Photo: Yogen Shah
Any incident that made you choose music as a career?
There is no one such incident, but from a very young age, I have been comfortable being on stage and taking over a microphone. My mother says I seldom cried as a toddler. Instead, I used to hum! But, I never planned on being a professional playback singer.
How did you become a part of the music industry then?
I had been the lead singer for two bands in Delhi; Crimson, which was a rock band, and Level9, which mostly played pop/blues. While hosting the Jack Daniels Rock Music Awards in 2007, I met Ehsaan (of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy) and the trio asked me to come down to Mumbai to record a song for High School Musical 2. Soon after, Amit Trivedi attended a gig of mine in Mumbai and that is how I landed Yahi Meri Zindagi from Dev D.
Having sung in more than 25 films in over six years, what kind of changes have you undergone?
Like many other artists, I have moved away from my hometown, family and friends. Having faced all of this, I have undergone a series of emotions, adjustments and phases that I am still working on. But the goal is to try and be a better person, as well as a better professional.
Which artists/bands have influenced your music?
I have been moved by a lot of artists and bands from time to time. Those who have influenced me include U2, Coldplay, Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson and Justin Timberlake. From Bollywood, Sunidhi Chauhan, Vishal Dadlani, Shankar Mahadevan and Sonu Nigam have made an impact.
Tell us a little about your band Groove Adda.
Groove Adda is a five-member band — Vishal Mehta (drums), Bhaskar Gurung (guitar), Prabir Sekhri (keyboard) and Gaurav Balani (bass). Our band mostly plays Bollywood tracks and we have been together for almost five years now.
How do you interpret competition in an industry where new talent emerges every second day?
All of us have a unique style, which remains with us, regardless of who comes and goes. In fact, I share a very friendly relation with most of my contemporaries. We party together and I have even cooked for a lot of them.
‘All of us have a unique style, which remains with us always’
The Last Court Legend
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Wearing a crisp maroon Banarasi sari, the frail woman, well into her 80s, took the stage. One hand on her throat, afraid perhaps of not finding her voice, she started with Behzaad Lakhnavi’s ghazal:
“Deewana banana hai to, deewana bana de
Varna kahin taqdeer, tamasha na bana de”
The crowd at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA) was transfixed as she crooned ghazals by Moumin and Shakeel Badayuni. The mehfil was complete when the begum sang Chhaa rahi kaali ghata, replicating the mood of the rain outside.
The long journey from the narrow lanes of Aminabad in Lucknow to the IGNCA auditorium has been an exhausting one for Zarina Begum, once a fixture at the mehfils in Sheeshmahal, home to the Nawabs of Awadh. Arguably the last living singer from the court of Awadh, Zarina is quick to assert her status as a darbari gayika (court singer) and not a tawaif (courtesan). She is one of the very few disciples and practitioners of Akhtari Bai Faizabadi’s (better known as Begum Akhtar) style of thumri, dadra and tappa.
Born in Nanpara, Bahraich, it is difficult to calculate Zarina’s exact age but if you try to extract an estimate out of her, she smiles, “Likho ki pachas ki umar hai humari (Write that I am only 50).’’ But Zarina distinctly remembers that she was all of 10 years when she bought a small harmonium for Rs 5 and made a daily ritual of practising at night under the lihaaf (quilt). Her father, Shehenshah Hussain, a zamindar for the then Nawab of Nanpara, Raja Syed Mohammad Saadat Ali Khan, and a singer himself, overheard Zarina one night and was impressed with her voice.
Traditionally, music in Muslim families had a patriarchal set-up, where the hereditary art flowed from father to son. Wives and daughters were restricted to their domestic roles. However, Shahensha Hussain enrolled Zarina to train under the famous qawwal Ghulam Hazarat. Still a teenager, she soon became a regular at the soirees of the Awadh court and the Nawab called her to perform at weddings, godh bharai or any other royal occasion.
“Though she was not from a courtesan background, Zarina performed as a mehfil singer and, hence, became a quintessential outsider,” explains Saba Dewan, an acclaimed documentary filmmaker, who heard about Zarina in 2003, while researching for her three-part project on the stigmatisation of female performers. “I got her reference from very well-known musicians. She was obviously very popular in her time.”
Abiding by the traditions of the old Lucknow gharanas, Zarina used to sing in purdah. “Women were not allowed to sing in a male gathering without purdah,” she says. “I mostly sang for the maharanis.’’ During one such mehfil in Bahraich, Begum Akhtar heard Zarina sing and made her a shagird (disciple). Zarina remembers her first encounter with Akhtaribai. When she went over to meet her idol, Begum was smoking. “It took me a while to recognise her,” she recalls. Akhtaribai was known for her very impressionable teaching style that her disciples reflect in their singing. “She didn’t teach by speaking but through singing,” Zarina says. It was during this time that Zarina met her husband Qurban Hussain, who used to play the tabla for Begum Akhtar.
Renowned vocalist Ustad Iqbal Ahmad Khan of the Delhi gharana, who has known Zarina for 55 years, testifies to the purity of her style. “She could sing exactly like Begum Akhtar, maybe even better,” says Khan. “Today, people can barely differentiate between thumri and dadra.’’
Zarina received a part of her training from the Bhatkhande Music Institute and performed extensively at private mehfils and pubic concerts in Delhi, Kolkata, Patna, Rampur, Varanasi, Mumbai, Muzaffarnagar and many other places. Among those who became a regular audience of Zarina’s performance were the Nawab and Rani of Rampur, where she spent five years at their insistence. She had to leave the place after she felt threatened. “I used to be very attractive in my youth,” she says. “Dacoits once chased me and forcibly made me sing.” She takes deep breaths in between giggles as she narrates how she sang Majrooh Sultanpuri’s Nazar lagi raja tore bangle pe for the dacoits and ran for her life through the jungles with her eldest son Aslam in tow. The Raja of Mehmoodabad was another connoisseur of music for whom Zarina performed.
In the late 50s, Zarina was a singer for the All India Radio (AIR). “It was an extraordinary experience but they stopped calling me because there was no dearth of singers like me then,” she says. With the abolition of princely states, court musicians lost patronage. Zarina Begum and other female performers suffered because of their exclusion from mehfils in post-colonial India.
Zarina and Qurban Hussain had three children. After her only brother allegedly occupied the ancestral family house in Nanpara, she was forced to shift to a one-room dilapidated structure in Aminabad that belonged to her husband. Strangely, she did not introduce her children to her music. “Pehle ke log jahil the, tawaif aur randi bulate the (Earlier people were illiterate, they used to call me a courtesan and prostitute),’’ she explains as a reason. For someone who was accustomed to a life under the limelight, Zarina and her family have been living in poverty for the past four decades.
Over the years, Zarina’s health has deteriorated. She suffered from a partial loss of memory after the demise of her husband. “She even forgot the verses from the Quran, I made her learn everything again,” says daughter Rubina. She and her husband Mohammad Naved live with Zarina in their one-room Aminabad house and have no children of their own. “My mother means everything to me,” says Rubina.
Zarina’s eldest son, Aslam, married and moved to Kanpur and has no standing familial ties with them while her younger son Ayyub, is mentally challenged. With no one else to rely on, Rubina takes care of her mother and brother. Owing to her inability to walk, Naved has to carry Zarina, even for short distances. The family receives a monthly pension of Rs 2,000 under a scheme run by the Sufi Kathak Foundation (SKF), a Delhi-based NGO. Although the amount is more than any assistance they ever got from the state government, it’s almost inconsequential for a family whose medical expenses sometimes run up to Rs 30,000 a month. “Our foundation provides musicians like Zarina medical support and pensions as a service for their lifetime’s work,” says Manjari Chaturvedi, founder of SKF.
As a registered society, the foundation performs a two-fold operation of archiving older traditions and artists and providing them with pension schemes and medical support. Chaturvedi, the pioneer of sufi kathak, asserts the need for research and documentation of music of the erstwhile courts as a serious form of art. “The court performances of Zarina ji and the likes had class and etiquette, which is now widely displaced,” she says. “What people in those days sang has not been archived in any form. It was an oral tradition that is now lost.’’ She points towards the 200-odd ghazals and thumris Zarina wrote and sang herself, which will be lost after she is gone. “The lineage of mehfil singers will die with her, because Zarina didn’t pass on her craft to her daughter and there has also been no documentation of what she sang. We need to create a format in which if a Yo Yo Honey Singh can exist, so can Zarina Begum.”
Wajahat Hussain Badayuni, who performed alongside Chaturvedi at the Royal Festival Hall in London last year, was the grandnephew of illustrious qawwal Jafar Hussain Badayuni. Wajahat was the only practicing qawwal of this rich lineage, but he died during a performance at Thane in February 2014. His wife and children are now supported by Wajahat’s pension scheme under the SKF, which also organises annual qawwali seminars in association with India International Centre.
Vikram Lall, a music scholar and founder of The Society for Art Appreciation and Research (SAAR), says contextualising art could be a solution. “Art does not have to die with a loss of patronage,” he says. “Every art form undergoes change. It is important to create synergy between traditionalism and modernity. Indians have failed to appreciate their own heritage as a result of which we are not very culturally educated or sensitive.” Lall also talks about the need for investing a share of corporate social responsibility for preservation of art forms (or artists) that are on the verge of extinction.
“What Zarina Begum took back from her concert in a metro like Delhi is something that will allow her to die in peace. A need for reassurance was more urgent than money for her,” adds Chaturvedi, explaining that in a city where people are wary of donating and sharing, it is worth applauding that they indulge in something that is not Bollywood.
As the overflowing crowd at the IGNCA rose in standing ovation, Zarine Begum closed her eyes and bowed her head. Finally, her gayaki had made a mark on the bada sheher.
aishwarya@tehelka.com
Readers can send their contributions to Zarina Begum at the following address:
Zarina Begum,
C/o Qurban Hussain,
House No. C-33, Hata Khuda Baksh Colony,
Purana Ganeshganj,
Aminabad, Lucknow – 226018
******
Bank details:
Zarina Begum
Account No. – 02510100022066
Bank – UCO Bank
Branch – Charbagh, Lucknow
IFSC code – UCBA0002022
‘It is always easier to point fingers at women’
Was becoming an actor a childhood dream?
I grew up in Shillong but finished my schooling from Bishop Cotton Convent School in Bengaluru. During my days in boarding, a lot of avenues for co-curricular activities opened up and I developed a strong inclination towards them, sports and drama alike. But at no point did I see myself becoming an actor or a model.
How did Bollywood happen then?
Coming from an academically inclined family, I moved to Mumbai for my graduation and was planning to become a chartered accountant. It was during this period that I began doing commercials. Soon I started getting calls from casting directors for auditions, but I wanted to be ready before embarking into films. So I took a two-year break after completing college. I did my share of apprenticeships, workshops and institution enrolments during this time. Once I felt confident, I began auditioning for films and that is how City Lights happened.
What kind of preparation went into performing an intense role in City Lights?
I play Rakhi, a docile rural woman from Rajasthan, who is very different from what I am in real life. In order to undergo that mental transition, Hansal sir sent us to Pali in Rajasthan for three weeks, where we spent time with the locals to observe their conduct and learn their language.
A lot has been said about you landing the role merely by your association with Rajkummar Rao. Sexism at work?
Absolutely! It is always easier to point fingers at women. How often do you see male actors being trashed for making debut alongside senior actresses? But I was mentally prepared for this and it does not bother me. Even though people have failed to acknowledge the fact that I auditioned over six times for this role, I am confident that I have done a good job. Filmmakers like Hansal Mehta and Mukesh Bhatt don’t cast someone simply for the merit of being the lead actor’s girlfriend!
Are you having pre-release jitters?
I feel really confident about the film. On a more personal level, I am afraid of sitting at home, being unproductive. As much as I value my two years of immense struggle, I would not want to re-live them.
How the kothas fell silent
Aaj hum apni duaon ka asar dekhenge
Teer-e-nazar dekhenge,
zakhm-e-jigar dekhenege
Dressed in pristine white, Sahib Jan (Meena Kumari) sings in anger and despair at the wedding of her lover Salim (Raj Kumar) to another woman, a marital salvation a tawaif (courtesan) like herself could never attain. However, towards the end of this sequence Sahib Jan dances on shattered glass, injuring the very feet Salim fell in love with. The scene marks her final transition from a courtesan to a bride, which she achieves by mutilating her feet (i.e, her dance).
“Kamal Amrohi’s 1972 cult classic Pakeezah was an exquisite melodrama that encapsulates the world of professional hereditary female performers in South Asia prior to modern reforms,’’ Anna Morcom writes in her latest book Courtesans, Bar Girls and Dancing Boys — The Illicit Worlds of Indian Dance. A senior lecturer in the Music Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, Morcom explains the reluctance in embracing female hereditary performers in the late 19th and early 20th century in the social, economic and cultural spheres, which added to the topography of Indian performing arts. “The trajectory of this process has continued into postcolonial India. This ‘reform’ of classical performing arts was a project of construction, of nation building. But it was also a process of exclusion,” she adds.
At its core, the book is a reflection of the conflict that female public performers have presented to patriarchy over the centuries and how modern India has chosen to respond to these conflicts. Morcom provides a critical understanding of the same:
“As a performing art, dance is an embodied form. A dancer who performs in public or male space is on display and gives pleasure to the male or mixed audience through a living, bodily art form. However, under traditional forms of patriarchy, a woman must be controlled by her father, male relatives and eventually by her husband. Associating with or even being seen by men outside this circle can bring dishonour to her and the family. Dancing in public or for the entertainment of men is, therefore, incompatible with marriage and ‘respectability’.”
Living in matrilineal societies and away from the mainstream, the communities of courtesans not only harboured hereditary dancers but also the girls who were adopted or bought as slaves. Women who ‘fell’ from marriage, or were unable to marry, and widows shunned by their families were also appropriated in the category of courtesans.
Worlds of Indian Dance Anna Morcom Hachette India 320 pp; Rs 599
The book explains in greater detail the plight of the widows who performed in public spaces (dance and theatre) and then subsequently engaged in commercial sex. Says Morcom: “The term randi pejoratively means prostitute, but etymologically means ‘widow’. Widows could act in Marathi theatre and many of the early commercial sex workers in Calcutta were Brahmin widows.’’
The contradictions of the life of a courtesan have previously been captured by many — whether it is the aesthetic power they enjoyed through music, dance and poetry while the domesticated wives often remained illiterate, or the close ties they forged with the nawabs, but were still unable to enter into any kind of matrimonial alliance themselves.
However, Morcom’s book stands apart because it not only traces the glory of the tawaifs back in time but it also completes this trail by establishing credible links to key players and major factors that shaped the history of performing arts in the subcontinent. Colonial ethnography and censuses classified female performers in negative ways, often identifying them as prostitutes, giving birth to a rigid trend. A major example of this is that by 1891, the tawaifs in Awadh came to be listed as a caste, which they weren’t but gradually transformed into, once in official records. Although little distinctions were made to distinguish them from low ranking prostitutes, by the early 20th century, these distinctions had completely been erased by census reports, and they were all clubbed into one class — prostitutes. The irony, according to Morcom is that by calling them prostitutes, we have actually reduced them to prostitutes.
The book highlights how the elite classical performers of the 18th century and flag-bearers of rich heritage had almost strategically been reduced to the margins under the British. “Further deterioration occurred when with the dissolution of princely states, the courtesans and other court musicians lost patronage.’’
A series of colonial policies and nationwide purity campaigns that were anti-nautch, pushed the propaganda of presenting nautch as ‘social evil’ and employed tools to present it as a degenerative influence. “In contemporary India, such warnings continue with stories being told of ruin at the hands of bar girls,’’ adds Morcom, who is fluent in Hindi and has spent 24 years researching music and dance in India, during which she published Hindi Film Songs and the Cinema.
The dynamics of this heavy moral stigmatisation and loss of livelihood targeting the dancing communities (including transgender males or female impersonators) saw the emergence of dance bars in the 1980s. The nuances of the courtesan culture gradually infused into bar culture with the common man replacing the nawabs and ghazals, thumris and Kathak being replaced by Bollywood music. This flourishing culture of dance bars however turned problematic due to lack of consensus between government, police and bar owners on the issue of license fees. Meanwhile, moral pressure on dance bars also increased, with a committee being set up in 2002 to stipulate rules that would help check ‘obscenity’ and ‘vulgarity’ in them. Finally in 2004, at the initiative of Varsha Kale, an activist, the Bhartiya Bar girls Union (BBU) organised a massive rally to protest constant harassment in the form of raids and girls being arrested and abused by policemen.
BBU continued to assert that bar dancing is a profession and, therefore, began to steer the debate away from subjective ideas of exploitation and immorality onto questions of labour and livelihood. Several attempts over the years have been made by politicians to ban the bars.
“Although exclusionary pressures on public/erotic female performers have been continuous through postcolonial India, the scale of this episode makes it large enough to be called the second anti-nautch movement,’’ says Morcom.
Specific chapters from the book have been devoted to the tradition and contemporary world of kotha performers, which include transgender men or female impersonators. Like the hereditary female dancers, they have witnessed an ‘undeniable trajectory of exclusion’, which along with destroying their livelihood, saw the disappearance of erotic male dancers and female impersonators from high status performing arts.
While analysing the historical genesis, Morcom uncovers the illicit zones of performing arts alongside the legitimate ones in contemporary Indian society.
Female hereditary performers like bar girls face the possibility of dramatic improvement in their status and a chance of gaining an identity through recognition of their labour. But this seems unlikely for the kothas. However, alongside these processes of exclusion, new spaces are being negotiated and fought for through political activism and identity politics, as in the case of bar girls.
“During my visit to Muzaffarpur, I met these women who used to be baijis and then there were those belonging to the Nat community. They spoke perfect Urdu and taught me about ragas in music. But most of them denied their identities. It’s sad that women whose families have played such important cultural roles are ashamed to admit it. What would thumri be without the baijis and Bharatanatyam without the devdasis?’’
Stigmatising hereditary dancers and female impersonators from ‘reformed’ performing arts opened the way for the entry of upper class/ caste women into performing arts, with a new sociological configuration that removed the transgressive dynamics of class and gender of traditional female public performers. This group then successfully took over the ‘legacy’ of legitimate performing arts while the hereditary performers were forced to seek refuge in the ‘other’ illicit world.
aishwarya@tehelka.com
Mukul Sinha: Death Of An Activist-Comrade
An accountant with a centuries-old religious trust in Gujarat, Bharat Bhatt, then 33, graphically remembers the pleasant yet nippy winter evening in 1988 when he walked into a trade union office in Ahmedabad. A sister-in-law’s brother had brought him to meet the union’s leader, a soft-spoken lawyer named Mukul Sinha. That 15-minute encounter would change Bhatt’s life forever.
Wearing a half-sleeved bush-shirt and smoking a cigarette, Sinha heard Bhatt narrate the woes of the 600 employees of the unwieldily-named Seth Anandji Kalyanji Pedhi Akhil Bharatiya Jain Shwetambar Murtipujak Shree Sangh Pratinidhi. Most staff were priests in its five Jain temples in Gujarat and one each in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. Sinha asked who ran the trust. When Bhatt named a billionaire industrialist, Sinha said: “Usko dekh lenge (We will take care of him).”
The tale is both funny and serious. While earning tens of millions annually in donations from the Jain faithful, many of them the typically rich flying over from domiciles in Europe and North America for a quick tête-à-tête with the gods, the trust paid its staff a piffling average of Rs 300 a month. Sackings abounded. Those ill or in other urgent circumstances had only the gods to turn to. Just weeks before Bhatt walked in Sinha’s door, a Congress party-linked trade union the employees had allied with had backstabbed them and sold out to the trustees. The sister-in-law’s brother had once worked with Sinha and knew of his tested prowess as a union negotiator and lawyer.
I heard this story in 2009 at Ahmedabad during a trip for TEHELKA for which I then worked. Mukulbhai, as I called him, guffawed and, pointing at Bhatt, said: “I told him we are incorrigibly atheist and asked if he really wanted us to work with them.” Everyone sitting around us at the office of Jan Sangharsh Manch, their civil resistance outfit, cackled as Bhatt grinned. The answer was yes, they wanted Sinha to get them a better deal from the miserly crorepati trustees. Two days after we lost Mukulbhai to cancer this week, I telephoned Bhatt and shared a laugh going over the very surreal victory that the very un-priestly Mukulbhai wrought for the struggle of the priests.
Founded in the 17th century by a businessman who had descended from Mughal emperor Akbar’s royal jeweller, the trust was chaired for half of the 20th century by the family’s patriarch, textile magnate Kasturbhai Lalbhai, who owned Arvind Mills. At the time Mukulbhai cudgelled up for the union, Lalbhai’s son, Shrenikbhai, had taken over as the trust’s chairman. Mukulbhai’s trade union work since the late 1970s had already led him to cross swords with Lalbhai’s businesses. The group’s lawyer was taken aback to see him arrive for negotiations with the management. “Come on, Mukul,” Bhatt remembers the lawyer say in exasperation, “at least spare our temples!”
Negotiations ate up an entire day and the night that followed. At 5 am, exhausted representatives of the management, who included not a few businessmen travelling from Mumbai, offered blank cheques. “We told them we don’t want their money,” Amrish Patel, a comrade who, too, was present, told me with a laugh when I asked him over the phone this week to recall that fairytale. “We told them they have to give the workers’ dues.” As the talks flopped, Mukulbhai called a strike.
Downing tools meant no showers or change of clothes for the gods. No lamps lit, no prayers made. No darshan, no blessings. The jet-set scrambling in for a flying encounter with the divine bristled. In six days, the union had won. “We have signed six agreements since,” says Bhatt. Wages now nearly match the Sixth Pay Commission’s recommendations. Dearness allowances, gratuity and increments are generous. Sackings are rare. Any time the management acts funny, the priests go slow. How on earth do priests go slow? “They take hours to bathe and clothe the gods,” Mukulbhai told me in 2009, grinning. “Before daily darshan can start, it is time to shutter down.”
Mukulbhai shot to national prominence only a decade ago as he filed court cases on behalf of the victims of the anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002 in which more than 2,000 Muslims were killed. He also began representing the families of the mostly Muslim men and two women who Gujarat Police shot dead in the mid-2000s in what came to be known as “fake encounters”. But inside Gujarat, his renown with the civil society and the working classes dates to his sacking from the State-run Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) after he had briefly worked there as a probationer and had quickly become a troublemaker for trying to unionise the employees.
In 1977, Mukulbhai, only 26 years old, started a union at PRL. Soon after, he helped found a workers’ union at the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB). There he met Narendra Patel, an older comrade, and the two stitched up a lifelong relationship. (Amrish is Narendra’s son.) In 1980, they started the Gujarat Mazdoor Sabha, which today boasts 25,000 members. In 1982, when the Centre tried to push a law to bar unions in governmentaided institutes, Mukulbhai fired up thousands as part of a national protest and forced the Bill to be abandoned.
Emerging thus as a formidable union leader, Mukulbhai, still only 33, launched an umbrella outfit in 1984: the Federation of Employees of Autonomous Research Development Education Training Institutes. Becoming popular by its tongue-in-cheek acronym ‘Feardeti’, which in Hindi would mean “strikes fear”, it included unions at the who’s who of the public sector: NDDB, National Textile Corporation, Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad), Gujarat Cooperative Oilseeds Growers Federation Limited, National Institute of Design, and Sardar Patel Institute of Economic and Social Sciences.
As his successes drew private sector unions, he launched the Gujarat Federation of Trade Unions in 1989, quickly sweeping up most private and public sector unions such as of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, the Ahmedabad Municipal Transport Service, the Oil and Natural Gas Commission, electronics giant Hitachi and textiles major Raymond. Increasingly aware of the everyday struggles of workers beyond the workplace, he and his comrades simultaneously launched the Jan Sangharsh Manch to take the fight to the heart of a class-based system.
Reporting in Gujarat connected me with him in 2008 and we began to interact often. In February, I phoned him for his views on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s claims of governance. Finding Mukulbhai a tad less ebullient, I asked him if he was unwell. He was surprised I did not know he was diagnosed with cancer in the lungs last year. “May be I forgot to tell you,” he said casually. I asked him for more information. Equally casually he said chemotherapy was taking care of him. But I have never seen you smoke, I said. “I stopped smoking long ago,” he said with his typical short laugh.
I wanted to join Mukulbhai’s funeral but there isn’t going to be one. Researchers at a cancer hospital he gave his body are splicing it up now. A lifelong Leftist, Mukulbhai had lately withdrawn from most union work. Except the Jain trust staff’s that wouldn’t let him go and so he stayed its president until his last. “I believed in god and Mukulbhai always made fun of me for it,” Bhatt told me with a chuckle. “He would tell me bhagwan nasha hai, isse chhod do (god is an intoxicant, forget him). He taught me so much, including atheism. I don’t anymore believe in the nasha of god.”
letters@tehelka.com
‘Hindi theatre is not dying. And an art form does not need your pity’
What was life like before theatre?
A Kashmiri Pandit by birth, I was brought up in a small town called Hoshangabad in Madhya Pradesh. As a swimmer, I represented my state at national level and got admission in the Sports Authority of India, Bhopal. It was in Bhopal that I got introduced to theatre during a trip to Bharat Bhawan. I began to wonder if I can live that life. I was completely blown away by it, so much so that I never stepped into the swimming pool again!
Can you recall an experience that was enriching, but you would never want to live through it again?
During my initial days in Mumbai, I was under severe financial constraints and everything about films was new to me. My naivety and desperation to earn money made me do a role in the Sunny Deol starrer Champion. On reaching the sets, I realised that I was working as a junior artist. Sitting in a corner in a humid room for hours to collect a meagre sum was a very humiliating experience. But at the same time, it taught me something important. If it wasn’t for that episode, I wouldn’t have realised the immense worth of junior artists and other subordinates.
Have your aspirations changed over time?
As a child when I saw airplanes flying over my town, I used to wave ecstatically. Later, when I sat inside an aircraft for the first time, I stood up and almost danced with joy. Now it doesn’t make much difference. The emotion of aashcharya diminishes with every passing experience and gradually people have to hunt for things to beat normalcy.
Why is Hindi theatre often referred to as a dying art?
When people tell me this, I often reply ‘Even if it is, let it die!’ Firstly, there are a lot of people doing interesting themes. So it isn’t ‘dying’. Secondly, even it it were, then let it die, because it will make space for something new. I don’t do theatre to save it. I do it for the sheer love and fun of it. An art form doesn’t require your pity.
How important is money?
I come from a vulnerable family and almost everything I’ve done is against the scheme of minting money. Having done experimental theatre for the past decade, I’ve been living hand-to-mouth. But that does not bother me. I directed Hansa with just 12,000 in my pocket. If you want to earn money, it will consume your time and mind. So, money is an artistic choice.
‘Updating a status on social media doesn’t mean anything’
For someone pursuing a career in flying, how did you land up in films?
I gave up flying and went back to college to study commerce. I did not want my parents to spend too much on me and, therefore, juggled between jobs, ranging from working in a call centre to working for a sculptor. I auditioned for Hip Hip Hurray and that was the start. It was only after My Brother…Nikhil that I decided to pursue acting seriously. Gradually, it became a route for creative exploration.
You play a water diviner in Jal. How did you associate with the struggle of people living in arid regions?
The people of Kutch have survived the harsh climatic conditions of the desert for long. We, city dwellers, take these resources for granted. There is an element of poetry in fetching water rather than opening a tap anytime you please.
How did Jal happen? Tell us something about the film.
When Girish (Malik) approached me with the idea of Jal, he offered me a choice to be as much a part of the character-building process as I was included in the script. When your director is working with an “I’m going to give it all I have” kind of passion, then people around catch that energy too. On the other hand, Hide & Seek, though a good idea, did not turn out to be anything close to what I imagined. It made me realise that I should have been a little more assertive back in those days.
So, is the relationship between an actor and director that of collaborators?
When you are hiring a bunch of people for a project, you need to share your vision with them. As an actor I need to cultivate mutual trust with my director, which can only exist if he’s open and accommodative.
You’re also an ambassador of Operation Black Dot. Could you tell us something about that?
Operation Black Dot is aiming at 100 percent voter registration in Mumbai and making people understand the nuances of our democracy. I believe that youngsters do not have the right to voice their disappointments unless they understand the functionality of the government. Updating a status on social media doesn’t mean anything. Either they take charge independently or might as well shut up and sit at home.
Framing the stage
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Ignited by the idea of capturing the spectacle of the stage, photographer Shobha Deepak Singh, director of the Shriram Bhartiya Kala Kendra, made a distinguished attempt at creating a rich archive of Indian theatre. A visual documentation of 40 leading theatre productions over a span of two decades has formulated into Theatrescapes. The book is a collection of more than 200 photographs by Singh, encapsulating the intricate emotions of the stage and its open spaces.
Curator Alka Pande has shaped thematically the multiplicity of superlative emotions in Singh’s pictures through the concept of navarasas from the Natyashastra, an ancient Indian treatise of performing arts. These nine rasas — shringara (erotic), hasya (comic), karuna (pathetic), raudra (furious), veera (heroic), bhayanaka (terrible), bibhatsa (odious), adbhuta (marvellous) and shanta (peace) — are the premise of all human emotions and play out the ever-changing hues of the stage.
Singh’s lens captures some of the most iconic moments in Indian theatre, including productions of Habib Tanvir, Ebrahim Alkazi, Ratan Thiyam, Heisnam Kanhailal, Amal Allana, Usha Ganguli, Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry, Naseeruddin Shah, Alyque Padamsee and Lillette Dubey.
“There is sensuality, exuberance and energy, as a series of transitory emotional expressions communicated by the actor unfold in all their ethereality,” says Amal Allana, noted theatre director and the daughter of Ebrahim Alkazi. “Shobha’s love and knowledge of Indian classical dance and music undoubtedly allowed her to respond to this form of theatrical expression with greater familiarity and ease.”
Making rehearsals and performances a subject of her photography, Shobha has managed to capture brilliant frames with precision and awareness, sometimes treading on territories that were not always welcoming. The end result, however, is a prolific gallery that even the most irritated auteur would be hard pressed not to admire.
‘Intelligent cinema does not have many takers in India’
Was Shaa’ir + Func a strategic move towards indie music?
I was a struggling artist in New York and came to India in 2005 with all my savings, which were sufficient to sustain my stay in Mumbai for three months. I met Randolph Correia at a party and Shaa’ir + Func happened. We have recently released Re:Cover. We are called electro-rock, but we are experimental, heavy bass and a dance-music band.
Your uncle, Prakash Sharma, is a well-known dogri musician. Have you explored folk music as well?
My mother’s side of the family is deeply into arts but I could never explore these roots since my parents split when I was 12. I was raised by a single father in the States and was deeply connected to music. So all my musical endeavours have been individual pursuits with no support from either side of my family. I would love to learn Hindustani classical music and also experiment with dogri folk music.
You’ve described yourself as a feminist on various occasions. Where does this stem from?
I was raised to be vocal. Maybe that is the American in me. Popularity and recognition make me feel obligated to bring certain issues to peoples’ attention for the greater good of the society. In India, especially, there is a long way to go if we talk in terms of women’s rights or empowerment. When you are being pushed down, you have to push against. Being opinionated or having a distinct individuality is not a very accepted norm in the East. I’m a bit of a punk I guess!
Have you found your feet in the film industry?
I’m not yet familiar with the protocols of this industry. So I often get into trouble for divulging too much information.
Why hasn’t Fireflies seen an Indian release yet?
Intelligent non-commercial cinema does not have many takers here, although avenues are opening up. There should be a solid date of release by next month hopefully.
Having played the third wheel in Severing Ties, how do you deal with scruples in life?
I don’t put pressure on myself to be a certain way. What I want today, I might not want tomorrow. People face the dilemma of morality because they want their present, past and future to be the same. This leads to stagnation. One must accept that change is constant.
‘I was rejected at auditions for the most ridiculous reasons’
Did films happen by chance?
Not really. Everyone in my family is a Hindi film buff. So, I was naturally very enthusiastic about cinema. I began doing theatre in school, but it was only after I went to the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune that I resolved to become an actor, so much so that I never looked at an alternative career option.
Have you deliberately chosen not to play similar characters?
Our industry typecasts actors, so you can’t afford to bracket yourself. The major advantage and beauty of being a film actor is that you get to live many lives. If you are interested in playing one character for long, then you might as well opt for television.
What went into delivering the performance in Shahid?
Given that I could not interact with the man himself (Shahid Azmi), I spent a considerable time with his family, especially his brother. It helped me understand why Shahid did what he did. In preparing for any role, physical transition is easier than making internal space for your character. Letting your hair and moustache grow is a passive change, which doesn’t require much effort. A mental transition, however, does.
What substantial changes have you undergone as an actor?
FTII changed my perception of acting. Initially, for me, being an actor meant, beating up 10 guys and still looking good. Now it has transformed into a meditative art. I’ve been turned down at auditions for the most ridiculous reasons like “you are not fair enough” or “your eyebrows are not right for the role”! But instead of driving myself to despair, I learnt how to channel my energies.
All artists embrace hidden egos. How much truth does this hold for you?
I believe nurturing self respect is more important than embracing ego.
Your next film City Lights is said to be inspired by Sean Ellis’ Metro Manila. Did watching the film help you prepare for your role?
I made a conscious effort of not watching Metro Manila for the fear of being influenced by Jake Macapagal’s portrayal of the character. Besides, I didn’t see the point of watching it, given that the landscapes the two films are set in are completely different. It has been my toughest role by far and has drained me emotionally.
