Arguably, the most poignant tale on Partition, M.S Sathyu’s “Garm Hava” enjoys great goodwill among critics and students of cinema but somehow the public lost touch with the film for its negative aged badly and apart from making some stray appearances on Doordarshan, Salim Mirza didn’t find favour with the satellite channels, looking for more shine than substance. Now it has been restored through a painstaking process but the film was never about technique. It is about the humanism that it conveys through the lines and the pain that oozes between them. And that remains as prescient as it was four decades back. So are the performances, which Sathyu says came about because some like-minded people came together.
At the core, “Garm Hava” is about the choices we make and the consequences that we have to shoulder. Salim Mirza, a shoe manufacturer in Agra, decides to stay in India while his brother shows faith in Pakistan. His decision came to haunt him both at the professional and personal level. While his prospective son-in-law migrates to Pakistan leaving his daughter distraught, his business suffers for nobody is ready to advance money to a Muslim, who could migrate to Pakistan. His mansion is dubbed as enemy property. Mirza keeps on saying the sacrifice of Mahatma Gandhi will not go in vain but his confidence comes across as naivety in the communally charged atmosphere.
Looking back, Sathyu doesn’t betray a sense of clairvoyance. “It was my first film. We got some money from Film Finance Corporation and had a story to tell. It was never in our mind that we are making a classic. We just wanted to justify the story.” The story came from the conversations that he and his wife Shama Zaidi, a long time collaborator of Shyam Benegal, had with Ismat Chugtai. The eminent writer’s relatives suffered during Partition when some of them left for Pakistan. The duo narrated the story to Kaifi Azmi who brought in his own experiences of Agra and leather industry. Azmi not only wrote the lyrics but also agreed to pen the dialogues, which he seldom did.
FFC gave Sathyu Rs. 2.5 lakhs which was a measly amount even in the ’70s. In that sense “Garm Hava” is one of the first true blue independent films to come out of India. “I borrowed money from my friends. Balraj Sahni, who was a good friend and with whom I had worked in IPTA’s plays, agreed to work for Rs.5000 and I could pay Farooq Shaikh only Rs. 750. Still, it took me 15 years to repay the loan.” Among the like-minded people, whom Sathyu says he didn’t need to tell much, there was a surprise casting of Badar Begum as the mother of Salim Mirza. “She used to run a brothel in Agra and when we offered her the role she got all misty eyed. She ran away from her home to Mumbai to try her luck in the film industry but could only make it as an extra in a couple of films. Disgruntled, she returned to Agra and eventually ended up in a red light area.” Sathyu tells us that her voice was dubbed by Dina Pathak.
In 1973, the film had to grapple with the Central Board of Film Certification for a year before getting the certificate. “They had doubts that the film could create tension in the society. Political leaders like Bal Thackeray and Lal Krishna Advani attacked the film. Advani wrote a review without watching the film. Later, when he became the Information and Broadcasting Minister, he apologised for writing on hearsay,” recalls Sathyu.
Some people still label “Garm Hava” as a Muslim social. “It is a skewed way to look at cinema. When there is no Hindu social or Christian social, how can there be a Muslim social,” asks Sathyu. On the contemporary relevance of the film, Sathyu says, “The whole political situation is moving towards communalisation and fundamentalist forces are going strong. In this situation I want to see how the young generation reacts to the film.” Sathyu agrees though the politicians and a section of the media would like to make us believe that the world has moved on and that the wounds of Partition have healed but the Muslims in India still face the same problems. They still face scorn when they go out to rent an accommodation in a Hindu majority area and their business interests are still under suspicion. “We are being told we have made economic progress but I don’t see it at the rural level. Even in the cities, one gets to see the progress only in certain parts.” He says the issues with Pakistan continue to trouble us because no solution can be reached unless there is some “give and take”.
On his limited filmography, marked by just one more Hindi film, “Sookha” — a moving account on the politics of drought, Sathyu says all the eight films that he made were deeply political in nature and such subjects find hard to get finance. “Such cinema has always been in minority. It was in minority then. It is in minority now.” Mysore Srinivas Sathyanaryan started as an assistant to Chetan Anand and is remembered for his art direction in Anand’s “Haqeeqat”. His friends call him Sathyu and it stayed on.
