October 31st, 2010

Foreign front: When time doesn’t matter

I was still in school when my father dragged me to watch the film, Garam Hawa, insisting that I needed exposure to some good cinema. I was hoping that none of my friends would see me going in the cinema hall, as we ‘believed’ that this film was meant for ‘oldies’.

Films for us in those days meant masala films of Dharmendra, Jeetendra, Rajesh Khanna and others. Back then, I had never ever heard of people like Kaifi Azmi, Shaukat Kaifi Azmi, Balraj Sahni and the director M.S. Sathyu.

In fact for the first 10 minutes I didn’t even bother to look at the screen as I was still trying to peer through the darkness of the hall at other member of audiences who all appeared to be of my father’s age. But then things changed. The soft, gentle tone of Salim Mirza played by Balraj Sahni jerked me out the seat to ask myself “is this a film or a reality unfolding before me?” So subtle was his voice, dialogue delivery and expressions of helplessness and angst that I for a moment felt that I should run to him to hug and comfort him.

That was Balraj Sahni and after that film I made sure I watched all reruns of his brainless films like Talaash, Waqt, etc. In fact the film prompted me to coerce my friends to watch M.S. Sathyu’s next film, Kanneshwar Rama, a Kannada language film.

That was the impact Garam Hawa had on me.

The film based on the then unpublished story by the famed writer Ismat Chughtai was screen adapted by Kaifi Azmi (father of actor Shabana Azmi). There is no dearth of stories written on the horrors of Partition and there are innumerable tearjerker films made on the theme. But Garam Hawa, winner of several Indian and international awards, stands at the pinnacle of all films in this genre.

It deals with the plight of an average north Indian family who were undecided post-1947 whether to adopt the newly-created Pakistan as their home or to stay back in the country of their birth and the generations preceding them. Salim Mirza, a shoe manufacturer of Agra city, is the protagonist whose family decides to stay back, bewilderedly watching as friends and relatives migrate to the ‘land of the pure’. Every Muslim family is unsure what the future holds for it, and is faced with the dilemma of leaving or staying behind.

While Salim’s brother Halim (Dinanath Zutshi) migrates along with his family, his son played by Jamal Hashmi returns to marry his lady love but only to get arrested. In all this turmoil, Salim’s business gets into trouble as moneylenders refuse him additional amounts as they are unsure whether Salim will continue to stay back or leave for Pakistan. Everyone — be it those who decide to stay and those wanting to leave — is in search of peace and stability.

I know many youngsters may ask why talk about the film Garam Hawa today when we have all outgrown Partition. Why is there a need to re-release this film? If we look deep into what is happening in our society today, we realise that the migration is an ongoing process. Even today, we all face the same dilemma of moving on to new territory, making new friends, finding newer opportunity or living back and wining against all odds.

The reasons for moving to new territory may be various — terrorist attacks, floods, other natural calamity or simply trying to earn a decent livelihood. But the dilemma and uncertainties faced by Salim and others in the film are as contemporary as it was in the past. Only the causes have changed.

“That is one of the reasons why we thought of getting this 1973 made film restored in entirety without harming its narrative,” explained Subhash Chedda of Rudraa Entertainment who along with IndiKino Edutainment have worked on restoring and distributing the film.

He said, “Several student groups both in India and Pakistan are using the film for studying not only from the angle of film-making but also to serve as a peace broker among neighbouring countries and communities.”

The film, which perhaps is the only Indian film so far to be nominated for the Golden Palm Award at Cannes International Film Festival in 1974, took more than a year to restore. The old print was damaged at many places and dirt had got encrusted. While restoring every single frame (over 197,000) underwent a high resolution 2K scanning. Frames whose colours had faded were re-coloured. Missing frames were recreated by comparing them with adjacent frames. Even every sound byte was improved to fit into the present day sound systems. And all this was done without losing a single frame or adding anything to the original version.It is done in such a way that present generation viewers used to high-tech sound and picture quality shouldn’t get an aversion to the olden quality and watch it in its entirety. The film teaches us the quality of peace and the necessity to understand each other without shouting, sloganeering or pointing fingers. In Balraj Sahni we can identify every Indian, Pakistani, African American or any other person who has to make an all-important decision of leaving one’s home and hearth for an uncertain future.

This film by Sathyu-Kaifi-Sahni doesn’t offer solutions to our predicament but helps us understand it better. This is one re-release which we should watch. If it doesn’t get released in cinema halls, buy the DVD – Surekha Kadapa-Bose

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