Fruit Pulp Fiction

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Diploma Film Script, Fiction, Short Film Screenplay

[This is a diploma film size screenplay, autobiographical in essence and one of my most satisfying. I got an identical burst of temper from my son, the same as the man in the story. The film wasn’t made since i couldn’t find a right actor to play my character. (Not that he has to look or behave like me! In fact quite the opposite.) 

I still hope to make it one day. But if somebody else wants it sooner, please let me know. A good film must be made, whoever does it.]

Draft Five

August 31, 2005

FRUIT PULP FICTION

Screenplay for a 15-minute long film in 35mm, colour

by Surendar Chawdhary

Synopsis

A fruit obsessed father tries to push a bowl of fruit to his son but gets a blast of foul temper. Hurt he goes for a walk and crossing a busy road, meets with an accident. Mother dismisses reporting calls as wrong number, but when the son takes the phone, he is flabbergasted. “Where is he?” he asks mother, “Where does he go for walks?” But surprisingly she remains indifferent. By the time some neighbourhood children come to fetch him, he is already collapsing. As the kids wait outside, in a strange mix of penance as well as need for instant energy, the six-footer boy sits gobbling up from the same fruit bowls that only minutes back he had rejected. And promptly throws up. He is miserable.

But fortunately, all this has been played out only in father’s imagination. There’s been no accident and having ‘commandeered’ the boy to this situation in his mind, the father now sits across the table from him, watching as he suffers. And when he decides enough is enough, he further imagines for him the most effective balm in the world, his girl friend’s apology and a passionate patch up.

Finally thus purged, the father goes happily for his evening walk.

­­­­Screenplay

Fade in

“Distrust all men in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.”

—Friedrich Nietzsche

Fade out

Titles

A man comes back home from work.

He parks his Maruti in the stilt parking of his apartment complex and climbs three floors. His wife opens the door. The son is already back from office but has closed the bedroom door. “Working,” says mother. “He has asked not to disturb.”

Unburdening himself of his laptop on the drawing room chair, father goes to the toilet, then returns to join her in the kitchen. Plucks himself a banana from the top of the fridge, eats. “When did he return?” he asks mother. “Just half an hour back.” It isn’t yet dark but she has already started cooking dinner.

“Oh, he didn’t finish this in the morning?” Inspecting the fridge for something more to eat, he has found a bowl of fruit. Mother is not surprised. “I told you, he doesn’t like them papayas.” She is fed up with having to tell him for the umpteenth time, even happy that he prefers her cooking to all the vegetables and fruit that her husband tends to push. “He just took some Maggi, watched TV and then…”

“Well, you could have finished it. Fruit is good for everybody.” Father picks up a fork and settles down with the bowl at the dining table. “You know why they are saying ‘shit’ all the time? Shit this, shit that? Because they are eating shit all the time, that’s why! Give them pizzas and coke, any number.” He finishes and leaves the bowl at the sink beside her. Then picks up a fresh bowl and brings out the leftover papaya fruit from the fridge. Again he settles down peeling and slicing it at the dining table. Seeing which, mother senses trouble. “Now who is this for?” But he says nothing and goes on. Next he selects a large chikoo from a paper bag on the fridge. “These would be the greatest chikoos in the world, by any reckoning!” This one too he carefully cleans and slices. And likewise a large, blood red pomegranate, whose flyaway seeds he goes retrieving from all kinds of places. “Only Kandhari pomegranates are better than these. A Kandhari would never stain your shirt.” Mother looks at him with mistrust. “And why’s that?” “Because it’s a Kandhari, that’s why!”

Finally father has assembled an appetizing, colourful tray. The bowls even seems to glow from inside.

“He said not to disturb, he’s working!” mother warns him. But handling fruit seems to send father on a high. “You can’t stop them from eating shit, but you can certainly leave them less space to eat that shit!” says he, making a point, with gleaming eyes. “That’s the strategy, you see! It’s war!” He picks up a fork and gets up to go.

Music can be heard playing inside as he approaches the bedroom door. He knocks, gently at first, then harder. “Surja?”

Just then, right next to him, the telephone rings. It’s from his own office. “Just a minute, I’ll take the hand set,” he has already switched to playing the boss, then drifts into the room issuing instructions in a measured tone. “You don’t have to sir me so much, only keep deadlines. That’s all I ask!” he dismisses the caller. Obviously a junior is having to stay longer to complete an assignment.

“Suraj!” Father is again at the door knocking.

“Yeah, yeah, just a minute,” comes a sudden, irritated response from inside. Is he sleeping? Suraj, a tall big youth, opens the door. It’s dark red light inside and he’s indeed been sleeping.

“Oh, but mummy said you were working…” Father tries to explain.

“Yeah, so?” His eyes are groggy and father is overawed and dumb-founded. “Sure I lied, I am not working but why can’t you just for once leave me alone, man!!??” He suddenly bursts out shouting. “Oh, I’m sorry, I just didn’t…!” The father is taken aback and instinctively begins to withdraw the fork in his hand but that only draws the boy’s attention to it—and in turn to the sliced fruit crowding next to the phone.

“Papa, you woke me up for these?” His eyes red, he is incredulous, astounded. “Shit man! Why don’t you just get lost and leave me alone, Papa? I really mean it!” Not knowing any better, he has suddenly switched to almost begging.

“What a way to talk Suraj!” Mother has meanwhile joined up from the kitchen. “These are not for you, he’s cut them for himself! He wants his clothes, so he can go for his walk. Why are you forever bolting the door from inside?” She goes past him into the room as Suraj returns to the bed in disgust and flops. Mother collects father’s walking outfit one by one from the pegs and hangers in the closet and comes out closing the door behind her.

“Ji?” she goes looking for father. “Where are you?”

Standing in their third floor balcony, father is looking at the flowing traffic through the grille. His head is reeling—they love him so much, he and his wife, and… “Where are you?” Mother joins him from behind. “Here are your things.”

“Just what’s wrong with this boy? He is turning a regular psycho, crazy!” Father returns into the drawing hall and sits down on a divan against the wall. This serves as his bed for the night, while mother’s bed is opposite on the other side. The bedroom has been given over to the son.

“Don’t bother about him; just go for your walk!”

“But something has to be wrong with him after all?”

“Must be that girl, what else?” Mother is dismissive as she goes back to attend to her cooking.

Girl? What girl? And what can a girl have to do with this lout anyway? Father draws the French door curtain and stands changing in front of his bed; then gets his shoes from the rack and begins to wear them sitting on the bed.

Music starts as we see father coming out of the building’s main gate. Dressed for his evening walk, he approaches the camera like a zombie. Music builds up to a peak and goes silent as he goes past the frame. The view ominously holds as we hear an accident.

He has been struck by a vehicle. A commotion results. As some people attend to him, one tries to take down the registration number of the gone car.

Back in the house, telephone rings—and keeps ringing. “Mama!” Suraj calls out irritated. Mother comes from the kitchen and takes the call. “Wrong number!” she promptly puts it down and returns.

Another call and mother again dismisses it as wrong number. The third time, Suraj comes out and takes the phone. He is flabbergasted. “Where is Papa?” he asks mother. “Somebody is out of his mind—” mother continues stirring the vegetable. “Yeah but where’s Papa?” “He’s gone for a walk and nothing is wrong with him,” insists the mother. “But where does he go, for a walk, these days?” Something is definitely wrong and mother doesn’t seem to understand. “Well, he goes and comes back!” shouts back mother. “He doesn’t meet with accidents! Never done so in his whole life!”

Just then there is a knock on the door. Some children have come to report the accident. Alarmed, Suraj begins to leave at once but returns from the staircase to change. “Give me some money,” he asks the mother in the kitchen. “I may need…” To his surprise she continues to cook as though nothing is amiss. But he is already breaking down. “Let me eat something before I go.” In the fridge, there is the tray with the same glowing fruit bowls that his father had prepared for him. He takes out the whole tray and sits down at the dining table. Fidgeting, he begins to gobble from all the bowls. Rich red of pomegranate, BJP saffron of papaya and shit brown of chikoo, he finishes them all. Then suddenly he throws up and everything is out on the table. He is miserable but would his father like that? Wasting good fruit, vitamins? Dazed and desperate, he begins to wipe and lick up the mess from the table.

Sitting unseen at the opposite chair, father watches all this in great sorrow as if to say, “But you asked for it!” The whole thing has been entirely a product of his imagination, not real. Mother stands behind him cooking as before—she’s by now slapping chapattis. A young girl comes hurrying up the staircase, past the waiting children, and appears behind the son in the kitchen. She has heard the news. With great concern she holds him from behind. “No, no, don’t worry. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. Don’t worry Suraj we’ll eat up everything. We’ll both finish all this fruit, just as your father said…” She smothers and fondles him with all the love that father wants bestowed upon the boy at this moment.

Watching intently thus far, father breaks into a smile. That’s been punishment enough for the boy. Moreover he now knows why his son was misbehaving. It was his girl—and that’s her. Nice girl. In fact, rather too pretty, for this high-strung, foul-mouthed idiot. The thought makes him feel somewhat easy and the boy is forgiven. But he has a genuine curiosity and mother is best person to ask.

“Lekin, yeh aise gadhon ke saath aisee sexy ladkiyan pat kaise jati hain?” says father, turning round to mother.

“What?” Mother is caught midway through a chapatti.

Father, now standing in the kitchen doorway, repeats the question in a lowered tone. He is ready to leave for his evening walk and steps in so as not to be heard by the boy in the next room.

“Kaun ladki?”

“Why, isn’t that her picture on his table? What’s her name?”

“Aur kaun gadha?”

Father doesn’t want to argue the point. “Anyhow, that’s none of our business,” he says.

Feeling light and bouncy, father steps out into the staircase. “Close the door, I’m gone for the evening!”

Music builds up as he comes out of the main gate, towards the traffic, just as he had done a while ago. And just as before, music peaks and ends on an empty frame. But this time there is no accident.

Instead a car is heard approaching and it goes brushing past father, almost knocking him down at real high speed.

“Bastards!” shouts the father lustily after the ruffians, angry from the fright they gave him. Then resumes.

When last seen, he is chewing at a carrot and waiting to cross the road.

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Quintessential Bahadur Sahib

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Badal Rehman, Film Appreciation Course, FTII, Professor Satish Bahadur, Sholay, Vinay Shukla, Zaki

Sorting my old negatives recently, I was lucky to find this strip of film.

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This is Professor Satish Bahadur in his office in late 1980.

He and I were going to Dacca to teach a 2-week long Film Appreciation Course. Having been East Pakistan until 10 years before, Dacca was special. We had since begun to have Bangladeshi students—Zaki and Badal Rehman come to mind but there were others. Roping in a Dacca minister’s son (whom we later met; a bearded, smiling young man, he was forever rolling three steel balls in hand, both outside as well as in the pocket), these boys had liaised with Indian High Commission to have us over. Moving about in an Indian embassy black Ambassador in Dacca felt distinguished. “We are the Americans here,” Prof Bahadur whispered to me. Posters of a Bangladeshi remake of Sholay were plastered all over the town. Having experienced liberal Institute culture and seen greatest examples of political cinema in Pune, the boys joked about their fledgling government and told us we were going to be security-tailed wherever we went. Indeed a blue Toyota did us the honors. We always found it parked a ‘discreet’ 100 yards away. Innocent times, memorable experience.

These pictures were taken to send to Dacca by way of introduction. That day I issued one of our Minolta SLRs from the Camera store, loaded a film cassette—practice was to go to the dark room and fill up a blank cassette from a 400’ roll of NP 5 or 7 raw film as needed—and shot as Bahadur sahib was speaking to someone. The laboratory then stapled it with their regular processing job and sent back the negative. I remember nothing about my own photographs.

Bahadur sahib was a chain smoker in his first phase of life. He always carried a Wills tobacco pouch, a paper-pack and matchbox in his kurta pocket. (Mrs Bahadur, bhabiji to all of us, got him those supplies from the famous Dorabjee’s in Main Street. She also bought material and stitched all his khadi kurtas at home.) Talking with him you never realized when he took out the pouch, rolled a puff and began to smoke. “Catching him do it is as difficult as catching the start of camera track in a Ray film,” went the popular chant. So at times we would simply switch off in his class in order to look for when his hand reached for the pouch, when he took out a knot of tobacco threads, softened it between thumb and forefinger; how then a paper was pulled out from the packet, tobacco pressed on it and rolled. Finally it would be brought to the lips, licked and pressed. A matchstick would then pack it tight at both ends and fold the edges inside. And then the light, and the drag.

With 3-4 successive frames showing him do it, these photographs must be the closest to a visual record of that famous act of Professor Bahadur’s. Vinay Shukla and I would would often reach out for that pouch across the table and roll ourselves cigarettes. It took us a good many of them wasted before learning not to lick them wet.

Professor Bahadur was unlucky with formal recognitions and awards. As far as I am concerned, he was already Padam Shri material in 1980.

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Here is my portrait done by a Bangladeshi student during that FA course in Dacca.

Goes to show that we were not the only ones not listening in the class!

When Peacocks Came Us Visiting

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Nikon D60, Peacock, Photography

This happened last Monday. Out on a morning walk, barely had I turned my lane when I saw a highly unusual sight. Passing by parked cars, three peacocks were strolling up the street as if on an inspection visit.

On the quick I went back home and returned with my camera. The birds were still there; they had done just a couple of houses in my absence and now lingered around a car. Luckily none of the dogs were out and seeing me intent the security guards too stood by and watched. With muted movements I began to click.

The birds walked a steady leisurely pace, clearing small obstacles through casual hops and taking short flights when necessary. One of them would be attracted to explore beyond a compound wall and others too would be infected by the same interest. One by one, then, all three would fly into the enclosed front gardens, peck about here and there and exit as though on common understanding. Soon I began to follow them along parked cars.

At the end of the lane the birds turned the corner. I hurried to reduce the gap but even at my longest, 55mm, I couldn’t get them much bigger. My Nikon D60 offers a focal length range from 18 to 200mm but splits it over two lenses. I should have brought the whole bag.

The birds were now in the semi-built open area of the colony, walking merrily among straws and shrubs. Just beyond was a small park where on the one side I spotted a girl pacing up and down with her notes—you cram good on fresh air—and on the other, playful movements of local dogs. A yoga group was active farther away. Knowing that stray dogs can be real mean and vicious, I began to click in anticipation. When the attack finally came, the birds, rather Chaplin style, were taken completely by surprise. First they stopped alarmed in their tracks, then suddenly changed course to try and escape behind a building. I waited some long, anxious moments but heard no disaster. Good job! The dogs had been given a slip.

But the group had broken up; only one peacock returned while the other two had flown off in some other direction. But surprisingly, he seemed to have already forgotten both, the attack as well as his companions, and was back to his carefree ways. Traipsing among little plants and bushes it suddenly came against a corner, again registered a momentary set back and promptly took off in a vertical flight to land on a first floor balcony. Here it stood turning its neck in all kinds of ways.

Peacock is after all a large bird and since it was now confined, it made sense to change angles of view and, given the handicap of lens, explore even the opposite of what was needed, namely the long shot. Using 18mm, one of the pictures shows the animal hedged between two buildings and a patch of sky, and I think it works. When it finally flew down, it was a longish trajectory and I was able to capture the bird mid-flight in two frames. (Regrettably what couldn’t be captured on my still camera was the jet-like grace and substantial feather sound it made while doing so.)

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But by now I was feeling quite restive and wanted to get close to my subject for a more intimate look. The only way it seemed possible was to somehow surprise the bird and click a few quick ones before it flew off. The opportunity—or at least the promise of an opportunity—came when we found ourselves going parallel along the rear of a row of houses. The peacock kept going unrestricted through the back lane while I walked on the kuccha road, seeing it while it was on an empty plot and quickening the pace when the view was blocked by a built up house. Two houses ahead I knew the lane was ending and if I could wait at the rear corner of the last house, I had my chance.

I waited. And waited. Then stole in to check. It was a clear field. Where was the bird?

I went further inside the back lane and around the corner house but, nothing. The bird had simply vanished.

Not only the dogs, the bird had given even me a slip!

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Looking at the slides you can tell that of the three birds, two are males and one female. None has at this stage a full grown plume. That would grow now during monsoon but, of course, only in the males.

Kapoor sahib once made an interesting observation. He said that in most species, male is more attractive than female. I am not sure if the comment would stand National Geographic scrutiny but he cited many examples. While peacock’s famous plume and iridescent colours is what the bird is known for, peahen is rather bald and ugly by comparison. Likewise chicken. The cock is the one with bright red crown and the hen rather a plain Jane. Similarly, the lion as well as the tiger.

Human beings are a glorious exception, of course! Thank God!

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More Mani-Kumar Stories. Enjoy!

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Amitabh Bachchan, Ankur, Bertolt Brecht, Calcutta 71, Claude Levi-Strauss, Duvidha, Fareeda Mehta, FTII, indian cinema, Iqbal Masud, Italian Neo-realism, Kaali Shalwar, Karl Marx, Kasba, Kumar Shahani, Mirza Ghalib, Mrinal Sen, MS Sathyu, Naukar Ki Kameez, Premchand, Professor Bahadur, Rajendra Kumar, Rajesh Khanna, Rosselini, Saeed Mirza, Satyajit Ray, Shatranj Ke Khiladi, Shyam Benegal, Teshigahara, Uski Roti, Van Gogh, Woman of the Dunes

[Following my 3-part post on the Mani-Kumar duo in December-January 2013, I received a number of emails recalling colorful personal accounts with our ‘mavericks’. Put together in a collection they would have made a hugely entertaining read but unfortunately the writers were reluctant to go public.

That’s when I decided to dig deep into my own past and write this piece.

At first I seriously thought of calling it Mani-Kumar urf Santa-Banta after the Facebook name of a dear friend. But then decided the piece wasn’t that frivolous!]

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“Well, what was it actually like in those days, sir,” asked a bewildered first year student after seeing one of Mani-Kumar films sometime in the early 90s. Clearly, she suspected an answer somewhat along the lines of, say, a ‘patriotic’ Hindi film doing well under the shadow of an Indo-Pak war. In which case, what ‘war’ was influencing the tastes and judgment of the people in the early seventies, which justified production of films such as those, she wanted to know.

This was FTII of course and we were in a class where once a week teachers and students from all departments assembled to see, and after a 10-minute break, discuss important films from the world cinema. Once in a while the titles were spiced up with Wave films. Great Dictator, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Intimate Lighting, Calcutta 71, Eight and a Half, Closely Guarded Trains, Where is the Friend’s Home?, Ankur, Through a Glass Darkly, La Joli Mai, Early Spring, Kasba…

The silence among the faculty that followed the innocent question was pronounced and embarrassing. Like many times before, it threatened to make cowards of us all.

“Well, I think we were made to feel as though we were in the midst of a revolution,” I began to say, recalling my years through the experience. “Some of us saw the game, but by and large the campaign beat everybody into submission. To my mind, it was one of the biggest con-games in the history of the Indian cinema.”

Never before had I made such a cogent formulation of my position in front of such a large body of students and teachers, about fifty of them. The effect was electrifying, for no one muttered even so much as a protest. It struck me that day that times must have changed, for not very long back could you have made such a sacrilegious statement and gone unchallenged, un-hackled, indeed unbeaten. Instead, everybody here was listening.

“There was suddenly a number of these films in production in those days,” I continued encouraged, “and the stance was that if you didn’t understand one—there was no question of enjoying it, for that was supposed to be associated with commercial cinema—take your chance with another. The medium itself was at long last changing and that if you didn’t board the bus, you risked being left behind. But, of course, as real students of cinema, your choice had to be between Mani and Kumar, because others were not to that extent truly cinematic. But certainly they could be well-meaning friends, those others, not outcastes since they were at least trying—with the handicap of their not having been the Institute students, that is—for a different kind of cinema. This last herd included Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal, both Basus, Chatterjee as well as Bhattacharya, and many others.

“Of course, Mani’s and Kumar’s are difficult films but then you have your own capacities to blame, not doubt theirs’ to make. And they are there to explain the films all the time—hang around with them, eavesdrop under the wisdom tree if you are given to chicken-heartedness, or attend their sessions with the film appreciation groups like proper students. Question them by all means but the risk to be made to look like fools and laughed at was all yours.

“And then there was this scholarly dimension to this cinema. A number of names and references seemed to back the Wave—Karl Marx, Bertolt Brecht, Claude Levi-Strauss, Upanishads, even Ramayana and Mahabharata. Once asked what kind of reading he wanted the students to be ready with for his classes in film theory a month hence, Kumar nonchalantly poured forth the last three titles. “Ramayana, Mahabharata and Upanishads perhaps?” Another name often called upon to serve the Wave was Van Gogh’s. Mani went about issuing caution, not much different in manner from a threat, that already once mankind had failed to recognize Van Gogh’s art during his life time and let them not repeat the same mistake in his own case…”

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Being intensely subjective sometimes serves the ends of objectivity even better. Since that morning I have never been short of listeners to all my ringside accounts of how the whole thing was a sham, a manipulation of the timid and nothing but a form of cultural terrorism.

Here are some of my stories…

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“Over its Uski Roti campaigns, Mani’s entourage once included a new character—a thin, long-faced Bengali, bearded and effeminate—who whatever he said or did, would send the whole group reeling with laughter. Soon however it was clear that you would be a fool to be fooled by his clownish conduct since he was none other than the editor himself of Uski Roti. We had just had a remarkable Japanese film come to the archives—Teshigahara’s Woman of the Dunes as it happens—and as a gesture of returning a matching compliment, had the visitors see that film. Afterwards, as the ‘masters’ spilled out of the main theatre, apprehensively we began to follow them for reactions. Playing safe, a group of editing students approached the Uski Roti’s editor and tamely asked him his views on the editing of Woman of the Dunes.

“ ‘Good! Rather good, I must say! Except—’ and we all waited for the historic pronouncement. ‘Except zara rhythm ka chakkar hai. But good! Rather good!’”

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“Only very close friends of mine know that at one point I was to be immortalized playing the main character in Mani’s Duvidha!!! Looking back, however, what difference does it make as to who was under that oversized yellow turban as long as it wasn’t a Rajesh Khanna or a Rajendra Kumar! (It could even have been Amitabh Bachchan, mind you, because he was around and wasn’t yet a star!)

“One day a trunk call was received from Mani at the Institute main gate asking to speak to me. A number of messages goaded me over the day to wait for his call in the evening. That Mani had singled me out for the honors was bad enough, when asked if I would like to act in Duvidha, I almost fell off the chair. Me, act? With my chipped tooth, I managed to blurt?

“ ‘Well, I have taken all that into account,’ said Mani coolly at the other end.

“Suddenly a historic responsibility seemed ready to fall on my nacheez shoulders and would I be equal to the task? Let me not fail Mani—indeed the Indian cinema—by being the sole reason for the film falling short. But how could I say no? And quickly, for I couldn’t keep a low budget filmmaker’s telephone bill mounting as I searched for words. My fumble would be a butt of ridicule forever and ever anyway. After a long haze, I felt my focus returning as I put the phone down in relief. I had simply asked Mani what I would be paid considering I was no longer a student but a professional who had to begin to fend for himself. That settled the issue my way.

“Why me, indeed, for acting a role—in fact non-acting, modeling—I have often wondered? The answer came years later when after a long gap I happened to be seeing a Wave film. It’s noteworthy that all these films are low on the budget, but rich on credit titles. All the names with any kind of past, present or future are generously listed in a tail-heavy formation. And it becomes a way of proclaiming the commitment of all these individuals to the Wave, along with all the goodwill their names individually carry. Being included in such august company, being officially admitted to the very history of Indian cinema, was to be my remuneration, rather than some kind of petty cash that like an idiot I had broached to the Master.”

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“In one of Mani’s films, a reel begins with an out-focus shot. Thinking it was focus-slip on his machine, the Institute projectionist began to reset the projector. When his efforts made matters only worse, he stopped and began to look for a cut. But for a long while there was no cut coming. Just then a high-rise building column entered the moving frame. Again the operator rushed to focus but even that was soon gone, leaving behind another stretch of open, out-focus sky. After a long hide-and-seek, it turned out it was a slow, long focus, 360 degree spiral pan—perhaps, twice over—of the Mumbai skyline taken from atop a high-rise where buildings would selectively keep coming in sharp focus as the view gradually descended aground. A good concept marred by clumsy reel division.

“ ‘You could have provided a sharp focus shot ahead of this one in the reel?’ I asked Mani after the screening. ‘Having confirmed focus after his switch-over, the projectionist would leave the rest alone as they do all the time.’ ‘Is it? But there was no problem when it was projected last week in New York?’ was Mani’s nonchalant response.

“I have no problem visualizing how Mani would explain something somebody found confusing in the film in New York. ‘Oh, that’s from Mahabharata, which everybody knows in India.’

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“Once an ex-student having a say in Lucknow, late Vijay Saxena, had the state government host a film festival in the mid eighties. A good number of us from Mumbai and Pune were invited. It being a small airport, all crowded the place around the same time but the administration was eager to show that they had left nothing to chance. A number of youngsters received the ‘tired’ us and, virtually snatching whatever we were carrying as a gesture of exuberant hospitality, put us straightaway in hordes of ‘dazed’ taxis. Evidently in a mix of kabhi hum unko, kabhi apne ghar ko dekhte hain and who-knows-what-the-heavyweights-may-need-when, we had been ‘dumped’ care of the only five star hotel then available in the city. Food, drinks, and even cigarettes, it turned out, were on the house. Clearly, the irony of Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj Ke Khiladi, one of the films on show, had been lost on the organizers. This was truly Wajid Ali Shah’s Awadh trying to put its best foot forward.

“Providing the event with a scholarly core was a seminar on, what else but experimental cinema. Braving the aatankavaad of English, the organizers had roped in a cross-section of the city intellectuals to chair the proceedings by turns, one common responsibility of each being to sum up for the benefit of the audience the preceding speaker in Hindi. The intellectuals it turned out were doubly in awe, of English as well as the Cinema. Our audience, looking for bare initiation into the maze of film scholarship, wanted to hear as a first step nothing more than the sound of voice of the star speakers. A number of unknown us were floated between the likes of Saeed Mirza, Iqbal Masud, MS Sathyu, Prof Bahadur and, of course, Kumar Shahani. While in their presentations each of the rest had their moments of contact with this situation from India’s backwaters, Kumar was unforgiving as ever. In his impeccable English verging on French, he went to town talking about the Italian neo-realism, Rossellini and the rest as though he were referring to a mere Premchand. I stole a glance at the man on the dais who was to translate Kumar. He was the busiest, and most worried. No word Kumar used needed a dictionary to consult and yet what was the man saying?

“Mirza Ghalib kept me company that day with his Bak raha hoon junoon mein kya kya kuch, kuch na samjhe khuda kare koi.”

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In the mid-90s we were once—but for the umpteenth time—trying to enforce the length of diploma films and one defaulting film came up for review. This was about three and a half reels against the prescribed maximum length of just three. Mani was on the campus and had been for days lobbying in support of the film. The lobbying continued even at the Steenbeck table where senior faculty had assembled to look at the edited footage and take a view for Director’s decision.

As the screening ended, we felt that a film such as that could go on for another couple of reels without making any difference. “Exactly,” said Mani, “so you should approve the film as it is.”

But we couldn’t agree to that facile and frivolous view and stuck to our position. The film remained at three reels. After a few months an invitation was received from an Italian festival for the same specific film by name. Needless to say, Mani was on the jury and later had the film win an award.

Afterwards both Mani and Fareeda Mehta—she had been the student in question—went on to make Naukar Ki Kameez and Kaali Shalwar under a program of support from the French government.

For one who had sold a whole Wave to one government, selling two films to another would have to be nothing more than a joke.