Yeh Un Dinoñ Ki Baat Hai — loosely translated, Once Upon a Time — is about the era when stardom was more about grace than glamour; when crafted words were reserved only for the camera but candour prevailed off screen; and, above all, when Urdu was very much a part of India’s language landscape and not considered alien.
It is refreshing to read such a book — pen portraits, reflections and reminiscences of bygone-era actors, directors, writers, lyricists and music directors appearing in various now- defunct Urdu publications — at a time when stars ‘open up’ to film journalists but actually set out on an exercise in self-promotion, revealing very little of their minds.
The pen portraits, of some of the biggest names of the time, weren’t composed by the pen of journalists on the film beat, but processed in the minds of people who were big names themselves. The contents page says it all: ‘Meena Kumari by Nargis’, ‘Ashok and Kishore Kumar by Iftekhar’, ‘Suraiya by Ismat Chugtai’, ‘K. Asif by Naushad’ and so forth.
The very title of Nargis’s piece, Meena — Maut Mubarak Ho!, is a telling commentary on the film industry: how a star adored by the public can actually be haunted by loneliness and indifference. She congratulates Meena Kumari on her death because “this place is not meant for people like you.”
Then there is Kaifi Azmi talking about Sahir: “...I certainly wish Sahir to collide with a rock that can shatter his identity into pieces. This clash is essential to awaken the capabilities in him.” Today can you imagine a poet making such a brutal but well-intentioned comment about a fellow poet? Sahir also figures in the reminiscences of music director Jaidev, who never tasted the success he deserved: “I am not in denial about Sahir’s contribution to my achievements. However, he is the one who is responsible for my downfall too.”
Budding filmmakers should not miss the piece of Satyajit Ray by Javed Siddiqi, who gives a rare insight into the working style of the maestro — and also slips in this paragraph: “A renowned Bengali director had once said with a malicious snigger: ‘His craving for publicity just doesn’t subside. He freezes every two minutes to enable Nemai Ghosh to click his pictures.’”
And come to think of it, all these writings had long disappeared from public space and public memory until Yasir Abbasi tracked down private collectors — akin to finding a needle in a haystack. With the needle he has stitched together a book that has added many more years to the era we thought had died.
Yeh Un Dinon Ki Baat Hai: Urdu Memoirs of Cinema Legends ; Yasir Abbasi, Bloomsbury, ₹699.
