I have said before that movies are often a slice of the zeitgeist that they were made in. If you know where to look, they provide treasure trove of information about how the people lived in those times, what were their main concerns and how they dealt with them. And one can get as much information from the story itself, as from other elements – casting, cinematography and my favourite, language. I have this almost fanatic obsession with the way language is spoken in movies and it makes me heavily biased in my judgement.
If you watch old Hindi movies, you will not find many traces of the Marathi culture that was dominant in many of the places that the stories take place in. And I don’t blame the makers. Movie making requires a lot of money and effort and if they are not sure that it will sell, they will not put in the money. Also, it is not fair to judge old movies by todays standards where the viewer is much more aware due to his healthy diet of movies/shows from around the world.
I do draw a line, however, when it comes to the so called parallel cinema of the 80’s. These were some great movie makers, making movies without any regards to the market. Authenticity was their highest priority. Naturally, one holds them to higher standards. That’s why the mishap of language in Bazaar irks much more.
Same thing happened recently when I watched Gaman. A beautiful movie about migrants coming from hinterlands to Mumbai in search of work. Great acting performances and yet, I am stuck on languages. The movie starts in a small town in Uttar Pradesh and the characters speak in a dialect. When Ghulam Hasan (Farooq Shaikh) comes to Mumbai to his friend Lalulal Tiwari (Jalal Agha), he meets the family of Lalulal’s girlfriend Yashodhara (Gita Siddharth). Yashodhara comes from a Marathi family and lives with her brother Vasu (Nana Patekar), her mother (Sulabha Deshpande) and father (Arvind Deshpande). And yet, none of them speak even a word of Marathi! If you show authenticity while depicting a UP family speaking in dialect, why not do the same for the Marathi family? Instead, we see the characters speaking Bambaiya Hindi that is too jarring on the ears. The question that all viewers would not understand Marathi is kind of mute because at times it is difficult to understand the UP dialect as well.
Why did this happen? The answers are complex and often rooted in the socio-economic realities of the time. These can even be traced back to the birth of Maharashtra and the subsequent mills strike in early eighties in Mumbai but I will not go there. Instead, I will restrict myself to world of cinema and theatre at the time.
I find this omission in Gaman especially interesting because of few reasons. During the 60’s and 70’s, Marathi theatre was thriving with new subjects and modern outlook. The names that were active in Marathi Theatre at the time read like the Who’s Who of Indian Theatre – Vijaya Mehta, Dr. Sriram Lagoo, Vijay Tendulkar, Girish Karnad – the list goes on. One of the main reasons that their plays got national recognition was due to the National School of Drama (NSD) in New Delhi. After Ebrahim Alkazi took over as director in 1962, NSD started looking for plays to perform for their students. They actively encouraged translations of Marathi plays into Hindi. The parents of Yashodhara in Gaman – Arvind and Sulabha Deshpande were themselves stalwarts of the Marathi theatre who formed their own theatre group Awishkar.
And yet, all this strong cultural ethos did not earn the Marathi culture a place in the Hindi cinema. Commercial movies did not show Marathi culture because they were not sure people would watch it. But why Gaman failed to do this is a mystery.
Things started changing during late nineties. Directors like Mahesh Manjarekar and Ashutosh Gowarikar established themselves in Bollywood. With the internet coming of age, the Indian audience started getting mature. Singham was one of first recent movies that showed a Marathi protagonist in a Hindi movie.
The music of Ajay-Atul was pathbreaking. The title song of Singham and Deva Shree Ganesha from Agneepath both have the quintessential Marathi rhythm instead of usual Bhangra or North Indian beat that used to be the norm for such songs. (This particular beat is a signature of the Ganesh festival processions throughout Maharashtra. This rhythm has been ingrained in my brain at a such a deep level that I get goosebumps every time I hear it. For example, a famous song during the 80’s was Deva Ho Deva Ganapati Deva from the movie Hum Se Badhakar Kaun.) They used dholaks and were dressed as Maharashtrians, the rhythm was North Indian, same one used in the song Jai Jai Shiv Shankar from Aap Ki Kasam and many other hit songs. Also dholaks are NEVER used in Maharashtra for Ganesh festival processions. They use dhols. There is a big difference, literally.
With Sairat, Nagraj Manjule created history. Marathi language was no longer a barrier if your content was strong. What this achievement will mean for the Marathi culture will be an interesting thing to see.
