Filmiholic

After winding up a long and fascinating interview with singer Kailash Kher this weekend, just before he departed for Bombay, I asked if he wouldn’t mind a few pictures too. 

The seemingly always good-tempered man happily agreed, and this was the most amusing of the shots.

Here’s a wee bit of trivia: sure, we all immediately recognize his voice from such Hindi film songs as O Sikander and Mangal Pandey, but did you also know that he’s one of the vocalists on Rangu Rangamma from the 2008 Tamil film Bheema?

This is a story I did that appeared in the June 13, 2008 issue of India Abroad.  For the filmi connection, have a look at the postscript.

Consider this patch of humid land, sitting at the nation’s edge, packed with people of all income levels, trying to make a go of it while more arrive every day.  Real estate prices are ridiculous, the infrastructure crumbles regularly, the traffic is frequently thick and slow.  And yet, it’s the nation’s financial capital as well as home to actors, writers, publishers and filmmakers responsible for much of the country’s arts and entertainment. 

I’m referring to Mumbai -

…and also to New York. 

Nisha Sondhe, a photographer who calls both cities home, is busy pairing them up in a multi-year visual project she calls Bombay v New York.  At her online portfolio, visitors compare and contrast images of people, architecture and landscapes both here and there. 

A Lexington Avenue construction worker in a yellow hardhat and white tee-shirt, his back to the camera, is twinned with two smiling sari-clad women, metal containers of broken rocks balanced on their heads.  A picture of rows of Bombay duck on the beach precedes freshly hosed sides of beef in the Meatpacking District.  A Sikh man in a crisp turban gazes out a suburban train window; a young woman wearing tell-tale white iPod earbuds sits in a subway car.  And so she shoots, on an on, from Coney Island and Chelsea to Koliwada and Crawford Market.

The 38-year-old woman behind the lens, a Cleveland native who settled in New York ten years ago, received her first camera from her father when she was ten years old.  “I got into photography because there was nothing else to do as a kid in Ohio,” Sondhe says.

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On the occasion of the recent DVD release of his debut film, Vanaja, here’s the first part of an interview with the film’s director, Rajnesh Domalpalli: 

Can you talk more about how this film took some inspiration from a cry in Sophie’s Choice?

I remember seeing Sophie’s Choice a long time ago, before I joined Columbia, and the thing that stayed with me was the child’s scream, that moment of mother-child separation.  It lingered with me for a long time.  The first semester we had to write a synopsis and that’s when I decided to go back because I knew there was material there that would probably come out in the writing.  To my surprise I found that the story began to meander.  I started there with mother-child separation.  I wrote about the experience, what it feels like through the child.  The story began to take on elements that were peculiar to my own experience in real life, growing up in rural Andhra where my father used to work in dam construction.  Those elements of life in rural Andhra are finally what got their way into the script and infused the entire film with a sense of a rural ethos.

How long ago did you have, and how clear was, the idea for this film?  Did it pre-date you being in the MFA programme? 

There are elements I explored a long time ago, when I was in IIT in India, I had written a short story that was picked up by the BBC, that was called The Dowry and that story was about a rape of a young girl, not young girl, but close to a twenty-year-old.  That was another thing that worked its way into the film.  I think that the earliest seeds of the film were multiple shades, that’s how I would put it.  One set was Sophie’s Choice, the other set was my story that I had written in the 80s, so it goes back a long time.

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Before we ended a recent interview, running in this month’s Khabar magazine, I had a chance to ask Manil Suri, author of The Age of Shiva and The Death of Vishnu about his interest in movies.  Here’s what he had to say: 

In both novels, Hindi movies are all around the edges, and seeped inside them.  Do you like Hindi movies much yourself?

I certainly grew up on them. I would watch at least a couple of movies every week.  Once I joined college I stopped seeing so many Bollywood movies, I started seeing more Western movies.  Nowadays when I want to see a Bollywood film I usually watch something that I’ve seen before from the ’70s or so.  The ’60s and ’70s were the heyday where you had all the kitch and campiness, now they’re a little more globalized I think.

When I go to India I’ll see two or three movies.

What are some of your favorites?

My all-time favorite is Caravan which is from 1972.  It has this very famous song/dance by Helen; I think that’s probably her most famous cabaret dance.  It’s a complete romp from beginning to end, no socially redeeming value but great fun.  I’ve seen it so many times and shown it to so many friends.  It stars Asha Parekh and Jeetendra.  It had music by RD Burman and was one of his first popular movies.  That’s the true essence of Bollywood, the escapism. 

Another is An Evening in Paris.  It has all these weird scenes where a fight will start in Paris and end in Lebanon for some reason.

Here, on Rediff, is an interview I did with Mani Ratnam.

His workplace, Madras Talkies, is quieter than a library governed by the strictest librarian. 

The day I went to see him, I was ushered in to his office and found him at his desk, seated behind his MacBook, no music playing, no phones ringing, no chatter.  Everything around him was placid. 

When the interview was over, I asked to take a few photos.  No pressure there, eh?  “But there’s no light!” he said, as it was well past 4pm and the sun had started to fade.  “Perhaps outside on the terrace?” I suggested.  So, he obliged, slipping on his sandals under the desk before getting up and sliding back the glass door.

Photo shoot over, before I left, I took out a copy of Nayagan that I had bought recently - the Moser Baer edition, the only one I could find at Landmark - and asked if he would sign it.  He grimaced as he looked at the orange packaging, saying “Oh, look what they’ve done with the colors.”  But, ever graceful, he signed anyway.

Met Vikram Chandra for a breakfast interview yesterday.  The totally mellow and down-to-earth author was in town because his maha-novel Sacred Games was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.  The book is sodden with filmi references, just one more reason why I loved it.

More about the interview and the novel next.

(And no, Sacred Games didn’t win, but it was in some great company among the other nominees.)

Mamata Bhukya has been in New York for several appearances connected with her film Vanaja.  She and director Rajnesh Domalpalli have been at the red carpet premiere and at several screenings to introduce the film and to do Q&A sessions afterward.  I caught up with both of them recently as they grabbed a meal in between screenings.  Rajnesh was kind enough to serve as interpreter for Mamata, who speaks Telugu, Hindi, and quite a bit of English.

Q: What is your favorite scene in Vanaja?

My favorite scene is the one in which Vanaja cries for her baby.   I’m very frightened by that scene.  I thought I never would be able to get that much emotion in me but before that you (Rajnesh) made me do dhanam, which is concentration, then after that I felt I got the confidence that I would be able to do it.  When I was doing it all the people around me began to cry.  I saw that and I was surprised.  After the shot was over you told me “You did very well” and I was very happy and that’s the most difficult scene, now I like it the most.

Q: And what about your favorite dance scene?

I like the tillana a lot.  I like all of them.  In the tillana there’s a kind of rhythm in it that’s why I like it a lot.

Q: Do you practice dance now when you’re in NY, in your room?

No.  (Laughs)

Q: What do you like to do when you’re not in school, in your free time?

I’m fond of writing a diary, very fond of drawing, and I like songs.

Q: What kind of songs?  Popular music?

Any, but melodious. 

Q: Would you ever do a mainstream Tollywood movie?

I will, but the story should be good.  A woman should be shown with respect but in many movies they show women with short dresses; I don’t like that.  When the woman is in distress the boy comes and rescues her; I don’t like that.  If you show both, you should show them equally.  If they’re nice roles, so long as women are not being shown like a doll, those kinds of roles, then I will do it.

Q: Has you seen any mainstream Telugu movies that you liked?

Yes, I’ve seen one when I was a little girl.  The film was Osey Ramulamma, the actress was Vijayshanti.  She is my favorite actress because she takes roles where she confronts men, so I like her.

Q:  What have you been doing in New York all this time, when not at screenings?

You (she says to Rajnesh) took me to 42nd street and Central Park, Washington Square Park. 

Q: Are you missing home?  And food?

I want to go there but I also want to stay here.  Food, a little bit.  (Rajnesh adds he suspects it’s more than that.)

The night before he appeared at Lincoln Center for the Bachchan Sandhya, Amitabh Bachchan came to the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan for a press conference.

After some welcome comments from the Bhavan’s Dr. Navin Mehta and Dr. P Jayaraman, Mr. Bachchan said, as he loomed over the podium at us:

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen.  Thank you so much for having me here this evening.  And for giving me an opportunity to be present among the people of New York on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of my father. 

I think in many ways Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan has gone one up on us in the family because we were planning to do some kind of celebration on the 27 November which is Babu-ji’s birthday.  But Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan has decided to do something before us and therefore we are feeling a little bad about it but we will accept this gesture on their part. 

I thought that I would express whatever I had to at the function tomorrow but if there are any specific questions that the media would like to know on this occasion I’ll be very happy to answer. 

We are happy that there is an institution like the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in North America that looks after Hindi and Hindi speaking people, talks about our culture, our tradition, our literature.  This bodes very well for all expatriates who live out of our country and who miss and are deprived of any kind of cultural or literary activities and Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan takes care of that.  I’ve been greatly impressed by the talks I’ve been having with the people concerned.  It’s so wonderful an institution I hope they continue doing the good work and propagating our language and our culture in other parts of the world as well. 

We are 1/6th of the entire population of the world, we are a billion people in India and a large number of them speak Hindi.  I think it’s only worthwhile that our culture and our traditions go beyond Indian shores.  We do in the Hindi film industry in a very, very small way what we can to propagate our culture, our language in the field of entertainment.  Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and other people associated with it are doing something similar but on a more professional and more ethical and greater cultural level than we do, but all the same, this is a wonderful enterprise, I’m very happy to be here, and I hope that tomorrow evening will go off well.  Thank you so much.”

Q & A:

Q:  Has anyone asked or discussed making a film of your father’s life?

AB:  No.

Q:  Who are some of your favorite authors or poets?

AB: There are several but I have to admit that I’m very biased as far as my father is concerned.

Q: On the 60th independence, what does independence mean to you?  Do you think we are independent?

AB:  Yeah, I think that our forefathers fought for independence and we are in our 60th year.  I do believe that, rather than become cynical and critical of what our country has done, we have to believe that, we’re a very young nation.  60 years in the life of a nation is a very small period.  You have to understand that we have lived a major portion of our existence being ruled by others. 

It was the Moghuls first, and then the British, and despite that we are today being looked upon as the future superpower of the world.  I think in a short span of time to be able to achieve this is something that needs to be looked at very favorably.  (more…)

There’s a story I did in this week’s issue of India Abroad about the weekend that Amitabh, Abhishek and Aishwarya Bachchan were in NY, for a variety of events, including a news conference to promote next year’s Unforgettable tour. 

As an accompaniment to that story, here’s a brief  one-on-one I had with the newlyweds that day at the Mandarin Oriental:

(to Abhishek):  With Yuva, did you feel you’d crossed a Lakshman Rekha of sorts with your work?

Abhishek:  No, I don’t think I crossed anything.  I think I was pushed across a certain threshold due to Mani, the director.  He made me believe that there was something there, by giving me the confidence by giving me such a role to know that after which confidence level started to build up and then you felt that you could be able to take on more challenging work.  So, no.  I feel I can’t give myself credit for that.  I feel credit has to go entirely to Mani.

(to Aishwarya): Do you keep any souvenirs from your films?

Aishwarya:  From some of them.  And what’s been interesting was to discover that Abhishek does as well on all of his films, and we discovered this on Guru.  (laughs)

(to Aishwarya): How?  Did you both want the same item?

Aishwarya:  That’s very special.  We got married onscreen in the film and we retained the rings as well.  That was very, very special.

(to Aishwarya) You worked with Rajiv Menon on Guru and previously on Kandukondain Kandukondain – can you talk about what it’s like working with him? 

Aishwarya:  Very special.  He’s a very, very dear friend and in fact I had done one of my very early commercials with him and he was amongst the people I’d met in the beginning who were convinced that I’d be in the movies and I never was. 

At that time Mani was making Roja, so he had introduced me to Roja’s music and to the film, and I was already a fan of Mani’s work, so eventually when it came around to making his first movie in fact Rajiv offered Sapnay to me, and I was unable to do it straight up because he was starting it immediately during the end of my Miss World tenure.  So he made me meet Mani for Iruvar, so he was the bridge who got me to meet Mani.  He said “Go and make this film and I’ll come for the next, and he did for Kandukondain. 

I think it was really wonderful that we all came together to make Guru, a film very close to our hearts and very special for all of us: working with Mani again after my first film, with Rajiv on board, and with Abhishek who was one of my closest friends and colleagues from the industry and, of course, we came together as well.  So, all in all, a very special film.

(to Abhishek):  The death scene with your father in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna is so powerful, especially knowing that you are father and son in real life.  Was it rough to film and do you and your father dissolve into tears watching it since then?

Abhishek:  No.  I think this is one of the dilemmas of being an actor.  We were shooting it here in New York.  I remember there wasn’t much prep done for the scene and I remember Karan was feeling very edgy.  We had to shoot the scene outside of Dad’s room when I break down with Rani, and I remember weirdly enough it came very easily, because there wasn’t much you had to prepare, or work yourself up to.  At the end of the day it was Dad, and just thinking about such a horrendous thing would bring tears to anyone’s eyes.  So shockingly, it was easy to shoot.  It wasn’t easy to deal with, but it was easy to shoot.

And watching it was relatively easy as well because you seem to just disconnect then because it’s something as an actor that you don’t want to invest in after that and I think even when we were doing his shots, which we had to do on a set in Bombay, when you’re partaking in the scene it becomes even that much easier.  It’s a bit weird.  It becomes a bit easier because it is actually your own father that’s lying there in front of you and when you go back and see it on film, you disconnect from it emotionally, because you don’t want to think about it and you want to avoid it.  It’s one of the things we have to deal with.

Hello everyone and welcome to [this transcript of] our virtual, multi-country, multi-continent event to discuss Anupama Chopra’s latest book:  The King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema. 
 
The book - which traces Shah Rukh Khan’s career from his young days in Delhi to his pervasive success in 2007, while also examining the growth and changes in the Hindi film industry - is published by Warner Books and has been available for pre-order on Amazon.com for a while now, and will be published very shortly (in the US on August 2, in India on August 9, and in the UK on September 6).  
 
Anupama began her film journalist career in 1993 at the magazine India Today, and since then has also written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Variety, among others.  In addition, she has already published books about Sholay and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge.

 
Participating in today’s discussion with the author are:
 
* Babasko, a.k.a. Barbara, who blogs about Bollywood from Austria at Baba aur Bollywood,
* Maja, SRK enthusiast based in Slovenia, who blogs here
* Michael, lawyer and blogger who writes from Germany about Hindi and Tamil movies here,
* Jo, Bollywood fan and owner of the funky London fair trade shop Ganesha,
* Darshana, who participates frequently from NY in Hindi movie discussion forums at Bollywhat.com.  (She also worked as a background extra on Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna),
* Beth, who resides in Illinois, USA and blogs at Beth Loves Bollywood,
* and me, Filmiholic

Maria:  Anupama, let me get the ball rolling and say that I think you’ve managed to write a book that is informative for people who are new to these films and who might be curious to learn more about them or Shah Rukh Khan, while also containing many interesting details for long-standing fans of mainstream Hindi movies and SRK, which can’t have been an easy balance to achieve, so congrats for that. 
 
What I do find fascinating is that this book is being published by an American house.  Can you share with us how they decided to go ahead with a book on an actor who, while recognized worldwide, and within the US, though by only a segment of the population, but who is not a household name here?  They must feel confident that there is, and will be, a market for a book on this subject, right?  Can you tell us about this?

Anupama:  Hi Everyone.  Firstly, thanks for taking the time to read my book and participate in this event.  I think it’s incredibly exciting that all of us, separated by thousands of miles and time zones and borders have connected over Bollywood and Shah Rukh Khan.  So thanks, Maria, for making this happen.
 
Regarding, how Warner Books (actually they have been renamed Grand Central Publishing), decided to go with this book:
 
I was very clear that I didn’t want to write a book only for the Indian market.  Book writing is a lonely, long, arduous journey with usually a miniscule pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  You do it because you love to do it.  So I figured if I’m going to spend a few years of my life writing a book, I at least want it to be available in book stores in countries in the world.  I wanted to write for an American publishing house but as you point out, not many in mainstream American publishing had heard of Shah Rukh Khan.  I think it happened largely because of my agent Anna Ghosh (Scovil, Chichak and Galen).  Anna helped me to put together a 60 page proposal, which included a marketing plan, which she then shopped out to publishers.  Anna, very smartly, sent out proposals to several Indian editors.  This way, at least we were speaking to the converted and didn’t have to start from scratch.  The proposal was picked up by Devi Pillai at Warner (she has since left).  Devi wasn’t a big Bollywood fan herself but she knew what this whole universe is about.  If I remember correctly, Devi’s niece was a big Shah Rukh fan.  Devi convinced Warner that this was a book worth doing and they bought it.  But it is a leap of faith for them.  I hope it works.

Maja:  I haven’t read any other books about SRK before and I didn’t know much about his life, so I really enjoyed finding out more about him in this book, but I was wondering - considering that quite a few books have been published about him already, how did you decide to write another one?   Also, I like how the book is not only about Shah Rukh, but also about the history of Bollywood, and I even learnt something about the history of India from it. How did that come about - that it’s not strictly just a biography, that it includes so much other information too?

Anupama:  The idea of writing about Shah Rukh Khan grew out of my second book Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jeyenge (British Film Institute).  When I wrote a monograph on DDLJ, I found myself becoming more and more fascinated by Shah Rukh’s story, his incredible ascent and how he became the face of a post-liberalized India.  King of Bollywood was never meant to be a biography.  It was written as a portrait of Bollywood as seen through the life and films of Shah Rukh Khan. I hope that I’ve managed to create a picture of Bollywood with Shah Rukh in the foreground and many, many other things in the background.  The ambition was to create a window to a superstar’s life, Bollywood and India.
 
I think in so many ways this book is so different from the other book on Shah Rukh. I believe that I have added to the conversation on him and on Indian culture and films. So I wasn’t worried at all about the other books.

Beth:  I really enjoyed - and benefited from - the descriptive background information about what Hindi popular films and the film industry were like in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as well as the context you give for particular people (Yash and Aditya Chopra, for example), particular films, styles of filmmaking, etc. The book feels almost as much like a biography of Hindi filmmaking in the last few decades as it does of Shahrukh Khan. Did you assume that most of your readership would not already know much of this information, or was it included in order to emphasize the relationship that exists between Shahrukh’s career and its setting? Are you hoping to attract readers who are relatively new to learning about Hindi cinema?

Anupama:  I’m happy to hear that you found the non-Shah Rukh material interesting.  I wanted to trace the evolution of the film industry and also give a context for his career.  I think it’s so much more interesting that way (I hope you all agree).  And yes of course, we are hoping to attract readers who are new to Hindi film.  Warner is marketing this book to the mainstream American market so it isn’t purely an Indian or Bollywood lover thing.  This balancing of information and details was the most difficult thing to achieve in the book.  It had to speak to both — the American reader who knows very little about Bollywood and the Indian reader who even knows that Shah Rukh Khan eats chicken everyday.  I hope I’ve managed to make it interesting for both.  It was a tall, ambitious order but that’s what made it challenging and fun. 

Darshana:   First, thank you to Maria and Anupama, this is a precious opportunity for me as I am an admirer of Anupama’s writing, enough to have hunted down her NYT articles and printed them out.
 
I see this book as one that can be read by the kind of person who reads good movie writing in the Times, The New Yorker, etc. — it’s clear, interesting, intelligent but non-academic writing on popular culture.  I look forward to recommending it - well, handing it to — my friends who are not immersed in Hindi cinema.  
 
My question is related to these remarks:  I love this kind of popuIar culture analysis (I love Shah Rukh, too), and I find surprisingly little journalistic writing about Indian mainstream movies that is on the level of Anupama’s writing or takes the movies as a serious subject.  So I would love to know:  how did you get here?  How did you come to write about the popular movie world?  Did you have to overcome any kind of disapproval — real disapproval, or a worry about meeting it?  Has your attitude toward Hindi movies gone through changes over time, or have you always liked, loved, appreciated them?   Or of course anything you might think of on this general subject.

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