Shakespeare has proved to be not only a man for all seasons but for all countries. In India his admirers are limited not only to English literature classrooms but are found everywhere among all classes, and he has become a part of popular culture. His plays have been translated into several Indian languages and are widely staged. And now as Vishal Bhardwaj takes it upon himself to transform Shakespeare’s plays into Hindi films, the bard’s audiences have swelled exponentially. After the successful adaptation of Macbeth into Maqbool he has created Omkara, a masterly remake of Othello. It is an entirely modern rendition which uses the contemporary idiom to negotiate through the changing times and context without, however, violating the spirit of the play. Vishal considered three options Omkara, O Saathi Re and Isak for the title and finally settled in favour of Omkara after an audience poll. Stephen Alter, author of several bestselling novels and travelogues, and a writer-in-residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
has created a parallel text, which unfolds the story of the making of Omkara while taking the readers to the inside world of the Bombay cinema, or Bollywood, in popular parlance, (mercifully we still call it so even though Bombay is now Mumbai).
The book, remarkable in its plenitude, turns out to be a wholesome compendium on Hindi popular cinema. Bollywood proudly boasts of a pantheon of celebrity icons and has a fan following which is larger than the population of Europe and America put together. What is particularly significant is that Bollywood has become a part of the Indian psyche, and does not remain an isolated phenomenon, removed from everyday concerns in India. It is a culture which amazingly and seamlessly spills over from the silver screen to the streets (haven’t we heard Mogambo khush hua, and kitne aadmi they a million times?), to the mushrooming TV channels with their ubiquitous Nach Balliye dance programmes, and to the public arena of wedding extravaganzas that replicate Bollywood rituals. Even political discourse is often peppered with Bollywood lingo. Screen life and private life, reality and fantasy, it is difficult to tell where one stops and the other begins in contemporary India. Stephen brings home all of this not as someone commenting as an outsider but as one who is deeply involved in his project. Of course, he has acquired enough knowledge of the inside world of the Hindi cinema from his cousin, the actor Tom Alter, the eternal ‘gora sahib’ of the Hindi movies. He was drawn to film director Vishal Bhardwaj for his uncanny knack to strike out for new concepts and themes rather than recycling stereotypes in one movie after the other, the bane of commercial cinema. Stephen finds that Vishal is fascinated by archetypal emotions, which is also the hallmark of Shakespeare’s art that makes him so much our contemporary. All of Shakespeare’s mature works deal with universal themes that appeal to us irrespective of language and race. Interestingly, they find echoes in Indian dramaturgy as well, which is, perhaps the reason why William Jones hailed Kalidasa as the Shakespeare of India, though the parallel did not amuse diehard Anglicists, and apologists for the Empire, such as Macaulay.
The love-thief motif which the author finds conspicuous in Omkara is not an invention of Vishal or Shakespeare. It is something central to Indian mythology and which finds its objective correlative in the Bollywood cinema, becoming almost a metaphor for it. The Sanskrit poem Chaurapanchasika or Phantasies of a Love-Thief, which is attributed to Bilhana, an eleventh-century poet from Kashmir, has a hero who is imprisoned because of an affair with the king’s daughter. But perhaps the greatest love thief is Krishna, the adorable makhan chor who also steals the hearts of the gopis, particularly of Radha. Stephen finds that this is a recurrent motif in the innumerable escapades of the rakish heroes of Hindi films.
The author meticulously observes and comments on every stage of the making of Omkara. He shadows Vishal during the brainstorming sessions with his scriptwriters in Mussoorie, and later accompanies him to various locations wherever the rehearsals and shooting take place. He finds that a shooting event itself acquires the proportions of a festive celebration for the curious onlookers who watch the spectacle with awe and amazement. He describes how the racial overtones in Othello are subtly modified to put the focus on jealousy, as the story is adapted for the Indian audiences. The setting takes a ‘modern turn’ with the characters brandishing their mobile phones. One wonders how Shakespeare would have reacted to the use of such gadgetry!
While in Mumbai Stephen makes it a point to meet all those who were associated with the making of Omkara, and makes interesting observations on them, their modus operandi, and often on their idiosyncrasies and tantrums.
There is an interesting pen portrait of Gulzar, the poet laureate of Hindi cinema, who has written the lyrics for Omkara. Stephen finds him at his best reciting Urdu poetry which, as he notes, has ‘a gentle urgency, rising out of his throat as if the language comes not from the tongue but from deeper within, enunciating the rhythms of his heart.’ He meets the inimitable M.F. Hussain, the barefoot artist, who can never resist the seductions of Hindi cinema. Then there is Naseeruddin Shah, ‘an actor’s actor,’ Shekhar Kapoor, the consummate artist, and the evergreen Dev Anand. He meets Javed Akhtar whose songs are most sought after in the film industry. Javed tells him about the dilemma of a film maker: ‘All over the world, not just here, but in Hollywood or Europe, the requirement for a story is paradoxical … Everyone wants a totally new story that has come before.’ But then there are those who can circumvent this dilemma. Shyam Benegal, the pioneer of art films or parallel cinema, for example, has done this. Benegal tells him that a film must give a message and should do it in an ‘inclusive’ manner since film is a medium that includes everyone. Stephen recounts several anecdotes about the film industry. During a visit to the Film Institute in Pune, Tom Alter tells him how Dilip Kumar once insisted on sixteen retakes of a reaction shot in which he simply nods his head! Omkara was shot mostly in Maharashtra, for security reasons, though the story centres in a village of eastern Uttar Pradesh. When a few scenes were shot at the Lucknow University some newspapers played up the irony of campus politics spilling over from film into reality. But, of course, there is no escape from Bollywood. It is a ubiquitous presence in India, littered all over with the pictures of film stars from the billboards and on labels of all conceivable consumer products.
Christian Metz has observed that the fascination of cinema is founded on scopophilia (the pleasure of looking) and therefore a film maker constantly devises narrative strategies to solicit the ‘look’ and mobilize the scopic drive. Popular cinema in India manipulates this drive for the ‘eye catching’ effects either in terms of technical wizardry or more commonly, by enacting spectacular scenes of song and dance. The flip side of it, of course, is that the ‘parts’ of popular Hindi film may become greater than its ‘whole.’ This is what actually happens with the introduction of the so called ‘item songs’ in a film. Historically the staged song and dance performance with the leading female star offering herself to the erotic male-gaze has been a crucial, commercially driven component of a film. The erotic voyeurism addresses the male desire. In Omkara the ‘Beedee jalaie’ song is virtually used as a mascot for the film. Stephen narrates how the director was able to cruise the song past the censors, which was a difficult job since smoking scenes are prohibited on the screen. This particular song has been very popular with the masses. But the appeal of the song can also be attributed to the vestiges of feudalism in India which uphold a particular ideological position based on domination and fetishization of the female body. One can also find that the dulcet and subdued songs of rural India have to make way for the boisterous and raucous noises of urban India.
Far from being a marginal pastime the cinema is important in understanding Indian society and culture. Viewed from this perspective Stephen Alter’s book is a very significant contribution to cultural studies.
Satish C. Aikant is Professor and Chair, Department of English, H.N.B. Garhwal University, Pauri. A critic and translator, he has been a visiting professor at Ecole des Hautes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Author of Critical Spectrum: Essays in Literary Culture.