Unsung and unrecognised brigade of BollywoodMovie-watching has traditionally been a larger-than-life experience. That may no longer apply in the YouTube and smartphone age, where a screen can be smaller than the length of one’s hand, but most people still agree that the proper way to experience a film is on a big screen—even if the definition of “big” has shifted from a 70-mm hall to a 42-inch plasma TV.
No wonder that when people meet movie stars in real life, they are often taken aback by how small-statured and “ordinary” they seem—it is as if, at some sub-conscious level, we expect to see golden-skinned, 12-feet-tall demi-gods out of a Tolkien fantasy. But what about the people who really are “little” in terms of not being the marquee names—the ones whose contributions are constantly overlooked or undervalued?
Two things recently set me thinking about the small heroes. The first was Krishna Shastri Devulapalli’s fine novel Jump Cut, which is about a man named Ray trying to avenge the injustice done to his recently deceased father, a writer who was exploited by a powerful producer. The book has a prologue in which the child version of Ray and his sister watch the preview of a film that their father has worked on. Eyes fixed on the screen, they don’t dare blink until the title card they have been excitedly waiting for appears. “It says ‘Story, Screenplay and Dialogue by Vasant Raj’ in big letters that fill the screen.” That must be the father’s name, thinks the unprepared reader, but then comes the coda: “At the bottom of the screen, in barely readable letters, is the legend: Associate: Raman. Then it is gone.”
In terms of tone, Jump Cut is what you would call a light novel–the writing is warm and fast-paced, and there are many inspired comic passages. But the essential note of melancholia struck by that opening passage never quite fades; we never lose sight of Raman’s disappointments and his efforts to maintain his dignity. Ray’s quest to right the wrongs done to his father becomes more urgent, more worthy of a reader’s emotional investment, because through the book we are also privy to the dead man’s diary entries— these writings reveal the inner world of a taciturn, intelligent man who deserved better from life.
Around the same time as I was reading Devulapalli’s book, someone sent me a YouTube link to a song sequence from a 1964 film titled Aao Pyaar Karein. The sequence (which you can see here: bit.ly/Y3OF1m) has the hero, Joy Mukherjee, dancing with a friend who is daintily play-acting as a woman. The young supporting actor looked familiar to me when I first saw him, but it wasn’t until a few moments had passed that it struck me like a thunderclap. Here, clean-shaven and dressed in a formal suit with a bow-tie, was the actor MacMohan, who would many years later become famous to audiences for his role as Gabbar Singh’s minion Sambha in Sholay, sitting on a rock with a rifle in hand and answering his master’s questions. That role would lead to any number of parts as the main villain’s henchman, but in the black-and-white clip from 1964 MacMohan is unrecognisable from the screen persona he would eventually inhabit. His movements during the dance are lithe and graceful even during a strip-tease that ends with him in vest and striped shorts.
At this point in his career, Mac was probably a young actor hoping for a big break. If he had been better-looking (not that good looks are always a prerequisite for a Hindi-film leading man!), he may even have hoped for something bigger. Yet he ended up being known for what was essentially a one-line part, and this role stalked him forever. There is a very moving scene in the 2009 film Luck by Chance, in which MacMohan has a cameo part as himself. He is visiting an acting workshop, where the enthusiastic students ask him to say the line that made him famous. Mac looks down, pauses for a moment, then looks up and says the three words. “Poore pacchaas hazaar.”
Cynical viewers might call this a case of a man being invited to participate in self-mockery. But you can also see a performer making an effort to “act” for the two seconds it takes him to say the line. In its understanding of dignity of labour, the scene reminded me of Satyajit Ray’s short story Patol Babu, Film Star, in which a middle-aged man hired to play a part in a film discovers that all he is required to say is “Oh”, but then gets over his disappointment by uncovering the possibilities contained in the word.
Of course, there are many other cogs of film-making that operate, literally, behind the screen. Gregory Booth’s book Behind the Curtain: Making Music in Mumbai’s Film Studios is about the neglected foot-soldiers of Hindi-film music—the people who played the instruments in orchestras, arranged scores and in many cases made as vital a contribution to the final product as the music directors did, without getting a fraction of the recognition. These include the many members of the Lord family, beginning with Cawas Lord, who may or may not have participated in the scoring for India’s first sound film Alam Ara in 1931.
Cawas’s sons Kersi and Burjor carried their father’s tradition forward, and it has been estimated that over a period of four decades every third Hindi-film song had one of the Lords working on it. Some of these “back-stage musicians” didn’t even know which song would be appearing in which film. Their experience was at a huge remove from that of millions of Indian movie-lovers who have been enthralled by Hindi-movie music for decades; viewers who, when they hear a song like “Maang ke saath tumhara” (from the film Naya Daur), think of Dilip Kumar and Vyjayanthimala on the horse-cart instead of wondering who played the instrument that simulated the clip-clop of the horses’ hooves. When Kersi Lord, now well into his 70s, got a special award at a function, he admitted to feeling nervous when he went up on the stage. “I am simply not used to live applause,” said the man who had helped bring alive some of our most beloved film tunes.