Colours of life

In one strip from Calvin & Hobbes, Calvin is seeking information from his erratic father. “Dad, how come old photographs are always black and white? Didn’t they have colour film back then?” Calvin’s dad, who likes his little jokes, tells him: “Sure they did. In fact, those photographs are colour. It’s just the world was black and white then.”

It’s easy to believe him. Look at old family albums, silent movies and the wonderful era of black-and-white cinema — we (those of us from this generation) have a hard time paint-bucketing colour into the world as we imagine it was then. Our visual conditioning assures us it must have been monochrome or sepia-tinted. But eventually, we will no longer be put to the trouble of conjuring up mind pictures, for the colourisation of our nostalgia is on.

The opulent Mughal-e-Azam was retouched, pigmented and released in 2004. Since then we have had other classics repackaged thus — Naya Daur and earlier this month, Hum Dono. In the south, we have embraced anew the cult mythological Mayabazaar. There are many more to come in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil and Kannada.

It isn’t cinema alone. Discovery Channel has begun a 13-part series called World War II in Colour — a magnificent sweep of the events between 1939 and 1945 narrated by Robert Powell. The footage, acquired from across the world, has been painstakingly cleaned, re-coloured and restored. Even I, normally averse to retellings of WWII, am caught up in the epic drama of it all.

Colourisation of our collective black-and-white past may be the dernier cri in India, but it is a fad that has run its course in Hollywood. In the ’80s, media moghul Ted Turner embarked on a rather insensitive colourisation drive that had lovers of cinema up in arms. When he coloured and reintroduced Casablanca, film critic Roger Ebert was unequivocal in his loathing of what he termed “artistic sin”. He said in 2005: “Anyone who can accept the idea of colorisation of black-and-white films has bad taste.” In India too, although the coloured Mughal-e-Azam was accepted by uncritical masses, it had its detractors. Cinematographers and film historians were deeply uneasy. Mahesh Bhatt compared it to “painting the Red Fort in acrylic emulsion”.

It is a worthy debate. The critics make thoroughly valid points. There is no doubt a film shot for the contrasts of black and white is tainted, diminished by the introduction of colour. We would be equally aghast, I imagine, if someone mooted the idea of colouring Pyaasa or Kaagaz ke Phool or Charulata. But what of films where black and white was not an artistic choice but a necessity? K Asif longed to make Mughal-e-Azam in colour and was only impeded by his circumstances. He brought in craftspersons from all over India to bring authenticity to jewels, costumes and weaponry. Belgian glass was imported to adorn the famous Sheesh Mahal. The battle sequences were the grandest India had seen. It was a film that cried out to be seen in colour. Mayabazaar too is a grand spectacle of a film whose frames are deepened, not degraded, by colourisation.

The techniques of colourisation may perhaps influence opinion as well. Early attempts were crude, and not unlike the crayons Orson Welles once accused Ted Turner of wielding. But now, programmes are able to intelligently guess the colour used originally. Even the five or six years since Mughal-e-Azam have seen technological advances — studios now use 16.7 million shades against the 65,000 colours the previous generation did. The effects are subtle and, for the most part, aesthetic.

This sounds like an argument for colour, but had Guru Dutt consulted me before he re-shot the title song of Chaudvin ka Chand in colour, I’d have begged him not to. I suppose the test is to look at a film with love and ask of it how it would like to be rendered.

No more the small screen

About to embark on Kaun Banega Crorepati (4), Amitabh Bachchan recently reminisced on his blog about how it was back in 2000. When he first decided to do television, those in charge of guarding his brand were highly doubtful. For a man who ruled the silver screen to be cramped into small box screens, to lose mystique and be delivered straight into distracted drawing rooms was seen as a dilution of his persona.

But Bachchan persisted — it was an honourable way to begin to pay off the pile of debts he had incurred in the debacle that was ABCL. To the participants who came hoping to win a tidy sum of money, this was even more of a connect with the man who sat opposite them; he too was there to make money — a necessity and a preoccupation that binds all of poor and middle class India. So when Amitabh Bachchan asks someone on the hot seat: “Kya maayne rakhtein hai ye paise aapke liye? What does this money mean to you?”, the query is significant. It adds to that mental profile we Indians assemble for everyone we meet. It is a question that everyone is sympathetic to; and the answer, no matter how similar, is invariably of interest.

Bachchan’s return to television ten years later sees a vastly different picture. Bollywood wouldn’t touch TV with a pole then, but they love it now. It is impossible to flip channels on primetime weekends without shuffling on star dust. Akshay Kumar is a sure shot these days, and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan smiled graciously on Masterchef last week even as she fenced gingerly with Karan Johar. In recent years, Bachchan Jr, Shah Rukh Khan, Akshay Kumar, Karan Johar, Farah Khan, Priyanka Chopra have all hosted television shows, and everyone in Bollywood worth anything at all has trooped through television studios. A fact that tells us, better than reams of statistics ever could, how powerful the small box has become.

Talk shows are one aspect, but there is the other tiresome matter of promotions. Singing contests, comedy, dance and sundry talent contests... nothing is spared from the relentless onslaught of new movie releases. Stars, directors and associated celebrities appear on these platforms. For the talent show, it presumably keeps the interest alive; for the movie, it is an easy audience, captive, gagged and bound. Win-win, as they say.

The biggest victims of this parade of self-serving guests, to my mind, are the judges of musical contests. Over the years, these have been notorious for attention-seeking gimmicks, manufactured conflicts... generally behaviour known in TV circles as ‘khaaoing’ footage. For example: a contestant performs well. Instead of a measured critique, he or she is more likely to encounter a judge who leaps out of his chair, bounds up on stage to bestow hugs, blessings and fulsome praise, all under the red eye of the camera. Camerapersons have learnt the hard way not to compose judges in tight frames, for they are apt to rear up without notice, leaving the vision mixer with disconcerting visuals of their midriffs if everyone isn’t sharp enough.

Now this scenario has become rather compromised by the Bollywood publicity machine. Hardly a week goes by without some promotion, and our judges must now suffer to play host to a series of celebs even more intent on consuming valuable air-time. For the viewer, of course, this is extremely fatiguing; quality music has long vanished and it is just one dose of insincere hype after the other.

But promotions aren’t limited to reality TV — they sometimes spill over into soaps as well. Salman Khan as Chulbul Pandey was woven (very, very badly!) into the script of Laagi Tujhse Lagan and Akshay Kumar dropped into the home of the Kashyaps of Sasural Genda Phool to sell Khatta Meetha. Much as we acknowledge the compulsions of the business, this is distressing. At least the soaps — television at its purest — may be spared the Bollywood infestation.

Rakhi-O!

Rakhi Sawant burst onto most people’s horizons with the kiss that the infamous Mika planted on her. It was the most shocking thing to take place that week and she got her due minutes of fame and airtime. It was all par for the course, which doesn’t explain what she is doing — four years later — hosting her own show called Rakhi ka Insaaf on Imagine TV. The television and film industry has legions of publicity seekers who seek small bursts of visibility and sink thereafter, which makes Rakhi Sawant’s longevity, her continued popularity and her success something of an astonishing oddity.

This latest show has been likened by quite a few reviewers to a fish market. It is a very understandable comparison. Two episodes old at the time of going to print, Rakhi ka Insaaf is a reality justice show with a very twisted shake. Disputes are brought for Rakhi to hear and judge and the disputants (so far) all represent the lowest common denominator. Rakhi, of course, conducts affairs with all the aplomb of a ring master. She is expansive, flinging out a hand to silence the audience, out-yelling her participants, reacting to every revelation with the requisite drama and finally issuing her take on the matter.

But to dwell on the rise of Rakhi Sawant: she has managed to straddle Bollywood as well as television — even if as a fringe item girl in the movies and as a Reality TV specialist on television. Since 2006, she has appeared in numerous shows; two of these bear her name in their titles and ride on her shoulders alone. The truth is that this woman — either by means of native shrewdness, luck or some mysterious factor — has managed to become a brand. What exactly is her appeal?

Her days incarcerated in Bigg Boss (1) gave us a few clues. She was clearly disadvantaged as far as her background went, but she was by turns heartbreakingly humble, ambitious in the most open, grasping way, curiously sincere and laughably manipulative. Her vulnerability came through and so did her love of the limelight. She demonstrated fine comic timing, she was naive. If she launched herself into the middle of an emotional drama with herself cast as queen, her eyes would flicker mid-scene to gauge its effect on her audience. Very few people fell for anything she said, but many were charmed. She had something that can’t be bought in tinsel town: personality.

I’ve found her tiresome on many occasions but one of the instances where she thoroughly delighted me was on the talk show with Karan Johar. Many thought it was a huge coup for Rakhi that she was asked on the show at all. For, throughout the previous season, Johar had taken low potshots at a few persons; they included Mallika Sherawat, Neha Dhupia and Rakhi Sawant. Now the film industry, such as it is, is bound to have a few young women who become embroiled, out of desperation or bad judgment, in something approaching sleaze. It is even more likely if the young woman comes to the industry without the aegis of a big name. For Karan Johar, with his background, success and position, to attack these particular women with such snide relish was ungenerous and ungentlemanly. Still the talk-show producers had bowed to the public’s dubious but thumping interest in Rakhi Sawant and she was invited to Koffee with Karan. She came. If Johar had hoped to expose her further, he succeeded. But he could not discomfit her — for Rakhi out-Rakhied herself.

She came in a cloud of effusive gratitude, took the wind out of his sail by admitting blithely to cosmetic surgery, cried so copiously Johar was left wiping his own nose in involuntary mimicry, she dived dramatically at his feet in a surprise move that had her host yelping in startlement and leaping nimbly out of reach. As a revenge, it was delicious. And she’s still having the last laugh.

Move over, sarson ke khet

I remember distinctly the time I had to ask someone what Daler Mehndi and Amitabh Bachchan meant when they sang, Sadde naal rahoge te.... There had been such a glut of Punjabi in the filmi and pop music market in the ’90s, I had needed translation for what is now mainstream lingo. As a context-less South Indian, I remember faintly resenting the easy dominance of the Punjab over our national tastes — permeation so complete and insolent, it didn’t need to come with subtitles.

It wasn’t only the music, it was also the images. The sarson ke khet, for instance, were so badly flogged, they should be sore still. Even before Aditya Chopra set Shah Rukh Khan in the middle of the obligatory mustard crop with a mandolin, the yellow fields were something of a symbol. Since then, the landscape — though distorted, candified, glossified — has formed the rural backdrop of choice in our collective cinematic consciousness.

Punjab, however, is conceding space to another milieu. And nothing confirms it like Dabangg: Uttar Pradesh is the new Punjab. Or, to be more precise, eastern UP — the badlands with ubiquitous country pistols, violent university politics; young men roaming the gallis and dusty trails, involved in a complex hierarchy of power — a matrix both dynamic and unchanging. The land of the bhaiyya and the bahubali, where societal structures of power are so strong, the law retreats in wary watchfulness.

Tigmanshu Dhulia tried it in 2003 with his low-key Haasil. A love story set in an atmosphere of seething university politics, it didn’t make box-office waves, but it is something of a cult among those who saw it. Then came the great Vishal Bharadwaj. His Omkara and Ishqiya dripped with the essence of the land, replete with its bawdy, charismatic expressions, its unique flavour. Then, cherry on top, there is Dabangg. Even the name is reflective of attitudes there — not merely power, not just dominance, the word includes a sense of psychological hold over a dominion.

But movies have only a couple of hours to impress our minds. For a detailed, leisurely taste of this culture, you must go to television. To Star Plus’ reigning soap, Pratigya. It is set in Allahabad, and deals most interestingly with power, chauvinism and ideas of respectability. Frequent invocations to Alopi maiyya (a goddess obscure to all but these parts), and sprinkled mentions of Illahabadi localities add considerable texture. With soaps relying so heavily on dialogue, the robust dialect used plays no small part in the success of this series. But even more steeped in the world of eastern UP is Imagine TV’s new soap Gunahon ka Devta. This is, for once, a hero-centric show, supposedly inspired by UP’s famous gangster Shri Prakash Shukla. Hero Avdesh Singh is the ‘ruler’ of Lallanpur, running and directing illegal commerce, influencing authorities, dispensing rough-and-ready justice. The locales are fresh, there is spontaneous outburst of song to the accompaniment of beat and harmonium; the tone is determinedly earthy, sometimes so coarse as to burn the ears of more sheltered citified folk.

This movement to UP could be because of the influx of immense talent from the heartland — Dhulia, Bharadwaj, Abhishek Chaubey, the brothers Anurag and Abhinav Kashyap are all from the cow belt. Not all their movies are set in their home state but the most evocative of them seem to be. It is no coincidence in television either; Pratigya and Gunahon ka Devta share the same writer, Shanti Bhushan, who comes from there as well.

Or, perhaps it’s simply Uttar Pradesh’s time in the sun, ka kehte ho?