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.

Music without boundaries

Last week, I attended a production called 100 Charmers. Director Roysten Abel had gathered five score saperas (snake charmers) from in and around Delhi to perform in an ensemble that was mostly music but presented with fine, dramatic flair. Set against the medieval Taramati Baradari on the outskirts of Hyderabad, the musicians lifted their beens to play an impressive repertoire.

This contained a few pieces that had me pondering the cross-currents of music, the interplay of different streams, and how riffs and even musical influences may travel from the grassroots of folk, up to the rarefied realms of the classical, and then be reinterpreted as accessible film music. Naturally, they performed Hemant Kumar’s interpretation of the sapera’s tune from Nagin (1954) — a reading so sublime and inevitable, it was in turn adopted by the snake charmer community as its anthem. The tune has stayed with India as the quintessential aural prompt for snakes. The musicians then played Kajrare from Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s Bunty aur Babli and the hymn Amazing Grace. The saperas had reinvented themselves — and extended their survival. In rendering Kajrare with their plaintive, rustic strains, they also owned the song in a delightfully new way. Purists may purse their lips but surely such borrowings can only enrich a musical system.

Film music is not given sufficient credit for its role in channelling music that lies outside its ambit. If the general public has heard Bade Ghulam Ali Khan at all, it’s probably the snatch he sang for Mughal-e-Azam. Many heard of Ustad Rashid Khan for the first time because he sang Aaoge jab tum in Jab We Met. I attended a concert of his in Delhi a couple of years ago and not even his elaborate Kirwani elicited as many cheers as when he started on Aaoge… For a man feted by the world of classical music, he was absurdly pleased.

Film music has depicted folk tunes in innumerable instances. It has included Kabir, Tulsidas, Meera, Khusrau, Rahim and Bulle Shah. It has used folk narrative genres, too. I have a particular favourite from recent years. Punjabi folk has employed jugni, a peripatetic female narrator who observes the world and provides her commentary, for almost a century now. I was particularly pleased to hear it in Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye, Sneha Khanwalkar’s sharply authentic 2008 album.

It hasn’t all been one-way though. Classical music too has dipped from time to time into the lower orders or into parallel streams to pick up skeins that are now woven into their own fabric. Pandit Kumar Gandharva coopted folk renditions of Kabir into his own style of Nirguni bhajan and Carnatic music has taken the Marathi Varkari tradition of abhangs into its fold.

But, to my mind, there is one very certain level of success — when you trickle down to the lowest common denominator. As the snake charmers have reclaimed their tunes, so have others made some songs their own. Train singers favour a certain high-pitched type of song that allows them to be heard above the din of trains, and ones that fall into the chugging rhythm; Mela dilon ka… they like, and also, Pardesi, pardesi jaana nahin…

One other community has been revitalised these past years: wedding band players. Their repertoire used to comprise the decades-old Raja ki aayegi baraat and Mera yaar bana hai dulha. But now, thanks to Amit Trivedi’s Emosanal Atyachar, a song made for the trumpets of the baraat, the band is fashionable again. I wouldn’t be surprised to find the lively title song of Band Baja Baraat blaring out at the next wedding I attend. 

Those happy old New Years

The world stepped out to welcome the New Year last week while I sought refuge in my quilt, nursing a miserable cold over a glass of rasam. Even television — a friend on most occasions — let me down. Brittle hype was lined up on channel after channel, attempts at humour on one, spectacle on the other. It was so unsatisfactory I turned it off without waiting for the countdown to midnight and, perversely, went to sleep.

New Year's Eve, as TV channels conceive it, is the most manufactured of celebrations; similar ensembles are put together routinely for Holi, Diwali and other festivals but somehow work better than they do here. On the subject of New Year’s Eve, my mind runs no doubt out of sheer sentimentality, to the good old days. Those years in the 1980s and ’90s when Doordarshan, our one window to the world, kept us company in the hours leading to midnight.

I remember the comedian Jaspal Bhatti entertaining us; the short comedy skits that were, I’m now certain, only mildly funny. There was Gurdas Maan singing his trademark ‘Dil da mamla hai’, pausing playfully at ‘Dil…’ and all of us rushing in to prompt him. I remember Penaaz Masani, Falguni Pathak, Sharon Prabhakar, Javed Jaffrey and Usha Uthup. I cannot honestly say they sang or danced or performed better than anyone on the stage today — certainly, nostalgia plays a large part in giving that age its patina of being special.

That nostalgia isn’t restricted to the New Year’s Eve specials, it envelops the entire Doordarshan era. Bring it up and you’re essentially calling for a whole lot of people to wistfully remember their own favourites. Chitrahaar, someone will invariably say. Hum Log and Buniyaad will get a few mentions. Then the Sunday morning line-up, the Saturday afternoon specials, the weekend movies we waited all week for. There is something vivid about these recollections — it isn’t just about what they saw, it is about what they felt. Curiously, people talk often of staring at the colour bars before Doordarshan’s slowly spiralling logo came on the screen.

There is a sea change from our worlds then and now. Our minds and sensitivities were clean three decades ago — tabula rasas waiting to be imprinted on. We weren’t assaulted by images, sounds, media, opinions. We were able to focus on whatever we looked at, an attitude that seems almost zen in comparison to how we are now.

What does our fondness for the Doordarshan years mean? Does the advent of TV only bookmark a time when our impressions were at their freshest? Is it also due in part to the fact that TV viewing used to be so communal? In the early days, the entire neighbourhood would pour into the one home that housed the TV set. Later, even when every home acquired its own, we would gather to discuss what we watched. This collective experience is quite incommunicable to the spoilt-for-choice cable-&-satellite TV generation. It is impossible to convey to someone who wasn’t there what it meant. It was, quite simply, an age of innocence. Perhaps it boils down to the fact that we — all of India with access to TV sets — were on the same page, looking at exactly the same thing. DD’s much used placard that said ‘Rukavat ke liye khed hai’ signified an entire nation in limbo — sighing in frustration at a frame that might leap into animation any minute now. Never again will we know that kind of unity.

What India watched in 2010

Recently, YouTube came out with a year-end list of videos that India watched the most in 2010. There were no great surprises. The list affirmed what we knew: that Bollywood and cricket still rule the Indian heart and mind. If Live IPL, Tendulkar’s double century, Shakira’s ‘Waka Waka’ and ‘Sheila ki Jawani’ were the most searched phrases, among the most watched were Bollywood hits mostly from the previous year.

YouTube’s list by no means defines what our prime preoccupations were — I mean, no one searches for videos on inflation or moral corruption of the polity, after all. Nevertheless, within its confines, what makes the list and what doesn’t are both significant. The FIFA World Cup finds no high mention apart from Shakira, neither do any of the very special Indian victories and performances at the Commonwealth or the Asian Games. No scandalous sting operations either.

Still, it was a delicious opportunity to see what the masses — the people who make up those staggering numbers — were watching. To see what had drawn the most eyeballs and, perhaps, to understand why. At the very top, something unexpected: a video featuring Australian motivational speaker Nick Vujicic, a man born without limbs. The clip received more than 15 million hits on YouTube India. Clearly a viral, its popularity is not surprising given the inspirational, emotional content. However, what’s heartening is that there is no obvious ‘India’ link here. Insular as we are, if this many viewers watched this brave man speak, it brings hope that we can perhaps be global citizens after all.

But there ends our token interest in affairs outside the ‘des’. At number two, with over 4.5 million views, is the title song from Dil Bole Hadippa that has Shahid Kapoor and Rani Mukherjee keeping boisterous Bhangra beat. I enjoyed this number from 2009’s releases but wouldn’t have put it this high above other musical hits. The film was only a very average grosser, there were other songs that pleased audiences — from Delhi 6, for instance, or Kaminey or even ‘Emosanal Athyachar’ from Dev D… what made Hadippa zoom to the top? A look at the video explains it. It’s simply a wonderful combination of music, fluid choreography and star power: Rani Mukherjee shows off her shapely back and tops that with an amusing Sardar cameo. A look at the region-wise statistics for this video reveals an interesting bit of trivia — the video is most popular, not in India, but neighbouring Pakistan.

The presence of ‘Tere Liye’, a song from the Viveck Oberoi starrer Prince is a bit of a mystery. But note that it is sung by the soulful Atif Aslam, as is that other toplister ‘Tu Jaane Na’ from Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani. Both movies were duds; there is nothing special about the way the songs were picturised. In fact, the top search yields for both songs aren’t even videos so much as montages to acco-mpany the song, so the inevitable conclusion must be drawn: India loves Atif Aslam.

‘Crazy Kiya Re’ is in this list, which is no surprise for Aishwarya Rai was in top form in Dhoom 2. There is also a steamy scene from Kurbaan with Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor. This one left me cold but, as they say profoundly, whatever…

But the inclusion that startled me most was a song from the 1984 film Andar Baahar with 3.9 million hits. I remembered this movie vaguely. It had Jackie Shroff and Anil Kapoor in it and involved, I think, cops and robbers. It was not a significant hit then and there is no reason why it should suddenly resurface other than that Shemaroo Entertainment uploaded it in February 2009. True, Shroff and Moon Moon Sen are fairly uninhibited in the rain-dance sequence but we have seen better and worse, depending on your point of view. Then, why? A viral spread by subterranean forums perhaps? We shall never know.

New soaps, more lather

The world of Indian TV soaps is raising a duststorm. Not of controversy this time but the honest dust of frenetic activity.

Soap operas, as studies and common observation will attest, are addictive affairs. It is a large but rather particular audience — usually female though not exclusively so; these are people with the time and mindspace to spare for the concerns of other people, be they ever so fictional. A good soap extends beyond the half hour that is spent in front of the television — a good story fills the crevices between chores, engages the mind and heart when they are not needed elsewhere. Favourite soaps are habits; not to have the next fix when it is habitually due can be disturbing to the rhythm.

I say all this to place in context the consternation of soap-viewing audiences given the ongoing changes in viewing patterns. To begin with, the past few months have seen the closure of a number of old regulars. The biggest wrench of all surely must be Star Plus’s Bidaai. It ran for three years and, while it achieved high TRPs for most of its tenure, it garnered a heart-warming popularity that can’t be measured by numbers alone. On the youth-oriented Star One, two long-running programmes — Dill Mill Gaye and Miley Jab Hum Tum — have been pulled off. Naturally, there have been replacements. Star One has three new shows including Ekta Kapoor’s vampire love story Ye Pyaar Ki Ek Kahaani. Bidaai has given way to the rather interesting and faintly magical Gulaal, which, to my mind, is quite the only one capable of adequately filling the gap its predecessor left behind.

What this means for the soap watcher is that, apart from missing her old staples, suddenly she finds herself in a completely new landscape — milieux that she isn’t too familiar with, several characters she has not invested in, and fresh relationships that don’t yet have an emotional connect.

Then, the industry must needs make alterations as well. A few months ago, Star Plus elongated viewing hours with new shows at 11pm and 11.30pm — late night slots that allow them to be more ‘bold’. Then, to the astonishment of many, a series called Saathiya that airs at the early hour of 7pm stumbled into the top ten.
You could hear the wheels turning. If sufficient numbers were tuning in at seven, could they be persuaded to reach for the remote earlier still? Zee TV is now trying that: two new serials from this week to kick off the evening’s television viewing from 6pm. If the idea takes, it won’t be very long before other channels follow. So, all taken, viewers have a potential six hours of fresh content and that’s without counting afternoon soaps, promiscuous channel-hopping and repeats. What's more, Star One has decided to push the programming envelope in another dimension. Their five soaps will air not five but six days of the week, by co-opting Saturdays into the ‘soap week’.

For our soap watcher, these are hours and slots she wasn’t used to, these are new habits she needs develop if she wishes to scope out her options. These shows aim, not at bringing in fresh audiences, but at reining in the same existing ones. How long before fatigue kicks in? Besides, to what end, if the content isn’t good enough and will only end after short flailing bursts?

Women rule prime time in India — on the screen and in the drawing rooms where they are received. But might this extensive programming threaten that? A family that is resigned to let soaps dominate during prime time will be less inclined to relinquish the remote for marathon sessions, five/six days a week. Will these adjustments serve to increase soap viewing or audiences? More importantly, does this slew of soaps bring anything fresh by way of attitudes or narratives? It is too soon to tell — but whether these strategies sink or swim, they’re working up a fine lather.

So many bugs

If you were a visiting Martian, belonging moreover to an obscure, insular tribe, who was somehow deposited in front of a television screen in India, what do you suppose you would make of this country's predominant preoccupations — going by its advertising images?

Within a couple of days you would be convinced that Earth was infested by these rabid, lethal creatures known as ‘keetanu’. You would note with trepidation that these lurk everywhere on the human person — in their teeth, on their skin, clothes and everything they touch. By and by you would realise that these are impossible to destroy, but you would understand also that this was one entity Earthlings must combat at all costs, or die. If you were a suggestible sort of Martian, you would soon find yourself avoiding contact with anything — doorknobs, newspapers, currency notes — for fear that you too could die from such deadly infection. You would have growing regard for a range of products: soap, toothpaste, deodorant, and a range of domestic cleaning liquid. You would see again and again the image of a magnifying glass that would show you precisely how well these products were working: a circle full of germs magically wiped clean leaving only one or two insignificant crawlies, one perhaps skulking so close to the edge as to appear practically invisible.

I, of course, am an Earthling. As children, we held these ‘keetanu’ in contempt. During a growing up phase when I fancied myself particularly hardy, I remember telling my sister that the best way to deal with a bleeding scraped knee was to rub a little mud on it to stem the flow. She did, and she lives, I assure you, to tell the tale to any sympathetic audience likely to cast dark looks at her heartless older sister. But the point is: Indians didn’t use to be this afraid of germs and bacteria. We knew that resistance was superior to non-contamination. That bacteria aren’t vile creatures that need to be warded off with vats of antiseptic. We learnt that the human body is an assemblage of microbiota in numbers that outstrip human cells ten times over. And this, we must now remind ourselves, is normal. Normal.

A few years ago, during the annual year-end NRI season, we had a few kids over. They went out to explore the garden and the adults sat down to conversation — only to have the kids rush in again in a flurry of alarm and disgust. Eeeks and ewwws were uttered and we heard complaints of “so many bugs”. An investigation revealed ants, grasshoppers and other innocuous fauna. First-world kids! We shook our heads then, but is the attitude so different from ours now? By and large, this fear of old-fashioned dirt has percolated to us. Children even two decades ago roamed more than they do now, played more robustly than they tend to do today. Parents are more protective — leashes are tighter and yes, there’s a keener eye kept on fingernails. Do children these days still collect ladybugs in matchboxes or examine frogs?

And all these arguments against the contaminants of the world would all be a little more sympathy inducing if the concern were motivated by pure love. A parent’s job is by necessity prone to anxiety and mothers are notoriously easy to guilt-trip. But you have to think — because soon after an advertisement has told you your child could fall ill if he didn’t wash his hands obsessively, it’ll usually let drop a more deadly fear: perhaps he will have to miss school. Oh the horror! Fall behind on lessons, slip down the ranks and be less of a success in standard four? Unthinkable. And so it comes about that your average mother is stepping out this minute to stock up on antiseptics, handwashes and bacteria-repelling toothpastes. While she’s at it, she should pick up a consignment of energy drinks that aid memory, keep up energy for school, athletics, violin lessons as well as keep the lad peppy through the extra tuition.

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.