Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; June 30, 2020)

On Sunday, June 28, Subhash Ghai rang in the 40th anniversary of Karz, tweeting that his first production had released in 1980 amid heavy rains. “We were looking 4 audience to come. Very few came. Disappointed.”

This confession from the showman about the film that he also directed, came as a surprise, because given the popularity of the chartbuster “Om Shanti Om”, one had always believed that Karz was a blockbuster. “Yeah, everyone believes that,” Subhash ji acknowledged, sighing that the downpour had washed away all their expectations. “Or maybe, as many of my distributors and exhibitors pointed out, the film came 10 years before its time.”

Conceived in the filmmaker’s living room of his two-bedroom apartment, which served as his office, he had ambitiously shot the entire film in cinemascope. But at the time of release, several distributors from Bengal, UP and other centres turned it down pointing out that out of the 200-odd theatres then, only 10 were equipped for cinemascope. “So, I had to spend more money converting it into a 35-mm print. Dejected, I hosted a preview show for some industry friends, among them Jeetendra and Salim Khan, who enjoyed the film but expressed doubts about whether it would be widely accepted given its subject and treatment.”

On Friday, June 27, 1980, Subhash ji and his assistant directors arrived at Bandra’s Galaxy cinema half an hour before the 3 pm show, expecting huge crowds. There were only a handful of people at the ticket window while Feroz Khan’s Qurbani, which had released a week earlier, ran to full houses. “We opened with 20 per cent collections,” he reminisces.

It got worse the next day, when his Delhi distributor admitted that the masses were not coming in as the characters were too urban and spoke more angrezi than comprehensible. The biggest shock came when the manager of a Uttar Pradesh theatre shared that people were walking out during the songs, even “Om Shanti Om”, put off by the psychedelic lights.

“It’s a good film, but people can’t understand why Rishi Kapoor needs to avenge Raj Kiran’s death. We know Monty is Ravi Verma reborn, but till now, in all Hindi reincarnation dramas, the hero returned with the same face. By going with another actor in the next life, you have merely compounded the confusion of rebirth,” he was told.

Subhash ji had tried calling his ‘hero’ on Friday and Saturday, but Rishi Kapoor didn’t answer the phone. “On Sunday, I learnt that he had been admitted to the hospital for depression. He had worked hard on every scene and was so proud of the film, requesting several preview shows for his friends before its release. The no-show came as a shock and I had to get Raj saab (his father Raj Kapoor) to reassure him that we’d made a good film irrespective of its commercial failure,” he flashbacked.

Collections picked up marginally on Sunday in cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad and many more after the Qurbani craze abated. But Subhash ji himself admits with refreshing candour that by 10-15 weeks, Karz’s run was over. “We stretched its life span in certain theatres so it could celebrate a silver jubilee, but paisa kuchh nahin banaye. It was Vidhaata with Dilip Kumar and Sanjay Dutt, followed by Hero with a new boy Jackie Shroff, that saved my production house,” he states.

Ironically, over the years, Karz , which was Tina Munim’s second film, attained cult status and four decades later, “Om Shanti Om” still reverberates in our collective memory. Its maker reveals that the song was always a part of the script and marked a turning point in the story. After his untimely death, Ravi Verma’s mother (Durga Khote) goes to the mandir and asks Kali Maa to give her son back. Soon after, pop star Monty is on stage singing “Om Shanti Om”. “As he stretches out the word ‘Om’, the oldest sound in human existence, which connects straight with the divine, he swoons and falls to the ground. In the hospital, he admits to seeing visuals of someone being killed, going on to realise that it was him in his previous birth. Since reincarnation is the work of God and not a human effort, I thought a song like ‘Om Shanti Om’ would be apt,” Subhash ji notes, adding that instead of a devotional bhajan during aarti, he worked with his composers, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, to make a pop song out of it. “Pyarelal ji gave me five-six haunting tunes from which I selected my theme music.”

Among its many hatke twists, Karz had a female antagonist at a time when villains were male and in the Gabbar Singh mould. “I decided on a love story which ends with the girl, Kamini, murdering the boy and going on to become Rani Sahiba. I wanted Simi ji (Garewal) to play her because she’s no ordinary vamp, but a sophisticated lady in a negative role. She finally agreed because I begged, but wondered if she was doing the right thing. It was only after watching the film, that she hugged me. Karz today is one of her most memorable performances,” says Subhash ji.

Rishi saab and he didn’t do another film but remained good friends. Today, Karz and “Om Shanti Om” are instantly associated with the late actor. “Even though Karz wasn’t a blockbuster, eventually it made us all proud,” he concludes.


Subhash Ghai, his leading man, Tina Munim and Simi Garewal at the film’s mahurat with Gulshan Rai, NN Sippy and Shatrughan Sinha, who gave the ceremonial first clap

Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 21, 2017)

On Monday, September 18, Shabana Azmi brought in her birthday with a bitter-sweet memory of another birthday from Mahesh Bhatt’s 1982 film, Arth, in which her character, Pooja, is handed the divorce papers by her husband Inder. The careless cruelty of the moment is undercut in the next scene with the tenderness with which Raj, her ghazal singer friend, draws her into the apartment and presents her with a rose, taking care not to touch her knowing how vulnerable she is. He urges her to cut a pastry while crooning, “Tum Itna Jo Muskura Rahe Ho, Kya Gham Hai Jisko Chhupa Rahe Ho.” The words “Rekhaon Ka Khel Hai Muqaddar Rekhaon Se Maat Kha Rahe Ho” still give Shabana gooseflesh.

The song was shot in a bungalow which Bhatt saab ‘dressed up’ himself, pulling the chandelier down and making Shabana scrawl “Happy birthday Pooja” on the wall, heightening the poignancy. She reveals how Raj Kiran would rehearse a scene with his own notions of how to play it. Once he was done, Bhattsaab would say with no intention of belittling him, “OK, done with your fantasy? Now throw it all away and do it this way!” and would go on to act it out for him. “Every gesture of Raj was Mahesh,” asserts Shabana, which is ironical given that Mahesh Bhatt was the philandering husband in the real life story.

That’s a cinematic moment that makes me smile and tear up. Vidya Balan, who’s equally taken up by the film, once claimed her birthday was on September 18. A huge bouquet arrived for her on the day from an anonymous admirer. She couldn’t bring herself to tell them that she had fibbed.

Shabana reveals that not only did she wear all her own clothes, leading to Aparna Sen to comment that she’d have preferred Pooja less tastefully dressed, but even lent her nightdress to the ‘other woman’ Kavita, played by Smita Patil, along with her white duvet sprinkled with blue flowers. “It’d drive me crazy that it was common for characters to lie on a ghastly printed bed cover with a ghastly sheet to cover themselves. I also set up Smita’s dressing table with my own stuff and was pleased even though the camera didn’t catch it in a single frame!” she laughs. And we still talk about the Smita-Shabana rivalry!

We also still talk about that scene at the party where a drunk Pooja confronts Kavita and Inder. Shabana singles out the one when she calls Kavita and begs her to let Inder go. She’d wrapped up her work when Bhattsaab called her on the last day of shoot for a ‘patchwork shot’. Before she could protest, he propelled her into the scene without giving her time to change or put on make-up. “It happened in one take. I was out in 10 minutes! In retrospect I feel it is so raw because it happened the way it did,” she marvels.

Arth got Shabana the National Award for Best Actress. Bullied by her husband, lyricist-scriptwriter Javed Akhtar, they entered the film minutes before the deadline. “So, we owe all the National Awards to Javed who gave us one of the most precious lines in the film when Pooja tells Inder after she’s signed the divorce papers and says, ‘Bechari Kavita, tumse shaadi ka woh pavitra’bandhan chahti hai jo ek dastakhat se bhi toot jaata hai.’ Even today, women tell me Arth changed their lives,” she says, wishing Revathi all the best with the remake and wished Bhattsaab a happy birthday on September 20 with a heartfelt thank you for giving her the Mother India of her career.