A Tamil story by S Ramakrishnan, translated by B.Chandramouli
From Public Domain
That town had fewer than a hundred homes. Children playing in the street looked at them curiously when they alighted from the car. Kandasamy called one boy and asked him where Venangulam was. That boy asked him mockingly, “Do you want to do a penance in the Venangulam pond?” and pointed him towards the south.
His wife, their only daughter, and the astrologer who had brought them to perform the penance got out of the car. The astrologer tightened his loose dhoti and said, “This is a powerful pond, Sir; all your ‘dosha[1]’s would wash away.”
Kandasamy nodded and started walking towards the south.
Kandasamy had been suffering for over ten years with a skin disease; he had suffered an unexpected loss in his business. There were problems in his daughter’s in-laws home as well. As if these were not enough, he lost an old lawsuit he had been fighting in court. He felt as though the snake in the Snakes and Ladders game had brought him down. He visited many temples, performed pujas[2] and penances; nothing had worked. Only then did an astrologer tell him about Venangulam and the story of the king of Venangulam himself, who had dipped in that pond to get rid of his doshas. Kandasamy felt a sense of hope and agreed to visit Venangulam.
It was a small village with red tile roofs and somewhat broad streets. However, the people had nearly deserted it; some houses were locked up. When they went to Venangulam, they found it to be dry; the steps were dusty. There were four idols on the four sides of the pond.
Doubtful if that was Venangulam, he asked a person splitting logs nearby, “Is this the pond for penance?” That person nodded yes and continued his work.
Kandasamy stood on the dried-up pond’s steps and waited for his wife and daughter.
He wondered if they had come there not knowing that the pond had dried up; he felt angry thinking, “Didn’t the astrologer inquire about this even?”
The astrologer, Kandasamy’s wife and daughter, came near Venangulam.
The pond was full of torn clothes, dried leaves, and plastic waste. Kandasamy said to the astrologer, “There’s no water in this pond.”
The astrologer said,” It had been dry for several years. You get down, imagine that there is water, and sprinkle water on your head.”
“How can I bathe without water?” asked Kandasamy angrily.
“Can you see the sins you have committed with your eyes? But doesn’t the mind feel them? Similar to that, this pond contains invisible water; if you feel that and have a bath, your sins will wash away. Belief is everything, isn’t it?”
Kandasamy descended the steps of the dry pond. Though the pond appeared to have only ten or twenty steps, as he descended, the steps seemed to keep going down forever. Kandasamy kept on descending the steps alone. He did not know how long he had been descending, but when he looked up, it appeared as though he had descended into an abyss. He had not yet reached the bottom of the pond. The steps still kept descending.
He got confused, thinking, “What kind of magic is this? How did this small pond become so huge?” Various thoughts crowded his mind. He thought of how he had deceived his elder brother when they ran a joint business, and how he had cheated money entrusted to him. All these past sins returned as memories.
How can a person who deceived his own brother not fail in life? Suddenly, his elder brother’s face flashed in his mind. In that minute, the thought that until then, he had been pretending as though he had committed no mistakes bothered him. Kandasamy felt that one’s mistakes become weightless when hidden, but once you start realising them, they feel heavy.
Kandasamy realised he was descending the steps of his conscience.
He felt that to relieve himself of his sin, he must return the money he had cheated from his elder brother to his brother’s family. No sooner had this thought occurred to him than he felt a sudden wetness on his feet. The step beneath him seemed to be underwater. He pretended to bend down and sprinkle the water from the pond onto his head.
When his wife asked him loudly, “What are you thinking, standing on the steps?” he came to his senses.
Thinking, “Have I not gone to the depth of the pond? Was it all in my imagination?” He looked closely at the pond. He saw only dried steps and a pond without water.
He realised that the pond awakened the conscience and made you understand the crimes you have committed. It was indeed a magical pond.
He pretended as though he had had a bath and came out of the pond.
The astrologer said, “Think of something in your mind and throw coins into the pond.”
He took coins from his pocket and threw them into the pond, thinking that he would pay back the amount due to the family of his elder brother.
The idols’ eyes in the pond seemed to smile at him mockingly.
S. Ramakrishnan is a writer from Tamil Nadu, India. He is a full-time writer who has been active over the last 27 years in diverse areas of Tamil literature like short stories, novels, plays, children’s literature and translations. He has written and published 9 novels, 20 collections of short stories, 3 plays, 21 books for children, 3 books of translation, 24 collections of articles, 10 books on world cinema, 16 books on world literature including seven of his lectures, 3 books on Indian history, 3 on painting and 4 edited volumes including a Reader on his own works. He also has 2 collections of interviews to his credit. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2018 in the Tamil language category for his novel Sanjaaram.
Dr.B. Chandramouli is a retired Physician. He has published several translations. He has translted Jack Londen’s novel, White Fang and Somerset Maugham’s Razor’s edge (2024) to English and various English translations of Tamil fiction and non-fiction.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Based on Paul Gauguin’s life is a book by Somerset Maugham[1] called Moon and the Sixpence[2], a novel about a stockbroker who abandons his profession to become an artist. Gauguin[3] was a stockbroker turned artist, and Maugham was trained a physician but opted to write books and became a famed novelist. While earning a living as solely a writer has become increasingly difficult through the world unless you make it very big like JK Rowling[4], and therefore, most writers opt for being part time writers while holding full time jobs, we do have a few strange aberrations. One of them is Dr Kiriti Sengupta, who turned to publishing and poetry abandoning his profession — that of a dentist.
Kiriti Sengupta: Photo Courtesy: Bitan Chakraborty
He ran away from his home and started writing in a small, rented accommodation in 2011-2012. And now he writes, works as a director in one of India’s top upcoming publishing concerns, Hawakal, and rolls out poetry. Sengupta describes his former profession with, an underlined sense of irony, and perhaps with tongue-in-cheek humour:
I prefer patients who are edentulous. I dread a tooth will wrangle my expertise, and I’ll fail to make an impression. (Rituals, 2019)
Wisdom the third molar adds to the surgeon’s expertise (Oneness, 2024)
He writes about water and the environment:
Water has many colors, smudging pebbles along its path
(‘Spectrum’, Water has Many Colours, 2022)
Feed the earth water she flows in abundance. Allow the planet to breathe: the air is her consort. (‘Hibiscus’, Water has Many Colours, 2022)
He writes for and about women:
How many mujras dwell in a kotha ?
How many neonates hew to a bordello?
Like her admirers God is silent. In her sinews hides a hint of soil from the yard of courtesans.
*Mujras are courtesan’s song and dance performances *Kothas are brothels (‘When God is a Woman’, Rituals, 2019)
And yet critiques stances with a twisted questions:
You define women as Durga or Kali. Are you a believer? Are you being kind? You could have convinced them to fight the evil. Instead, when you imply the goddess, do you illustrate sisterhood with many limbs? Would you like men to act as Shiva—the destroyer?
(‘Primordial Learning’, Oneness, 2024)
Underlying all of Sengupta’s poetry, is a strong sense of irony which like a veil drapes words with double entendres. While the poems are layered, he dwells on human frailties too… like procrastination with a soupçon of sarcastic humour as in ‘From Being Late in Calcutta’ (Rituals):
As soon as you mark me I’ll talk about events that guide me to the records you maintain.
I’d say crowded buses invite passengers from unscheduled halts. I’d emphasize the number of speed-breakers on road, and their poor performance in preventing accidents.
I’d tell you trains run late. Signals are laggy between stations. I won’t forget to mention how a sudden protest makes the train stand still for hours.
I’d discuss about the day I reported late, owing to instantaneous suspension of underground train services as a man killed himself on the railway lane.
I’d ask you to remember why I came late the other day.
If you can recall, I had indigestion despite eating at home. I blamed farmers for sprinkling pesticides on crops. I pointed at my salary that failed to buy organic veggies.
And then, I’d invariably argue about maintenance and population.
I’d appreciate China, one-child policy, and their claim on how the government prevented four hundred million births. And how India thrives on the revenues earned from selling nicotine and condoms.
I’ll explore other issues the next time I reach late.
He pours out lines on stars, film stars and politicians. Sengupta responds to life with poetry, often terse, brief… sometimes with a wry sense of humour. But in the brevity, lies a depth of mystery, which you can mull and cogitate over endlessly. A flickering of spiritual beliefs and a seriousness of intent despite the apparent lightness of words create a conversation within the poems. In this exclusive, an award-winning author of more than fourteen books, Kiriti Sengupta takes us on whirlwind tour of his life, his ideas and his work.
When and how did you start writing poetry? Why did you switch professions — from a dentist to a poet-publisher? What compulsion made you turn from a lucrative to an uncertain profession? Were you sure you’d succeed? Please share your story with us.
First of all, thank you for inviting me to Borderless for a heart-to-heart, Mitali. I greatly appreciate your dedication to literature, especially quality work. Coming to your first question (a bundle of questions, actually), I don’t remember when I first wrote a poem. Coming from a dentistry background, I never imagined that I would write poems. Until then, I was well acquainted with journalistic articles, critical responses, cultural essays, and, of course, scientific papers. Poetry was out of the question. I believe in karma. Maybe I was destined to write poetry. It wasn’t a deliberate choice. It wasn’t a spontaneous stance either.
I was passing through an obnoxious personal crisis that compelled me to reconsider my career in dentistry. I was comfortably placed in a government institution, enjoying a considerably thick monthly salary. In early 2012, I decided to leave my job and spend some time with myself. However, as you can understand, it was risky, as I was the only breadwinner in my family, which consisted of my wife and son. I had no career options to pursue.
I was new to social media back then. I had the opportunity to become involved with a virtual group, Indies In Action (IIA), run by Stephen L. Wilson. They were raising funds for the victims of the devastating earthquake in Oklahoma. I contributed a few poems to the literary anthology Twist of Fate(ToF), which Steve edited. It was hugely successful, and all proceeds went to the May Tornadoes Relief Fund, managed by United Way. For the promotion of the book, I interviewed a few eminent contributors, such as Bill Lantry, Terry Lucas, Colin Dardis, Marshall G Kent Sr., Allison Bruning, Maggie Rascal, Don Martin, Linda Bonney Olin, Maria Edwards (the then President of the American Authors’ Association), Ency Bearis, among others. Honestly, they all helped me become familiar with the world of poetry.
In 2013, my first book, The Unheard I, was published. It was released simultaneously in India by Dhansere Prakashan and in the United States by Inner Child Press Limited. It was non-fiction, although it contained two chapters dedicated to poetry. In his commentary, Stuart Aken remarked, “It is a scholarly [collection] that will appeal to those with an interest in poetry, particularly spiritual poetry expressed as literature, as well as [to] those who have a leaning toward or a significant interest in Indian myth and religion.”
Even then, I had no plans to pursue writing (or publishing, for that matter) as my career. Gradually, I evolved, and here I stand today. Do I call myself successful? I’m not sure whether I have turned into a consummate writer. Since I write poetry in a niche market worldwide, it is challenging to become a “successful” poet and earn enough royalties to sustain my family. As a publisher, oh yes, Hawakal has emerged as a leading traditional press that has published several writers and poets and enjoys its presence in New Delhi, Kolkata and Nokomis (Florida).
How long have you been in the literary framework? Was it a tough journey moving from dentistry to writing? How did your family respond?
My first essay was published in 1995 in the college magazine. I remember it was written for students suffering from anxiety and family expectations. While studying dentistry at North Bengal Dental College, I joined the All-India Freelance Journalists Association (AFJA, Chennai). My senior colleague, Dr. Falguni Maji and I were commissioned by Uttarbanga Sambad to write an article on the pottery art in Matigara (Siliguri). I was a regular contributor to “The Third Law” in The Telegraph (India). Later, I regularly wrote health-related articles for Ganashakti.
As I said before, I was initiated into poetry quite late. It was a challenging move as I had no formal training, but I was immensely blessed to have a few mentors who honed my skills and taught me the basics of writing poetry.
My family suffered badly from my career-shift. They had to compromise on their living standards. The initial years of becoming a full-time writer were dreadful, to say the least. From only one wholesome meal a day to just a pack of instant noodles for the day — I have personally experienced it all. I ensured that my family didn’t starve, nor did my son lose his schooling. However, their ceaseless support enabled me to survive as a writer and publisher.
How many books have you authored/translated and how many poetry collections, and within how many years? Do you see yourself more as a poet or as a publisher/editor?
I have written fourteen books of prose and poetry, and as a translator, I have two full-length collections of poems. I have also edited nine literary anthologies, including Shimmer Spring, an all-colour, hardback coffee-table book published during the pandemic, which addresses our perceptions of light.
Honestly, I see myself as a patron of Indian arts, literature and fine arts (painting, sculpture, etc.). I’m an admirer of Indian textiles, too! I love buying drapes, be it a saree, a shawl, or a dhoti, in rich fabrics. Bitan and I have plans to start a men’s brand of drapes. We are working on it.
You claim you are a slow writer, and you isolate yourself in a ‘studio’. Tell us about your poetic process. How do you write? What inspires you to write? Are you influenced by any writers/musicians, or artists?
You know, Mitali, we have two studios in India: one in Kolkata and the other in Delhi. These ateliers are essentially stations where we work on the submissions from authors — we read, select, edit, and design the books we publish. We invite authors and readers to have a one-on-one. Readers also drop by to buy a book or two they want. You see, these studios are not meant for our writing. I say “our” because Hawakal is the collective enterprise of Bitan Chakraborty (the founder director) and me. While Bitan oversees the Bengali department, I supervise the English-language division of Hawakal.
It’s difficult to describe how I write. Anything that stirs my imagination or fancy, whether a line from a song, an incident, or a tragedy, often inspires me to pen my thoughts. I am fond of ekphrastic poems and frequently visit art exhibitions to catch a thread or two. However, it takes days or weeks to write a poem, although most of my poems are short or very short. I believe in condensing my thoughts, which is a time-consuming affair.
Your first collection of poems, Healing Waters Floating Lamps (2015), was largely spiritual, while your latest, Oneness (2024), covers multiple aspects of life that may not be purely spiritual. Some of the poems in your later works are also ironic or verge on humour. A gap of nine years and multiple publications reside between the two books. Has there been a change or a progression in your poetry through your journey? Do you feel your poetry has changed?
Healing Waters marks my debut full-length collection of poems. Prior to this, I released 4 books, including My Glass of Wine (2013), which featured autobiographical poetry. My journey as a poet has led to a noticeable evolution. Scholars are more suited to examine these transformations. Some observe that my language and craft have become significantly more refined. They argue that my recent works display a level of sophistication. Conversely, others suggest that my earlier poems felt more spontaneous and grounded. Embracing evolution is crucial; without it, my growth as a writer would stagnate.
You translate from Bengali. Tell us who all you have translated. Have the translations impacted your own poetry. Do you feel translations should be literal or more focussed on capturing the essence of the language?
As I said before, I translated two volumes of Bengali poetry into English: Sumita Nandy’s Desirous Water and Bibhas Roy Chowdhury’s Poem Continuous—Reincarnated Expressions. I am delighted that these books have received rave reviews in India and overseas. Moreover, Hawakal recently released the 10th-anniversary edition of Poem Continuous, which has garnered critical appreciation.
Other than these books, I have translated a few contemporary Bengali poets as well: Ranadeb Dasgupta, Gourob Chakraborty, Rajeswari Sarangi, to name but a few. I can confidently tell you that translating Bengali poems has hardly influenced my work.
Whether translations of poems should be literal or more focussed on capturing the essence of the original is debatable. However, it is even more critical to ensure that the translated piece qualifies as poetry in the first place. If the piece does not read like a poem, regardless of the sincerity of the translator, the labour of translating the original work goes into vain. Every language comes with its own nuances. So, the translator should possess an excellent understanding of both the source and target languages.
Hawakal is regarded as one of the most important publishing houses for poetry in India. When and how did you join Hawakal as the director of the English section? How did you meet Bitan? Could you tell us about the journey?
Thank you for your kind comments on Hawakal, Mitali. Bitan Chakraborty established Hawakal in 2008 in Kolkata. He published numerous Bengali poets until I joined him in 2015. A common friend Kishore Ghosh introduced Bitan to me. Ghosh, a Bengali poet of some renown and a journalist, urged Bitan to publish a collection of literary criticism based on my work and that of Sharmila Ray. The book was titled Rhapsodies and Musings: poets in the mirrors of other eyes and authored by Ketaki Datta and Tania Chakravertty. So, we started our collaboration. Eventually, Bitan induced me to become one of the Directors of Hawakal.
Where do you see Hawakal travels as a publishing concern? What is the scenario like? Do you only bring out writers of Indian origin, or are you open to writers from other backgrounds? What does Hawakal look for in writers to publish with you?
For the past few years, Hawakal has been more focussed on fiction and non-fiction manuscripts. There is no dearth of poetry submissions, though. However, it’s challenging to find an authentic voice. We have published American poets like Dustin Pickering, t. kilgore splake, Marshall G. Kent Sr., Gary Manz, and others. Ethnicity isn’t a limiting factor for someone who wants to get published by Hawakal.
We really want to establish a steady foothold in the United States. Our tiny outlet in Nokomis is currently managed by Dr. Robertson James Short II. It has to grow big. Hawakal seeks original work, and we yearn for quality submissions.
Do you have any suggestions for young writers?
Aspiring writers or poets should read more and be well-versed with the works of contemporary authors. It is important to get published in journals, and accepting rejections from the editors is equally beneficial. Getting published should be a slow process. As the saying goes, there is no shortcut through the forest of life…
An Indian newspaper published an article about adults who still read Tintin and I realised that although I would have liked to be interviewed for that article, my qualifications were inadequate, for there is no ‘still’ in my particular case. I only began reading the comic when I was grown up. In fact, I only read it properly in the past few years, and I am more than half a century old. True, I did read one or two of his adventures when I was young, but I read them half-heartedly, I don’t know why, instead of with unalloyed delight, as they ought to be read. Possibly they were too elaborate for me back then.
Yes, Tintin is elaborate, but this doesn’t mean it isn’t simple. Yet it has the kind of simplicity that seems complex to the very young reader. There are plots and subplots, conspiracies and clues, and all of this is perhaps a bit much for the mind of a child more familiar with the primitive antics of Dennis the Menace or The Bash Street Kids from The Beano. Each of Tintin’s exploits seemed beyond reasonable length to me, too adult and requiring a heavy investment of my time and intelligence. I speak, naturally enough, only from a personal perspective. In some households, Tintin was read by minds younger than mine, understood and enjoyed too. I was clearly a late developer.
Thanks to a remarkable bookshop in Bangalore, I have been able to obtain the comic books in omnibus editions and catch up with what I missed out on. It intrigued me to learn that the elements I had regarded as impossibly modern in my youth are now quaintly dated. Tintin’s adventures are not hugely dissimilar in tone and setting to the adventure stories of John Buchan1 and they even put me in mind of Somerset Maugham2 at his most sensational, with their heavy reliance on seaplanes and tramp steamers and open-topped automobiles. The pacing is as fast as The Thirty-Nine Steps or Greenmantle, the atmosphere as exotic-colonial as The Moon and Sixpence or The Narrow Corner. There are differences too, of course, but the differences are less surprising.
The pacing is incredibly fast and Tintin blunders his way into scrapes and pickles almost as if destiny has chosen him for the role of spanner in the cogs of the workings of villains, which in a way it has (if we regard Hergé as Fate). He is highly competent most of the time, but can also be inefficient and even inept, often hampered as well as helped by his dog, Snowy. But no quantity or quality of hampering can keep him down for long, he is deft at seizing the opportunities of coincidence that extreme contrivance throws his way. He is fully the equal of any ancient hero from legend or mythology.
And he is mentally strong: no amount of trauma, no near-death incidents or hair-breadth escapes affect him psychologically. He falls out of an aeroplane, an assassination attempt by a dastardly pilot, and his parachute malfunctions. A flat character on a flat page is about to be flattened on the flat ground, but no, he has the singular good fortune to land in a hayrick being transported on a cart. There are no broken bones and no gasping for breath. He picks himself up, dusts off a few straws, resumes his mission with perfect aplomb. One might even say he is inhuman in his attitude to danger. A touch of psychopathy, perhaps? But he is a friend of goodness, an enemy of criminality.
He is also weirdly tolerant of the pompous ineffectiveness of all the sundry supporting characters who populate his existence. Thomson and Thompson, the detectives who never get it right but always take credit for cases solved in their vicinity, provide comic relief, which justifies itself, but even a cursory analysis of their deeds raises a few awkward questions. How on earth are they entrusted continually with missions requiring the utmost delicacy, tact and cunning? They are negative factors in the field of detection, hindrances rather than boons, a pair of slim buffoons (we normally regard buffoons as portly) with a strange sartorial taste and peculiar speech patterns, dramatically underperforming sleuths who are prone to take what they are told at face value. They are worse than useless; they are beneficial to the continuance of evil.
It was a long time before I was able to tell them apart but now, I know they are doubles rather than twins, and that the one with the drooping moustache is Thompson and the one with the flaring moustache is Thomson. In the original French, they were Dupont and Dupond, which is a little less confusing but not much. Tintin ought to have nothing to do with them, but he is always delighted to see them and treats them as highly competent and valuable colleagues. This is a symptom of his own occasional incompetence. But this has nothing to do with India and so we must regretfully forget them.
Tintin travels to India on several occasions. In Egypt, he daringly escapes a firing squad, requisitions an aeroplane, a 1929 de Hallivand DH-80 Puss Moth, one of the highest performing aircraft of its time, with a 130 hp (97 kW) Gipsy Major engine (this aircraft is also notable for being the first to cross the Atlantic from east to west, in 1932) and he courageously, some might say foolishly, sets off for India. Unlike the pilot Nevill Vintcent3, who flew the exact same aircraft from Britain to Sri Lanka (Ceylon, as it once was) without crashing, Tintin runs out of fuel and comes down in the jungle.
Although extremely absurd, the idea of piloting such a plane so far isn’t as implausible as it might appear. We should remember Maurice Wilson4, that very noble but eccentric mystic who planned to climb Mount Everest solo in 1934, forty-six years before Reinhold Messner5 managed the feat, and of course it was inevitable that he would fail, for all the odds were against him. Despite his lack of flying experience, he purchased a de Havilland DH.60 Moth, a more rickety aircraft than the one Tintin used, and flew it from Britain to India in a series of hops. It was a lunatic thing to attempt and yet he succeeded. His failure was on the mountainside, not in the air. Therefore, we have established that Tintin really could have flown to India from Egypt.
Tintin, after his crash landing, meets elephants in the jungle and he wishes to solicit their aid but he doesn’t know their language. He decides to learn it and improvises a trumpet in order to do so, carving the instrument from a block of wood with a penknife, an amazing feat of carpentry (but in Land of the Soviets he creates a new propeller in a similar manner). Now he can fluently talk to all elephants in their own tongue, for elephants apparently speak in a kind of jazz. It is good to have such magnificent animals on your side. One elephant is worth a dozen human friends when it comes to strength and endurance. And they will never forget a service rendered. That, as far as I’m aware, was Tintin’s first visit to India, but he had another a little later.
Tintin in Tibet, often regarded as his finest adventure, finds Tintin visiting Delhi in the company of Captain Haddock, that boisterous, drunken, bumbling, loquacious master mariner who frequently makes matters worse rather than better. They admire the Qutab Minar, as I did, awestruck, when I was in Delhi. I have since learned that the Qutab Minar was based on a tower in Afghanistan, the Minaret of Jam, which must be the most marvellous name ever devised for a tower. I imagine it is made from apricots and strawberries and I lick my lips as I contemplate it. But this has nothing to do with Tintin, who after leaving Delhi travels to Kathmandu and then overland into the mountains. He meets a Yeti and scares it off with the flash of his camera.
The Tintin comics always had a very substantial fanbase in India and letters from Indian readers often were mailed to Hergé. It is therefore unfortunate that a Tintin adventure set entirely in India doesn’t exist. Personally, I would be happy to see one set in Goa. In the 1990s, a nameless artist designed a series of t-shirts bearing images that are parodies of the Tintin book covers with the title “Tintin in Goa” on them. They show the intrepid reporter doing nothing intrepid at all, simply lounging about the beach or going for a joy ride on a motorcycle. Even a comic character as psychologically resolute as Tintin needs a holiday once in a while. What better place for a relaxing stay?
John Buchan ((1875–1940), Scottish peer, writer and editor ↩︎
Neville Vintcent (!902-1942), South African aviator ↩︎
Maurice Wilson (1898-1934), British soldier, mystic and aviator, who died trying to climb Mt Everest solo ↩︎
First mountaineer to ascend Mt Everest solo, without oxygen in 1970 ↩︎
Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Since his first book was published in 1995 he has had fifty other books published and his work has been translated into ten languages.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
An exhaustive essay by Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, one of the best film critics from India, an editor and writer along with an interview with the writers of the book, The Ultimate Biography, on the film legend and genius called Kishore Kumar
Kishore Kumar
Introducing the Genius of Kishore Kumar
Singer, composer, lyricist, director, writer, actor — Kishore Kumar was all this and more. Apart from Satyajit Ray, I can think of no other person in cinema whose talents ranged across so many departments. As a playback singer, he had no parallels – not Mohammad Rafi, not Hemant Kumar, no one came close. As an actor, he was almost surreal in comedies like Half Ticket and Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi[1]. It is only because we do not view comedy as an artform at par with tragedy and melodrama that his contribution as an actor has not been acknowledged. As a director and writer, he balanced the almost surreal Badhti Ka Naam Dadhi[2] with the minimalist Door Wadiyon Mein Kahin[3]. It is immensely sad that he did not have more films and songs to his credit as a composer and lyricist.
Take a look at these dialogues —
Kya dekh rahe ho, Prashant?
(What are you seeing Prashant)
Uss raaste ko jo duur pahariyon ke beech kho gaya.
(I lost myself in that distant road among the hills)
Haan, musafir aur raaste ka gehra sambandh hai. Shayad uss raaste ko dekh kar tum apni naye safar ke shuruwat ke barey me soch rahe hogay.
(Yes, the traveller and the road has a deep relationship. Perhaps seeing that road, you are thinking of a new start for yourself)
Jindegi ek safar hai, Joseph sahab, aur uss raaste ka koi anth nahin. Har purani raah ek nayi raah ko janam deti hai aur manzilon ke silsile kabhi khatam nehi hote. Sirf uska saath denewale musafir badal jatein hai.
(Life is a journey, Joseph sahab, and that way has no ending. A new path is born of old roads and the stories never end. Only the traveller changes.)
Theek kaha tumney, Prashant. Saath denewala musafir hamesha badal jatey hain. Magar na jane kyon log phir bhi jazbaati ho jatein hai. Darasal zindagi ka maqsad hai zindagi ka saath nibhana, par tum in raston ka saath nibhakar chaltey ho. Aisa kyon?
(You are right, Prashant. The travelling companions always change. But people for some unknown reason become emotional. Actually, the goal of life is to be with life, but you walk along the paths. Why?)
Unhi raaston mein hi toh zindagi hai, Joseph sahab … kahin khushi, kahin ansoo, kahin dukh, kahin hahakar, kahin itni bhook aur lachari ki insaan par zindagi bhari hain, aur kahin itni khushiyan ki aadmi sambhal hi nahin sambhalta. Hamein in sab ka saath nibhatey chalna hai … uss anjaney andekhe path par … jiska koi anth nahin…
(Those paths is where you find your life, Joseph Sahab… Our Life is full of happiness, tears, sorrows, despair, sometimes it is full so much hunger and desperation that life becomes a burden and sometimes there is so much happiness that it spills over. That unknown, untrod path knows no end.)
So entrenched is his reputation as a comic star that it might come as a surprise that this exchange above was scripted, directed and acted by Kishore Kumar in one of his most atypical roles.
In the wake of his madcap antics in Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi (1958) and Jhumroo (1961), and the sustained lunacy of Half Ticket (1962, where he plays Vijaychand vald Lalchand vald Dhyanchand vald Hukumchand alias the child Munna, as also his own mother, in a performance that has no parallel in Hindi cinema), Door Gagan Ki Chhaon Mein[5](1964) was probably what audiences and critics of the era might have least expected from Kishore Kumar.
Why only audiences and critics? As film folklore has it, even elder brother Ashok Kumar was sceptical of his ability to deliver the emotion required for serious songs. Composer Chitragupt had reportedly composed the beautiful ‘Itni badi yeh duniya’[6](Toofan Mein Pyar Kahan[7],1966) only with Kishore Kumar in mind and even recorded it. Only to have the star of the film, Ashok Kumar, on whom the song was to be picturized, veto it. Ashok Kumar felt that his younger sibling did not have it in him to give the song the pathos it required and that only Mohammed Rafi could do it justice. The song was recorded again, this time by Rafi who did a brilliant job.
And yet in his directorial ventures, Kishore Kumar time and again presented a facet of himself that other filmmakers never tapped and no other producer had the vision to explore. Which is why each of these films had the singer multitasking as producer, director, actor, writer and composer.
Door Gagan Ki Chhaon Mein
Based on the 1958 Western The Proud Rebel, starring Alan Ladd, Door Gagan Ki Chhaon Mein is the story of a soldier, Shankar (Kishore Kumar), who returns from a war to find that his wife and father have perished in a fire that has destroyed his house. The trauma has robbed his ten-year-old son Ramu (Amit Kumar in his maiden film appearance) of his voice. Shankar sets out on a quest to treat his son and restore his voice. On the way, they are waylaid by a villainous Thakur (Raj Mehra) and his thuggish sons (played by Iftikhar and Sajjan). They are rescued by the kind-hearted Meera (Bengali superstar Supriya Devi), who shelters them and becomes a surrogate mother to Ramu.
It is unlike any film that Kishore Kumar had starred in (barring probably Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Musafir[8]). And though the inspiration may have been James Edward Grant’s story directed by Michael Curtiz, it is the influence of Satyajit Ray that is apparent in the making. The singer-director had reportedly watched Ray’s Pather Panchali[9] thirteen times before embarking on his directorial debut. The setting is rural (barring one sequence set in the city) and the director gives us a close look at the landscape, the ramshackle hutments, the swaying fields, the water rippling in the ponds, even the dog that follows Ramu every step of the way.
The film is of course now part of Hindi film legend because of its songs. Kishore Kumar himself wrote that ultimate father-son anthem ‘Aa chal ke tujhe’, a sequence that in the bonding between the two recalls the final sequences of Ray’s Apur Sansar[10]. Shailendra penned the other classics, including Koi lauta de meray[11]and Jin raaton ki bhor nahin hai[12]and two Asha Bhosle gems. But it is in the way that Kishore Kumar eschews all trappings of his comic persona to capture the little moments around the characters that the film stands out in the midst of the fluffy entertainers that characterised the era. Interestingly enough, Iftikhar, who plays the main villain, also designed and painted the film’s title cards.
The film was critically well-received, with even the impossible-to-please Baburao Patel of Filmindia calling it a film that “just misses out on being a classic”. Though not a big commercial success, the film did well enough, and Kishore Kumar had the last laugh vis-à-vis another film at the time which was expected to be a blockbuster. As Kishore Kumar narrated in his now-cult interview with Pritish Nandy, “It started with an audience of 10 people in Alankar. I know because I was in the hall myself … Even its release was peculiar. Subhodh Mukherjee, the brother of my brother-in-law, had booked Alankar for 8 weeks for his film April Fool[13], which everyone knew was going to be a blockbuster. My film, everyone was sure, was going to be a thundering flop. So, he offered to give me a week of his booking. Take the first week, he said flamboyantly, and I’ll manage within seven. After all, the movie can’t run beyond a week. It can’t run beyond two days, I reassured him. When 10 people came for the first show, he tried to console me. Don’t worry, he said, it happens at times. But who was worried? Then, the word spread. Like wildfire. And within a few days, the hall began to fill. It ran for all 8 weeks at Alankar, house full! Subodh Mukherjee kept screaming at me but how could I let go the hall? After 8 weeks when the booking ran out, the movie shifted to Super, where it ran for another 21 weeks! That’s the anatomy of a hit of mine. How does one explain it? … Can Subodh Mukherjee, whose April Fool went on to become a thundering flop?”
With Door Ka Rahi (1971), Kishore Kumar goes a step further with his character. Hindi cinema seldom has a drifter as the protagonist. As a people, we do not take to characters who do not have a definite goal in life – in the world of Hindi films that either means pursuing the girl you love or avenging the death of your family and loved ones. Prashant (Kishore Kumar) is unlike any hero in Hindi cinema. He does not have a love interest. He has no family of his own. He refuses to settle down at one place. Prashant reminds me of Larry Darrell, the protagonist of Somerset Maugham’s Razor Edge[15].
The film opens with a sequence of an old man trudging his way through the snow before collapsing. As he breathes his last, he reminisces about his life and the many people he has known and whose lives he has touched. There’s Karuna who wants to set up home with him, there’s a group of orphans he takes care of, there’s his friend Vimal (Abhi Bhattacharya) and his family that includes his wife and her brother Jeetu (Amit Kumar) who are being exploited by their local zamindar and moneylender. In the final episode of the film, he comes across a widow Monica (Tanuja) and her father-in-law Joseph (Ashok Kumar). He reminds them of George, Joseph’s son and Monica’s husband. Even as Joseph proposes that he stay back and make a life with Monica, Prashant has to take a decision on the larger calling that beckons him.
If one thought that Door Gagan Ki Chhaon Mein would be a hard act to follow musically, Door Ka Rahi goes one better with what are possibly the finest philosophical numbers in any Hindi film ever. No other Hindi film in my view has songs that so evocatively capture the essence of a film. If Shailendra’s ‘Chalti chali jaaye[16]’, rendered by Hemanta Kumar in a splendid baritone, echoes the eternal journey that is life, Irshad’s words in ‘Panthi hoon main’, ‘Khushi do ghadi ki’ and the ephemeral ‘Beqarar dil tu gaaye ja’ evoke a spirit that few lyricists in Hindi cinema have managed. There’s also Manna Dey’s ‘Ek din aur gaya’ and the Kishore songlet ‘Mujhe kho jaane do’.
Door Wadiyon Mein Kahin
While Door Gagan Ki Chhaon Mein and Door Ka Rahi marked a break from the standard film fare of the times and Kishore Kumar’s image as an actor, Door Wadiyon Mein Kahin (1980) demonstrated his penchant for experimentation – one that earned the filmmaker plaudits from none other than Satyajit Ray himself.
He not only did away with songs – in itself a huge creative decision given his stature as a singer – he decided to shun music altogether in the film. Thus, you have that rare Hindi film that does not have a background score. Instead, there is a remarkable array of natural sounds filling in – the crunch of feet on snow, the rustle of leaves, the soughing of the breeze, and silences which accentuate the bleak and forlorn ambience of the film.
The film begins with an extreme close-up of a pair of eyes watching a bird in flight against the vast expanse of the sky, accompanied by the azaan[17] on the soundtrack. The camera pulls back to reveal a man holding on to the bars of a prison window. Aslam (Kishore Kumar) is serving a term in this jail set in the middle of inhospitable mountainous terrain. He talks to the warden (Raza Murad – who is nameless in the film and is always addressed as ‘Inspector Sahab’) about how suffocating imprisonment can be for a man, and how envious he is of birds. At the first opportunity he gets, Aslam makes a run for it with his prison mate Ghulam Ali.
While Ghulam Ali dies during the escape, Aslam finds himself in a farm inhabited by a mother-daughter duo, Olivia (Bindu, in quite a turn with her grating voice, in one of her rare starring roles) and Jennifer (Shyamalee). His presence sets off a chain of events involving the women, both of whom take a fancy to this man from nowhere. Interestingly, if in Door Ka Rahi, Prashant is a free spirit refusing to be tied down to one place or any human attachment, in Door Wadiyon Mein Kahin, Aslam seeks to break free but fails. The escape from the prison only leads him to another one in the form of Olivia and Jennifer’s house. As he tells the inspector at the end, the world, life itself, is a prison. The only difference with his erstwhile prison is in scale. And the only escape lies in death.
The last of these atypical films that he directed was his final outing too – Mamta Ki Chhaon Mein (1989). Unfortunately, Kishore Kumar passed away while the film was in production and it was Amit Kumar who completed it. Unlike the others in this list, Mamta Ki Chhaon Mein is not a very distinguished piece of filmmaking with a dated story celebrating the greatness of motherhood that belongs more to the hoary 1950s. It is surprising that Kishore, who broke away from established mores in the other films, zeroed in on this hackneyed theme for his swansong, which looks more like a love-letter to wife, Leena Chandavarkar.
The film tells the story of Gauri (Leena Chandavarkar) who brings up her son Niranjan (Amit Kumar) single-handedly. She nurses a secret about Niranjan’s father which forms the crux of the film. Niranjan grows up with the question about his father haunting him all his life. He travels to the nearby town for his higher studies, and it is here that he comes in contact with a man (Raj Babbar) who claims to know Gauri and gives Niranjan an unsavoury take on her past. Niranjan confronts his mother, but she refuses to divulge her secret, leading to the two falling out. The rest of the film deals with the story of Gauri’s past and Niranjan’s realization that he has been unfair to his mother.
It’s a poor film in every respect but it’s impossible not to feel nostalgic about a film that recreates one of Kishore’s cult crazy songs, ‘Allah Allah … Bhagwan bhagwan’ (Hum Do Daku[19], 1967). Or one that has what is probably Kishore’s last playback for Rajesh Khanna (who has a cameo in the film), aptly titled ‘Mera geet adhoora hai’[20]. It was reported in the media at the time that the director had wanted Amitabh Bachchan in the role. However, the star was not forthcoming and that affected the relationship between the two. Kishore in fact hinted at this in an interview at the time and named Manmohan Desai as the one responsible for the rift between him and the star whose voice he was.
Then there is the music of course. A standout album, this has some of Kishore’s most lovingly crafted songs. He himself sings two gems while Amit Kumar has four numbers which count among his best, including ‘Main ik panchhi matwala re’ [21](which he had earlier rendered in Door Ka Rahi) and the life-affirming ‘Beeti jaaye’ [22](the mukhda[23] of which harks back to the antara[24] of one of his hits from Jhumroo, ‘Ge ge ge geli jara Timbuktoo’[25]. The composer in Kishore Kumar could not have asked for a better album to bid adieu.
The Call of the Distant Horizon
There are certain aspects that one finds in common across these films. An old man looking back on life. A loner as the protagonist – a man with a love for the road as well as the road less taken. A man with a unique philosophy of life. Time and again in these films you have the protagonist articulating that he does not know who he is, nor where he comes from or is bound for. As the character in Door Ka Rahi says – door ko apne qareeb bula leta hoon aur khud ko apne se door kar leta hoon (I embrace that which is faraway while I distance myself from me). There’s a lingering sense of the fleeting nature of life, a longing for a lost past. These lines from the film that Kishore hums hold true for almost all the protagonists across these films:
There’s an affinity for birds and the freedom they epitomize, for animals roaming in the wilderness, and for people at the margins, for example, the madman who befriends Ramu in Door Gagan Ki Chhaon Mein. And a genuine feel for harmony. It says something that the protagonist in Door Wadiyon Mein Kahin is a Muslim (the climax has a beautifully understated sequence where Aslam offers namaz while the police officer waits to arrest him) while Christians are pivotal characters in two of these films.
None of these films is set in a city. The cinematography (Aloke Dasgupta in the first two and Nando Bhattacharya in the rest) captures the everyday sight and sound of the countryside. There’s a song in a bullock cart in each of these films (barring Door Wadiyon Mein Kahin) which articulate a philosophy of life and that of the film – Door Ka Rahi and Mamta Ki Chhaon Mein begin with such a song. There’s a feel for the topography that is very ‘Western’ in its look. Parts of Door Ka Rahi evoke Shane[27]as the man rides from one destination to the next (Shane was probably a favourite of the singer as his unfinished film Neela Aasmaan[28]has a song, ‘Akela hoon main is jahan mein[29]’, inspired by Shane’s theme). Door Gagan Ki Chhaon Mein is of course based on a Western and Kishore invokes the look of the original at many places. Door Wadiyon Mein Kahin stands out for some breath-taking shots of the barren snowy terrain against which the drama plays out.
These film of Kishore Kumar may not have been great commercial successes. And his craft as a filmmaker may not secure him a rank among the best. There is however no denying his desire to go out on a limb and give us films that leave you with something to reflect on. He was seemingly unperturbed by the fact that the films wouldn’t run. As he told Pritish Nandy, “I tell my distributors to avoid my films. I warn them at the very outset that the film might run for a week at the most … Where will you find a producer-director who warns you not to touch his film because even he can’t understand what he has made.”
And yet he made them. Why? “Because,” as he said, “the spirit moves me. I feel I have something to say.”
On the evidence of these films, despite their flaws, the spirit behind them has the power to move the viewer too.
Book Review of The Ultimate Biography
Given the range of his contribution and the eccentricities that defined his personal life, a biography of Kishore Kumar that adequately covers his life and times is a tall ask. Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Parthiv Dhar’s exhaustive biography of the legend, audaciously titled The Ultimate Biography, pulls it off – well, almost.
For one, it is a pleasure to come across a biography of a legend like Kishore Kumar that does not seem like an armchair hack job (refer to, say, Aseem Chhabra’s book on Shashi Kapoor, Yaseer Usman’s on Guru Dutt, Rajeev Vijaykar’s atrocious ones on Laxmikant-Pyarelal and Dharmendra and the many banalities that go for biographies these days). At close to 600 pages, this one is a painstakingly researched tome. And it does not even talk about his repertoire as a singer in that great a detail. As co-author Anirudha Bhattacharjee tells me, “If I were to make a selection of even a hundred of his songs – an impossible task – and talk about them, this book would have gone beyond 2000 pages.”
Despite that, what the book covers by way of the trajectory of Kishore’s life is commendable. The authors have gone to great lengths to get first-person accounts, supplementing that with a great eye for trivia and other obscure facts. They incorporate all of this in bite-sized chapters, most of them three to four pages long, so that the reading never gets tedious. It also gives the book that essential quality in an era of short attention spans: you can open to any page and start reading. Though it does come at the cost of a detailed analysis of any one aspect.
And it is a delight to have such detailed indexes – a general one and a song index – in a book. Most publishers have abandoned the index to cut costs.
If I say the authors ‘almost’ pull it off, it is because the language leaves something to be desired. It could have done with a more rigorous copy-edit. The book gets off to an unfortunate start with the preface whose first paragraph had me scratching my head. And the inelegancies continue to haunt the careful, close reader off and on, with erroneous words, wrong sentence construction, often the syntax at odds. The authors seem to get carried away with the information they have to share, and some passages are a trifle overblown.
One would also have loved to see the authors playing it a little less safe, assessing Kishore Kumar vis-à-vis his contemporaries, or providing a more comprehensive reading of his directorial ventures. Or for that matter talking of what accounts for his popularity in the years after his death. During my growing years, I distinctly remember reading about him being dismissed offhand – Naushad’s comments are part of cinematic folklore (he in fact left the jury when it was decided to honour Kishore with the Tansen Samman). I grew up with people who swore by Rafi and Manna Dey, Naushad and Madan Mohan. And Kishore, despite his popularity, was someone who always came off second best in these conversations. Something shifted in the last thirty years. It would have been fascinating to understand what did. In response to my question on this, Parthiv Dhar says, “Nothing changed. Naushad was an aberration.” He goes on to mention the crowds at Kishore’s funeral. Which is not the issue here. Something in the way we consume music has led to a Kishore and RD [30] fandom like it probably never existed during their lifetimes. Why is it that with the opening of the airwaves, so to say, Kishore and RD have ruled almost all channels broadcasting music? None of their contemporaries – not Rafi, not Laxmikant-Pyarelal, definitely not Naushad or Mukesh – have enjoyed the kind of revival they have.
The authors do not leave anything out – but the text often tends to become a chronological litany of facts. Fascinating, no doubt. And invaluable. But I could never shrug off the feeling that a book that has so much history and offers such delights, with authors who know the subject so well and don’t stint on research, should have been a little more.
Interview
Tell us something about the process of writing the book. Given that all the dramatis personae are long gone, how difficult was it to put information together.
Parthiv Dhar: Anirudha-da and I go a long way. In fact, around 2004-05, we started a campaign for the Bharat Ratna for Kishore Kumar, and did quite a fair bit of work. Probably it was at that time that writing a book on Kishore Kumar crossed our minds. I remember, we were clueless on the structure of the book owing to the multidimensional persona that Kishore was. My visit to Khandwa in 2010 and Anirudha-da’s book on R.D. Burman (with Balaji Vittal) winning the national award provided the much-needed impetus. Graduating to Kishore was a natural progression.
The visit to Khandwa made me realise that it would be a crime not to write a book on him, given the paucity of knowledge. Kishore himself did not help matters much by being extremely economical with the press. The Khandwa and Indore visits brought me close to his friends and their families, his caretaker at the Ganguly House, his college professors who went out of their way in sharing with us breath-taking anecdotes and documents. Fittingly, the book is dedicated to Khandwa. Apart from that we had a fantastic time at Bhagalpur, interacting with his relatives like Ratna-di, daughter of his cousin Arun Kumar, getting a treasure trove of unknown events related to his maternal side. Meeting his secretary Abdul was also a high point in the making of the book.
The decision to structure the narrative by ragas and their times: dawn, afternoon, evening. You slot Aradhana[31] in the evening. I found that interesting.
Anirudha Bhattacharjee: The structure with ragas developed organically given the enormous amount of material we had. The first draft was over a 1000 pages long. Giving it the structure enabled us to get clarity. As for Aradhana appearing under an evening raga … Madhubala passed away in 1969. That was probably a setback. His mother too passed away after a year. Kishore’s tenure as a hero had almost come to an end. He was forty. If we go back in time, K.L. Saigal passed away at the age of forty-two. Critics were urging Lata to stop singing in the late 1960s. She withdrew from the Filmfare awards after 1969. Hence, we equated the time with the evening of their lives. And extrapolated it to Kishore Kumar’s as well. Kishore had great strength of character and turned the tide … but that’s another story.
Would you say that Kishore was the one true maverick genius of Hindi cinema, maybe even Indian cinema? The only other person who comes to mind is Satyajit Ray.
Parthiv Dhar: Kishore Kumar was a phenomenon, the likes of whom you rarely encounter. He was perhaps the only person in showbiz whose reel and real lives were mirror images of each other. Precisely why there was no reason for him to ‘act’. You never knew whether he was acting on screen or being his own self. That held true even for his real life. His ratio of hits to total songs composed must be one of the highest in the world. He tried everything that the camera and the studios offered but unfortunately there were occupational hazards that clipped his wings. Had some of his unreleased songs and movies seen the light of day, he would have been unassailable. That he did all these only by pure observations and without any formal training made him a genius. As Rama Varma told us in a chat, he had the ability to identify shortcomings in a particular guitar string in the midst of a session without even looking at the guitar or the guitarist. Genius would be too small a word for him. However, we have not assumed much in the book and left the readers to judge for themselves.
What in your view is his greatest contribution to the art of playback singing in India? The one thing that sets him apart from all the rest.
Parthiv Dhar: Definitely the fact that he made singing appear so easy that emulation became an everyday affair. The clones would, of course, realise that the songs were after all not everybody’s cup of tea. But everyone would attempt a Kishore song. The very fact that he was an actor made him think like one when he would playback. Also, he was perhaps the only one to develop his texture and baritone with infrastructural progress each decade after independence. This led to him being probably the only one to realize that tragic songs need to make the audience cry, not the singer.
Anirudha Bhattacharjee: All our male singers except Bhupinder and too some extent Yesudas have been tenors. Maybe the timber has varied, but they are tenors, nevertheless. In my opinion, K.L. Saigal, Kishore Kumar and Pankaj Mullick were tenors who had a unique quality in their voice: ‘dhaar’ and ‘bhaar’ (sharpness and weight). This they used to great advantage. For other singers, it was a case of either/or. Hence, Kishore could playback for Dev Anand using his ‘dhaar’ (Hum hain rahi pyaar ke[32]), complement it with some ‘bhaar’ and ‘mizaaz[33]’ when he sang for Rajesh Khanna (Kuch toh log kahenge[34]), and use his ‘bhaar’ when he sang for Amitabh Bachchan (O saathi re[35]). He also had a strong swarranth[36], which gave the songs resonance. Plus, his flux density was unique. Even with such a heavy voice, it would remain steady when negotiating long notes, something very difficult to achieve. I know from experience as I sing.
He sang Saigal’s ‘Dil jalta hai’ [37]in reverse, set the Malthusian theory to tune, introduced scatting, yodelling, nonsense/gibberish words (bam chik chik) to music in India … where would you place these innovations in his output? Do you think his comic genius came in the way of him being taken seriously as a singer for the longest time?
Parthiv Dhar: He was born to innovate, and his childhood is testimony to that. Lateral thinking and he went hand in hand. Domesticating jackals, singing in reverse, giving nicknames to almost every friend, composer … the list is endless. How he handled the goof-up in Baap re Baap[38]is a terrific example of his innovation. Similarly, making a wardrobe malfunction in Badhti Ka Naam Dadhi the reason for executing anything and everything as a director’s prerogative could be another.
However, it is probably not true that his comic persona had anything to do with his singing. He started his career with several serious songs while simultaneously making people laugh in his movies. He gained recognition as a serious actor courtesy his roles in Bandi[39] and Naukri and was known as a sufficiently good actor. He sang for all the top music directors till as late as 1958. That he had a long gap after that could be attributed to his preoccupation with Madhubala’s health.
Let’s talk about him as an actor … would you agree that as a comic he had no parallels in India? It is only because comedy is not regarded as a genuine art form in India that there has been little recognition of him as an actor.
Parthiv Dhar: A very difficult question and not proper to say that he had no parallels. It should not be forgotten that he was a hero in almost 99 per cent of his films, a fact renowned actors would be proud of. While reviewing Bandi, critics had placed him above his more famous brother (in those days). As mentioned earlier, he did not enact comedy, it was in his DNA although by nature he was an equally serious person. His comedy was a mix of slapstick, mimicry, antics. Very few would enact comic role as a hero for the entire length of time without appearing stale. Kishore Kumar had that quality.
Where would you rank him as a filmmaker? Do you think he tended to overcompensate for his madcap image with his own films which were ‘serious’? Door Wadiyon Mein Kahin is a rather daring experimentation, even if the execution is amateurish. Even Ray commended its sound design. Your comments.
Anirudha Bhattacharjee: As a filmmaker, he was a lateral thinker. He tried unique subjects. But the issue is that he got entangled in too many activities at the same time and could never devote himself properly to making films. Had he concentrated only on filmmaking, he might have made some great films. Door Gagan Ki Chhaon Mein and Door Wadiyon Mein Kahin could have been classics.
You devote an entire chapter to Laxmikant Pyarelal. His songs with LP are not spoken of as much. You correct that, though you focus on their early collaborations…
Anirudha Bhattacharjee: We focused on Mr X in Bombay[40], Sreemaan Funtoosh[41]and Hum Sab Ustaad Hain[42] primarily because these films gave him the dimension of a singer first and a hero later. Till then Kishore was viewed as an actor who also used to sing. People forgot Mr X in Bombay (it was a bad film) but remembered ‘Mere mehboob qayamat hogi’[43]. Ditto for SreemaanFuntoosh and Hum Sab Ustaad hain. Most did not even see these films. But ‘Yeh dard bhara afsana[44]’ and ‘Ajnabee tum jaane pehchane se lagte ho’[45] became classics. So, on one side, Kishore emerged as a singer, while the actor gradually faded into the background. LP had a key role in this transformation.
(Originally published in The Telegraph, Kolkata)
Shantanu Ray Chaudhuriis a film buff, editor, publisher, film critic and writer. Books commissioned and edited by him have won the National Award for Best Book on Cinema twice and the inaugural MAMI (Mumbai Academy of Moving Images) Award for Best Writing on Cinema. In 2017, he was named Editor of the Year by the apex publishing body, Publishing Next. He has contributed to a number of magazines and websites like The Daily Eye, Cinemaazi, Film Companion, The Wire, Outlook, The Taj, and others. He is the author of two books: Whims – A Book of Poems (published by Writers Workshop) and Icons from Bollywood (published by Penguin/Puffin).
[1] 1958 movie produced by Kishore Kumar, also the lead actor.
[2] 1974 movie directed by Kishore Kumar, also the lead actor.
[3] In the Distant Valleys, 1980 film directed by Kishore Kumar, also the lead actor.
Let me loose myself from the sight of the world
Where no one can find me:
No voices reach me, no tears be shed for me,
No straw, no inklings trace my thoughts.
Drape my body in a white shroud.
Even spirits should lose sight of me --
My being should only waft in the breeze…
Shantanu Ray Chaudhuriis a film buff, editor, publisher, film critic and writer. Books commissioned and edited by him have won the National Award for Best Book on Cinema twice and the inaugural MAMI (Mumbai Academy of Moving Images) Award for Best Writing on Cinema. In 2017, he was named Editor of the Year by the apex publishing body, Publishing Next. He has contributed to a number of magazines and websites like The Daily Eye, Cinemaazi, Film Companion, The Wire, Outlook, The Taj, and others. He is the author of two books: Whims – A Book of Poems(published by Writers Workshop) and Icons from Bollywood (published by Penguin/Puffin).
Borderless 