javed akhtar in jadavpur

A week ago, the department of film studies of my university organized a one day seminar on the dialectic between hindi films and urdu poetry. This turned out to be a first in various ways. Not many universities of course, can boast of a film studies department and when one’s university falls into this rarest of rare categories of actually possessing a department wholly concerned about what is frankly, a mode of entertainment to me, and treats watching films as a necessary component of an academic discourse, then, I believe one should boast bluntly and boisterously about it. Which is exactly what I’m going to do.To come back, however, if you can bear my superciliousness any longer, to the seminar, it was a first in multiple ways, because, it was wholly about hindi films and not Indian or foreign films in general and also because the department got hold of one of india’s brilliant poets; also an evocative lyricist and a leading intellectual; javed akhtar; to speak on the subject.Javed saab, was such a change from the usual film-maker/critic who speaks at seminars. He did not talk about godard as if he’s known him since childhood. Nor did he insist on dissecting, one of the rare critically acclaimed films which you actually liked, to the ultimate extent of shredding it to bits, with the multiple-pronged knife of modern critical theories, and then proceeding to gas it with copious quantities of pungent, verbal verbose. I hasten to add, however, that not all film critics do that. It requires immense skill and one can acquire perfection only after years of practice. It is , however , (not to discourage potential critics) an art which can be mastered, though being, of no use to people like javed akhtar.Javed saab adopted a very simple approach. Credit also goes, ofcourse to the film studies profs for letting it remain so.In the first half, he read out about a dozen of his poems. A professor from City College(?) , who was accompanying him, translated them into either English or bangla as he went along.He started with a simple poem about a room; ‘ek kamrah’. It’s about the room which he used to live in, with the open casement;’daricha’, and the overflowering creeper outside it. It had two chairs; two twin sisters. It also had two vases, which constantly quallered between themselves. And the poet would lie on the bed and weave webs of stories while staring at the network of rafters on the roof. Now, today, he possesses a huge house;palatial,one would say… ‘bahut bada aur alishan’…. And yet in the silent loneliness of this house, the poet realizes, that his old room used to ‘speak to’ him…woh kamrah baatein karta tha…..The essence of the poem is ofcourse lost while translating it to other languages. In urdu however it sounded absolutely beautiful and was received with thunderous applause. His poem ‘doraha’ or ‘crossroads’ which he once wrote for his daughter zoya ,he now dedicated to the innumerable young women in the audience. He also quipped that the applause was somehow louder when he read a couple of romantic poems, one of which was adapted for the song ‘kabhie kabhie’. On a more serious note , there were 2 poems;’ fasaad ke pehle’ and ‘fasaad ke baad’, ‘fasaad’ meaning ‘riot’. He ended by reciting ‘waqt’, an apparent favourite. The atmosphere, needless to say, was absolutely electrifying, by now and his one-liners like ‘I realized all good looking men cant act’ on being asked why he never wanted to act in films , had the whole house in splits.The second half of the programme was dedicated to a question-answer session. Queries ranged from ‘do you support remakes and remixes?’ to ‘why do you think forms of urdu poetry, other than the ghazal, is dying out?’ . Queries to which Javed saab answered with his inimitable wit and élan. A memorable moment was when he said that one should see , not why, but how a film is re-made, a la, devdas etc. , and someone from the audience quipped ‘so how is farhan making don?!!’ Snippets of scenes from sholay ( gabbar singh with steam coming out of his ears and nostrils, legs astride, lashing his whip left and right and going ‘arre o sambha…kitne aadmi thhe’ in the background), and deewar ( bachhan ranting like a madman to poor shashi kapoor who apparently thinks having a mother like nirupa roy, who turns on the waterworks at a moment’s notice, is God’s way of being nice to him) and songs like ‘ek ladki ko dekha’( no snide comments here..i like the song) were also shown while he spoke on urdu poetry in general, and on the deteriorating nature of language being used in films….In short, javed saab had the audience eating out of his hands. His wit, language and style( not to forget the yellow kurta) floored all.We applauded him,cheered him,loved him….and sadly, also mobbed him… hope he didn’t much mind the last bit though…I mean , it’s not very often that he has pretty Judeans like us ( and I only mean the girls, here) chasing after him, does he?