Window to the Past

Its been a long hiatus and about time I broke the silence. I have been meaning to write something for so long but half formed ideas and semi polished poetry is all that I could come up with all this while. Lack of inspiration and the strong need to do absolutely nothing kept me away. Nevertheless like it is said, inspiration can be found anywhere and I never thought I would be saying this but this time around, it was Mahesh Bhatt.

I can almost see the raised eyebrows but I’ve gotten used to that. Over the past few years as the speed of Internet improves so does the access to free movies. Now, I am a huge movie buff but a bigger fan of free things and hence never guilty about a pirated/free version of music or movies although, I subscribe to a totally different school of thought when it comes to pirated books but more on that later.

For anyone who knows me well enough, it is not hard to recognize that I thrive on nostalgia. Watching re-runs of old and forgotten TV-series/movies/interviews has always been the second best thing to do, the first of course, sleeping. I might just doze off now or watch another movie and then hit the sack if I kept dwelling over that last sentence, but that’s how I came across this wonderful treasure trove of movies whose memory had started to fade since Sony TV inspired by Ekta Kapoor stopped its 2 pm matinee shows and Zee Cinema has decided to have a relay of the Barjatya productions on the weekends. I know “Zee Cinema” really!! but I am just going to skip that for now.

The late 80s and 90s were a wonderful time, the most memorable I guess in every way. Images and voices from that era are still so vivid and often remembered. It was that period of time which still held semblance of the era gone by but also was making room for new thought. It was the time in Indian cinema where a lot was changing. We now had Satan; pure evil, characteristic of the 90s cinema whether it was Maharani of Sadak, or Bob Christo in Gumrah and who can forget Jimmy from Sir. The images of these characters might be a little blurred, maybe even forgotten amongst most but well remembered at just the mere mention of the movie. These strong character sketches really set Bhatt’s screenplay apart. There was another underlying DNA common to most of Bhatt’s characters; a constantly damaging conscience. The epitome of it in Kavita Sanyal of Arth or the little more subtle form of it in Anand Sarin from Daddy or even the less noticed Sulabha Deshpande as Kaushalya in Tamanna. One can see traces of it in all of his work. Mahesh Bhatt mostly credited for his Sidney Sheldon like characterization of the female protagonists has rarely been appreciated for digression from ‘motivation by morals’ to the ‘crazy(ing) conscience’. It is interesting to note how Bhatt strengthened the nuances of screen paranoia in Bollywood and what’s more, he made his own wife perfect the art of it. Jokes apart, Soni Razdan in my mind paints a picture of the perpetually paranoid and beleaguered person even till today although it has been almost 2 decades since I watched Saaransh or Sadak. And despite the fact that I am so tempted to digress off onto Saaransh, I shall contain myself here because “Saaransh” ka koi saaransh nahi and Ill leave it at that.

And when it comes to the music in his movies, I cannot help but hum while I write this.  His perfect taste in poetry and music is something I truly admire. Apart from the fact that his movies had some of the finest ghazals and nazmz of the time they also proved to be blockbuster hits, whether it was the entire album like Arth, Naam, Aashiqui, Phir teri kahaani yaad aayi and Dil hai ki manta nai, or numbers like “Shab ke jaage hue taaron” or “Aina mujhse meri paheli si surat”.

While I am still talking about Mahesh Bhatt, I would be careful to not forget mentioning the epic he created outside of the 70mm screen, “Swabhimaan”. For all those who were still in school in the 90s, I am sure they would still recall it being a part of their routine on weekdays to come home from school to a television screen narrating the first 500 episodes of the coming wave of family saga that was going to drench us all in the coming years. I am not quite predisposed to rant on this, considering it ate up my cartoon time then but nevertheless in hindsight, apart from a cast that later went on to become one of the most critically acclaimed bunch both on screen and on stage, I still acknowledge it as one of the most progressive depictions of the usual infidelity and inheritance issue and once again I shall not fail to emphasize on the characterization: Tyagi, Svetlana, Devika, Rishabh Malhotra etc.

It is sad to see that Vishesh Films now churns out traumatic experiences such as the chronicles of Raaz, Murder, Jism, Jannat yada yada yada but that in mind, the Bhatt clan still knows the recipe of a hit whether I like it or not. Anyway just to put aside that fact so as to not tarnish my memory of some of the better days, I am going to listen to one of my favorite songs and then ofcourse sleep!

"Tum masarrat kaa kaho yaa ise gam kaa rishtaa
kahate hain pyaar kaa rishtaa hain janam kaa rishtaa
hai janam kaa jo ye rishtaa to badalataa kyon hai?"

http://youtu.be/yKuDEZhpVjg