Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 4, 2020)

It’s hard to forget Sadhana in Arzoo, a vision in white, against the backdrop of Chinar trees, their reddish-brown leaves carpeting the ground below, as she sighs about lost love, “Bedardi Balma Tujhko Mera Mann Yaad Karta Hai, Barasta Hai Jo Aankhon Se Woh Sawan Yaad Karta Hai”. The autumnal image is intercut with memories of spring when the same trees were lush and green, and the man of her dreams by her side. The evergreen chartbuster is among Lata Mangeshkar’s top five songs and producer-director Ramanand Sagar’s son, Prem Sagar, recounts how one day, while they were filming at the Rajkamal Studio, Jaikishen, of the composer duo Shankar-Jaikishen, suddenly walked in and reminded his Papaji that they still had one sad song to complete. Then, using the cameraman’s paatla (low wooden stool) as a makeshift drum, he began to belt out a tune even as his alaap rend the air. Then and there, the song was composed, with Jaikishen ji, whose recording for the day had been cancelled, urging Ramanand ji to record the song immediately as the studio was free, and Lata ji was there too, along with a 100-piece orchestra and Mangesh Desai, the best sound recordist in the business.

Soon after, Ramanand ji sent his lyricist Hasrat Jaipuri on a recce to find apt locations for the song. Once they were identified, they flew to the Valley for the shoot. But being a writer himself, Ramanand ji wanted a different colour palette for words like “Tujhe Is Jheel Ka Khamosh Darpan Yaad Karta Hai…” Being a much-loved son of Kashmir, he roped in the state tourism department to tell him when the Chinar trees would turn the exact shade of red-brown he had in mind. “Papaji knew he’d have a really short window of three-four days for this portion of the shoot and had warned Sadhana she’d have to drop everything when he called. She was game and after a flurry of telephone calls and telegrams, we rushed to the same location, this time in autumn, and completed the song,” narrates Prem Sagar ji, who has penned the bestselling book on his father, The Epic Life - Ramanand Sagar: From Barsaat To Ramayan.

There is a scene in the romance drama where Sadhana ji and Rajendra Kumar ji are walking along the banks of the Dal Lake in Srinagar, reading each other’s thoughts. “Yeh raasta kahaan jaata hai?” he asks, and she replies, again without words, “Yeh toh mujhe bhi nahin pata.” Prem Sagar ji acknowledges that it’s not easy speaking through silences, the language of the dead. “But Sadhana didn’t need words. The expressions flitting across her beautiful face spoke for her,” he says, chuckling as he recalls how the locals, including Chief Minister Ghulam Mohammed Sadiq, were amazed to see unseasonal poppies growing by the lake during the shoot. “How did they suddenly bloom?” they wondered aloud. Ramanand ji only smiled, unwilling to divulge that he had artificial flowers specially imported from Hong Kong for the sequence.

Arzoo started where An Affair To Remember ended, with Cary Grant’s Nickie realizing that the reason Deborah Kerr’s Terry did not keep their meeting at the Empire State Building is because she can’t walk. Ramanand ji took the same theme forward, with Rajendra Kumar’s Gopal aka Sarju, a champion skier, refusing to go back to his fiancée, Usha, after he loses his leg in an accident. He is afraid that she will reject him having heard her say that it is better to die than live the life of a disabled. Sadhanaji, as Usha, is unable to accept that her Sarju would leave without a word and keeps searching for him. She even goes to a skiing competition, where she spots someone who looks exactly like him on the slopes. But he tells her that he has been an invalid since he was a child and has never skied.

“Papaji wanted 10 feet snow for this sequence and we were cooped up in a hotel in Kufri, waiting for a heavy snowfall to call our lead pair, who were at the peak of their careers and really busy, for the shoot. “We had them fly out after it snowed for two days, but then, none of us could step out because it continued snowing. On the fifth day, Papaji told his hero and heroine that they were free to fly back, but both voluntarily decided to stay back another day. The next morning, the sun blazed bright and Papaji got what he wanted,” Prem Sagar ji flashbacks, all praise for the cooperative duo. “Sadhana was a God-gifted artiste who knew exactly what the director wanted from her. And despite being a top star and amongst the five most beautiful actresses in the industry, she had no airs and no requirements. She was a simple, homely girl and a great cook who’d bring biryani for the whole unit, from the director to the spot boys,” he raves.

September 2 marked the 79th birth anniversary of the actress who was also a style icon and Prem Sagar ji remembers that after the film’s release, her costumes, designed by Bhanu Athaiya, were such a craze among teenagers that as part of Arzoo’s promotional campaign, they designed a contest around her wardrobe. The winner was a young girl, who owns Cooper Chikki Shop in Lonavla, and, as promised, she was flown to Kathmandu and got to meet Princess Annapurna because she’d correctly answered all the questions about Sadhana ji’s clothes.

Clockwise from above: Prem and Ramanand Sagar; Ramayan; Barsaat

Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; December 28, 2019)

On October 25, 1947, Maharaja Hari Singh sought urgent military aid as invaders from Pakistan neared Srinagar. Governor-General Mountbatten, who chaired the Defence Committee of the Cabinet, refused to oblige, unless he acceded, arguing they could only defend Indian soil. The Maharaja agreed, and at 2 am, left for Jammu in a private aircraft from a hastily-built tarmac.

The following day, on Jawaharlal Nehru’s insistence, Sheikh Abdullah seconded the Instrument of Accession on behalf of the people, and on October 27, the first of three Dakotas left from Delhi for Srinagar, signalling the start of the IAF operations. “There were no lights, the tarmac was broken, Biju Patnaik (former Orissa CM), who was piloting the craft, circled the airfield twice before landing. Immediately, a crowd of refugees, anxiously waiting since three days, rushed towards the plane,” recounts filmmaker Prem Sagar, who was on that historic flight.

His mother, Leelavati, was four months pregnant and his father, Ramanand Sagar, was lugging a huge trunk, ignoring the cries of “No luggage.” Enraged, Patnaik kicked the trunk, thinking there was gold inside, but instead out flew a sheaf of papers. “He learnt that this refugee was a novelist, poet, dramatist and editor of the Daily Milap whose serialised column, Diary Of A TB Patient (Maut Ke Bistar Se), he had read in the magazine Adab-e-Mashriq. He hugged papaji and the trunk with the unfinished novel on his Partition ordeals, was carried on board,” narrates Ramanand Sagar’s son Prem ji.

In 1949, leaving his wife and five sons in Daryagunj, Delhi, Ramanand ji relocated to Mumbai to try his luck in films. He moved into the attic in actor Sajjan’s home on actor-filmmaker Prithviraj Kapoor’s insistence. Having started out as a stage manager at Prithvi Theatre and going on to direct a few plays, he’d impressed the senior Kapoor who told his son, Raj, if anyone could write him a perfect love story, it was Ramanand Sagar. “Raj ji walked through the jungle that was Marve to meet papaji who narrated a story which had all the nine rasas and moved Nargis ji to tears when she heard it a few days later,” reminisces Prem ji.

The film, written by Ramanand ji, opened in 1949 to a rapturous welcome. “Barsaat earned Raj ji over Rs 1 crore with which he bought his studio while papaji bought a 640-square-feet flat in Mahim with the Rs 7000 he got as remuneration. We moved in with my mother, four brothers and a sister born on the day he’d signed the film,” says Prem ji, adding that a special screening of Barsaat was organised by his children at a suburban nightclub after the launch of his book, An Epic Life: Ramanand Sagar, in Mumbai on December 17. “What a film! The performances, Shankar-Jaikishan’s score, Shailendra’s lyrics and Jal Mistry’s camerawork were unforgettable!” he raves.

However, despite a string of super hits, including the Dharmendra-Mala Sinha spy thriller Aankhen, it is the TV series, Ramayan (1988), that has become synonymous with Ramanand Sagar’s name. “He was born Chandramouli Chopra. Chandramouli is another name for Shiva, who is believed to have developed and narrated the Ramayana to his wife Parvati. After papaji was adopted by his maternal grandmother, he was rechristened Ramanand Sagar and once again the choice of name was symbolic. Many sadhus had prophesized that papaji was born to tell Ram’s story in the electronic era,” points out Prem ji, recounting that during the shoot of Charas (1976), a man entered a café on the border of Switzerland and France with a box, which turned out to be a colour TV. “That day, while still a successful filmmaker, papaji decided he’d bring Ramayan, Krishna and Durga to TV. The decision brought much ridicule and no financiers. So, as a test marketing exercise, we made Vikram Betaal, a mythological series for DD based on Betaal Pachisi, on a budget of Rs 1 lakh, shooting an episode a day. It was telecast at 4.30 pm on Sunday and kids stopped going out to play and markets closed. Buoyed by its success, Ramayan followed and with a viewership of 82 per cent entered the Limca Book of Records as the world’s most viewed mythological series.” says Prem ji.

After Ramanand ji contracted tuberculosis, no one expected him to live, not even the hakim treating him. “But he was cured in a few months. When the surprised hakim visited the sugarcane field where papaji stopped daily to eat ganna, he discovered a 12-feet cobra twined around some stalks and believed it was the snake’s poison in the plants that cured papaji. He used it to make new medicines which hopefully cured more TB patients. Papaji went on to tell his Ram kahani which brought anand to many,” Prem ji signs off.