Entertainment
Updated : Nov 14, 2014, 11:53 AM IST
More than four decades after it pioneered parallel cinema in Hindi and won a national award for best film in 1973, a restored Garm Hava (GH) is all set for a theatrical re-release.
The film scripted by late poet-lyricist Kaifi Azmi - which tells the story of the Mirza family at the time of the Partition sees, Halim Mirza (Dinanath Zutshi) leave for Pakistan as he feels there is no future for Muslims in India while his younger brother Salim (Balraj Sahni) stays back hoping things will get better – had run into considerable trouble with the censor board.
"They said the film will lead to rioting," remembers filmmaker MS Sathyu, "It took eight months of haggling and finally some prodding by then PM Indira Gandhi to ensure the film saw light of day."
It got invited to the Cannes Film Festival where it was nominated for the Palme d'Or.
“Unlike preparations on war footing we see in the run-up to the Oscars now, we were clueless. Some Academy members at Cannes saw the film, liked it and invited us to bring it to Oscars,” remembers Sathyu who alongwith the IPTA went through get hardships to raise the Rs 10 lakh spent on making the film then.
The film which was in a bad condition has been painstakingly restored at over 20 times that cost. A proud RD Deshpanday of Indikino Edutainment who oversaw the process said, “The greatest challenge we faced while restoring GH was to enhance the quality of the picture and sound without touching content. Tricky as the entire process was, the end result is something we are quite proud of.”
At the special preview actor Gita Siddharth was emotionally overwhelmed. “Whether its Balraj Sahni, Jalal Agha, Kaifi saab or the very young Farooq Shaikh who debuted in the film, we’ve lost so many people who were part of this film,” she told dna and added, “We were all part of the IPTA family and the seven weeks spent shooting the film in Agra felt like being part of a very long play for me.”
She told dna how the Balraj Sahni who enacted her father had to deal with his daughter’s suicide in reel life barely months after dealing with his younger daughter Shabnam’s suicide in real life. "That intensity and look in his eyes always gives me the goosebumps," she remarked and added, “It wasn’t easy doing the suicide scene where my character slashes her wrist with a blade and dies. Sathyu saab explained the shot and left it to me. That scene drained me completely. I spent most of the next two days retching and running a fever. Now it all seems worth it."
In fact so taken was the late auteur Satyajit Ray with her work that he wrote her a personal letter congratulating her. “He said, it would be an honour for him if I worked in his film. Imagine. He was a legend so tall in the world of film making and yet he was being so modest. I was very moved and replied that it would be my honour and privilege instead.” Siddharth eventually went on to do Sadgati, a telefilm, based on Munshi Premchand’s short story on caste-discrimination with Manikda - as Ray was fondly called – eight years later, a film which had Om Puri, Smita Patil and Mohan Agashe in the cast.
She also recollected how both Sathyu and Kaifi saab tried their best to get Begum Akhtar play the elderly matriarch. "Her family had reservations and at the last minute a local elderly brothel keeper, Badri Begum, was roped in," she remembered and added, "When Sathyu saab offered her the role she broke down. 'I ran away to Mumbai to become an actor and see where it brought me. Now you’ve come to offer me a role?’ she had asked him," remembered Siddharth who added, “She was far too old to travel and dub so the late Dina Pathak did it."
Sathyu told dna, “Given the polarised bigoted times we live in, GH is more relevant today than 41 years ago,” about the must-watch classic. It is a view shared by documentary filmmaker Satyen Bordoloi who wrote a book based on the film five years ago. "Look at the films on the Holocaust. Here 20 times as many died in Partition and all we have is a GH, Train To Pakistan and Khamosh Paani," he lamented.
Pointing out how corpus of funds was especially created to document the Holocaust cinematically in 1951, he said, "You see how since then there has been a concerted effort at putting together documentaries and features on the subject. So much so, that every year religiously there are a few contenders at the Oscars. Wonder why India with its long filmmaking legacy can’t get this right?"
He further said, "I hope GH is seen widely and its nuanced narrative understood in the socio-cultural perspective it is supposed to."
We too are keeping our fingers crossed.