Having been part of the entertainment industry for almost two decades now, actor-director Tannishtha Chatterjee has dabbled in various genres and platforms.

Her latest web release, Lihaaf, an adaptation of Ismat Chughtai’s controversial story from 1942, which alludes to a same sex relationship between two women, has already won 11 awards at film festivals.

Elaborating on the relevance of the story even after all these years, Chatterjee says, “We are going in cycles. There was a time when artistes were getting more freedom and pushing boundaries. Now, more than the government, we are censoring ourselves.”

Chatterjee, 40, pins the backlash Chughtai’s story received in 1942 on society’s struggle with acceptance but feels that representation of LGBTQ characters have ‘definitely increased’ in films lately. “With creators, producers, platforms and makers, there’s a silent mandate to be inclusive and include all genders and LGBTQ characters. The more we weave them in as characters of a story, the more normal it will become with society,” she notes.

Her unreleased directorial debut Roam Rome Mein, got positive reviews from international critics and even won her Asian Filmmaker Of The Year at Busan International Film Festival, 2019. Indeed, there was a phase when she was really nervous about the project. She recalls being warned by her casting director when two stern Italian critics turned up to watch the film at the Rome International Film Festival. “She told me that I shouldn’t feel bad if they ripped my film apart. And I thought, they will write in Italian so not many will get to know. But they actually understood my film and I felt really happy and elated,” she signs off.

Rahat Kazmi, who has translated Ismat Chughtai’s story on screen, says that it was cathartic for him to make the film
Kusumita Das (MID-DAY; May 27, 2018)

When Rahat Kazmi first shared the idea of making a film on Lihaaf with Tannishtha Chatterjee and Sonal Sehgal, they asked him if he would really dare to do such a thing. After all, Lihaaf has been fodder for controversy ever since Ismat Chughtai wrote it. It has been an uphill road for this Kashmiri filmmaker, who is best known for his film Mantostaan, that was based on four short stories by Saadat Hassan Manto. Kazmi’s Lihaaf, that recently unveiled its first look at the Cannes Film Festival, has the world’s attention now, especially, since Marc Baschet, Academy Award-winning producer came on board.

Things are looking much more grand than Kazmi had imagined a year ago. “I read Lihaaf for the first time as a teenager. I have always been drawn towards Urdu literature, having grown up in Kashmir. Stories of Chughtai and Manto are always fascinating. When you read them at a young age, they seem obscene, but as you grow older, you know better. My friends and I experienced something similar too. And I would keep going back to Lihaaf,” says the 36-year-old.

Having read it in English, Kazmi hunted down the Urdu version too, which was not easy given the controversy surrounding it. After it was published in 1942 in Urdu literary journal Adab-i-Latif, Chughtai had to defend herself in Lahore Court having being charged with obscenity. Kazmi’s film, in fact, starts at the point where the police comes to Chughtai’s house in [then] Bombay to summon her. “The film has two parallel tracks — that of Lihaaf, the story, and that of the trial which is the outcome of the story. It’s interesting that the story itself is a true account. Ismat’s family confirmed to me that she indeed knew a begum on whom the story was based. And later, a grown up Ismat met her when she had remarried, and had children too,” Kazmi says.

It was not easy for him to convince Chughtai’s family to grant him permission to make the film. “It’s difficult for them to trust anyone. I met her daughter Sabrina and her grandson, Ashish Sawhny. When they got to know about Mantostaan, and the recognition it got internationally, they saw in me someone they could trust,” he says.

In the film, Chatterjee plays Chughtai while Sehgal, Begum Jaan. Interestingly, Baschet wanted to associate with the film after he saw the first cut. Until then, it was an independent production shot in three months. Lihaaf, Kazmi stresses, is not as much about homosexuality as it is about alternate sexuality. “This is a common misconception. Begum Jaan falls for her masseuse Rabbo only after she fails to find love in her husband. It’s more about love and the need for physical affection.” The visuals are a mix of risqué and suggestive. “The best thing about Chughtai and Manto is that they don’t judge their characters. I have tried to do the same,” he says.

Now, as the film prepares for a world premiere — the choice is between Toronto and Venice — we ask Kazmi if he’s concerned about reactions on home ground. “For me, it was cathartic to make it. As far as controversies are concerned, let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,” he says.

Sonil Dedhia (MID-DAY; May 16, 2018)

Famous Urdu novelist Ismat Chughtai’s short, Lihaaf (The Quilt) will be rendered for the big screen by producer-director Rahat Kazmi, with Oscar-winning producer Marc Baschet also stepping in to back the venture, along with other Indian producers.

Unveiling the first look at the ongoing Cannes Film Festival with filmmaker Subhash Ghai in attendance, the makers announced the casting of Tannishtha Chatterjee as Chughtai in the film, which also stars Sonal Sehgal, Namita Lal, Mir Sarwar and Shoib Nikash.

Baschet tells mid-day that he was first introduced to the story at the Film Bazaar in Goa last year. “I was struck by the theme and decided to follow the development of the film. Golda Sellam of Cinelink France, now a consultant on the film, also heard the narration from Namita and decided to be part of the team. What I like about the story is that it is a narrative of a true event in Ismat’s life, one that occurred when she was in her teens, and stayed in a feudal family for a short while,” he says.

Applauding the fact that the film deals with a subject — of same-sex relationships — which is still considered taboo in parts of the world, Baschet says, “Ismat was ahead of her time, which is why I am not surprised that she was slapped with a legal notice for depicting obscenity in her story. However, she refused to apologise and defended herself for three years in a Lahore court. Ultimately, she won.”

Chronicling the story of the relationship between a neglected Begum and her masseuse, seen through the eyes of a teenager, director Kazmi says, “Her contemporary society of rich men, who are lost in the pursuit of their male-centric pleasures, and neglect their women. The latter then sought joy from their female company.”

The film is expected to release later this year.


Ashish Wagh, Subhash Ghai, Marc Baschet, Golda Sellam, Namita Lal, Rahat Kazmi and Rishi Bhutani

Deepali Singh (DNA; April 8, 2018)

There was a time, many years ago, when Naseeruddin Shah was fed up of acting in movies. “That was when actors did double shifts,” he recalls. “I had to do that on several occasions, and incidentally, the films I was doing back then were total crap. It was a period of five or six years, when I was really miserable. Theatre saved my sanity. We would even rehearse for the plays in the make-up room.”

It’s been over four decades now, but his love affair with the stage refuses to lose steam. “Theatre is a living medium and that’s the joy of doing it,” he states simply. And that’s the reason the actor has consistently delivered the goods on stage. Till just a few months ago, he had been busy staging his play, The Father, one of his most ambitious projects, which had a month-long run at the NCPA Experimental Theatre. And here we are again, sitting inside the hallowed interiors of Prithvi Theatre, as he watches his troop of actors getting ready for the technical rehearsals of his next play. Aurat! Aurat!! Aurat!!! is the third part of his tribute to Ismat Chughtai, the celebrated Urdu writer, after Ismat Apa Ke Naam and Kambhakt Bilkul Aurat.

Unlike the past monologues, this time, he has multiple actors on stage — all women — and Naseer has chosen to only direct the play. “Just like the earlier ones, I hope this play too strikes a chord with the audience. It’s funny and talks about women asserting themselves. Though there are some things in it,  which people might think don’t happen now (as this was written in the ’40s), the fact remains that they are not all that different. Even if some of them are not true anymore, they are worth reiterating to remind the audience of the courage it took to write this stuff in the ’30s and ’40s for a Muslim woman, coming from an orthodox family. Today, she would have been probably murdered by some mad fundamentalist for saying these things!” he exclaims.

In director mode now, he watches, as his wife Ratna Pathak Shah discusses the costumes with the actors, the technicians adjust the lights and the props are put in place, before facing us for a chat...

You keep going back to Ismat Chughtai. What is it about her writings that inspires you?
I can see the stories because they seem to reflect my extended family. My kin is from a place near Meerut, from exactly the kind of milieu she writes about — the fading aristocracy, clinging on to the so-called glory of the past, indulging in a lot of peccadilloes and some serious things also, including pulling guns and threatening each other.

My mom had 19 siblings out of whom 11 survived, but that means for almost close to four decades, her mom only bore one child after another! The eldest had children who were older than the youngest sibling! There were old men marrying young women, brothers insisting on asserting their right on their widowed sisters-in-law and s*** like that. She writes about all this and I have witnessed it at close quarters, so it just has a tremendous resonance.

I can visualise these stories and she's so funny and so wicked, I just love it! (Laughs) She doesn’t claim to be very meaningful. She says I write about the people I know. And there is this amazing compassion she has for everyone she writes about. It’s a treasure I have stumbled upon. I feel privileged and I just can’t stop. This is the third part of it but in between I staged Lihaaf. And there’re so many more I want to do.

Most people here would know her only for Lihaaf...
(Cuts in) And it’s a real tragedy! That’s something we talk about in one of the plays, in a commentary by Urdu fiction writer Balraj Menra, who said that people just considered her an obscene writer of sexual stories. But there are hundreds of stories, 10 full-length novels, that nobody talks about. Most people have read the translation of Lihaaf. I wonder whether the richness of the language gets across in translation, but at least people are familiar with it. I wish that people would read her. She’s a great writer.

Not many people are aware that you acted with her in the 1978 film, Junoon?
Yes, and we were all very condescending towards her. ‘Poor Ismat Apa, she has never acted before, we have to take care of her’ — hers is the best bloody performance in the film (laughs)! When I see it today, it's Shabana Azmi's performance and Ismat Apa’s performance. Everybody else is showing off to high heaven, most of all, yours truly!

There were some really acclaimed actors in that movie...
Yes, all hamming it up, like crazy! (Laughs)

How did you find her, as a person?
She was a sweetheart. I never took her to be anything but this cute, cuddly, gossipy grandma. She was always like, ‘batao batao, woh Nafisa (Ali) achchi lagti hai tumhe?’ and things like that (smiles). She was always full of zest and fun. She would ask me a lot about myself, never asked if I read her work, and I loved talking to her. She was a great listener. That is the real sign of greatness. Otherwise, you see celebrated people, they never ask you questions, they are always waiting to be questioned.

You had never read her writings before that?
No! It was only a couple of years after her death, that I walked into a bookstore and came across a book of hers and decided to buy it, out of affection for Ismat Apa. It was an English translation, a bad one at that and still, I was blown away! I thought if in English they are so amazing, they must be magic in the original. I kick myself now, thinking I had access to her, but I never bothered to meet her. I wish she could have seen our work.

You don’t adapt her works to modern times...
There’s no need. Adapting it to modern times would ruin the beauty of it. These are things she wrote in the ’40s and they still stand true. Great writing transcends its time. The text to me is sacred.

The earlier parts were monologues. You have multiple actors on stage this time. Why the change in format?
The ones we have done earlier were stories that one person can tell and hold an audience. These are not stories, but essays. Here, the first one is out of her autobiography. Since we have these lovely actors, I just thought it would be great to stage those scenes — her childhood, how she rebelled against getting married when she was 13 and insisted on studying, what made her the rebel that she was. So we are staging all that. Only the last one is sort of a story being done by Seema Pahwa, which will be a monologue.

The play will premiere on April 10 at 9 pm at Prithvi Theatre.