Hero of historicals
(Jairaj died on August 11)
By Devinder Bir Kaur

WHILE Ashok Kumar was taking his first shaky steps towards stardom, P. Jairaj was already an established actor and a star. A true legend who even after seven decades stood tall and strong at 91. He literally grew up with the film industry, right from the black and white, silent era through the emergence of the talkies and technicolour! It was a pleasure to watch him when he appeared in the popular Movers and Shakers show on TV a few months ago. He proudly mentioned his age and said he was like a monument that had weathered many storms for 70 years watching various film caravans passing by.

The veteran actor was always conscious of good health and healthy living. Body-building was a life-long obsession. At his peak, Jairaj himself stood 5 feet 10 inches and weighed 155 pounds “without an inch of fat”. His good physique landed him with lead roles in historicals of the 1950s and ’60s. He played Tipu Sultan, Prithviraj Chauhan, Maharana Pratap and similar characters of history opposite Anita Guha or Nirupa Roy. One distinctly remembers Lata Mangeshkar’s O pawan weg se udne wale ghode... from “Jai Chittaur” wherein Jairaj as majestic-looking Rana Pratap is astride the legendary horse.

Jairaj himself belonged to an aristocratic family. He was born on September 28, 1909, at Karim Nagar in old Hyderabad state. His family never approved of his becoming an actor. “They never spoke to him for over a quarter of a century,” he once remarked.

From his first day in Bombay, Jairaj had to struggle. He never sought to impress people with the fact that Sarojini Naidu was his aunt or Harindranath Chattopadhyaya his uncle. The acting bug had bit him at the age of six. Sarojini Naidu used to organise Shakespearean plays at her house in Hyderabad and Jairaj was cast in one of them.

His first film in 1929 was a “silent” titled “Sparkling Youth” (Jagmagati Jawani) in which he played the second lead. In “Hero” Jairaj kissed the heroine Madhuri (Meena Kumari’s sister) on the screen, in “She” (Aurat) Zebunissa and in “Murad” Khurshid, who went on to become a big singing-star a few years later.

Jairaj went on to do nearly a dozen “silents” before switching over to “talkies”. The coming of the talkies with “Alam Ara” in 1931 was looked upon with fear especially by those who did not know the language. For a time stage people lorded over them and would strut around reciting dialogues in the old stagey style. Muslim artistes too felt superior because of their knowledge of Urdu.

But for Jairaj the transition from silent to a talkie hero was smooth because of his Urdu from Hyderabad.

Once sound was introduced in the movies, the next inevitable step was music. What was worse was that artistes had to be singers as well! Jairaj made his first and last — highly embarrassing — attempt to sing before the cameras in a film called “Patit Pawan” opposite Durga Khote and Noor Jahan. He engaged an ustad to coach him, but the latter gave up in despair. Jairaj rehearsed the song he was to sing for a full month. Finally the camera was switched on and he sang the entire song in three minutes at a stretch without pausing for breath and not bothering to see whether he was “in synch” with the music. He wasn’t. His singing was a few jumps ahead of the music and on a different octave altogether. After they finished filming, they all burst out laughing. It was one of the most embarrassing moments of his life and of course they deleted that song from the film.

He acted with Nargis in many films, and later she starred in the first film he produced, directed and acted in himself — “Sagar” in 1952. However, the film flopped.

Jairaj was just a few years ago seen in “Khoon Bhari Maang” in which he rescues a much-mauled Rekha from the jaws of a crocodile.

In 1982, Jairaj received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in recognition of his 70 years of distinguished service to the Indian film industry.

Last year, when he turned 90 his entire family got together to celebrate his birthday. Two of his sons especially flew down from the USA. Jairaj was very active till the end and worked whenever there was some work that suited his age. “You are as young as you feel,” he said in a birthday message. He couldn’t have had a fuller life.

Sight & Sound
by Amita Malik

Dirty work at quiz shows

I THINK it was very brave of Star Movies, considering its sister channel Star Plus is running Kaun Banega Crorepati, to screen a fascinating film over the week-end, Quiz Show. Because it was a recapitulation of an actual TV scandal which took place in the USA around 1958 and on the major channel, NBC. The story goes like this. A man who was an extremely unpleasant character on screen was winning hands down and irritating viewers, so NBC substituted him with a very charming professor, the son of the President of an American university to boot. They found out the subjects on which he was an expert and fed questions on those subjects which he answered quite easily and won hands down. There was a subsequent public outburst and enquiry and the professor who had been a willing tool made a full confessional statement on the urging of his high-principled father which was much more moving and intellectually honest than Hansie Cronje’s melodramatic one on cricket. The professor later went on to work with Encyclopaedia britannica, the two producers went into exile in Europe for two years and after they returned took to producing shows of a different nature. In other words, after having been exposed and paying the price, they led honourable, quiet lives. With the proliferation of quiz shows on almost every channel, except DD, some rising from lakhs to crores and a kilo of gold, we have fortunately had no such suspicions as yet. But it just shows that one cannot be too careful. But I would like to ask the producers of KBC, as many viewers have brought to my notice on the telephone, how they worked out that Jana Gana Mana mentions 12 states of the Indian union, and not seven, as the contestant mentioned. They list from Tagore’s original song Punjab, Sindhu, Gujrata, Maratha, Dravid, Utkal, Banga (that is seven) Vindhya refers to mountains, Himachal was not then in existence as a state, Jamuna and Ganga are rivers. They say even if you delete Sind, which is not a state in India and substitute it with Himachal the number still remains seven. Would the producers like to clarify? I noticed a letter in a national newspaper some days ago challenging another decision, but since I knew nothing about the subject, I did not follow it up. There the writer had suggested that it would be only fair to recall the contestant and give him another chance with some other question. This is an interesting point. Since mistakes occur in the best of families, what would Crorepati do if such a situation arose? Remember the number of third umpires watching. Speaking for myself, I have already faulted them for spelling Nobel Prize as Noble Prize. You can’t be too careful when crores are at stake, can you?

The best news footage of the week was provided by Zee News Channel’s cameraman Irfan, who went on shooting the car blast at Srinagar, in which his colleague was killed and even after Irfan himself was grievously injured. Also imprinted on my memory is the shot of Barkha Dutt of Star News, cradling in her arms a young colleague whom another colleague is trying to revive by patting him vigorously on his face. The field hazards of reporting crisis situation are truly grave.

Out of all the filmi experts who cavort, shriek and speak at an impossible speed in bizarre outfits, I find Kunal Kohli pleasant and coherent. But by putting him on at 8 a.m. on Star Plus, when few people can concentrate on cinema critiques and by removing Good Morning India, by far the best morning chat show with Shireen and Sharad, who now operate only at 7 a.m., Star Plus has killed two good birds with one stone. A bad mistake which they should correct post-haste. As for the other morning shows, the new 7 to 9 a.m. team on DD’s News Channel, are the pits, gawky and self-conscious. Shivani with her confidence and good cheer often has to save the most dire choice of people and items on Zee. Vinod Dua on Sahara is professional and newsy with proper professional colleagues like Satish Jacob of the BBC. Shall report on the rest when I watch.

Audioscan
by ASC

Daler Mehndi in his element

EK-DANA (Tips): It is good that the controversy over a video from this cassette has ended quickly enough because the album itself is quite interesting. With every new release Daler is gaining in confidence and trying out offbeat stuff. Here, he occasionally delves into Sufiana music but only too briefly. In general, it is all dhol-dhamaka stuff with a frenzied beat.

The inclusion of Dulhe ka sehra … by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan adds to the value of the cassette. The finest of the lot is Dil ne yeh kaha hai dil se ….

Art & Culture 
by Suparna Saraswati

Simplicity of basic issues

FOR a city dweller, the countryside has always been a romantic getaway. Freshness of the air that one inhales, the “khalis” “gaon ki mitti” that grows sweet crops, the clean environment that lures an outsider towards its greenery, the slow pace of life that passes by on the bicycle or a bullock-cart are some of the common place experiences of a laid-back rural lifestyle. Yet, due to uncontrollable factors, our ancestral retreats appear to be getting corrupted by rampant urban exploitation under the garb of modernisation.

The play’s performance devotes an unusually uncompromising view of the intelligent by the creative. A rare balance between a serious theme honestly presented and a framework that holds the interest of the motley crowd that usually throng the urban sources of entertainment and that is precisely what “Gaatha Ik Pind Di” achieved in its maiden performance.