Forever Yours

It is one of the most beloved plays of all time but has been recorded just once. Tumhari Amrita, performed by Shabana Azmi and the late Farooq Shaikh, was once an enormously popular play, not merely because of its powerful words but also because of its actors. Yet, there is only one recording of the play first performed in 1992, says the play director Feroz Abbas Khan, and also only one recording of its last performance at the Agra Literature Festival in 2013. “It was against the backdrop of the Taj Mahal and we were not sure of the vocal quality, so we recorded it,” says Khan. That was also a performance for which Shaikh asked for a photo, says Khan. “Usually Farooq wouldn’t bother, but that day he asked me to send a photograph,” says Khan. Some wounds do not heal, he says, talking about Shaikh’s death just a few days after the play. “They should not heal,” he adds. Khan, who directed two grand spectacles, Mughal-e-Azam: The Musical and The Great Indian Musical: Civilization to Nation, has now applied the sparsity and quietude of Tumhari Amrita to his new play Letters of Suresh. This play, written by Indian-American Rajiv Joseph, chronicles the lives of four people as they seek a connection through a series of letters. The play stars Vir Hirani, a young actor trained at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and also director Rajkumar Hirani’s son. Palomi Ghosh is also in a lead role. “I wanted to reclaim the power of language,” says Khan, at a time it has seen such degradation. What next from Khan? Well, if we’re lucky, we may just have a reprise of Tumhari Amrita. With an all-new cast?

Kashmir Calling

Obur is one of the five short films shot on an iPhone for MAMI (Mumbai Academy of Moving Image). Directed by Faraz Ali, it tells the story of a young man who has lost his mother. Ali and four other directors Archana Atul Phadke, Prateek Vats, Saumyananda Sahi and Saurav Rai were mentored by filmmakers Vishal Bhardwaj, Vikramaditya Motwane and Rohan Sippy. Obur deals with memory in the age of the digital cloud and the lives of marginalised people. Shot mostly with non-actors from Budgam, the film is as close to real life that it can get. The young man who plays Suppu, Aqif, was one of the people Ali saw at the horse-trading fair in the village. “We wanted someone like him who knows how to ride a horse on that slippery and slushy snow,” he says. And he looks magnificent while doing so. Shahnawaz Bhat, who plays a shopkeeper, is perhaps the only trained actor in the movie who works with movie productions as a casting agent and dialect coach. Jozia Mir, who plays Suppu’s mother, also does some local theatre. “There are a lot of restrictions on what you can and cannot do culturally,” says Ali, whose first-feature film Shoebox was shot in his hometown of Prayagraj in 2021. “There, too, I used local people as much as possible,” says Ali, who adds that it really bothers him when people onscreen do not speak in the language and accent of the geography in which they are based. Ali wanted to explore the relationship of digital cloud with memory. “The intangible aspiration of the cloud collides with the rural reality and the vagaries of Kashmir’s power supply when you realise what the boy is chasing is lost in the vast expanse of ether,” he says, of the intersection of technology and tradition. And then there’s the poignancy of not finding a direct photo of his mother on his phone when he does finally retrieve the data. Obur is at once haunting, funny (with its irate shopkeeper of the Hollywood Home Centre and his agitated burkha-clad assistants) and also tragic as Suppu steps into adulthood while organising his mother’s funeral. As a Kashmiri, I have often cringed at the way the accent is depicted onscreen and listening to the actors in Obur enunciate Hindi and Kashmiri the way it is spoken in Kashmir was like a balm.

The Other Thackeray

He’s the other Thackeray who will soon step into public life, but unlike cousin Aaditya, it will be in cinema. Aaishvary Thackeray has been working hard for five years with dance and action lessons and now it seems he is ready for his close-up. Aaishvary is the son of Smita Thackeray, social activist, film producer, and former wife of Jaidev Thackeray. Both Aaishvary and Aaditya are grandsons of Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray. The late strongman’s photographs often pop up in Aaishvary’s Instagram feed.

Aaishvary ThackerayBollywoodcinemaFaraz Ali