Thursday, August 8, 2019

अनवर नदीम (1937-2017) का एक सवाने-हयाती नस्रपारा

गुल्ली-डंडा छूआ नहीं, कंचे खेले नहीं,  क्रिकेट या हॉकी में दिलचस्पी ली नहीं, फुटबॉल या कबड्डी की तरफ लपका नहीं, तैराकी या घुड़सवारी के पीछे दौड़ा नहीं, ताश या कैरम ने जी लुभाया नहीं - दिलचस्पी थी फिल्म से, दिल आज भी उसी की तरफ झुकता है - बदन में अदाकारी की सलाहियतें रेंगती हैं - दिल शायरी के लिए मचलता है - दमाग़ कहानियां बुनता है। मगर साहब! ये अदाकारी का जौहर, ये शायरी की दौलत, ये कहानियों की फसलें - इनकी निकास का कोई तरीक़ा ?... मन की तहदारियाँ न हांक लगाने दें, न घर से बाहर निकलने दें। चेहरों के हुजूम में किसी से रिश्ता, किसी से क़ुरबत , मगर सबके आगे बेलाग, बेलौस बातें और क़हक़हे - न काम की फ़िक्र, न शोहरत की भूक , न दौलत की हवस। ज़रूरतें पूरी हो गयीं तो ठीक, न पूरी हो सकीं तो बेपर्वाह , पूरी ज़िंदगी न तो किसी नशे का सहारा लिया, न खुद सादगी का दामन पकड़ा। घर से मिली दौलत को भूईं-भूईं करता रहा। मगर ग़ालिब के इस शेर से जो रिश्ता था वो हमेशा क़ायम रहा:

आवारगी से गो रहे रुसवा-ए-दहर हम
बारे तबीअतों के तो चालाक हो गए !

-        I never touched the Gulli-danda, nor played with marbles, never took interest in cricket or hockey, didn’t leap towards football or kabaddi; didn’t run after swimming or horseriding; cards and carom didn’t impress me. My interest lay in films. Even today, my heart is inclined towards them. The ability to act crawls through the entire body, the heart becomes anxios for poetry and the mind weaves stories. But gentlemen! Is there a way to channelize the talent of acting, the fortune of poetry and this crop of stories? The layers of the mind don’t allow to shout out or to step outside the house. In this multitude of faces, relations with a few, friendliness with others, but still very different from everyone. Conversation without pretence and hearty laughters- neither worrying about work nor hungry for fame, nor lusting for money. If essential needs were met, then fine, if not, then didn’t care a dime. All my life, I didn’t seek solace in any kind of intoxication nor clinged to simplicity; but the relationship I’d struch with this couplet of Ghalib, remained forever:

 

āvārgī sé go rahé rusvā-é-dahar ham

Bāre tabiyatoṅ ké to chālāk ho ga’é


(Translation by Saira Mujtaba)



An Excerpt from Namrata Joshi, Reel India: Cinema off the Beaten Track (Gurugram: Hachette India, 2019):

For all those success stories, however, and the mutual love and affection shared by Lucknow and Mumbai, there are also tales of fiascos, of aborted ventures and filmi dreams dying young. Our Lucknow trip comes to a close with one such sad, untold and undocumented story of a film called Kirchein (Shards), written by Anwar Nadeem Kaiser Bari, nephew of the Pakistani poet Josh Malihabadi; a film that was launched and relaunched, but never made.

Anwar Nadeem confesses that he was always interested in movies, in writing songs and spinning stories, but was just as sceptical about taking the train from Lucknow’s Char Bagh railway station to Mumbai, to forge a career in the Hindi film industry. He wanted films to come home to him. For a while,

it seemed as if his dream would actually turn into a reality.

In 1971 he met Satyanand Rao, who hailed from a village in Andhra Pradesh and wanted to make a film that was set in Lucknow. Nadeem’s Kirchein, about a woman who tries to bring her sister out of the kotha-tawaif (courtesan) world by marrying her off to her own lover, caught Rai’s fancy. Three songs were recorded in Bombay (now Mumbai), among them, a rare Muhammad Rafi gem: ‘Chaahoon bhi to soch na paaoon mera mann kya soch raha hai. However much I try, I can never tell what my heart is feeling.’ A unit came down to Lucknow from Bombay for the shoot. But things got stalled even before they could start in earnest. A production of Mehfil Films, launched by Nawab Jafar Mir Abdullah in the ’80s, Kirchein never saw the light of day for lack of finances – or so the nawab claims. A decade later, Rao tried to relaunch the film with a new name – Thakan. A new theme song was also recorded for it. A unit came down from Bombay again. And yet again, things ground to a halt for the same reason – lack of finances.

Nadeem refuses to talk much about it. All you can sense is a deep cynicism and an irreparable fissure in his relationship with the nawab. But even as it lies unmade, the films’s script has been published as a book. Does he anticipate the possibility of the film eventually being made, now that Lucknow is buzzing with film shoots?

‘No’, comes the curt reply. ‘It’s about a culture whose tracks have been erased. It’s about the past that no longer exists.’

It’s about a city that is lost in time, even as another Lucknow thrives today in Bollywood films.

Anwar Nadeem (centre) with filmmaker Satayanand Rao (with beard)


 




































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