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mahesh dattani and shashi deshpande discuss music, profile actors and non-actors
Of BEAUTIES and BEASTS
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`There's one thing I envy about today's generation: the openness.'
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AS SHASHI Deshpande looks around for a place to sit in Mahesh Dattani's cosy study, Mahesh points to the photographer, and asks: "Decide your place, depending on which is your better profile, right or left!" Unfazed, Shashi laughs: "What if it's neither?!" And that sets them talking about notions of beauty, our biggest non-acting `profile' hero Manoj Kumar, his equally non-acting female leads...
Both Shashi and Mahesh have recent accomplishments to talk about: Shashi's novel, Moving On, has just been released and Mahesh's play, Dance Like a Man, made into a film by Pamela Rooks, is showing in cities across India. But as the conversation moves on its own steam, neither seems inclined to ponderous academic debates or self-congratulatory talk.
BAGESHREE S. brings you excerpts from the conversation, with due apologies for not being to find print equivalents for the uproarious laughter that flowed freely through it...
Mahesh: Don't you think beauty is more of a self-image because other people would call you good-looking?
Shashi: Well, I'm yet to meet them!
Mahesh: Maybe they are too scared to say it because you look so formidable.
Shashi: I promise you I wasn't fishing!
Mahesh: I wasn't sort of biting the bait either. I was talking of perceptions...
Shashi: I know what you mean. Smita Patil, for example. To me she looked so beautiful. But I wonder how she would have looked to someone in Maharashtra. Being dark is a crime there. You are shaped by it. But I think she was amazingly beautiful. I admire beauty enormously in a man or a woman.
Mahesh: Was beauty something you admired when you were a young girl?
Shashi: No, only now! It's a whole-hearted admiration. It's a great quality. Never mind if it's transitory.
Mahesh: I suppose what makes beauty so precious is that it's transitory.
Shashi: Right, look at Saira Banu. Look at her now. I think Waheeda is one of the few...
Mahesh: Yes, she's as charming as ever... Sharmila too. I saw Gautam Ghosh's Abar Aranye recently and she looked so charming in it.
Shashi: And what about Hema Malini? The woman wasn't good looking when she was young... And she'd (be coquettish) all the time. But so was Sharmila. My God, she would (be coquettish) even when there was a wall in front of her! But my image of her changed when I saw Devi.
Mahesh: The whole look changed when she was in Satyajit Ray's films. There was this completely natural look in Apur Sonsar too. This look completely left her when she came to Hindi films. The entire get-up, the hairstyle changed. Her dimples were highlighted dramatically.
Shashi: You must have seen lots of films.
Mahesh: Yes, my mom was fond of movies and we used to go together.
Shashi: How nice. My father hated movies... Wouldn't allow us to see them.
Mahesh: But did you see a lot of theatre?
Shashi: There wasn't theatre then like there is today. There were just occasions when plays were staged... We went to a movie once because my father wanted to watch the Films Division documentary they were showing with it. It came in the interval. The minute it was over he said, `Off we go.' My heart broke! My only access was movie songs. I adored them. We would listen on Radio Ceylon.
Mahesh: Radio Ceylon was my introduction to English music. I grew up in a traditional family and there were no English books or music available at home.
Shashi: So there was English music too on Radio Ceylon? I didn't know that!
Mahesh: It was the music of the '50s that we listened to in the '70s. Arts didn't travel so fast those days... But it's not as if I always feel nostalgic for `those days'.
Shashi: Neither do I...
Mahesh: For instance, there were plenty of horrible actors and actresses too then!
Shashi: Yes, Manoj Kumar, Rajendra Kumar... How did they become actors? Oh, those Manoj Kumar profiles...
Mahesh: He was another one for left profiles! He would show all those nubile women dancing in the rain and then there would be a close-up of him turning away, as if to say it was is all wrong! So he got the audiences coming and also got the super image of being a patriot...
Shashi: Raj Kapoor did it better. The gusto with which he showed his women!
Mahesh: Do you remember that underwater scene with Padmini in Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hain?
Shashi: Padmini was quite a lot of body also! Simi in Mera Naam Joker was much less.
Mahesh: And it was ingenious the way Raj Kapoor showed his women. He never gave you the feeling that camera was lingering on a body part, unlike a lot of later filmmakers who made it seem sleazy. Not to say Raj Kapoor was any better than them!
Shashi: No, he was a dirty old man...
Mahesh: ...And a dirty young man too! Like Manoj Kumar, Raj Kapoor also took you on a journey of voyeurism and brought you back to say, `The values have to be intact.'
Shashi: But the worst are some of these remixes. Just ugly.
Mahesh: Yes. The first one I saw was `Ye Wada Raha...' It's such a beautiful song. And when I saw the remixed video version, I just couldn't believe my eyes!
Shashi: Even `Thoda Resham Lagtha Hain...' in which a young Aruna Irani looks so sensuous. It's a song done with such sensuous grace. The remix version is hideous.
Mahesh: Remember Caravan in which Aruna played a gypsy? Asha Parekh too was in it. But Aruna just stole the show.
Shashi: Obviously, Asha Prekh wouldn't have a chance!
Mahesh: The way she used to bat her eyes! What took the cake was Love In Tokyo in which she plays the Japanese woman.
Shashi: And those hips were so un-Japanese.
Mahesh: In the kimono they stood up like a volcano about to erupt!
Shashi: I don't know if it had something to do those directors then, but all of them acted so badly.
Mahesh: Mala Sinha, Babita... all of them.
Shashi: None of them have one memorable movie... All vacuous. An entire era of non-actors and non-actresses...
(The tea arrives then and the conversation shifts gear to the pleasure of sipping tea in Mahesh's study with tree branches peering through the window — a window that has no grills and makes one wonder how no thief has ever broken in!)
Shashi: Even if some thief did get a ladder to the second floor, he would look at all the books and decide it's not worth it!
Mahesh: Yes... Did you grow up with books around you?
Shashi: Life was all about books... no beauty and no boyfriends! Even those who had boyfriends had to have them stealthily. And it's terrible when you have to hide and be furtive. That's one thing I envy about today's generation: the openness. Karnatak College in Dharwad had separate rows for boys and girls then.
Mahesh: Looking back at my own college days, I think it was a time when I was exploring a lot of things. Politics, sexuality, everything...
Shashi: In the '70s when you were exploring things, I was involved with children and uniforms. Those 10 years of my life I was nothing but a mother. I can't remember a book I read or a movie I saw. The years were wiped out in the sense of me being alive in other ways.
Mahesh: You think you sublimated that feeling in your writing?
Shashi: I think that's how the writing came. It sort of exploded.
Mahesh: That's what gives your writing a remarkable power. It appears tame at first, but you read a little and begin to feel the strong power.
Shashi: Lot of anger came from a sense of not mattering at all for being a woman. I was reading an article about medical spouses this morning. The writer says how difficult it is for the male spouses, but is quite OK for the female spouses because they can sit and talk about servants and children. And it struck me like a blow. Come on, it wasn't OK! That was exactly why I started writing! Those years I was continuously angry...
Mahesh: As they say, the personal is also political.
Shashi: Yes, entirely... This whole world of people who are ignored was waiting inside me to explore as a writer... It's a big world, it's everywhere...
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