HISTORY IN PICTURES

A cursory channel-surf on the T.V showed that almost all the movie channels were telecasting patriotic films like GANDHI, BORDER, and such like. With celebrations for Independence Day round the corner, we are getting our annual audio-visual dose of patriotism – a heady mix of some-facts, some-jingoism, more-rhetoric and a lot of stirring sentiments.

When we were young, Doordarshan used to air such appropriately heart-swelling films to celebrate 15th August. A big favourite was Chetan Anand’s HAQUEEQAT, which never failed to bring a lump to the throat everytime it was shown on our grainy Black-and-White T.V set, especially everytime they telecast the song on the dying-freezing soldiers:

“Kar chale hum fida jaan o tan saathiyon,
Ab tumhare hawale waton saathiyon.”

(Sacrificing body and soul for the motherland,
Friends, now I leave the nation in your hand.) (incompetent translation by me).

But a far more potent and long-lasting source of nationalistic fervour were the Amar Chitra Katha (literally – Immortal Stories in Pictures) comics which I read and hoarded. Extremely affordable and easily available, these thin books retold history and legend in a colourful graphic form. And India, with its hoary action-packed and multi-layered past, supplied a vast storehouse of subjects.

Be it the Jallianwala Bag massacre, or the lives of Jawaharlal Nehru or the Rani of Jhansi, or the valiant deeds of pre-British-rule heroes like Shivaji or Rana Pratap, or the mythical romances of Amrapali and Nala-Damayanti, or the wit and wisdom of the Panchatantra, Jataka and the Birbal tales…the list is endless. Whenever I had accumulated the requisite sum of five rupees, I would run down to the para (neighbourhood) book shop, where a few Amar Chitra Kathas would be displayed by hanging them with clothes-pegs from a wire (in the manner of clothes drying). Flipping through a few, I would take my time choosing a new addition to my collection. And then the impatient rush home, and the losing myself in the colourful pictures, easy narration and crisp dialogues which made history come alive and which made myths appear believable.

I liked the Amar Chitra Kathas which retold the history of our freedom struggle, be it through biographies like that of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, or through incidents like the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. The school history books gave us the bare facts; my Amar Chitra Kathas infused those facts with colour, vigour and voice. These books could make me gnash my teeth in rage against the evil colonial masters; they could make me cry at the courageous deeds and deaths of the freedom-fighters.

But my most-est favourites were two mythical stories – Surya [the legend of the Sun God and how the love of Sanjana and her alter-ego Chhaya (shadow) mellowed him] and Samudra Manthan [The Churning of the Ocean - how the devatas (gods) tricked the asuras (demons) by using their strength to churn the ocean (with the help of the Mandara mountain and the snake Vasuki) to get the amrita (nectar of immortality) for themselves, without giving any to them].

Thank you, Uncle Pai (Anant Pai, whose brain child the Amar Chitra Kathas were), for all the knowledge - culled from history, religion, folklore, mythology - which you fed us so pleasantly. Thankfully, these wonderful graphic stories are still available and flourishing in bookstores all over India, for generations of children (and adults) to read and cherish.

DO SHARE YOUR MEMORIES OF PATRIOTISM.

MY MOST EMBARRASSING FAN-TASY

(Almost) Everybody goes through a FAN-tastic phase in life. One, at least. Or several, as in my case. Over those awkward, gangly-gawky growing-up years, I have been a fan of several different people from several different professions. Actors, singers, authors, sportstars…you name them, and I have had them up on my walls or deep in my heart.

Sometimes the adulation-relation has been a lifelong one – I just can’t get enough of Mr Amitabh Bachchan, for example. Or Agatha Christie.

But sometimes, the passion has been short-lived. And the intensity has been completely inexplicable once the phase passed. (OH MY GOD, HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO-O-O CRAZY ABOUT SO AND SO?) I have done this from oooh-to-eeks deflating journey quite a few times, actually.

Take the eminently-nonentity Rahul Roy. When he first appeared in the movie AASHIQUI, strumming a guitar and lip-syncing to the nasal-but-memorable songs by Kumar Sanu, floppy hair hiding half his face (and covering up for his complete lack of expressions), it was fan-dom at first sight for me.

I was all of seventeen, living in a hostel with a gang of girls (all in their swoony-moony adolescence), and completely swept off my feet by this screen-hero who waited for his girl with a bunch of flowers outside her typing school, who came from a broken home and hated his dad, who cried like a child in his mum’s lap when love seemed to turn sour.

Teenage romantic filmy classics like BOBBY and JULIE were before my time. For me, and some of friends in Lady Brabourne College Hostel (Lopa, this is for you), it was this ordinary, sensitive and vulnerable hero of AASHIQUI, who believed in love, not violence, who ruled our hearts and raced our pulses. We bunked college several times to watch and re-watch the movie. In fact, I think we saw it seven times in all. Six times at the theatres. And one time in a riskily madcap adventure.

Around eight of us had slipped off from the hostel with no intention of attending classes, intent on catching the matinee show of AASHIQUI once again. But the show (at the now-defunct LOTUS cinema, I think) was, as the board proclaimed, HOUSEFULL. Then one of us said that we could go and ask the nearby video-cassette rental shop if we could hire the AASHIQUI cassette and watch it at their shop premises, since it was not possible to watch it at our hostel. But the shop-owner did not grant us our request.

Very dejected, we dragged our feet outside the college, unwilling to go in. We loitered outside the strangely-named stationery shop, DOLPHIN (located close to our hostel and much frequented by us) and poured out our woes to the sympathetic young (and nice-looking) owner.

The chivalrous fellow immediately offered to help us damsels in distress. He invited us to his house (a three storey mansion right behind his shop), sent someone to rent the cassette and showed us the movie on his drawing room television. He even treated us to colas, a luxury for us perpetually cash-strapped hostelites.

When we returned to the hostel, giddy with another dose of Rahul Roy’s maudlin heroics and the Dolphin-owner’s generosity, we were severely scolded by the rest of our friends for being foolish enough to enter a stranger’s house. “You could have been raped, or kidnapped! The cola could have been spiked, you idiots!" they scolded, and not without reason.

But, being fan-atics, we paid no attention. Head in the clouds, we wore our fan-dom badge proudly and loudly, defending Rahul Roy against charges of non-acting, silly-sissy hairstyle and suchlike.

Once, my friend Lopa and I, the giddiest-headed-ever fans of Rahul Roy, walked straight up to a BATA shoe-showroom glass door, kissed the life-size poster of Rahul Roy smack on the lips (he appeared in ads for North Star shoes and apparel) and walked off again, much to the open-mouthed incredulity of the security guard. But then, fans are supposed to be crazy.

Thankfully, though, the Rahul Roy phase soon wore off, although I valiantly tried to keep the flame alive by faithfully watching his next few quite-unwatchable movies, and I mourned (a little) his passing into obscurity. Imagine my embarrassment when he turned up decades later, chubbier-than-before but as wooden-as-ever, with the trademark floppy hair in place, in that terrible reality show for all kinds of has-beens and never-was-es – BIG BOSS. And he won it, too. Everybody teased me about my old and near-forgotten crush on the now-portly (non)actor. I almost died cringing.

DO YOU HAVE ANY FAN-MEMORIES WHICH NOW MAKE YOU CRINGE?

MOVIES, MASTI, MAGIC

Near my childhood-home in Barrackpore, there was a run-down cinema-hall optimistically called Chitrabani (literally meaning ‘Picture and Sound’). The picture would jerk and shiver as if malaria-infected, and the sound was none-too-reliable, often petering out. The lungi-clad, betelnut-juice-spitting audience would roar their displeasure, disrupting the sudden, unexpected silence, and the man in the projection room would make frantic whirring noises, and the sound and the fury (on-screen) and the peace (off-screen) would be restored.

My dida (father’s mother) was an avid film-watcher, though she did not understand Hindi. My brother and I were allowed to accompany her whenever she visited Chitrabani, much to our wide-eyed (and cocked-eared) delight.

It was in the decrepit darkness of Chitrabani, perched on broken, bug-infested seats, desperately trying to get a full view of the screen between the oily heads of the people sitting in front of me (who would, invariably and infuriatingly, put their heads close to whisper at all the exciting moments), that I first met the tall and tragic Jai in the block-buster SHOLAY. I fell in love with the film (like the rest of India has for the last three decades: SHOLAY regularly tops the best-Hindi-movie-ever charts). And I fell in love with the actor playing Jai: AMITABH BACHCHAN (again, like the rest of India has for over thirty years).

On the huge, dirty-dynamic Chitrabani screen strode this intense-eyed, deep-voiced cynic-with-a-heart-of-gold, mesmerizing my seven-year-old-heart with his loyalty, wit, courage and sheer screen-presence. What clinched my captivation, I suppose, was his doomed-when-barely-blossomed love affair with the equally-reticent widow, Radha, and, of course, his death (sacrifice-to-save-his-buddy). Always a sucker for tragedy, I wept copiously and gloriously, returning home all wet with tears before the film ended because my brother had a high fever.

My dida thought I was upset because we hadn’t sat through till the end. So, next week, (SHOLAY is that rare film which runs for several weeks even in re-runs), the entire family went again for the ‘night show’; parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, all mellow and talkative after an early dinner.

Again the fast-paced SHOLAY-story cast its spell: the fascinating details of the lives of the villagers of Ramgarh, the drama of the good-evil conflict between the Thakur and Gabbar Singh, the Jai-Veeru friendship, the skirmishes in their battle with Gabbar Singh, their parallel-but-dissimilar romances, the many-mooded-songs-and-dances, the comic interludes, the swift, sudden strikes of tragedy.

Again I was caught up in the magic of Amitabh Bachchan, living (and loving, laughing, fighting, hurting) an intense-lifetime in those three hours. And again for me, the film ended when Amitabh (as Jai) dies, though I sat till the official end (when Gabbar Singh, the villain, is felled and Veeru, Jai’s buddy, reunites with Basanti, his belle), blankly gazing at the screen with sight-blurred-with-tears.

This was way back in 1980, much before the multiplex-experience. Till date, I must have watched SHOLAY over 25 times. Each time, I cry when Jai dies. Each time, for me, the film ends there.

WHICH MOVIE FIRST MOVED YOUR HEART? WHICH MOVIE STAR WAS YOUR FIRST IDOL?