1 bed, 5 pairs of trousers and 4 dream merchants
Following is the excerpt from
Scene: 75, a book written by Rahi Masoom Raza in 1977.
Scene: 75: Day: Post Office:
He had written this heading on the page at 8.30 in the evening. For the fourth time the director, Harish Rai, had said with some irritation: ‘ It’s incredible, Amjad! You can’t understand such a simple scene.’ The scene really was very simple. A munshi is sitting by the road, writing a letter, and an old lady is getting the letter written. Leela Mishra is playing the old woman, and Sanjeev Kumar is playing the street munshi.
But he really couldn’t understand Scene: 75: Day: Post Office’. And Harish Rai was not wrong in asking him why he couldn’t understand it, because were there any scenes in commercial Hindi cinema that one couldn’t understand? Premchand!
Yashpal!
Ali Abbas Husaini! Rajinder Singh Bedi! Krishan Chander!
Ismat Chughtai…
And in the room, all these names were awake.
The film’s title was Chaurahe
ka Dada. By now he was used to writing without thinking. Writing scenes was the easiest thing. Earlier when he thought and wrote, the director, the hero, the heroine, established character artists, everyone would start picking faults with the scenes, because everyone in the film world is a writer except for the writer himself. Never mind if they can’t even speak proper Hindi, they are all writers. From Dilip Kumar to Raaj Kumar, everyone loves to write. Raaj Kumar, Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra, Dilip Kumar … everyone’s homes are full of good books. Indeed, many people are able to make ends meet simply by supplying them books. But these poor stars, working three shifts a day, how can they find the time to read? As for writing, how much time does that take? Just take the writer’s pen and ‘ fix’ the scene…
At first, Ali Amjad didn’t like this business of ‘ fixing’ scenes at all. He would start arguing and fighting. And he would remain unemployed, lying around aimlessly in his guest house. D’Cruz Guest House.
At the corner of Bandra Talao. Four men … Four dream merchants lived there together. There was a bed in one room. A sofa with torn upholstery which had been bought from a junk shop. Five pairs of trousers. Six shirts. Countless bedbugs. And four men.
Ali Amjad.
Harish Rai.
VD. ( His name was Virendra Kumar. Once he ‘ happened’ to you, you could never get rid of him, which is why he came to be known as VD.) Alimullah Khan.
Ali Amjad had come to Bombay to become a writer. The way film as a medium was getting raped! India is an uncivilized country. And for uncivilized people, there is no medium more powerful than film. Krishan Chander, Bedi, Ismat aapa had brought shame to writers. Damn Shailendra, Majrooh and Sahir … ‘ Laal laal gaal’ … Wah! What poetry! These people have sold themselves for black money. They have lost their character and their ideals … I won’t do that … me, me and me…
Even after staying in D’Cruz Guest House’s mosquito- and bedbug- infested room for eight months or perhaps eight years or perhaps eight centuries, here he was, crucifying his dreams, Ali Amjad Naqvi, MA, LLB.
The four had decided amongst themselves that whoever arrived at the room first would get to sleep on the bed with the mosquito net. There was a story behind that bed. It had been made for a film titled Adle
Jahangir and was supposed to be the emperor Jahangir’s bed. The day it arrived on the set, Jahangir broke his leg. The shoot was stalled for three months. When Jahangir’s leg healed, Noorjehan got married and took off to Europe for her honeymoon. Nothing could be shot for two more months. By the time the dates were worked out all over again, Noorjehan had got divorced and gone off to Kashmir with an upcoming star to drown her sorrows, and there, in an inebriated state, she declared that this upcoming star was far more suited to playing Jahangir than that five- foot- fiveinch actor. How could he play Jahangir! Whereupon Jahangir demanded that the heroine be changed. Another couple of months went by. The heroine was changed. The set was erected all over again. The day the shooting was to begin, a baby girl was born to the hero. His mood soured. The crew was asked to pack up. Now the producer became worried. What was happening? Cars ran to Burmawali, the famed seer of Worli. It was discovered that everything was the bed’s fault … Harish Rai was the fourth assistant on that unit. He asked if he could keep that royal bed.
So, in truth, the bed belonged to Harish Rai. But all four of them were Leftists. Socialism, Che Guevara, Kanu Sanyal … they thought and talked about them until late into the night, as they smoked their Charminar cigarettes. So how could any one man have sole rights to the bed? If they could turn four pairs of trousers into sixteen, how could one bed remain just one bed? Whoever came first would claim it
Ali Amjad had landed some work at the time. He was writing stories for Phandaji. Phandaji was very secular but didn't eat anything that had been touched by a Muslim, so Harish Rai had introduced Ali Amjad as Gaurishankar Lal ' Krantikari'. Apart from writing stories, Ali Amjad also had to rewrite Phandaji's daughter Pushplata's poems, and listen to Phanda Patialvi's eyewitness accounts of the treachery of Muslims. Though when the riots were actually taking place in Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Lahore, Phandaji was in Bareilly selling medicines. Years later, when he discovered that Gaurishankar Lal ' Krantikari' was actually Ali Amjad, he stopped talking to him. And as for Harish Rai, Phandaji didn't want to look at his face again. In those days he was quite influential, so poor Harish Rai was thrown out of many projects … But now, because of this wretched ' Scene: 75: Day: Post Office', he had to hassle his friend. Chaurahe ka Dada was Harish's first big film. Harish had every right to throw a tantrum. He picked his pen up as if it were a sword, and sat down. He’d fix this damned scene!
He began writing:
The scene begins with the munshi sitting by the road, one leg folded under him, the other raised and bent at the knee. Across his knee lies a writing board upon which he is writing a letter...