The mother on the Indian screen for good or for bad was always for her children but in case of conflict between the spouse and the off spring, the mother supported her husband. The first time this changed was in Maine Pyaar Kiya, in a crucial scene after opposing his father Salman Khan asks mother Rima Lagoo, ‘Maine glalat kiya?’ and a tearful Rima shakes her head and embraces Salman. In Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge when Farida Jalal discovers Kajol and Shahrukh Khan together in the courtyard, she is filled with hope not fear and urges them to flee and follow their dream.  

Come 2000 and the mother (rather the family) was slowly disappearing from the big screen. Ram Gopal Verma said he was bored of the relatives and Yash Chopra who had built a career on family dramas sidelined the older generation in Dil Toh Pagal Hai. In Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na Ratna Pathak Shah revived the motif as a new age mom and Farhan Akhtar’s coming-of-age Dil Chahta Hai revived image of contemporary parents. When Aamir Khan’s father senses he is low, he says, ‘I want you to come back’. The film was a success not just for the portrayal of the youngsters but their supportive, realistic parents.

Another film featuring Sulochna in her later years was Johnny Mera Naam. Two scenes stand out in my memory. The first when her son, Dev Anand appears in disguise at the door and she pulls off his moustache, making it clear that she cannot be tricked. The mother in this case is super intelligent and she proves it in the climax when villain Jeevan asks her to point out to her son and Sulochna deliberately and helplessly points to Pran to save Dev Anand.

When young heroines played mothers, filmmakers camouflaged their roles as Bhabhi maa to stroke their ego and I think the concept first emerged with Bhabhi Ki Choodiyaan where Meena Kumari rises at day break going about household work singing ‘Jyoti kalash chalke…’ as her besotted devar follows her from room to room… In Chhota Bhai, an exasperated Nutan has punished her mischievous devar to stand on one foot on the terrace. At dusk, while serving dinner to the family Nutan realizes that he is still there waiting for her release orders, so she charges up the staircase and pleads forgiveness.  The film held a strong social message that Bhabhi is more than a mother!

To be continued

Yash Chopra once said that Salim Javed’s ‘Mere paas maa hain’ is an immortal line and what made Deewar unforgettable. The mother has been omni present in our movies initially as a goddess, later as a paragon of virtues, at the cost of extreme self-sacrifices. The audience loved it and so did the filmmakers. They repackaged the same motif over the decades, a coughing widow bent over a sewing machine working tirelessly to pay the fees of her children and on the other extreme, a cheerful mother dressed in silk, feeding the hero with gajar ka halva. Unfortunately, even the promising protagonist like Sumitra/ Nirupa Roy of Deewar in the seventies was a replay of Radha/ Nargis in Mother India.  So, the changing image of the mother on screen, in my opinion occurred not via the titular roles but films that reflected social change.

On top of my special list is the kohl-eyed Sulochana humming ‘Nanhi kali sone chali…’ while putting her new-born to sleep in Bimal Roy’s Sujata. In the adjoining room, sleeps the abandoned child of an untouchable who has through some coincidence landed into this Brahmin household. The husband watches his wife overlooking the stranger baby and cons her into believing that she is burning with fever. In a spontaneous gesture, Sulochana jumps out of her bed to touch the baby’s brow to realize that she has been tricked into touching the ‘untouchable’.

To be continued

In the forthcoming years, RGV did work with many superstars, Sarkar Trilogy with Amitabh, Abhishek, Aishwrya Rai Bachchan and Bhoot with Rekha to name a few but after a few films, the restless filmmaker liberated himself of the excess baggage and shifted to making Rakt Charitra Par 1, Part 2 with unknown names and insisted they were bigger hits than Sarkar.

Not easy to argue with his logic because RGV is eccentric and lives by his dictates. Post 2010 he disappeared from Bollywood, turned author, wrote strangest memoir with the weirdest title /Guns and Thighs. These days, I hear, he is parked in Goa and shooting a web series. I’m hoping the series is completed in stipulated time or else RGV will not be able to sustain interest.

Why do you enjoy scaring your audience with horror movies?  “I entertain myself scaring them and I want to master the art and therefore keep rectifying my mistakes, Kaun is a correction of Raat. We lived in the house where we shot and after a point, all of us felt haunted! Human beings endure far worse than they imagine, which is why crime is a recurrent motif in all my movies. But all my films Shiva or Satya have never glorified crime but yes, I empathize with the gangster”.

Why are you reluctant to work with saleable stars? “Well, I did feature Urmila Matondkar, Aamir Khan in Rangeela and Ajay Devgan in Company but when you sign on superstars’, the canvas expands, dates are not as easy and the film takes that much longer, while newcomers are at my beck and call and their enthusiasm is infectious.”

To be continued

In the 90s and in the 2000 RGV’s production office worked 24 X7 because Varma is an insomniac. Surely there is a life beyond cinema I commented. “Sure, but cinema dominates all. I celebrate my successes and my failures because all of them teach me something. It is only now I realize how rebellious I was during Daud, had I paused and pondered, the film would have fared better. Satya reflects introspection and Rangeela my happy state of mind”.

What does Jungle reflect? “My impulsive nature, I hate being idle, so one afternoon, writer Jaideep Shahani dropped by my office to narrate a subject. Next minute, I summoned my assistant and asked them to start planning our next production. That’s how all my films are born and my team is used to my spontaneous operations. I became obsessed with the idea of turning a forest into a character even though Jungle proved physically an exhausting experience”.

It was shot in one schedule? “We camped for 45 days on location, cut off from civilization, stayed in villages without electricity and with only each other for company. We travelled rough roads in open jeeps, endured insect bites but our spirits remained unbroken. The grass inside a dense forest is four feet tall and it is difficult to perceive what lies ahead of us, once a leopard crossed our path and scared us.”

To be continued

I was strolling in the market and in a tiny book shop, found filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma’s book Guns and Thighs, a strange title I thought but then he is the man who titled his adaptation of Sholay as Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aaag. Call it vanity, or heady success but failure knocked on his door, Varma was quick to fled home, to Hyderabad and Telegu films.

My mind rewinds to my several conversations with the director. He often said that he cannot sustain interest in any project beyond six months, “I am restless by nature and if I don’t move fast, I get bored”. Don’t you fear burning out, I asked. “Productivity has so far not destroyed any filmmaker and prolificity isn’t the only evil in creative field. I’d stagnate if I’m unproductive and between the two, I choose burning out”.

To be continued

Sublime

Film: 99 Songs

Date: 16.04.2021

Director: Vishwesh Krishnamoorty

Music: ARRahman

Cast: Ehan Bhat,Edilsey Verghese

Ratings 4 stars

A constant tune plays in his head, makes him restless, he senses music all around him, in nature, in his surroundings, in isolation and at gatherings. As a little boy, he charged towards his window, every time a wedding band passed by. He wandered on the street, followed a flute player, observed his moving fingers on the bamboo stick. He was drawn to the sound of the mridung and rushed to make it in time for the aarti, attracted to the sound of Sufi song rendered in the mosque. He found peace inside the church humming with the choir.

From the beginning, little Ehan was different. On his birthday, his father escorted him to a toy shop and said he could pick whatever he liked. The little boy unearthed an old guitar hidden in the rear shelves that amused the shop keeper but the boy’s father was furious! ‘Out of all the vices in the world, melody is the worst, music is a curse in the family’ and he warned his son to stay away from it.

The child promised to obey, but melody haunted him, followed him; from the clouds, from the waves, from the clanging bells and the chirping birds in the sky. Director Krishnamoorty’s narrative unfolds amidst dry trees fluttering with orange fabric in the breeze and a little boy stringing kites onto an ancient boat parked at the seashore.

99 Songs is about music but also about imageries, of skylines, art and architecture that intermingle and dissolve into sensual frames as if the cinematographer and the composer strike a symphony in silence. The aesthetics are breathtaking and the wounds caused by distrust crackle like crystals. Pain is expressed in charcoals on canvas and when anger overtakes, melodies turn into flames.

The film is the journey of a creator and his creation, about the people who touch his life, the demons he has to fight and strangers who rekindle faith. A tutor taught him that feeling is more important than vision, another music lover said, music is truth. Ehan remembered both!

The darkest emotions, deception, drug or death unfolds like a symphony and through the maze of conflicts, Ehan finds himself. resolves that music isn’t a curse, but the only magic in this world.

99 Songs is not a regular film and the review cannot be regular. This is a cinematic, sublime experience, a must watch for all Rahman lovers and released in Hindi, Telegu and Tamil.

Bhawana Somaaya