid Mujahid by the UP cops (see pic on right). But Mulayam and Akhilesh Yadav are choosing to divert attention by distributing computers and laptops!

In Gujarat, where Mumbai-based student Ishrat Jehan who was killed in a fake encounter on the pretext of her part in a terror plot, the case has been reopened and the focus is now on the blatant killings conducted by the State. A few months ago, I had spoken to well-known human rights lawyer Vrinda Grover, who is the counsel for Ishrat’s mother. She said, “It was soon after the Sohrabuddin case was taken up by the Supreme Court and the nexus between the cops and politicians was exposed that I was contacted by Ishrat’s family to take up their case.

“It was the conviction of the mother and family in the innocence of Ishrat and their determination to have her name cleared of the tag of terrorism that persuaded me. They wanted their respect and dignity restored. As a human rights lawyer, I often represent victims of police atrocities and violence. But, after meeting Shamima Kauser (Ishrat’s mother) and her children, seeing the case file and the reading the truth about Sohrabuddin’s murder, it was clear that this ‘encounter’ was not just a crime committed by some trigger-happy cops, but rather part of the State-sanctioned and planned violence against Muslims, which was unleashed in the genocidal pogrom of 2002.

Ishrat_Jahan“The FIR recorded by the Police of these encounters refers to the riots and killings of Muslims in 2002 and claims that the alleged ‘terrorists’ wanted to kill Modi and take revenge for the 2002 attack on Muslims. These encounters, about 22 of them in Gujarat, are part of the politics of hate to polarise and build mistrust and fear between the communities. It is very important to recognise a clear pattern of targeting Muslims and demonising them as the enemy that must be eliminated, by use of State power, whether through engineered riots or staged fake encounters i.e cold blooded murders by those in State power.”

She went on, “It is very important to bring out the truth behind these fake encounters because in Gujarat there is a criminal nexus between the political executive, the police and even persons in critical positions in the IB, both in the Centre and State. This is a very dangerous and lethal combination and before our eyes a fascist State is in the making. To fight for Ishrat’s truth is part of the battle against fascism. The mechanics of electoral democracy may not deliver justice and the legal battle is important so that the killers and their masterminds are unmasked and punished.”

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy news.in.msn.com, www.rina.in, rihaaimanch.blogspot.com)

Categories
Cinema@100

Gemini Ganesan and eternal romance

Most of us identify Gemini Ganesan as film star Rekha’s father. However, there was more to the superstar than cinema.
by Humra Quraishi

I chanced upon a book, Eternal Romantic: My Father, Gemini Ganesan, by journalist and writer Narayani Ganesh, a few years ago. The book is about the halo around the Tamil superstar, the lesser-known things about him, and most importantly, it captures him in the context of the times he lived in, the Tamil Nadu of his birth and work, and everything else in between.

Gemini GanesanAs per the book, Gemini Ganesan spent his formative years in the royal principality of Padukottai in Tamil Nadu, followed by a year in the Ramakrishna Mission Home in Chennai, where he learnt yoga and attended Vedanta classes. This was followed by his years at the Madras Christian College, and much later, with a glorious career in cinema.

Written with a great deal of transparency, the book dispels the mystique around Gemini Ganesan, making him out to be normal family-oriented man who was not at all filmi. From the several pictures of him and his family in the book, he appears to be a traditional family man, surrounded by his large family in an old-world setting.

Frank and devoted

He was known for being far ahead of his times, both in his work and personal life. He was candid about his relationships with his co-stars, and did not ever deny the existence of film stars Pushpavalli and Savithri in his life. He married them, fathered their children. Amazingly, his first wife, TR Alamelu, popularly called Bobjima, appeared to be utterly comfortable with the Gemini-Pushpavalli-Savithri situation, and also their children. Even more surprisingly, all of his children, with all three women, got along well with their half-brothers and sisters. One of these children was Rekha, who would later become a superstar in Hindi films.

The more I read, the more I pondered on Bobjima and the courage with which she faced her husband’s relationships. She seems to have been a woman completely in love with her husband, and she was with him right till the end. If a film was to be made on the life of Gemini Ganesan, Bobjima would definitely play the heroine in an extraordinary relationship that endured till the end.

Narayani was born to Bobjima. She writes, “When I think of appa, the words that spring to mind are charming, handsome, affectionate, witty, responsible and compassionate. He was gemini ganesan and sarojadevian interesting person…because his interests went far beyond cinema. As a dashing romantic actor, appa did have relationships outside his marriage, but his relationship with us remained the same. He was the same caring father, son and nephew, but of course, I would not be able to say what went through my mother’s mind. Because children were not part of their private discussions (if they had any) and my grandmothers were so benign and full of love – for appa and for all of us, so there was no question of ugly fights or hurling of accusations and that sort of thing.

“I would say that we all had a great deal of respect for him and for each other. As an actor, appa’s USP was that he had a way with women; he oozed charm and with his candy-box good looks, wide-eyed innocence and gentle ways, he won over the hearts of more than a generation of fans. For them, he was the eternal romantic hero…”

About Rekha

Narayani writes about Gemini Ganesan with touching honesty, leaving out nothing.  “At Presentation Convent, Madras, where I studied, a girl struck up a conversation with me after school one day. I must have been nine or ten years old.

Rekha‘Why do you and your sister go home in different cars?’ she asked. I was puzzled. My two older sisters had finished school. My younger sister was still a baby. ‘Come, I will take you to her,’ the girl said, taking me by the hand. I met Rekha for the first time. She was pretty and her eyes were lined with mascara. She said her name was Bhanurekha. ‘What is your father’s name?’ I asked.

‘Gemini Ganesan,’ came the reply. My eyes filled with tears. How can that be? He was my father. When Chinamma came to take me home, I blurted out the story. ‘Never mind,’ she said.

“Another day, I pointed out Rekha to Chinamma and she said, ‘She is like your sister. And she’s pretty.’ Then there was Rekha’s younger sister, Radha, who was even prettier, I thought. Her resemblance to appa was startling. When I was a little older, I learnt that they were born to Pushpavalli and appa, and that they lived with their mother and other siblings, too…”

Other interesting details about Gemini Ganesan the father were that he was very particular about his children’s teeth and their upkeep. “One of the earliest memories I have of my father is of him asking me to show him my teeth. He would inspect them regularly, and horrified that my two upper front teeth were parting ways, leading to an A-shaped passage behind, he whisked me off to the dentist!”

Actor Kamal  Haasan, who’d worked with him as a child actor in his movies, mentions in the books’s foreword, “Gemini mama (uncle) was larger than Rekha and her five sisters life; there was so much  more to him than his screen persona. That was what was so exciting – cinema was not his entire life, it was a vocation, a profession he chose over others. ‘To me, life is oxygen, not cinema!’ he would say. If he hadn’t been an actor, he might have retired as an academic, with teaching stints in, who knows, Pudukkottai, Chennai, Delhi, UK, USA. He let his laurels rest lightly on his shoulders – to him, success was neither a crowning glory nor a heavy cross. And at a time when celebrities made it a point to publicise their acts of charity, he did it quietly, without fuss…

‘I touched and felt film ‘stars’ for the first time in my life when I was three-and-a-half years old. The stars were Gemini Ganesan and Savithri, and I was to play their son in the film Kalathur Kannamma. Till then, I had no idea that actors were flesh and blood humans – I cannot forget the experience as they held me close in their arms, their ‘child’. I began addressing them as amma and appa on and off the sets. I’m told I had to be ‘weaned’ away from my screen parents!’

(Pictures courtesy www.veethi.com, ibnlive.in.com, thehindu.com, www.mid-day.com, rediff.com, www.masala.com) 

Exit mobile version