Bollywood’s Urban Legends

Meena Kumari willed all her diaries with her poems to Gulzar. Lata Mangeshkar was close friends with Raj Singh Dungarpur. Devika Rani told Yusuf Khan to change his name to Dilip Kumar. Dev Anand was about to marry Zeenat Aman when she decided to do Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978) with Raj Kapoor. How many of the above statements are true or merely urban legends is something film writers have to be conscious of. The problem, as writer Anant Vijay said recently, is that there is a lot of fiction masquerading as fact, and primary sources are slowly dying. The greats amongst us need to be respected by knowing their work. Only then will they agree to being written about. Yatindra Mishra, who has written a highly regarded biography of Lata Mangeshkar, took nine years to do so, dividing his time equally between conversations with her and meticulous research, including locating old recordings which even she had lost. Also not everything published in magazines of the time was necessarily true—Baburao Patel of the popular Filmindia was quite trenchant in his observations and not always unbiased. Fortunately, a lot of work is now being done to either access primary sources or to assimilate and translate old diaries and books. There are state sources, such as the National Film Archive of India, private collectors, such as Cinemaazi set up by Sumant Batra, accounts by associates such as Rahul Rawail (for Raj Kapoor) and Faisal Farooqui (for Dilip Kumar), compilations like the excellent Sone Chandi ke Buth, an anthology of writer-director KA Abbas’ articles and essays, and, most importantly, accounts by participants in history, such as Gulzar and Javed Akhtar. There is also considerable work being done by scholars of cinema like Ranjani Mazumdar who is working on the changes in the film industry after the introduction of Eastmancolor in the 1960s. There are those who take cinema lightly and then there are those who understand exactly why it is important to know why a particular trend existed at some point, why some artists did well, and indeed, why some great films didn’t work commercially at the time they were released.

Playing Kashmiri

There are enough heroes in cinema. Now we have to make way for the broken and the broken-hearted, says Shashank Arora who plays the confused Junaid in SonyLIV’s new series Tanaav. “I wanted to play him like any ordinary boy who had grown up in Kashmir with schools shut most of the time, opportunities being limited, and frustrations high, a kid born in the middle of the conflict who has to pick sides,” he says. Getting local boys to help him in the pronunciation of Kashmiri sentences was a masterstroke, adding a touch of authenticity. The Delhi-born actor, who went to Shriram School and is the son of a poet, graduated from Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, before moving to Mumbai 13 years ago to play a series of flawed and raw outsiders in films and web series. From the unfortunate brother in Titli (2014) to the sardonic wedding photographer in Made in Heaven (2019), he has made a mark by hanging back, underplaying, and exuding emotion in waves. He has also made it his business to play Kashmiri. As the young writer Anhad Draboo in a totalitarian India in Dibakar Banerjee’s Freedom, made for Netflix, he is an open wound. “The two-and-a-half months in Kashmir spent shooting Tanaav were the best in my life,” he says, as he lazed around in Gurez Valley, ate fresh girda from a bakery he fell in love with, and just soaked in the peace of a state pausing between wars, when he was not running around Srinagar and Baramulla.

Scene and Heard

Ranveer Singh’s exit from YRF Talent after 12 years underlines two things. The studio is not as powerful as it once was in an industry where the established are struggling and that the films they have made with the actor haven’t maximised his potential. Ranveer has always considered YRF boss Aditya Chopra his mentor; so clearly, the decision to work with Collective Artists Network (CAA) now was not taken lightly. All eyes are now on Ayushmann Khurrana, YRF Talent’s other big star, who has been making films outside the banner for a while now.

Ayushmann KhurranaBollywoodcinemaRanveer SinghShashank Arora