Towards the end of a losing battle with cancer, Mani Kaul was like a poet of life at its last gasp. Though life was beginning to resemble a journey to the end of the night, hope sprang eternal in his heart. Almost tempting fate, Mani was working on the script of “Under Her Spell”, Dileep Padgaonkar's book that shows many unexplored facets of Roberto Rossellini's life. The director in Mani was indeed under a spell as he sought to beat an imaginary deadline to complete the script and start shooting for the film.
This renewed attempt at filmmaking came a little after he had expressed his inability to shoot for a film based on playwright Vinod Kumar Shukla's book “Deewar Mein Ek Khirki Rehti Thhi” due to failing health. He had completed the script, Shukla had done the Hindi draft. Yet, Mani could not get down to shooting. A contradiction, if there is any, but not surprising. Here was a man who let silence speak the most eloquent of words in his films yet was never averse to enjoying a full-throated laugh in real life himself. Like Rossellini, he believed that pretty pictures meant dull cinema; they pleased the eyes, numbed the mind. Greys, ruins, sorrow, inspired him. Unlike many escape artistes of the Hindi cinema, Mani was no fantasist. Not that he lacked humour or wit – just that his reality was often bleak. He was audacious, tenacious, full of ironies but blessed with an intrinsic honesty denied to many. His work compendium may not compare favourably with the likes of Shyam Benegal, Goutam Ghose and others, Mani's strength lay in playing to his convictions. At times his conviction of his righteousness and cynicism for the dream merchants was matched by the indifference of the industry, yet nobody can ever take away the credit from Mani for being the pioneer of New Wave cinema in India, almost like neo-realists in Europe a decade earlier.
A genius
A little understood genius in an industry high on nihilism, Mani sought redemption through his work; his work may not have been accessible or even comprehensible to many, its meaning grasped only by a discerning few, yet his work was his message. For all, the brilliance of Bimal Roy and the skill of the likes of Mehboob, V. Shantaram, the Hindi film industry till the 1960s was not much more than a carnival of commerce, judging a film by how much it made at the box office rather than its artistic worth. Mani bucked the trend, albeit for a while only, even notching up a couple of National Awards in the process.
Right from the time of “Uski Roti” back in 1969 where he lent a silent symbolism to Mohan Rakesh's short story about a woman waiting for her husband with his bread, to “Naukar ki Kameez” via “Duvidha”, “Satah se Uthata Aadmi” and later “Dhrupad” and “Siddheswari”, etc., Mani was a man who made films with a perspective not easily understood by most, and a skill-set reserved only for a few. The luminosity of his mind was matched only by the situations he tackled in films. In fact, in situations he found a certain “dhwani which led him to the raga”, as his old friend Padgaonkar put it. This ‘dhwani' came out most poetically in “Satah se Uthata Aadmi” which was based on radical poet Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh. It also started his association with the documentary-fiction genre. If in “Satah…” Mani exhibited great prowess with an innovative approach of a sutradhar, it was his minimalism that shone through in the film. All along, he used ragas to carry the story forward. It was here his dhrupad learning at the feet of Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar came to the fore. It was a scholarship that was to stand him in fine stead again as he displayed in a film on Siddheswari Devi. Here was a musician at heart and not just another FTII product making a film, doing something he was in love with.
Of course, Mani often blurred the boundaries between documentary and fiction, and films like “Dhrupad” and “Maati Maanas” extended the realms of possibilities of the genre. It was in this mode of filmmaking that his qualities of precision and profundity came in handy.
Ahead of times
Yet for all his genius, Mani did not quite get his due. His admirers often talked of his skills, his eye for detail, his scholarship in music, and his staunch principles. Yet in official circles, the voices were muted, and the commerce-driven filmmakers failed to acknowledge his brilliance that was way ahead of the times. Many thought his films were too layered, too nuanced, you take away a little pause, a little comma and the meaning of the dialogue, the scene would change.
Others, ironically, accused him of too much abstraction. Not that it mattered to Mani. He made films the way he wanted. He lived life his way, never being averse to even pulling off a few pranks on new and dear ones. Way back in 1970s, as Padgaonkar recalls, travelling by a public transport bus in Bombay he asked the seasoned journalist for five rupees as he did not have a penny in his pocket.
As Padgaonkar lent him the sum, Mani got down from the bus, hailed a taxi, and off he went!
Indeed, life for Mani Kaul was often about the pain of exploration and the joy of discovery. If his films could have melancholy as their tagline, his life was all about getting the right dhwani, the right raga.
Life may not have been a perfect symphony for the understated genius, but faced with unequal music he never went off key. His personal vicissitudes failing to dull his passion for cinema.
