Shabana Azmi ने फिल्ममेकर Shyam Benegal को मेंटर व गुरू बताया

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1 year ago

एक्ट्रेस शबाना आजमी ने श्याम बेनेगल के साथ अपने एसोसिएशन को याद करते हुए उन्हे अपना मेंटर और गुरू बताया।

Transcript

00:00The first image I have of Shyam Benegal was in 1973 and what struck me most about him

00:15was his wide, warm smile as I went to visit him in the ASP office where he was the creative

00:25director looking to cast Ankur. The last image I have of Shyam was on 14th December, 24,

00:40when Neera and Piya had organised a celebration for his 90th birthday.

00:49After spending a beautiful hour with all of us, I saw him being whisked away

01:03with that same warm, wide smile.

01:10Shyam Benegal was my guru, although a reluctant one. He didn't want to be called

01:20anybody's guru, but he was my guru, nevertheless. Not only because he was my first director,

01:28but also because by just being around him I learnt so many little, little, little lessons

01:36of life. He was also my mentor. I consulted him every now and then about a project that perhaps

01:48I should do or not. He wanted to be neither my guru nor my mentor. He was my friend,

01:59my equal, and he created that space for this friendship. He never

02:11jataoed any ownership on me, although in the relationship it would have been very natural

02:18for him to do so. Never. He gave me equal respect and equal ability to stand on my own while also

02:32respecting the work. I could fill chapters about my relationship with Shyam,

02:45but there are little, little snippets I'd like to talk about. I remember when I was doing Mundi,

02:53okay, I must say that he was also a very canny person because when we were doing Mundi,

03:00we were 40 of us, people either from the Film Institute or the NSD, and everybody was there

03:10for 40 days, 40 of us for 40 days, and we saw that there was great camaraderie, and

03:16everybody was everybody's friend, and I marveled that, you know, there was no friction, no bad

03:25moment, and I wondered how he made that possible. And then many years later, an AD of his shared

03:32with me that Shyam had called them right at the beginning of the shoot and said,

03:40these are 40 actors who are going to be together for 40 days. Some of them have big parts,

03:48some of them have small parts, but all of them are very talented people. See that you never bruise

03:57anybody's ego and see that you look after the people with the smaller parts more than the

04:06people who have the main parts. I don't think that any director before that or after that could have

04:16shown that kind of empathy. I remember when I was doing Mundi, I was very concerned that I was too

04:24young to play the Madame of the Brothel. And so I decided to look up some of them myself.

04:32So I went to Pila House, and I saw that they were very young girls, even the Madame of the

04:40Brothel was very young, and they were all dressed up like the popular film star of that day.

04:50So I came away a little more convinced that, all right, maybe this is possible.

04:58Who do you think took me there? The famous Kabbali singer Aziz Nazam and my college mate

05:08Farooq Sheikh. I found it prudent never to ask them how they had full access to Pila House.

05:15After that, Rukhsana Sultan took me to GB Road in Delhi, and I found Rukmini Devi there.

05:26The put-on nazakat, the over-exaggeration of courtesy, the idea of the person Rukmini was

05:38of the person Rukmini was came from that. Then Shyam and I went to Heera Bazaar in Hyderabad,

05:49and we saw this young woman without a dot of makeup in one white blouse and a nylon sari.

05:56I don't know, Neera, whether you know this or not, but she stood there with her head down, and then

06:03somebody told her to dance. And so they put on a record of mine from a film called Fakira,

06:12which is an almost devotional song that I sing to my husband, Pooja Karungi Teri.

06:19And she broke up into the most raucous version of Pooja Karungi, kahan se main pata nahi sakti,

06:27but let me tell you, it was navel downwards. So I was absolutely shocked. Through this whole thing,

06:33there was one man sitting in a corner, completely expressionless, sitting on his

06:40anshes, not at all getting involved with what was happening. And Shyam said, that's my Tumrus.

06:49And that is the character Tumrus that Naseer has played so memorably.

06:56So why I'm saying this are the little, little things that he would pick up. Once I was humming

07:01a ditty, a Hyderabadi ditty, and he said, yeh kya gaali ho? Toh mein rekha hai, yeh meri mami

07:06gaati thi, yeh Hyderabad ka. And then I sang, main kitti baar bhuna naaji. He said, well,

07:10I want this in the film. So let me put a scene. And then he put the scene where Rukmini

07:18Devi sits in front of the mirror and she's doing that. He was constantly picking up from life.

07:26His relationship with his actors was amazing because he loved them. And he never told them

07:34exactly what he wanted them to do. He would explain the situation to them and let them free.

07:42Now, I think what he did was give the actors so much confidence that you could, you could dare to

07:52go into uncharted territories. You didn't have to play safe. You could try something knowing that

07:58if you were making an ass of yourself, Shyam will reign you in. That kind of trust between a director

08:07and an actor is the best thing that a director can give, for sure. There are many, many, many such

08:17incidents that I can go on. Once I remember, I told him, I said, what do you think is the

08:21difference between commercial cinema and what is called parallel cinema? And he said, without

08:27blinking, he said, you know, mainstream cinema whitewashes all the details. They don't locate

08:36you in reality. They locate you in an alternative reality, whereas independent cinema tries to

08:46locate you totally in a recognizable place. So the diction is important. The way they are dressed

08:55is important. The locale needs to be important. And that's the difference. What struck me was that

09:02it made me understand that, you know, when I was working in the 80s, in most of the mainstream

09:08films, it used to drive me mad that whether it was a police inspector's house or whether it was

09:14a millionaire's house, when you walked into the bedroom, on the dressing table, there was one

09:20body cologne bottle, there was one charmless cream and there was one talcum powder and a dirty brush

09:28and a comb, obviously hastily borrowed from the makeup man. And it used to drive me mad. And then

09:35I realized, okay, so they are switching to a suspension of disbelief. Let's not worry about it.

09:43So it was little things. What struck me was there was no judgment. There was no judgment. He was not

09:51saying, wo theek nahi hai, hum betar hai, never. And that's how he was throughout his life. I don't

09:59see him ever passing judgment. So many young people, so many filmmakers, so many inspired

10:09writers come and would like to pay abuses at his feet. And he would shy away from it all.

10:18He just embraced people. And that is his warmest quality that will always remain with me. Like

10:34Shivendra said he loved jazz. He loved telling tales. He was a great raconteur. He

10:44liked holding conversations. And I've had many, many conversations with him. And I look forward

10:54to many more conversations with him, wherever he is. You know, recently,

11:02another great artist Zakir Hussain passed away. We were looking at a lot of interviews that he

11:08done. In one of the interviews, he said,

11:38Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Shabana Azmi ने फिल्ममेकर Shyam Benegal को मेंटर व गुरू बताया

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