Last year one met Mahesh Bhatt on the sidelines of a press conference of Epic channel’s series Khwabon Ka Safar with Mahesh Bhatt. The series is about iconic studios in the Hindi film industry. Will Wadia Movietone also figure in the series, I asked? Bhatt paused for a moment and said, ‘Subsequently may be?’ And then he realised the possibilities. “If Wadias are featured, my father (Nanabhai Bhatt) will also figure.” Exactly, does history also suffer from tyranny of taste, a phrase Bhatt loves to use to defend the erotic stuff that Vishesh Films churns out? In this case Wadias, who were known for films like Hunterwali and Hatim Tai, were sidelined for some other day. “The tyranny of taste is in the historians’ mind, who put the history together. They were governed by the way they were groomed in the universities. They were given a particular bent of mind,” said Bhatt.
Recently Sanjay Leela Bhansali was credited for bringing alive the valour and romance of Bajirao-I. However, blogger Vishnu Sharma, whose blog Itihas Gavah garners many hits, sees it as a lost opportunity to showcase how Bajirao carried forward the vision of Shivaji and brought the Mughal empire to its knees. “Call it is his inclination, but Bhansali preferred to play safe and stuck to romance and gave us an alternative to Jodha Akbar .” In the film Bajirao keeps saying hum Dilli ko jhuka denge but does hardly anything to that effect. Generations will know Bajirao but will they remember the blitzkrieg, a term coined by the British for his style of attack, or his attempt to establish Hindu pad padshahi (Hindu Empire)?
On television history gets distorted and stretched every day. First Rana Pratap refused to grow and now Ashoka is taking his own time to become an adult reducing the historical figures to just another character for general entertainment. Sudhanshu Vats, Group CEO Viacom18, says, “India is such a huge market that by the time somebody starts sampling my series, it is safely two months. So eight weeks are gone. In case you made 13 episode series, the entire effort is lost. In a niche series like 24 it can work but not with something like Ashoka which is for all of India. And then if people start taking interest in the series, the pace varies. The media is a very ruthless industry. We get our report card every Thursday.” It seems akin to FMCG market where new toothpaste takes time to reach B or C centres. It can work with a fictional character but with Ashoka? “We have to do it aesthetically. Some creative liberty is there but then we should not judge content. Let the audience decide.” Ironically, the story emerged from Bihar where there are very few TRP metres.
Then there are issues of research. It hurts even more when you expect quality from a channel or a filmmaker. One usually gets to hear that it is a feature film or soap and not a documentary. I still remember how much I cringed while watching Santosh Sivan’s Asoka where apparently Shah Rukh Khan, dressed in a cardigan like outfit, called the shots on the look and design of the film. Shyam Benegal’s Bharat Ek Khoj and Dr. Chandra Prakash Dwivedi’s Chanakya are great examples of how authenticity can be achieved even in a limited budget. But even Benegal tripped in some scenes in Mammo and Zubeidaa .
Recently, director Gurbir Singh Grewal noticed one blunder on a channel where it was said Gen. AAK Niazi surrendered to Lt. Col. K. S. Aurora. “Strange the channel must have previewed the programme before telecast. A shame that they are not aware of great Army Officer Lt. Gen Jagjit Singh Aurora, Chief of Eastern Command in 1971 who made Gen Niazi surrender. But they give a statutory note in the beginning that programmes are only for entertainment, so it hardly matters when General becomes Colonel and J. S. becomes K. S.”
This week in Aligarh , a film about Prof. Srinivas Ramchandra Siras, Hansal Mehta didn’t change the name of the professor and the journalist who reported on the case but opted not to show the façade of the Aligarh Muslim University. The Department of Modern Indian Languages was turned into Department of Marathi. Later in one shot we can read both on the wall. But when we are made to digest a gangster wielding a machine gun in Bombay in 1950s in Bombay Velvet , pointing out Hansal’s indiscretions sounds like nitpicking.
