Shabana Azmi – A Blend of Arth & Fire

Shabana Azmi – A Blend of Arth & Fire

Shabana Azmi has many ‘firsts’, like winning five National Film Awards, three consecutively, and six Filmfare Awards. She may be overtaken someday, but being the ‘last’ may never be challenged.

She is the last to grow up in a commune, where she woke up to the chatter of poetry, play, and music that alternated between theatre, cinema, and Marxism-Leninism. That era in India’s political and cultural life ended long ago.

Imagine, called Munni at home, she was given a formal name only when she entered school. Having grown up thus, she went on to study at a Convent school and Jesuit college, into arthouse cinema and then to the boisterous and commercial Bollywood. The daughter of poet-writer Kaifi Azmi and theatre person Shauqat has imbibed the parents’ qualities and passion in abundance.

Her equally illustrious husband Javed Akhtar, son of poet-writer Jan-Nisar Akhtar, also had a commune childhood. But he embraced Bollywood directly, without flirting with the ‘parallel’ cinema. The extended Azmi-Akhtar clan, with many creative people, can be called the new “first family”.

Of them all, Shabana is arguably the most versatile. She has carved a niche in regional cinema, especially Bengali, and has also gone global, in Hollywood and Britain. She is more like Shashi Kapoor of the original “first family”, the Kapoors. Both have promoted and practised ‘purposeful’ cinema. Only, Shabana’s effort, in and outside of cinema, has a political pitch, of the ‘progressive’. Her cue from her parents was that art should push towards change.

Although filmmaking is a team job, critics at home and abroad have noted that several of her films were cited as a form of progressivism and social reformism which offer a realistic portrayal of Indian society, its customs and traditions.

Emerging from Mumbai’s elite Saint Xavier’s College she had access, if not to Bollywood, then to children of Bollywood families among her fellow students. However, she chose to learn the art at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) and imbibed some Stanislavsky.

In her first release, Shyam Benegal’s Ankur (1975), the role of a married servant slipping into an affair with a student was risky and was rejected by established actors. Of playing an ‘adulteress’, she said in a recent interview: “I loved the grey shades in Lakshmi’s character. All along, I knew something exciting was going on.”

“Once Ankur was released, it was like a whirlwind. It was selected for the Berlin International Film Festival, in 1974. It gave me my first National Award for Best Actress. Ankur’s commercial success paved the way for other arthouse films. Had I not started my career with Ankur, my career would have been on an entirely different trajectory.”

Call it the lure of Bollywood, and why not? Despite this critical and commercial success in cinema shorn of formula, Shabana also partnered with Amar’s character in Manmohan Desai’s Amar, Akbar Anthony, a typical Bollywood affair. She did not get typecast.

Not ‘beautiful’ in the way Bollywood seeks its heroines, Shabana has a distinct desi charm and poise that convince the viewers. She counsels the newcomers today not try to look glamorous. The face matters.

Besides Benegal and Mannohan Desai, she reached out to Bengal’s Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Goutam Ghose who were then accused of “selling India’s poverty” at foreign film festivals. Over the years, straddling Bollywood and Bengal, she did roles immortalized in many Sharatchandra novels, playing the sensitive Bengali with aplomb.

Ray took a while taking her in Shatranj Ke Khiladi (1977) after having spotted her in Ankur: “Shabana Azmi does not immediately fit into her rustic surroundings, but her poise and her personality are never in doubt, and in two high-pitched scenes she pulls out all her stops and firmly establishes herself as one of our finest dramatic actresses.”

Shabana emulated her mother who would dress and act at home to practice her role in a play. A Bombay girl, she has worked hard to depict real-life characters, be it in slums or the countryside, studying and even joining their milieu to achieve a degree of authenticity. In Mandi (1983), to portray the madam of a whorehouse, she put on weight and chewed betel. Real-life portrayals continued in many films. She was Jamini resigned to her destiny in Mrinal Sen’s Khandhar (1984) and a typical urban Indian wife who fought back marital betrayal in Arth (1982) and a mother and homemaker in Masoom (1983).

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In Godmother (1999) that brought her the record-setting fifth National Award, however, her accent as a gangster from Gujarat lacked authenticity. Compare her with Supriya Pathak in an identical role in Goliyon Ki Raas Leela Ram Leela (2013) and you see the difference.

The personal gets emotionally enmeshed with the professional. This writer’s favourite is her role as the mother of Neerja (2016), having witnessed events that followed the 1986 terror attack on a PAN-AM flight and the turmoil in the family of senior colleague Harish Bhanot.

Air hostess Neerja Bhanot, killed by the terrorists won everyone’s admiration and sympathy. But an anguished mother Rama Bhanot’s oration at her daughter’s condolence meeting, as she struggled to spread calm, brought tears. “It was very difficult to play her, particularly the last scene where Rama addresses an audience,” Shabana, who won the Best Supporting Actress Award, said.

The arthouse or parallel cinema is now part of our heritage. Having transitioned after playing many powerful women roles, she explains why not many left a lasting impact. The problem lies elsewhere, in the way cinema is made and watched. “If you want change in cinema, it has to come from mainstream cinema. Otherwise, you are preaching to those already converted.”

Selecting roles can be risky. Deepa Mehta’s Fire (1996) depicts Shabana as a lonely woman in love with her sister-in-law. The on-screen depiction of lesbianism (perhaps the first in Indian cinema) drew severe protests and threats from many social groups as well as by the Indian authorities. Portraying the exploited can be exploitative. “Initially, I had my reservations,” she admits. Then she consulted her husband, Javed, who counselled: “If you believe that the film is not exploitative and you would enjoy doing it, then do it.”

Individually and together, the couple have taken up public causes. As lawmakers, they have been more vocal than most from the tinsel town. Javed rallied the Mumbai citizenry after the 2008 terror attacks.

Along with theatre and poetry reading, Shabana has participated in public campaigns against communalism, victims of natural disasters, Kashmiri Pandits, and AIDS victims. She lost in a Lok Sabha election and has campaigned for Left-leaning candidates.

In the present times, social media and not socialism, commerce and not communalism, reign supreme. Septuagenarian Shabana was recently in the news for her peck, in a film, on the cheek of an octogenarian Dharmendra!

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‘Manthan’ And The Churning It Triggered

The repair, resurrection and re-release of the film Manthan last month matched India’s political churning as toxic, divisive, yet aspirational elections neared the end.

The 1976 classic was part of India’s big splash at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. It was important as it came from France, the birthplace of cinema. It also recognised the few quality films out of over 2,400 films made last year. They helped the waving of the flag. But they also sent multiple messages that need to be noted.

Cannes was unique because its entries won in different categories. The one in the competition section entered after a 30-year gap, received applause for eight long minutes. Their appearances are not to be belittled, India is no longer confined to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra and others walking the red carpet.

Take the films first before reading the messages. In each of the three competitive sections, India won a major award. Grand Prix, the second-most award went to Payal Kapadia-directed All We Imagine As Light. It is an ode to Mumbai, the birthplace of Indian Cinema and despite its many flaws – Urbs Prima in Indis – India’s premier city. The three women protagonists who are there to make a living amidst chaos are portrayed by less-known actors – none from ‘Bollywood’.

This is ‘independent’ cinema and bears some comparison with the ‘parallel’ or New Wave cinema of the 1970s and 1980s. Manthan was one of the outstanding products of that era. Hopefully, the new string of successes may see some of the big money invested in commercial cinema getting diverted to such efforts.

Kapadia’s film bagged the second-most prestigious prize of the festival after the Palme d’Or, which went to American director Sean Baker for Anora. An AFP report says Baker and his films were “hot favourites” but the victory was “surprising as many expected either the gentle Indian drama or the Iranian film The Seed of the Sacred Fig to win.”

Cannes, it seemed, celebrated India last month and the Indians did not belie the expectations. Kapadia’s win shows poor public memory and poorer attention to documentary cinema. In 2021, her acclaimed documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing premiered at Director’s Fortnight and won the Oeil d’Or (Golden Eye) award.

She is an alumna of the Government of India-run Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). Called “anti-national” and punished for leading the protest against its then leadership, she took less than nine years to prove her mettle. Two more graduates have brought FTII glory. Chidananda S. Naik’s Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know… won the La Cinef first prize. And Santosh Sivan was bestowed the lifetime Pierre Angenieux Excellence in Cinematography award. Need one say anything more about FTII?

Many foreign awards have marked India’s century-plus cinematic journey. But few remember that they won global applause even before Independence. The first to be shown at an international film festival was Seeta a Bengali film directed by Debaki Bose. It won an honorary diploma at the 2nd Venice International Film Festival in 1934. Sadly, Bose’s feat, like many by Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Gautam Ghosh and others from Bengal, accused of “selling India’s poverty to the West”, goes unnoticed by what is arguably called the “Indian film industry”.

In 1946 came Chetan Anand-directed Neecha Nagar. At the first Cannes Film Festival, it shared the Grand Prix with eleven of the 18 entered feature films. It remains the only Indian film to be awarded a Palme d’Or.

Entries at Cannes last month showed international mingling of talent. The Best Actress Award, the first by an Indian at Cannes, went to Kolkata-born Anasuya Sengupta. She worked with Bulgarian filmmaker Konstantin Boijanov for a Hindi film, The Shameless. It is inspired by William Dalrymple’s Nine Lives. Neither Boijanov nor Dalrymple, a celebrity chronicler of South Asian history, is stranger to India and the world.

Manthan has been restored by the Film Heritage Foundation. One recalls the buzz Manthan caused when shown at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in 1977. It was a poignant moment for Naseeruddin Shah, who had debuted as an actor when he led the team at Cannes.

Among the few ‘survivors’ spared by the ravages of time are director Shyam Benegal, now 89, and cinematographer Govind Nihalani, 83. Tracing the “crazy journey” 48 years ago, Benegal says: “Now I can sit back as an old man and say, we did that.” The film achieved an impact that most entertainment films don’t. It’s by far my most influential work, he says.

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Come to think of it, Manthan was a propaganda film meant to promote milk cooperatives after their success in Gujarat. It is a far cry from the present-day films that engage in political propaganda, try to re-write or sidestep history and spread hatred.

Herein lies the larger message of India’s own ‘Manthan’ – the churning – as a nation that stresses synergy, not separateness.

It is about two ‘revolutions’ – ‘white’ of the milk, pioneered by Verghese Kurien and ‘green’ in the farm sector by MS Swaminathan. Benegal says: “To me, he (Kurien) was one of the two greatest men who helped develop the country in the first 50 years of independent India. The other was Swaminathan.”

Swaminathan’s daughter Sowmya, a renowned scientist, stresses: “My father taught me the importance of humility. He said the Green Revolution only came because of the synergy between the scientists, politicians and farmers, describing it as a symphony orchestra.”

Manthan was Kurien’s brainchild and he involved 500,000 farmers. With Rupees each contributed, it was India’s first crowdfunded film. Every actor gave his/her best. Particularly, Smita Patil, the spunky farm woman, who came to the cinema and left like a meteor.

Heading the bunch of young actors was Girish Karnad, who played a veterinary doctor wedded to the ideal of cooperation among farmers. Many thought he portrayed Kurien, an engineer who strayed into harnessing milk production and distribution in a milk-starved country.

The ‘green’ one has pulled India out of the shame of food shortages and dependence on free foreign food, like the one the United States sent under its law, “PL-480”. Today, India tops in many farm products, exporting them, and even having the means to import when needed.

India is the world’s highest milk producer, contributing 24.64% of global milk production in 2021-22. At over 220 million tonnes, it is a six-fold growth since the 1960s. The dairy and animal husbandry sector contributes five per cent to the country’s GDP.

The present generation needs reminding that it did not happen overnight.

Sadly, farming and dairying cooperatives, launched in the last century, have been taken over by politicians with little faith in the concept. Values and priorities have changed. The private sector and multinational corporations have stepped in.

Lastly, when Swaminathan was awarded Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian award, nobody thought of bestowing the same on Kurien.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com