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| ARTS TRIBUNE | Friday, November 17, 2000, Chandigarh, India |
by ASC
by Suparna Saraswati
by Amita Malik |
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‘Ladla’ goes ‘Sarhad Par’ PUNJABI channels, being a family medium, cover a good part of the globe. Today, if you click the remote to switch over to any of the contemporary channels you are sure to find Vijay Tondon of “Kachehri” fame. He will face you either as an actor or director or writer on Lashkara in serials “Do Akalgarh”, “Tootan Wala Khooh”, “Kissa Puran Bhagat” and ‘‘Rano”. If you again change, you would find him in serials “Virsa”, “Saudey Dilan De”, “Apna Punjab”, “Pavittar Paapi” etc. On Zee Alpha Punjabi, he may peep when “Naveen Museebat Aayi’’, “Man Jeetey Jag Jeet”, “Gacha-Macha”, “Apni Mitti’’ and “Sarhad” serials are beamed. Vijay, who bagged the National Award for his Punjabi film “Kachehri,” graduated to movies from Chandigarh theatre doing Balwant Gargi’s plays “Little Clay Cart”, “Gagan Mein Thaal” etc. When noted comedian Mehar Mittal translated his play “Ladla” on 35 mm screen in 1972, Vijay shot to fame. The audience quipped, “Yaar ohi munda jehda
15 Sector phirda se, tey Mittal ohi 20 Sector wala...” Later, he appeared in Hindi films like “Kora Badan’’ and ‘‘Jogi aur Jawani’’ and about 30 Punjabi films. He also did memorable Hindi serials ‘‘Dada Dadi ki Kahaniyan” (Ramanand Sagar), “Buniyaad” (Ramesh Sippy), “Ek Kahni aur Mili” (Gulzar), “Vansh” (R.K. Films) and “Tara” (Raman Kumar). ‘‘Jazbaat’’ was his own production for DD Metro. Despite his bulging belly, Vijay fits himself well with consummate ease whether it is a script or character. Three Punjabi films in three years then “Hum laitey hain ek bada sa break....” “No movie after ‘Shaheed Udham Singh’, ‘Shaheed-e-Mohabbat’ and ‘Mahaul’ ”, I ask. Vijay bursts out: “More than 103 films are ‘dibba-band’ due to no policy of the state government. The announcement of a subsidy of Rs 12 lakh or 60 per cent of the total cost or cash award of Rs 5 lakh to National Award-winning film and 50 per cent tax exemption...remain merely announcements. The producers are facing a financial crunch. Some of them lost their prints to cinema hall owners due to non payment”. True! Instead of scripts, an obituary of Punjabi cinema might be written for the first time since the days of screening the first Punjabi movie, ‘‘Heer Sayal’’ (1932) and up to the millennium’s maiden year. That is why more and more writers, actors and directors are turning towards Punjabi TV programmes despite low-budget projects and low payments, that too deferred and sometimes even denied. The cerebral and profound icon of Punjabi celluloid, Vijay had switched over to construction work, but now he is back with reconstruction of scripts and serials to satiate his creative thirst. Still moving against the waves, Vijay is weaving dreams of winning the Oscar for Punjab very passionately. But before that, he is all set to bag an award for his forthcoming blockbuster, “Sarhad Paar” (Across the Border) with Sanjay Dutt and Tabu in the lead. It is a realistic saga of a prisoner of war and the aftermath in his own country. Vijay’s story is bound to touch the chords of those families whose members are still in the enemy’s captivity. |
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Another Yagnik takes mike DIL LE GAYA AJNABI (Tips): Alka Yagnik has been on the playback scene for quite some time and is at present arguably one of the most improved voices on the circuit. One has to only hear Chupke se sun … from the film "Mission Kashmir" to appreciate this assessment. But in this private album, the centre of attraction is her brother Samir Yagnik, with whom she does two duets. Six of the 10 songs are Alka solos while Samir renders two solos. All in all, it is a good family effort. Alka is, of course, sweet and polished. Samir has the hiccups of a newcomer, but makes a promising beginning. He seems to have a bit of Shailendra Singh and a bit of Hemant Kumar in his vocal chords. With time and experience, he should gain greater control. Music director Sameer Phaterpekar and lyrics writer Manohar Iyer have put in sincere efforts and some of their creations are indeed A grade. It is an almost unwritten law that the title song has to be the best of the lot. This is very much true here as well. Dil tha yahan abhi abhi, dil le gaya ajnabi … is accomplished in singing, music as well as lyrics departments. Samir gives good account of himself in the solo Shabnami sargami … also, although he is rather flat in Raat ko neend na aaye …. GOOD LUCK MUNDEYA (T-Series): One lesson all pop singers in India learn early in their career is that they cannot survive purely on crooning in English. Hindi-pop is the vanilla flavour you just cannot do without. Alisha Chinnai and Sharon Prabhakar will vouch for that. Shweta Shetty made forays into the dry territory to begin with but quickly switched over to Hindi. Her problem is that in her search for success she is going rather overboard. From Hindi she has moved on to Punjabi and has even kissed Lady Luck through Dil tote tote ho gaya … (along with Hans Raj Hans). Keeping up the trend, this entire album is based on Punjabi beats. Even when the lyrics are Hindi, the overall presentation is not. In fact, side A is full of songs which are pure Punjabi. It opens with the title song, Main teri good luck mundeya …. Next in line are Munda mere pichhe pai gaya … and Pichha kudiyaan da chhad de …. With so many genuine Punjabi singers fighting for a piece of cake, it remains to be seen how successful the album proves beyond northern India. Her almost masculine voice gels well with this kind of full-throated singing. Her diction may be horrible, but she does carry the Punjabi tunes adequately. The negative side is that Dev Kohli’s lyrics are pedestrian most of the time. After all, "Nashe mein mujhe kar gaya tull"... is anything but feminine. Music is by Anand Raj Anand. LAKK TUNOO TUNOO (T-Series): Punjabi music has found admirers round the globe. The robust tunes know no language barrier. That has been a boon even for traditional singers who are now going international with nothing more than a few jazzed up tunes. Surjit Bindrakhiya is one such. The intentions are made clear by the singer, and lyricist Shamsher Sandhu, through one of the songs in the cassette. There is an old folk song with many variations which says something to the effect that when you dance in Ludhiana, the reverberations can be heard in Jalandhar. This album takes the simile beyond seven seas. So we have lyrics like Jadd nachdi toon Birmingham, teri dhamak London vich paindi... The towns’ names change from London to New York to Seattle ad infinitum. Atul Sharma’s tunes are robust. But in the above-mentioned song, he rather unnecessarily copies the tune of Man dole mera tan dole …. The title song is particularly fast paced. Most of the songs are romantic though a few like Koka/arthi... are serious.
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Promoter of classical arts To many of us an attempt at appreciating classical arts, visual as well as the other, is somewhat of a distant thought. Especially if it encompasses in itself a text that is immersed in historical perspectives. The general response would then be of being intellectually weary of setting foot on its vast expanse. However, the classical surpasses its counterpart, the popular, with its eternal appeal howsoever measured it might be. It is in this situation that individual landmarks like Parag Trivedi, a die-hard music enthusiast and promoter of classical arts, comes forward to pioneer a path that aides in creating a complete education. A founder member of an organisation known as Sabrang started in 1992 with an aim to demystify the classical arts, Parag’s endeavour has been to impress upon people all over the world that these arts are not forbidding and mystical. He does so through workshops, conducted around the year in various parts of the country. He delves into music appreciation in general and Western classical in particular. The city played host twice to his interactive modules with a substantial number of participants from Chandigarh. Once last October for two days at the Department of Fine Arts in Panjab University and then this year the same month at the Chandigarh College of Architecture, Parag drew a good response. His modus operandi manages to bring about an intimate relationship of the audience with the arts, showing how societies, periods and civilisations think. Parag encourages them to develop an independent understanding not only of the art but themselves too. He correlates the cosmic mould of a human to the beauty of rhythmic sounds . Parag elucidates in the Indian context on the notion of music by stating that it comes in two dimensions i.e. cyclic and linear. Any composition, howsoever old or new it might be, must confine itself to either. As for its Western brethern, the ‘master’ begins with an elementary distinction between a melody and harmony. He brings forth his skilled craft with simple illustrations that an audience can relate to. For instance, while discussing the composers of the Baroque times, Parag articulates by saying, ‘‘He (the composer) Bach, rendered his brilliant works through the philosophy of the period, which was I am what I show. Europe of those centuries no wonder, displayed art with iconography’’. Parag equips his nodules with a fine collection of audio-visual treats. At times, he appears to be no less than a despot wanting total submission from his subjects, yet he often indulges in sharp wit combined with his genuine warmth and friendly behaviour. In his two capsule visits, Parag succeeded in making several culturally literate and more sensitive towards the classical arts. A once-upon-a-time diamond merchant from Gujarat, Parag has indeed sparked a voluntary movement among Indians towards sensitising their intellect with the soundness of appreciating the classical. |
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An embarrassment of channels I woke up one fine morning to discover that the channels I normally watch in the mornings had turned up in all sorts of unlikely places. Doordarshan’s National Channel was somewhere in the 60s and Star News, normally at position 10 on my set was at 22. The Maharishi channel, which had come and gone several times was now in two dominating positions with the Maharishi’s benign face smothered in flowers. People were speaking in German, Japanese, Chinese, Italian and as far as Indian channels went, the South Indian languages were dominant, with over a dozen channels in Tamil, Malayalam and Telegu. And may be Kannada. Of the Punjabi Tara channels, Punjabi had come on, but Tara Bengali was absent, in spite of repeated requests from Bengali viewers. There were two channels in Gujarati, but none in Marathi. Some of the older channels were also getting special treatment with more than two repeats-such as B4U, HBO, a religious channel called Aastha, and two channels of DW (no doubt Deutsche Welle) one in German and another in English, trying hard to sound like the BBC. But in the midst of all this largesse were large blanks. Some because there were simply no channels on them but there were others which had sound, sometimes tantalising dialogue but no images. No doubt channels which had not been paid for. I rang up the cable operator.. “Congratulations Madam,” he said, “You are now on Spectrum and hope you are getting all 63 channels?”. “Well,” I replied, “I haven’t counted them all but there are certainly a lot of them. But why don’t you tidy up things? Why don’t you keep all DD channels one after the other, the Star channels in sequence and so on? And why don’t you take off all the blanks? One wastes an awful lot of time skipping over them?” “Well you will have to do that yourself madam” he replied. “But what about eliminating the blanks and removing the repeats?”, I asked in exasperation. “Congratulations, madam, have a nice day,” he said and hastily rang off. Well, in spite of all the largesse, the cable operator, or perhaps I should say Spectrum, the new supplier remains king and chooses what we should see and not even bother to ask if there is any particular channel we fancy. But in spite of everything, it is interesting to see how the other half lives. And in spite of not being able to understand a word one must admit that RAI, the Italian channel, is the most beautiful of all to watch and what a graceful language to hear. Both NHK and DW have formidable technical quality. Which brings me on to the joy of watching the Golden Oldies of tennis perform at Bangalore. First, because for once the technical quality of the coverage was professional and one wonders if they were DD’s technical staff or others. If DD’s then well done. Then the Bangalore spectators, especially the children, were the most civilised one has seen on Indian screens and Mr Krishna, the Chief Minister, was there every day (a welcome escape from Veerappan) sitting quietly with everyone, without any security fuss or VIP treatment. Of course DD discovered only on the last day that Deuce is not spelt Duece. And while boasting of all those channels it started by telecasting the recordings at 10.30 p.m. when older people, whose generation was playing, were in bed, as were young children, who had so much to learn from these legends. But Borg, Amrithraj, Leconte, Baharami (the lovable clown) Cash and the rest played in the right spirit and treated us to relaxed tennis as well as flashes of the old magic. One of the golden moments of tennis come live. DD’s own special invention, the phrase “Deferred Live”, whatever that might mean in terms of language, meant that at the most exciting stages of the matches, there was a full stop and one had to see the rest hours after one knew the results from the news bulletins and long after it was time for bed. Ah, well, DD will be DD. |
