Friday, February 6, 2009

The Nargis Story






The Dream in White

Nirupama Dutt
A 10 or 11-year-old girl with a long unattractive face, spindly legs and dazed eyes clutching onto her mother’s hand. This is how the Urdu writer Sadat Hasan Manto recalled Nargis, who he saw at a couple of film premiers along with her mother Jaddanbal, a celebrated singer, looking at her, it seemed that either she had just got up from sleep of was falling asleep.
However, this thin, sleepy little girl was to become a legend. Everyone is familiar with this story of how the ungainly duckling turned into the beautiful swan, Starting as a child star in her mother’s film , ``Talash-e-Haq’’, Baby Rani who was later renamed Nargis after a rare and beautiful flower Narcissur, dominated the screen for a decade and half and was called ``The First Lady at the Indian Screen’’.
She rose to great heights and the cine-goers identified her as Mother India’’. She was the first Indian actress to receive the Urvashi award for acting. Her death, by cancer, many years after she quit acting was mourned all over the country and abroad. Rita, the ``Awara’’ girl had made her place in many a heart.
Nargis nostalgia is such that viewers kept awake till late in the night recently to watch a documentary on the life and films of this prima donna of the forties. The film was directed by Priya Dutt, the younger daughter of Nargis, and Sunil Dutt. The documentary was tribute to both Nargis the artiste and Nargis the woman – the ideal wife and mother.
Yet for Nargis and many other film heroines of her times, the artiste and the woman were at odds against each other. The norms of the society made the two roles distinct and heavy price had to be paid for reconciling artistic ambitions with personal satisfaction.
There was a touch of tragic to the heroines of those days. Be it the beautiful Meena kumari who was exploited alike by her husband and lovers and who took to the bottle. Or the sensuous Madhubala who, while being the dream of every man in the country, struggled to find a meaningful personal relationship with a man. She died young, a little after her marriage to Kishore Kumar. Or for that matter, the singing star Suraiya, who after her love for Dev Anand was thwarted by her family, chose a long secluded existence in which rich food became an obsession resulting in obesity while Dev Anand moved from film to film and woman to woman – younger and slimmer than before.
Finding the balance between professional and the personal life was not easy for Nargis too and the inevitable price had to be paid yet, she accomplished a better than other of her times and continued to play an active role on the social cultural and political platforms. She was awarded the Padma Shri and given a nomination to the Rajya Sabha.
But the politic of the personal were not without pain. It was significant to note that every time Sunil Dutt referred to her in the documentary, it was. ``Mrs. Dutt did this…’’ or ``Mrs Dutt did that…’’ it was as though to refer to her as Nargis was to somehow lessen her.
I remember having interviewed Sunil at the Pipli tourist bungalow a month after her death. He had come to perform the last rites at his village near yamunanagar. Every now and then he would say ``well, she was my wife. A wife is a very private person. We don’t talk about our wives.’’
He married her in those days when Mehboob’s ``Mother India’’ was being shot, after having saved her in a fire disaster. He was just a beginner then and Nargis at the peak of her career. Not only Not only was he marrying a more famous person but also a woman with a romantic past with another man. The Nargis-Raj Kapoor romance was all too well known.
The illustrated weekly, in its issue on the Indian cinema, in a feature on women of substance from Raj Kapoor’s dream factory, described her thus: ``With him she went singing in the rain, shot Dilip Kumar down in `Andaz’ when he became a fly in the ointment, bent backwards while he held her in his arms for the RK logo, in a dingy studio, she made love with her eyes at a time when a physical relationship had to be suggested through log distance cooing. In ``Jagte Raho’’ she even gave him water when he was thirsty though the rest of the world wanted to skin him alive. What Nargis did for Raj—Kapoor, a galley slave wouldn’t do for her master. Theirs was a mutual admiration society…’’
Yes, it was the naïve Nargis who took girl-friend and went to Mr. Morarji Desai, who was a Chief Minister then, seeking permission to somehow be allowed to marry the already married man. Of course, she was scolded and shooed away. Raj Kapoor, in the tele-film Simi Grewal made on him said without mincing any words that Nargis was his inspiration and Krishna, his wife and mother of his children. He went onto say that a wife could not be an inspiration and an inspiration could not be a wife.
Perhaps it was this hurt that led Nargis to give up films and all to settle down to a life of domestic ``bliss’’, with her strength, she chose the path of fidelity while Sunil had his share of pos-tmarriage romances from Waheeds Rehman to Reena Roy. He also reaffirmed what dream merchant Raj had felt that a wife cannot he an inspiration, at least not, just by herself.
In the long years after her marriage to Sunil, she never once referred to Raj in any interview and her radio programme of film music for fauji bhai did not have a single song from the RK years. Raj, of course, could talk of her and even indulge in re-living the romance in ``Bobby’’ by reproducing the first time they had met onto the screen. Nargis never objected. There was no need for her world was a full one with a home, a husband’, children, relatives and working with the sick and handicapped.
But sometimes it must have hurt. More so when the whispering publicity campaign during the ``Bobby’’ days was that Dimple Kapadia, who had a faint resemblance with Nargis, was the love-child of Nargis and Raj.
Giving his reason for marrying Nargis, Sunil said in the documentary that she looked after his sister who was ill with tuberculosis and he realized that here was a woman who would look after his relatives who had suffered much. And this dear man, who holds privacy so dear, broadcast the ill dying voice of Nargis sharing private moments with her children and giving them advice on what to do after she was gone.
Perhaps, she would have liked it, for this was the ``Mother India’’ role which she played from the heart. Her marriage was dear to her, and she wanted early marriages for her daughters. There was no question of her wishing Namrata or Priya a career in films.
She did not want her daughters to repeat her life. Though her talent blossomed in films and her creativity touched great heights, yet the women in her had suffered Manto had also written of Nargis ``whenever I see Nargis on screen, I find a strange sadness enveloping her. Earlier, her person had curiosity for life but that seems to be dulled and defeated. Why? Only Nargis can give the answer.’’
Perhaps, this strange sadness was born of being an exceptional woman in a man’s world.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Love, Longing and Gulzar




By Nirupama Dutt

He sat between two great names of Indian films—filmmaker Bimal Roy and music director Sachin Dev Burman. He rubbed the stubble on his cheek and his eyes behind thick spectacles had a far-away dreamy look. ``Bimal Da'' and ``Sachin Da'' were both trying to explain the situation to which the song was to be written. They both argued about the picturisation of the song and the character who was to sing it. The character was Kalyani, made immortal by Nutan, in ``Bandini''. The daughter of a postmaster of the village, Kalyani finds herself in love with Vikas, a freedom fighter, played by Ashok Kumar. She yearns to see him but she also hesitates and these were the feelings that were to be put into the song. The writer with a stubble took home the tune, the story, the situation and the character wove it in the images of moon and night and the song was born:

``Mora gora ang lai le

Mohe shyam rang dayi de

Chhup jaoongi raat hi mein

Mohe pee ka sang dayi de.''

And when the song reached the people many wanted to know who was the lyricist and they were told he was a shy assistant to Bimal Roy. Yes, poet Gulzar had arrived with his first song. Later, Gulzar spread out in many directions -- scriptwriting, dialogue writing and direction. But it was the poet in him which gave a new metaphor to the tender moments on celluloid.

From the song in ``Bandini to the lyrics of one of his recent films ``Ijaazat'' is a long journey with setbacks aplenty but the poet in him survived them all and one of the most moving songs of passion and parting reached the people through ``ijaazat'' which like his two latter films ``Lekin'' and ``Libaas'' did not find many takers:

``Mera kuchh samaan tumhare

Paas padha hai…

Who sawan ke kuchh bheege-

Bheege din rakhe hain

Aur mere ek khat mein lipti raat

Padhi hai…

Yeh raat bujha do, mera who

Samaan lauta do…''

This poet of delicate nuances who changed to the moodof film songs also because the inheritor of Shaera Meena Kumari's poetry. Incidentally, ``Bandini'' had given debut to two young Punjabi men—Gulzar as a lyricist, and Dharmendra as an actor, who appeared in a small role as doctor who is abandoned by Nutan for the ailing Ashok Kumar to the intense strains of Sachin Da'shaunting song -- ``O're maajhi.''

The two provided a starling contrast, Dharmendra whom later film columnist Devi christened ``Dharm Garam''was the he-man who took what came his way and moved along, and Gulzar the soft dreamy-eyed poet very often at odds with the demands of the film world. Yet both shared a close association with Meena Kumari. While Dharmendra became the inflictor of more wound on Hindi cinema's tragedy, queen, it was Gulzar who put the balm by makinga film for her``Mere Apne'' when she was alive and after her death editing and publishing her poetry and giving her a celluloid tribute in the documentary ``Shaera''.

Gulzar was born on August 18, 1936, in the small town of Dina in Jhelum district of Pakistan in a Sikh family and his name was Sampooran Singh Kalra. He migrated with his family to Delhi in 1947 and his father started a small business in Sabzi Mandi. Gulzar did hismatriculation from Delhi United Christian School. His first attemptat poetry when he was in the school at Delhi where the Maulvi sahib would put them through the exercise of ``baitbazi'', an antakshri of sorts with borrowed couplets. Gulzar recalls, ``My memory was weak and I could never store enough couplets in my mind. My friend Akbar Rashid on the other hand knew so many couplets that I started making up my own. This was how I picked up the craft of poetry.'' The art, of course, followed through the smiles and sighs of a life lived with stubborn sincerity and understated passion. And these emotions were re-woven in a song for ``Khamoshi'' which had the listeners bewitched:

``Hamne dekhi hai in aankhon ki

Mehakti khushboo

Haath se chhoo ke isse rishton ka

Ilzaam na do

Sirf ehsaas hai yeh rooh se

Mehsoos karo

Pyar ko pyar his rehne do, koi

Naamna do.''

The song remains till date one of the magical numbers, which cannot be penned by just anyone. And these days when the songs of the times are ``Tirchhi topi wale'', papa kehate hain badha kaam karega'' or ``kabutar ja ja ja'', the lyrics of Gulzar which in a unique manner spoke of the silence of the intense emotions of the soul seem to be rare indeed.

Gulzar's songs are very close to life and yet in their aesthetic flight they acquire an athereal quality which is complex. And taking a couplet of Ghalib he went on to write a song for ``Mausam'' which was drenched in the passions of theboy and girl next door. In ``Dil dhoondta hai'', he brought to words the charmsofthe summer nights of the north Indian plains;

``Ya garmiyan ki raat jab

purvaian chalein

Thande safed bistar par jaagein

der tak

Taron ko dekhate rehein chat

Par parhe huye''

The night and the moon are the necessary images of our films but Gulzar in his songs did away with the clichés and found for them symbols afresh. In one song he would turn the night into a beggar woman walking out with the bowl of the moon in hand and in another he turned the moon into a ``bindiya'' shining from the forehead of the night. And in a duet in ``Aandhi'', where the mood is one of looking before and after, he willed the moon not to sink from the skies:

``Tum jo keh do to

Aaj ki raat chand doobega nahin

Raat ko rok lo

Raat ki baat hai

Aur zindagi baqi to nahin…''

And Gulzar's own life moved from the early days of struggle to a beautiful white house on Pali Hill named ``Boskiana'' after his daughter. His marriage to the femme fatate, Rakhi, was turbulent and ended in separation. He inspired Deepti Naval, an actress, to p;ublish her poems in a book -- ``Lamhe Lamhe.'' He turned to writing for children for the love of his daughter, whom he described as ``Bittu Rani Boski, Boond giri hai os ki''

The latest issue of a film glossy turns to Gulzar for a view from the ringside and the introduction has the ring of ``lost and gone'' and it is lamented: ``The world Gulzar loved so deeply, is at its self-destructive peak. Ugly, dehumanized. It's a world peopled with transients who travel light.'' In the interview Gulzar takes mirth in being ``Unemployed'' and adds ``There is something I'm looking forward to, I am going to release my book of poems. If you ask me what I'dreally like to do, it's write poems. That gives me the most pleasure. It's all mine.''

Well, this would please those who have loved him most for his poetry even if a laved says that there's no meter in it. And the poet's retort is fine enough for there is poetry in it. Gulzar once gifted a volume of his poetry to an admirer and spelt her name wrong while signing it and to make amends as a poet would be added on a line ``with the right spelling of LOVE!'' And so we wait for poems which will spell out as never before love, life and all that it brings.

POEMS

Last Night

Last night dew dropped softly

On the tender lips of buds

Rubbing cheeks with flowers

In the shadow of night's

Blue veil, the dew opened pages of fairy tales

Two souls were swimming in

The gentle stirrings of the heart

Holding out the sky

On their dainty wings.

Last night was very bright

Last night dreams were fair

last night – was spent with you!

**

Moon Madness

Come stand on my shoulders

Then raise your heels

And kiss the face of the moon

Haven't you seen tonight

Crawling on its elbows

The moon has come so close

**

Tread Softly

Look, tread softly

No, softer still.

The feet shouldn't

Ring out noise

For scattered in

Loneliness are dreams

made of glass.

No dream should break

No one should wake.

The dream will die first.