Contrary to the popular notion that wars are fought by the armies alone, the whole nation including Bollywood personalities and leading artists get involved in the national efforts to fight the enemy.
The Chinese invasion in October 1962 was a shocking moment for India. Traditionally, India had supported China at every international forum for at least half a century. The invasion was the least expected from China and India was not at all prepared for it. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru urged the nation to stand united in that hour of emergency and in response Indians donated generously to the National Defence Fund.
The film industry did not lag. Film Industry’s war efforts were led by legendary filmmaker Mehboob, singer Mohammed Rafi and music composer Mohammed Zahur Khayyam Hashmi (Khayyam).
In less than a week they collaborated to produce two music videos, which were to be played in film theaters, on the radio, and on the roadsides to raise funds for the war.
One of those two songs, “Awaz do hum ek hain…”, by Jaan Nisar Akhtar is now a popular political slogan in India. On Nehru’s call to the nation, Jaan Nissar Akhtar wrote the song to which music was given by Khayyam and the voice by Mohammad Rafi. The song is an invocation to Indians to unite in the face of an invader became a national passion and remains so till today.
The song starts with:
ek hai apni zameen, ek hai apna gagan
ek hai apna jahaan, ek hai apna watan
apne sabhi sukh ek hai, apne sabhi gham ek hai
Aawaz do ham ek hai
(We have a common earth, we have a common sky
We have a common world, we have a common motherland
All our joys are common, all our sorrows are common
Say it aloud that we are one!)
The powerful lyrics were turned into a national rage by the soulful singing of Rafi. Jago watan khatre me hai, sara chaman khatre me hai (wake up our motherland is under threat, whole garden is under siege) and dushman se nafrat farz hau, ghar ki hifazat farz hai (hating your enemy is a duty, to guard your home is a duty), aroused patriotic emotions among millions of Indians. The song asks the youth to join the army and fight the aggressor.
The song was picturized on Rajendra Kumar, Sunil Dutt, Raj Kumar, and Kamal Jeet.
Another song produced along with this was written by Sahir Ludhianvi, “watan ki abroo khatre main hai…” (dignity of the nation is under threat). It was also produced by Mehboob and sung by Mohammed Rafi. The song specifically points to the Panchsheel pact and other friendly gestures made by India towards China. It says,
Wo jinko saadgi mein hamne
Aankhon par bithhaaya thha
Wo jinko bhai kehkar
Hamne seene se lagaaya thha
Wo jinki gardanon mein haar
Baahon ka pehnaaya thha
Ab unki gardanon ke waaste
Talwaar ho jaao
(The people we honoured because of our innocence
The people we embraced and called brothers
The people we received with love
Now, do become swords for their throats)
The song also points toward the internal threats at the time of war.
Khabar rakhna koi gaddaar
Saazish kar nahin paaye ae
Nazar rakhna koi zaalim
Tijori bhar nahin paaye ae
(Be vigilant that no traitor conspires against the nation
Be vigilant that nobody makes money out of our war efforts)
The song was picturized on Dilip Kumar, Rajendra Kumar, Raj Kumar, and Kamal Jeet in a video produced by Mehboob.
Lorries with speakers would roam around playing these songs and prompting people to donate generously. It is said that when one such procession reached the house of Shammi Kapoor his wife actor Geeta Bali started crying. She rushed inside her house and told Shammi that she needed to do something for the nation. Geeta took all her jewelry, even the pieces she wore, and gave it away for war.
Rafi felt that singing in the safety of Mumbai was a disgrace in the line of his national duty. He discussed with Dilip Kumar and urged PM Nehru to send them to the border. What would they do there? Rafi felt that his songs could boost the morale of Indian soldiers and the presence of Dilip Kumar would assure the troops that the whole nation is standing behind them.
It was a dangerous mission. It was unprecedented for the artists to perform at the war front. In the cold, Rafi and Dilip reached the war frontier. He sang songs, interacted with soldiers, and boosted their morale. Dilip Kumar later recalled, “needless to say he was the star attraction with the jawans and the young newly commissioned officers”.
After the war ended with a ceasefire the collected funds were used to recover the economy and modernizing the Army.
On 27 January 1963, Mehboob organized an event in Delhi where he invited.all the prominent film stars to perform in the presence of President S Radhakrishnan and PM Jawaharlal Nehru. The event is often remembered for the rendition of “Aey mere watan ke logo…” by Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammad Rafi sang two songs. One was written by Shakeel Badayuni and its music was composed by Naushad, “Apni azadi ko hum hargiz mita sakte nahi.” The song was later adapted into the film Leader and the other was “Kar chale hum fida….” written by Kaifi Azmi and composed by Madan Mohan, which was later adopted in Haqeeqat, a movie based on the India-China war.
The fact that Rafi went to the war frontier and stayed there for a few days to play what turned out to be a big morale booster for the troops remains an unprecedented manifestation of one’s sense of responsibility towards his country.
source: http://www.awazthevoice.in / Awaz, The Voice / Home> Culture / by Saquib Salim / December 24th, 2022
Veteran actress Nimmi passed away in a local hospital in Mumbai on March 25, 2020. She was 88 and had been ailing for some time. The last rites of the actress took place this afternoon. Nimmi acted in films from 1949 to 1965 and has some memorable films to her name like Barsaat, Aan Udan Khatola, Basant Bahar Mere Mehboob and Love and God. The actress’ captivating smile still remains fresh in the minds of the audience. As an ode to her, Filmfare presents to you our last interview with her, read on…
She’s the last of the begums. The golden girl of the golden era. The 1950s… where music, poetry, romance… all serenaded hope in a neo-independent nation. In an age, dominated by statuesque beauties like Nargis, Madhubala, Meena Kumari and Vyjayanthimala, came in the petite and crystal-eyed Nimmi. The second lead in Barsaat, she walked away with all the hit songs and the sympathy. While she went on to play heroine to Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand, it was her tragic chemistry with Dilip Kumar in Deedar, Daag, Amar and Udan Khatola that made her the delight of the ticket-window and tabloids. The larger-than-life histrionics eventually gave way to mellow performances in films like Sohrab Modi’s Kundan and V Raman’s Bhai Bhai. K Asif’s colossal but time-lagged love and God is remembered perhaps for an odd reason – the stills of the film remain the hard copies of Nimmi’s beauty.
Today, her face holds a resonance of yesterday. The Lucknowi Urdu, is intact and so is her penchant for shayri. She laughs as she reveals her unabashed admiration for Dilip Kumar, her vibe with Raj Kapoor. Yet there’s no clinging to the past. No tales of heartbreak define her narrative. Having lost her writer husband S Ali Raza in 2007, she’s accepted the reality of living alone. The emotion that emboldens her is gratitude. “For an artiste, the saddest, the most miserable thing is when people no longer recognise you. Khuda ka shukr hai… someone or the other recognises me when I step out.”
With Sunil Dutt in Kundan (top) and Nimmiji in Anjali (bottom)
Train from Agra
To escape the volatile atmosphere post Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination in 1948, 15-year-old Nawab Banoo (Nimmi’s original name) with her grandmother, left Fatahbad near Agra for Mumbai. “Nana (grandfather) told nani, ‘Take Lali (her pet name) to Bombay’!” recalls Nimmi who had lost her mother, singer/actress Wahidan at the age of 10. The two stayed with Nawab’s aunt, actress Jyoti, married to musician/filmmaker GM Durrani. Later, they approached Mehboob Khan for help, since Nimmi’s mother, Wahidan, had worked with him. The legendary filmmaker put them up in a spare room. “It was comfortable. But the toilet was outside. My servant would stand in the queue and call out when my chance came,” she laughs.
Barsaat of offers
Those days Mehboob Khan was shooting Andaz (1949) with Raj Kapoor, Nargis and Dilip Kumar. Once, Nimmi and her grandmother visited the set to watch the shooting. “Nargis’ mother, Bibiji (Jaddanbai), was also present. On seeing her, Rajji (Kapoor) rushed to touch her feet. He saw me sitting next to her and asked, ‘Aye ladki naam ky hai tumhara?’ It took me five minutes to utter my name,” she recalls. Raj Kapoor was looking for a fresh face for Barsaat (1949). Something about the unrehearsed Nimmi appealed to him. “Few days later he sent across a posh car and asked me to come for an audition. I was so nervous that I started crying during the test. Rajji thought that I was such an emotional artiste,” she smiles.
Raj gave her the screen name Nimmi and cast her as the mountain girl who dies heartbroken in Barsaat. “Initially, I was scared of Rajji. To make me comfortable, one day, he got a kalawa (a coloured thread) and said, ‘Do you understand the meaning of rakhi? Tie this thread on my hand’. Since then I tied a rakhi to Rajji every year.” The film’s title song Barsaat mein hum se mile and others like Jiya bekarar hai, Hawa me udta jaaye and Patli kamar hai were filmed on her. Later Sazaa and Aandhiyan with Dev Anand endorsed her viability. “I never saw Dev Anand idle on the set. He only spoke when necessary and with respect. After the shot, he’d go to his make-up room,” she remembers.
The ‘Un-kissed Girl of india’
Her big ticket film however was Mehboob Khan’s Aan (1952) with Dilip Kumar, Prem Nath and Nadira – a film evocative of Quo Vadis. Reportedly, the first edit of the film had Nimmi’s character, Mangala, die early. But on the demand of distributors, a dream sequence was added to give her more screen time. At the London premiere of the film, Western film personalities, including Errol Flynn, were standing to receive the team. “On seeing me, Errol bent down to kiss my hand. I pulled it away saying, ‘Don’t you know I’m an Indian girl?’ The next day newspapers carried the headline, ‘The un-kissed girl of India’,” she laughs. Given her fame the English version of Aan was titled Savage Princess. When the film was dubbed in French, it was titled Mangala, Fille des Indes (Mangala, Girl Of India). “I received a couple of Hollywood offers including from Cecil B DeMille but I wasn’t interested.”
A recent picture of Nimmi, With husband and writer S Ali Raza (on top) and with Kishore Kumar in Bhai Bhai (bottom)
Girl talk
She later did Mehboob Khan’s Amar (1954) where she played a milkmaid raped by a lawyer (Dilip Kumar). Narrating an incident regarding Meena Kumari who was initially to be part of Amar. She says,“One day at Central Studio, I found Meena Kumari sitting on a bench crying. ‘I wanted to do this film’,” she said. “Meenaji was slated to play Madhubala’s role in Amar but her dates were clashing with Kamal Amrohi saab’s film.” Years later, Nimmi did Char Dil Char Rahen (1959) with the actress. Though she says, “Sabse zyada dosti Nargis se thi,” Nimmi shared a warm equation with others too. “There was a rule that no one could sit on Madhubala’s chair. But one day, during the shoot of Amar, I happened to sit on it. My maid nudged me saying, “She’s come, get up!” On seeing me, Madhubala said, ‘Sit’. We grew friendly. Her skin was velvety. She had a long Iranian nose. She was tall and had beautiful hands and feet. Her eyes were ordinary but her smile was extraordinary. Lipstick suited her,” she says of the actress.
The Dilip Kumar saga
Like others, Nimmi too was awed by thespian Dilip Kumar’s acting skills. “He internalised a scene. That’s why his shot looked natural. He had scholarly knowledge on all subjects. He could express things beautifully. He’s a miracle of nature.” The duo did five films together in the ’50s, Aan, Amar, Deedar, Daag and Uran Khatola. While their ill-fated love on screen wowed audiences, off-screen too there were rumours linking them up. She explains the ‘attractiveness of his personality’, “God has blessed Dilip saab with a maqnatis (magnet). Everyone got pulled towards him. In fact, one maharani was willing to leave her all to be with him. I will not deny that I was also pulled towards him. Mujhe bhi woh bahut pasand the. Unke aashiq hum bhi the. I was his fan too,” she gushes. “Beautiful women – like Madhubala and others were in love with him. How could I ever be at par with them? I’d have been left heartbroken had I desired something unattainable. I stayed away from any such thought.”
She elaborates, “Once we were shooting a scene for Aan where I, seated on a horse, had to throw a sword to Dilip saab. The tip of the sword hurt him. I was apologetic. But in his poetic style he said, ‘Hum sochenge zindagi mein ek chot aur khayee (I’ll consider it as yet another wound in life)’. On hearing this any girl would have been floored. That night I too kept thinking about it. I’m not an angel, I’m human after all. But I collected myself thinking ‘how can he ever like me. I’m so ordinary’.” Her realistic stance, she insists, is the reason that she enjoys a ‘beautiful friendship with Saira Banu and him’ today.
Later years
Career wise, an ambitious Nimmi produced the film Danka (1954). Kundan (1955) with Sunil Dutt, gave her a double role as a mother and daughter. But in the ’60s, a few wrong choices harmed her career. She rejected films like BR Chopra’s Sadhna and Raj Khosla’s Woh Kaun Thi? both of which did wonders for Vyjayanthimala and Sadhana respectively. “Mujh pe shaadi ka bhoot sawaar tha. I refused films in the hope of getting married. I even refused Saraswati Chandra though my costumes were ready,” confides the actor who was in love with writer S Ali Raza who had written the dialogue for her Barsaat, Aan and Amar. “Raza saab wanted to become a filmmaker. He wanted to prove himself before marrying me.” She was also offered the lead in Mere Mehboob but she opted for the sister’s role believing it to be more important. With actors like Sadhana, Nanda, Asha Parekh, Saira Banu and Mala Sinha making headway, Nimmi opted for offbeat roles such as that of the blind girl in Pooja Ke Phool (1964) and Ashok Kumar’s mute wife in Akashdeep (1965), which was technically her last film.
One film that remains significant in her career, albeit for other reasons, is K Asif’s Love And God (1986). It took 26 years to complete. “Love And God was first shot in black and white with Bharat Bhushan. But later, Mughal-E-Azam took precedence. It was then restarted with Guru Dutt. For seven years it remained in the cans. Then Guru Dutt passed away. So Asif saab took Sanjeev Kumar. But then Asif saab passed away. Later it was edited heavily. The final print seemed a cut paste job,” she laments.
MARRIAGE and more
She gives a realistic perspective on her marriage. “No husband performs aarti of his wife – whether you are Queen Elizabeth or a star. You have to nibhao. Khushi and ranjh is part of life. It’s not that I never felt sad. I missed work. Reza saab used to write during the day and in the evening he’d enjoy his drinks with his friends. Main bewakoof ne kaam chodh diya tha. But I enjoyed looking after my bungalow in Worli.” She never stopped dreaming though. “I wanted to launch my production house.
I wanted Raza saab to be a director like Kamal saab.
I was ambitious, he was the opposite. But with time I resigned. I didn’t want trouble in my marriage.” Later, the couple shifted to an apartment in Juhu. “Here, he was diagnosed with blocked arteries. Raza saab passed away in 2007.” The couple didn’t have children. But she’s been mother to her sister’s son. “My younger sister passed away young. Her last wish was that I bring up her son. So I brought Parvez here from Pakistan,” shares Nimmi whose Barsaat was to release then. “He lives in the UK with his family now,” says Nimmi revealing the most laudable role of her life.
source: http://www.filmfare.com / Filmfare.com / Home> Features / by Farhana Farook / March 26th, 2020
The NCPA was keen to host it and Shapoorji Pallonji, the business conglomerate, keen to finance it. And both wanted a “big production”.
Priyanka Barve as Anarkali.
Mostly, perfection is elusive, unattainable. And yet, every society, every culture has something that is, simply, perfect.
Buildings, bridges, monuments, pieces of art, a song, a book, an athlete, a sportswoman or sportsman, a performance, an inning and, sometimes, a movie.
Based on Imtiaz Ali Taj’s 1922 play about the fictional love story of Salim and Anarkali, K. Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam — whose shooting first began in 1946, with Nargis as Anarkali and D.K. Sapru playing Salim, but released finally in 1960 with Dilip Kumar, Madhubala and Prithviraj Kapoor — is one such piece of perfection.
Feroz Abbas Khan, the first artistic director of Mumbai’s Prithvi Theatre and a veteran director with several plays to his credit, including Tumhari Amrita, admits as much. “Mughal-e-Azam, from the play to the script to the screenplay is a piece of literature. The script of Mughal-e-Azam is pitch perfect… It’s one film where everything is perfect. The acting, the screenplay, the dialogue, the music, the lyrics, the performances… And it has a dream cast — you can’t get a cast like that… Madhubala ko dekhiye, aur khatam uske pyaar mein… Mughal-e-Azam ek bahut badi cheez hai,” he says.
And yet, Khan dared to touch this piece of perfection, this sacrosanct icon.
In 2004, Khan was watching the colour version of Mughal-e-Azam when he had an audacious thought: It’s structured like a play and can be staged. But then there were other thoughts. “Sheesh Mahal kahan se aayega?”
It was something he wanted to do, but it didn’t seem possible. It needed a financier with deep pockets and deeper love for Mughal-e-Azam, a stage large enough, skilled production and lighting designers… And, yes, there was also a sense of what a gustakhi it would still be.
“You can do things which, agar nahin bhi theek hua toh log aapko muaf kar denge. Isme toh muafi ki koi gunjayesh hi nahin hai. Sazaye maut!” says Khan.
So for years, the idea of staging Mughal-e-Azam stayed in some corner of his head, circling around his restless to do a huge production, till a casual discussion at Mumbai’s NCPA sometime last year took him to Shapoorji Pallonji, the producers of the film who owned the rights.
The NCPA was keen to host it and Shapoorji Pallonji, the business conglomerate, keen to finance it. And both wanted a “big production”.
The sense of what a gustakhi it was now became a motivator.
“Gustakhi nahin… bewakoofi. Dekhiye aisa hai, ke aapki jo imagination hai, uska size chota kyun hona chahiye? Usmein toh koi paise lagte nahin hain? You have to aspire to be the biggest, the best, and then, somewhere between reality and utopia, you may get to the point of possibility… For me, unless I feel that this is going to go to a point that it could be the biggest disaster, unless I feel that it is something that is really challenging me, toh maza nahin aata mujhe.”
The challenge was to recreate the magic of Madhubala-Dilip Kumar romance, the high drama of a kaneez challenging Akbar the Great in bhari sabha, to pull off in two-and-a-half months of rehearsals what K. Asif had taken 14 years to do.
How do you do that, even if you find the same white ostrich feather and can play the recording of Bade Ghulam Ali Khan sahab? And are lucky enough to find an art designer who can simulate the heady dazzle of Sheesh Mahal which, in the original, required the headlights of 500 trucks?
You don’t. Because you can’t.
Because of the limitations of stage and time, because it’s all live, and because you have neither Dilip Kumar nor Madhubala, you don’t go for drama.
So Khan did the next best thing. He took 38 kathak dancers, added live singing and turned the epic romance into a stunning, spectacular musical.
With 350 cast and crew, 550 dresses, The Great Mughal became The Grand Musical which has run to full houses for four seasons (about 57 shows) in Mumbai, and, since September 9, has had packed shows at the 2,000-seater Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.
According to Wikipedia, the premiere of K. Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam was held at the 1,100-seater Maratha Mandir in Mumbai where the Sheesh Mahal, transported from the studio, was on display. Outside the hall stood a 40-foot cut-out of Prithviraj Kapoor, and the film’s reels arrived on an decorated elephant, accompanied by the sound of bugles and shehnais.
In Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Khan had to remake all his sets from scratch because the stage here is 60 feet, whereas NCPA’s was 36 feet.
And to make the experience palatable and comfortable for the audience, who would be paying anywhere between `500 to `10,000 for a ticket, he had to redo the carpeting, improve the air conditioning, paint the facade and get the loos fixed.
The response has been so overwhelming that Khan has had to extended the Delhi schedule, adding five more shows over three days.
Mughal-e-Azam, the two-hour-15-minute musical is an opulent, nostalgic dance-drama which is beautiful and mesmerising when it’s singing and dancing. Its spectacle is spectacular.
But in moments of intimacy, in scenes with dialogue, it irritates those who have watched Dilip Kumar and Prithviraj Kapoor go head-to-head, and that despite a Salim (played by Dhanveer Singh), whose dialogue delivery and body language are mostly impressive.
The play’s scale is both, its strength and weakness.
The stark sparseness of two characters talking on a huge stage, arriving immediately after sensational dances that rise to an impressive crescendo, needed more drama. But that’s missing.
The actors, though well-rehearsed and speaking in trained diction, often sign off on a lame note. The exits are limp, especially Akbar’s. Anarkali’s body-language and energy is often the opposite of what’s required. In Pyar Kiya Toh Darna Kya, there was no defiance in her body movements, and in a dramatic scene, Salim walked as if on a languid stroll in a park.
Admittedly, this is nitpicking. These are just tiny details. But these small, careless moments get magnified when all that is happening on a 60-foot stage is two characters talking, or an angry Salim walking, and yet his heel-toe movements say nothing.
As Khan himself says, “Ek second bhi hamare liye agar galat hoga, ek empty second can become a minute on stage.”
But, he adds, his musical play works well at both levels — spectacle, and when it’s sparse — and that’s why it is so successful.
Khan credits that to the dialogue which, he says, at once have scale and invoke personal intimacy. “Jab Jodha bolti hai ke, ‘Hamara Hindustan koi tumhara dil nahin ki laundi jiski mallika bane’, and Salim says, ‘Mera dil bhi aapka Hindustan nahin jispar aap hukumat karein…’ Yeh kya hai? Large and personal. It’s in the dialogue.”
But then adds, “See, I’m never going to be totally happy. Because I think there’s still room to do better. But I think, finally, a nice balance has come and the girls are absolutely brilliant.”
After the scene where he irritates with his listless walk, Salim faints and falls so perfectly that it gets a round of applause. And then another song-dance comes on, and the play rises. Till it dips, to rise again… So it goes, dipping and rising, leaving you at the end with admiration for Salim, Anarkali’s live singing, a smile for the chirpy Suraiya, but above all teary-eyed respect for the 38 kathak dancers who create moments so perfect and magical with their feet and ghungroos that Lachhu Maharaj would be proud.
Feroz Abbas Khan attends most rehearsals, often with his eyes closed. Listening and moving his arms around, like a music conductor. He’s simultaneously conducting and imagining the rest — music, lights, costumes, the backdrop, the screens, the impact and the applause.
During the shows he makes notes in his diary under each character’s name and after the curtain call these notes are handed over.
“Har ek character ke naam pe notes bane hote hain, aur hamein end pe woh notes milte hain, ki, okay, tum yahan kamzor the, tumhein ye better karna hai… Mujhe last mila tha ki main jhuk ke chal raha tha… energy kam lagi,” says Dhanveer Singh.
The Mughal-e-Azam script that Khan loves so much was also subjected to his directorial nitpicking.
Khan, who has worked on women empowerment in entertainment, and whose TV serial on DD, Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon, is one of the most watched TV shows in the world, refused to let his female characters be shown as less than his male characters, whatever the hierarchy, situation.
“In the film Saleem slaps Anarkali. Bahar usko jootiyan pehnati hai… I cannot, just cannot, I cannot do this… Mere liye yeh gawara nahin tha ke main aaj ke time mein yeh karoonga. After all, it is imagined history,” says Khan.
So he took these bits out and added an extra dollop of chutzpah and ambition to Anarkali.
Khan’s Anarkali owns her ambition with impressive spunk when she wears the crown and says, “Hindustan ki Mallika toh main hi banongi.”
“Jodha also gives it to Akbar, nor does Anarkali stop at it. When she says, ‘Shahenshah ki behisaab baksheshon ke badle mein, yeh kaneez Jalaluddin Mohammad Akbar ko apna khoon maaf karti hai’, she doesn’t do it, pithy — Ki, ‘Maaf karti hoon’. Aise nahin. She’s (he gestures) “Jaa! Teri kya aukat hai. GO!”
“Ab dekhiye, yeh meri choice hai. Jo main kehta aa raha hoon, even for entertainment, you don’t necessarily have to do good, but you can do a little bit not bad. Maine jhapad nikal diya, toh play kuch kum hua kya?”
Priyanka Barve and Dhanveer Singh as Salim.
But before these girls, and boys, can flex and flaunt their characters’ chutzpah on stage, they had to undergo some mind games, or what Khan calls “exercises”, for him to gauge whether they can act, and if they can, then “kis gehrai tak”.
Khan, says Singh, is the kind of perfectionist who will not let his actors go to the next word till the previous one is to his satisfaction.
“Unko agar 100% chahiye, toh unko 100% hi chahiye. 99.9% bhi nahin chahiye.”
Khan is not short tempered, says Singh, “but everything about him is grand… unka gussa bhi, pyaar bhi, daant bhi”.
“Woh Mughal-e-Azam se itni mohabbat karte hain ki woh kehte hain, ‘Main kuch bhi bardasht kar sakta hoon, lekin Mughal-e-Azam itni bhi kutahi (negligence) nahin bardasht kar sakta’.”
This perfection ki khoj began early for Khan, and those he thought were not up to putting in the work, or would get distracted by the glamour were weeded out. Like a B-grade Hindi film star who was pretty, a decent dancer and a very decent singer, but had “started celebrating playing Anarkali without going through the process”.
Worse, she wanted to be treated like a star. “She was told in advance ki yahan, if I tell you to come at 8, and you come at 8.05, the gates are closed. You are standing out.”
The starlet was let go. She didn’t have it in her to become Feroz sahab’s Anarkali.
The ones who stayed had to go through the “exercises” for Khan to see if he could actually make them act.
Apart from the basic requirements of the play — that the girls had to be very good singers, very graceful — what was especially important to Khan was that they be sensitive enough to be prodded to become actors if they were not already. And many were not.
“They need to have the sensitivity for me to take them to those areas… they should be neither very cold nor very knotted, because then I won’t be able to access them,” says Khan.
Accessing, he says, is very important because “if you stop yourself from feeling, then how will you believe”.
“The most fundamental thing in acting is believing. When I look at an actor, I first understand the person, what’s gonna tick with him or her, and then trigger that. According to what the person is, I tailor my exercises…”
These exercises, which often push his actors to a point of breakdown, are necessary, he says, to also see if there is vulnerability.
“I don’t like sure-footed characters. Jab tak usmein vulnerability nahin hai, usmein aap ko dimension nahin milta hai. Jab woh bolta hai, ‘Taqdeerein badal jaati hai, zamana badal jaata hai, mulkon ki tarikh badal jaati hai, Shahenshah badal jaate hai… Magar mohabbat jis insaan ka daman thamti hai, woh insaan nahi badalta…’ Jab-tak usmein vulnerability nahin hogi, toh kahan se bolega?”
The applause will come, he says, because these dialogues were written for wah-wah and taaliyan, but without vulnerability in the character, “dialogue bus dialogue reh jayenge.”
After much insistence, Khan reluctantly relents and agrees to share one exercise.
“Bahut saari exercises hain, but I’ll just give you one example. It’s very interesting. This girl, Bahar, the second Bahar, I told her, tomorrow you come, I’m going to do some exercises with you… I had a girl with her. So you take her to a place, a room, where she has come to meet somebody. She meets somebody, and the guy says, I’m going to come back, I’ll leave you here. Then it’s dark… And then somebody comes and puts a cloth around her eyes and then on her mouth and now she is put around a chair and then… I’m giving her the suggestion that five men are now abusing her. One after the other, one after the other, one after the other… It’s all imagination. So I start saying that… they are abusing her, and abusing her… I keep seeing her, and putting up the temperature… to see how far, because some of them refuse to do anything. They think, it’s fun, nothing real. And some of them start believing, get affected immediately, so I know I need to stop there… This girl broke down very badly and for another hour
she just could not get over it. So I realised that she has that sensitivity.”
Zil-e-Elahi, as Khan’s actors refer to him behind his back, narrated two more exercises which were, thankfully, slightly less scary.
Boys get different types of exercises because “Ladkon ki sensitivity bahut kum hoti hai. Ladkon ko zayada waqt lagta hai. Unko bahut mujhe le jana padta hai, but le jata hoon unko bhi main.”
All this because, Khan believes, “agar aap nahin jalenge, toh audience kaise jalegi, zara mujhe bataiye…”
“Jab tak tum khud ko Salim nahin samjhoge, tum kuch kar nahin paoge. Jab tak tum us mohabbat mein nahin jaloge, toh dekhne waale nahin jalenge. Feroz Sir ki is line ne mujhe bahut help ki. Woh paseena jab tak mein apne hathon mein, body mein jalan mehsoos nahin karta hoon toh us din mujhe lagta hai ki maine achcha nahin kiya,” says Singh.
“Main sab ko ye kehta hoon. It’s a simple line… It goes to the heart of the problem. Like, for example, I also tell them, aap ko karna kya hai, aap soch leejiye — you want to impress or you want to actually express…”
Most of Feroz Abbas Khan’s actors picked one. The gustakh director decided that he would do both.
Mughal-e-Azam
Director: Feroz Abbas Khan
Presenters: NCPA, Shapoorji Pallonji
Cast: Nissar Khan (Akbar), Dhanveer Singh (Salim), Priyanka Barve and Neha Sargam (Anarkali), Ashima Mahajan (Bahar), Sonal Jha (Jodha)
Costumes: Manish Malhotra
Production Design: Neil Patel
Projection design: John Narun
Lighting design: David Lander
Choreography: Mayuri Upadhya
Music: Piyush Kanojia
Shows at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on Sept. 22, 23, 24, at 3 pm and 7 pm (except on Friday)
source: http://www.asianage.com / The Asian Age / Home> Life> Art / by Suparna Sharma / September 22nd, 2017
Dastaan-E-Rafi looks at the phenomenal Hindi playback singer through the eyes of the film fraternity, but as a human being
‘Do you know about the Sanjay Gandhi- Kishore Kumar incident? And how Rafi came to Kishore’s recuse?’ These are the kind of leading questions and anecdotes that we Bollywood-crazy people thrive on.
And it is this sort of personal journey that Rajni Acharya promises with his film on one of Bollywood’s most charismatic and versatile singers, Mohammed Rafi, titled Dastaan-e-Rafi.
“Mohammed Rafi was a very different kind of a singer. He was well trained in classical music. But he was not padha-likha …his attitude inspired me,” says co-director and producer of what he calls a “lifeOgraphy” of Rafi.
India is a music-loving country, he observes. “We all begin our day listening to music,” he smiles, speaking at the 9th Bengaluru International Film Festival (Biffes). And, what more can interest people than the life story of a musician, he argues. “Rafi was also a great actor. He could be Dilip Kumar when he sang for him. He could be Shammi Kapoor, or he could be Johnny Walker… that quality is so rare in a singer,” he adds. We all have our personal favourite list of Rafi songs.
Rajni, an industry insider of over 25 years with his own media production house, who admits he had reasonable access to information and people, also recounts the other side of the making of this two-hour saga – he slogged on it for five years, starting with research, and spent 55 lakhs on it!
Many studios and production houses refused to part with footage of songs for a commercial venture like his. Acquiring music tracks alone was proving too expensive. “Some of the actors, singers and music directors we approached for interviews demanded money! We have stood outside their homes for hours to get some of these interviews. I shot for over 120 days to complete this film.”
He shot parts of the film in Pakistan, in Kotla Sultan Singh in the Punjab area, speaking to Rafi’s brother, son, friends. He interviewed Shamshad Begum, Ghulam Ali, Lata Mangeshkar, the entire Kapoor khandaan across generations, including a total of 60 people — co-singers, actors, music directors, his daughters who’ve given interviews before, interspersed with 60 of his songs.
The film also traces the famous singer’s career graph. “He is one of the very few in the industry who was able to rise once again, after a downward career spiral,” opines Rajni, who got close to Rafi’s family.
When the media was busy writing off Rafi’s career, it was Kishore Kumar who called a press conference and told them not to write about him negatively, says Rajni. When Sanjay Gandhi approached Kishore to do concerts to raise party funds, Kishore demanded his fee. “So Kishore was banned on radio. Producers stopped giving him work. People came and told Rafi this is a great opportunity for you. But Rafi instead approach Sanjay Gandhi and offered to sing for free, asking for the ban on Kishore to be lifted.” His film, says Rajni, looks at Rafi not just as a singer, but as a great human being. “Every single person we spoke to agreed he is a gentleman.”
The film has been telecast on Zee already, and will soon be out on DVD.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Entertainment / by Bhumika K / Februar 08th, 2017
The indelible Madhubala led a tumultuous life albeit with great elegance.
She was the flawless beauty. A woman of resolve and uncanny character. Her mystique and charisma attracted the West to our showbiz shores. More than Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand, the cogs in Hollywood wanted to know who she was, so when Hollywood director Frank Capra visited Bombay, all that he wanted to do was meet her. She was the veritable Indian beauty, our answer to Marylin Monroe. But unlike her Hollywood equivalent, she evoked awe and respect in the Hindi film industry. Her sex-appeal was preceded by her tehzeeb. Unlike Marylin who was chided for being the blonde, she was considered a professional par excellence. As the story goes, she was so dedicated that she obsessed about punctuality. In the late ’40s, she reported on the sets of her film a good hour-and-a-half before time. This after she had braved torrential rain, floods and a trip in the local trains. Her then director Kidar Sharma was pleasantly shocked. She continued to display the same commitment even when she was a top-billed star.
A young Madhubala is pictured with her father Ataullah Khan. Her father was a key figure in Madhubala‘s career. He would maintain strict control over who she could meet and where she could go. Reportedly, he even imposed a 7 pm deadline for the actress.
Beauty with a heart
She was the most exquisite woman celluloid ever witnessed. Her beauty had the power to mend broken hearts. Dilip Kumar was nursing heartbreak in 1950 but when he met she on the set of Tarana, it was her fluttering smile that stole his heart. The list of her suitors just went on and on.
Madhubala (R) with co-star Chanchal (L) in Mehlon Ke Khwab. This the mad cap comedy with Kishore Kumar was one of Madhubala’s early foray into comedy.
Prem Nath who was good friends with Dilip Kumar, also vied for her affections. So much so that, his friendship with Dilip apparently went kaput. Despite the flooding interest of men, she never found what she was looking for – true love. But that didn’t change her intrinsic warmth. She was known to be compulsive about lending a helping hand. She was known to give away a purse full of 100 rupee notes to the less fortunate on her sets. She would even greet trespassing paparazzi with her famous melancholic smile.
Light-hearted romances worked for Madhubala too. Movies like Tarana with Dilip Kumar added good steam to her career.
Sweet poison She was the most sought after actress in B-town. She could do comedy, tragedy and romance with consummate ease. But for all the talent in the world, her initial foray as leading lady wasn’t well-received. Barring Mahal (1949) and Tarana (1951) all her initial movies failed at the box-office.
Pradeep Kumar and Madhubala worked together for the first time in Passport. This film was one of the highest grossers of 1961, simply because the audience wanted to see more of the Mughl-E-Azam star.
She was called ‘box-office poison’ and was relegated to films like Lal Dupatta, Singaar and Desh Sewa. But as resolute as she was she bounced back with films like Badal, Sangdil, Mr & Mrs 55 and Howrah Bridge. By the time Mughal-E-Azam hit screens in 1960, she was at the top of her game. Her last film to release was Jwala in 1971 with Sunil Dutt.
(L)Mughl-E-Azam was the epic film in Madhubala’s career. Not only were audiences curious to see her and Dilip Kumar together in the same frame, they wanted to see why the magnum opus took so many years to complete. (R)It was during the shooting of Mughl-E-Azam that the first bulletins of her heart ailment became public. Director K Asif had reportedly got her shackled in real iron chains which hadn’t helped the ailing actress.
Business savvy
With the world at her feet, she could’ve had anything she fancied. But her ambitions were modest. The sole reason she worked in films was because she was the breadwinner of her huge family. In the late ’40s, when she first featured as a lead actress, Suraiya was the top heroine.
In the early ’60s musical comedies had become a staple for star her. Her pairing with Kishore Kumar was being appreciated a lot and one such caper was the fun-filled film Jhumroo.
Call her a beauty with brains because she made sure a dozen producers hired her thanks to her more lucrative deals. She used to sign films at one fifth the price that her contemporaries were charging. The modest remunerations changed into fat pay cheques when she became a star.
After a long period of absence Madhubala tried to comeback to the movies in the late ‘60s. Jwala (1971) with Sunil Dutt released two years after her death.
Tragedy hit
Right through her life, she lived in the shadow of her father Ataullah Khan. He’s known to have controlled what movies she worked in, whom she met and what places she could visit. It was his alleged domination that lead to the unfortunate end of her much-talked about love affair with Dilip Kumar. She had her moments of belligerence, when she attended the premiere of Insaniyat (1955) on Dilip’s arm. But eventually the friction led to a public split, what with Dilip having a showdown in court. The trauma of it all broke her already fragile heart.
Madhubala’s death was a grave loss. Here you can see Prithviraj Kapoor visiting her burial site in Mumbai.
Yes, the most beautiful Indian woman in the world born on Valentine’s Day, February 14, suffered from a ventricular spetal defect, a hole in the heart. Nonetheless, she was able to ward off depression and anguish and tie the knot with Kishore Kumar. But she was slated for a tragic end. Her health deteriorated. Even though Kishore did his best, he couldn’t save the inevitable. She faded to an ailing heart.
source: http://www.filmfare.com / FilmFare.com / Home> Features / by Rachit Gupta, Features Editor / Monday – November 11th, 2013
Dilip Kumar takes part at a special broadcast of BBC Indian Service during his visit to London in April 1953.
Born to a dry fruit merchant in December 11,1922, Yusuf Khan started his career as a manager at Bombay Army Canteen. But fate had other plans for him. A chance encounter with Devika Rani of Bombay Talkies landed this shy and debonair young man in Tinsel Town.
Of this Ashok Raj in his book Hero wrote: The Silent Era to Dilip Kumar says: “Devika Rani had gone out for shopping to a local market. At one fruit shop, she looked keenly at the young man engrossed at selling his merchandise. It was by mere chance that the shy shopkeeper had only replaced his father that day. Devika Rani found this young man with a sensitive face and expressive eyes quite unusual. She gave him her visiting card and asked him to meet her at the studio.”
Bombay Talkies not only changed his destiny but also his name — Yusuf Khan became Dilip Kumar and made his debut in Tinsel Town with Jwar Bhata (1944).
It has been 70 long years since Yusuf was ‘spotted’ and today he is considered as the ‘first modern Indian actor’ who freed himself from the theatrical mannerisms and developed a more natural and distinctive style, which stressed on silent pauses and hand gestures and films like Andaz, Jogan, Daag, Baabul, Aan, Daag, Foot Path, Madhumati, Devdas, Naya Daur and Ganga Jumna stand testimony to his versatility.
source: http://www.mumbaimirror.com / Mumbai Mirror / Home> Entertainment> Bollywood / by Mumbai Mirror / October 19th, 2013
