Benegal and his art

By Amber Sodhi

THE year 1998 is a benchmark in Shyam Benegal’s working career. This year he completes his silver jubilee in mainstream Hindi cinema. Right from his debut feature film Ankur (1973), which won him more than 45 awards, there has been no looking back for him. The foundation was laid long ago when he shot his first commercial in 1959.

Born in 1934, in Trimulgherry, Andhra Pradesh, Benegal received his initial training from his father who was a professional photographer. Benegal founded the Hyderabad Film Society while studying economics at the Osmania University, Hyderabad. With a Masters in economics, he got into advertising. While working for various agencies, he made more than 1500 ad films and numerous corporate films. He also worked as chairman, Film and Television Institute, Pune, and taught advertising at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan, Mumbai. "Advertising was a wonderful training for me. It taught me to use brevity in my work. I made my first ad film in 1959. By the end of the year, I had completed 130 films. I was the second generation of ad film makers", says Benegal.

As a result of his involvement with audio-visual communications for children, he received the Homi Bhabha Fellowship in 1969. This allowed him a stay in Britain, Japan, the USA and Canada. In Boston, he worked for WGBH TV as an associate producer and in New York, with Children’s TV Workshop.

The switch from the world of advertising to mainstream cinema was not very difficult. Benegal had already refined his sensibilities by then. An exceedingly humble man, Benegal exudes quiet confidence.

His cousin Guru Dutt and Satyajit Ray inspired Benegal. "Though Guru Dutt was a great source of inspiration, I did not join him because I did not want to be influenced by his style of work. He was a romantic. I am not a sentimentalist, I like to go beyond that. I did write a couple of scripts for him which did not see the light of the day", states Benegal. "It was while watching Pather Panchali in college that I knew exactly what I wanted to do," says he. Benegal claims to have gained a great deal of confidence from the works of Ray, "At one point I was groping, not knowing whether I could make the sort of films I wanted to. It was when I saw Pather Panchali, I knew I could. In a way, Ray has been a major influence in my work. But that does not mean I imitated him ever", says Benegal.

Benegal’s analysis is complex and uncompromising, while his style is smooth, simple and even poetic. He does not have any paradigm worked out for his films. His philosophy is defined by his concerns. "My films are based on the society, women’s place in it, social hierarchy and different kinds of oppressions — social and political", states Benegal. As a realist, he reveals what he feels and what he sees around him.

According to him, "There is a very interesting phenomenon that happens to human beings. The way we relate to one another gets frozen in time according to its significance and tends to remain like that throughout life. This insight inspires me to adapt myself to the intention of the author or try and read between the lines before I put the literary work into action. I got interested in simultaneity of events largely because the human mind works like that".

Major awards received include the Padma Shree in 1973 the Padma Bhushan in 1991, the Chicago Film Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement and the USSR State Prize. Till date, he has 20 feature films to his credit. The magnum opus on television, Bharat Ek Khoj, (A 53-part serial) based on Jawaharlal Nehru’s book, Discovery of India was a springboard for Benegal.

"Nehru had not dealt with many things. In some ways his work was seminal, the approach to our history must be Indo-centric. Bharat Ek Khoj was significant in this aspect. We had to fill in certain blanks. Nehru also made some mistakes, so where we differed from Nehru we gave it a different voice", says Benegal.

Benegal also directed a serial for Indian Railways Yatra, a 10-series work Sankranti which he did for the Golden Jubilee celebrations of India’s Independence, and a much-acclaimed and National Award-winning children’s film Charandas Chor. His other major works are Nishant, 1975, which won him the National Award and the Gold plaque at the Chicago Film Festival. Manthan-1976, Bhumika- 1977, Anugraham in Telugu- 1977, Junoon- 1978, Kalyug-1981, Mandi-1981, Trikaal-1985, Susman-1986 Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda-1992, Mammo-1994, The Making of the Mahatma in English 1996, which was a film based on a book by Fatima Meer, a social political activist of the South African National Congress who came to India in 1992 for the Indira Gandhi International Seminar. This was the first Indo-African co-production. Within the span of two decades, Benegal has built an impressive body of work which includes two long documentaries — one on Nehru and the other on Satyajit Ray.

Women hold a significant place in Shyam Benegal’s films. His heroines are strong characters, "In order to survive and prove themselves in the patriarchal world, where the demands on women are much more as compared to the man in a family, she has to be much stronger. In Indian society a male is valued more than a female. It is the male who is oriented, trained and taught to feel that the world revolves around him", remarks Benegal.

As Benegal projects realism in character and story, actors in his films are selected according to suitability of script, the ability of the actor and the photogenic quality of the face. "I have only auditioned twice in my life and I have often picked actors for my films intuitively. Shabana Azmi came to my office dressed like a fashion model when I was casting a village girl for Ankur but I chose her. I saw Smita Patil reading Marathi news on television and I sent her an offer", recalls Benegal.

He prefers not to take very glamourous figures for his films as they might hinder the projection of the characters.

Presently, Benegal is working on his new film Samar, meaning battle, set in the Bundelkhand area of Madhya Pradesh. It deals with caste conflict. The cast includes Rajat Kapoor, Seema Biswas, Raagheshwari Sachdeva and Raghuvir Yadav. The film consists of 45 speaking parts. The story is from the region and is based on an incident which occurred in 1991.

Benegal has not left the small screen behind. He may do a project for television if it relates to the sensibility of his work. The only time Benegal is tense is when he is not working. "I want to keep making films all my life. My work is my passion, my vocation, my profession. It’s my life, it’s also my relaxation".

Youth in the third millennium

By J. N. Puri

THE youth is a dynamo, an ocean, an in exhaustible reservoir of energy. But this energy cannot be held in prison. Its basic nature is to flow, to express itself.

The youth energy on the basis of the nature of its expression can be divided into four categories.

(1) The vast majority of the youth today are with the establishment, whose formula of life is learn, earn, burn and enjoy. It means that learn to operate the modern devices and employ them to earn the maximum amount of wealth to the point of burning the natural resources of the earth, as well as yourself out, and then enjoy your own funeral. This category of youth is intelligent, skilful and hardworking but it lacks insight and foresight. They are self-indulgent and any sense of a moral code of conduct is alien to their nature and something foreign to their texture and way of life. Neither are they able to see in depth, to find out whether there is a deeper meaning and purpose to their human life, nor have they the capacity to look beyond the tips of their nose to find out the consequences of their way and approach, where it is leading them to. They are the ends unto themselves and enjoyment is the motto of their life.

(2) The second category of youth in nature and approach is the same but as it is less privileged and less qualified and skilled, it has lesser opportunities for earning and enjoying. Such youth rebel against the establishment for this gross injustice being meted out to them. This opposition takes various forms. When it is well organised and systemic it may take the form of political opposition and even go to the extent of expressing itself in violent ways. The various insurgent and terrorist groups the world over are its manifestations. When the opposition is not so intense and organised, it remains content with giving verbal expression to its resentment periodically.

(3) The third section of youth is a sober and thoughtful class of people, which objectively observes and studies the phenomenon of development and trend of the world. These youth find that man in his insatiable thirst for consumption has become blind and lost the sense of distinction milk and blood. Today man in his mad rush for exploitation is sucking the blood of mother earth and nature, leading to their destruction and is thereby digging his own grave. This responsible category of young people is looking for an alternative model of development based on co-operation between man and man. This development based on mutual love, friendship and harmony is not only sustainable but leading to endless prosperity mutually. To bring about this natural revolution from death-movement to life-movement is the aim of this group.

(4) The fourth and most vital group of youth which is going to usher humanity into the third millennium and act as the pioneer for the future development of planetary life is engaged in evolving a new way of life and releasing a new principle of global consciousness through a fundamental research in the science of life. The science of life is a new branch (rather, stem or tree) of knowledge which takes the whole man into account without dividing him into subjective and objective halves of spirituality and physicality and does not treat him either as a refined (thinking) animal or an ethereal entity, having its base in some other non-physical world. It, rather, recognises man as a basic unit of conscious life which has got immense, practically inexhaustible, possibilities and potentialities for evolution, development and growth. As per the Vedic formula, man is the micro-cosmos and his fullest flowering and unfoldment lies in his identification with the cosmos.

This is the perfection of human life which leads to the realisation and establishment of harmony and order between man and God, the divine, between man and nature, the earth and between man and man, the entire creation. To the extent and degree this new order enforces itself, the old disorder and chaotic jumble created by mutilated vision of man recedes. This process paves the way for the new and golden dawn tomorrow with the advent of the third millennium.

This is a period of transition unprecedented in human history where an old order, because of inherent contradictions, is collapsing and a new one on the wings of a new vision and a creative spirit is emerging, leading to the birth of a new world in a new age. The burden of this golden future is being borne by the sons of humanity, the sons of the earth and the fathers of Gods that our youth are. This is their privilege, this is their glory, this is their destiny. The youth is overwhelmed with this bestowment of grace in the form of the crown of divine responsibility placed on his head by the time. At the same time he is proud and confident of carrying his mission of establishing a new life order to utter fulfilment in the third millennium. May God bless the divine flower of mother earth.