Autobiographical Notes 3: My Days in Bombay

Nostalgia

Meeting the Arzoo Man

ZGM

It was a  dreamland. For many of many of my friends, it was a fabulous city that neither they nor their fathers had ever visited but only heard about it from those few in our Mohalla who visited this city of seven islands for selling silver trinkets, carved and embroidered crafts. Their fathers, grandfathers had shared with them lots of stories about Lahore- the city of splendor and culture. But, after having lost this city, which for centuries had been a second home to Kashmiris, it was Bombay that some of my friends imagined as an Eldorado.

Sitting on shopfronts, with Kangri tucked underneath their pherans, and listening film songs from the community Radio speaker hoisted on the pedestal of naked flag post of an old “Halaqa”- notorious for having been once a torture center for the voices of dissent some of my friends talked about trying their luck in the metropolitan. Somehow Bandra Bandstand- a famous hangout had got stuck in their minds and they believed it was a place for making to the film world.  Couple of my close friends in the Mohalla, who profusely oiled their hair and combed after every fifteen minutes topped the list of fantasists.  For many of them, Dilip Kumar was the   role model- some admired Dev Anand for his hair style.

I remember having read short stories of eminent story writers like Ramanand Sagar published in the magazine. One of the nom de plume used by this writer and filmmaker was Ramanand Kashmiri.  Besides pictures of film actors, actresses, and film-related functions, it was the film reviews published in the magazine that attracted us most—a good review in the magazine would make us to buy a ticket even in black- nicknames of some “blackers”  like Changa and Ranga still live in my memory.

Many of us wrongly believed that Ramanand Sagar like us was a downtown boy who was brought up in Maharaja Gunj and had made hard way it to the film industry. Some friends would say ‘if he has made it they could also do it.’  The elders remembered him for having written story and screenplay for Raj Kapoor’s film Barsat .The film for presenting Kashmiri women in bad color had ruffled feathers in Kashmir- there were stories the then Prime Minister of the State, Sheikh Abdullah after Raj Kapoor’s Barsat had banned film shooting in Kashmir.     Nevertheless, we remembered him for his film Arzoo staring   Sadhana, Rajendra Kumar and Feroz Khan and Mahmood. It was not the story and performance of the superstars of the super hit film but the captivating scenic beauty of Kashmir captured by the filmmaker that had left an ineffaceable imprint on our minds. The enthralling scenes of interiors of Dal and Nageen Lakes and shimmer damsel’s ing waterways under awnings of willow trees resembling tresses  of   captured in the film surprised us. These pristine backwaters of the Nageen Lake that film make maker had filmed artistically during summer used to be best haunts for us for boating and angling.  How did Sagar explore these virgin scenes, this question often bothered me. In 1983, on my posting in Bombay, when a colleauge Narinder Singh casually mentioned that he knew Ramanand Sagar and occasionally visited him, the question again cropped in my mind, I thought of meeting him to know the answer of this question and about his Kashmir connection.

In October 1983,  I got introduced to him  in a big way when he organized a mega late night party, at his house for the scion of Abdullah family who had taken over as Chief Minister  was on a visit to the grand city of art, culture, films and big money.   Sagar like many others in his clan like Krishan Chander, Khawaja Ahmed Abbas, and Rajinder Singh had an admiration for his father, Sheikh Abdullah.   Entire, film crowd, the elite of the metropolis and bigwigs in politics had been invited to the event. On this occasion, he offered a lead role to debonair Chief Minister and wanted to cast against Salma Agha, a Pakistani actress- then famous for her role in film Nikah. Later, on I visited him on many a Sunday mornings- every time, I was welcome at his home and without any airs and graces he shared his ideas with me on Kashmir, films, literature and then emerging small screen as an alternative cinema.  Once, when I asked him about picturizing of the unexplored beauty of backwaters of the lakes in Arzoo – he told me he had spent whole childhood in the old Srinagar.