Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; June 29, 2019)

Jhankaar Beats started out as a script writing exercise for Sujoy Ghosh. A self-taught writer-director, he decided one day to write a film. The problem was he had no idea what story he wanted to tell. After much brainstorming he decided it would be about people, life and music.

“As a Bengali I was hooked on music and I am a RD Burman fan. He was a genius composer and I liked him as a singer too. I still remember the craze his 'Mehbooba Mehbooba' had become after Sholay released. It was playing all over, and so was another very different composition, 'Mere Naina Sawan Bhado', from the reincarnation drama, Mehbooba, sung to perfection by Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar. But his repertoire is too vast, you can’t handle it in one film, maybe a few hundreds. So, I thought, why not speak about the influence of his music on different people at different points in their lives... From a couple waiting to fall in love to another expecting a second baby and a third who are on the verge of divorce,” Sujoy reminisces about his directorial debut which released on June 20, 2003, seven days before Pancham’s sixty-fourth birth anniversary.

Point out to him that 16 years later, the film still brings a smile on people’s faces and he quips, “That’s the only place I feel I have succeeded and it’s thanks to the magic of R D Burman’s music, it gives you a warm, happy feeling. His songs can be played in any situation, from a competition to the church and an evening with the wife, it’s almost like therapy for believers like me.”

The title is an instant hook and Sujoy flashbacks to the age of remixes when music companies would add some ‘jhatak’ instrumentation to original songs to make them popular with the aam janta. “I remember a sentimental Mukesh-Asha Bhosle duet, 'Hum Donon Milke Kagaz Pe Dil Ke' (Tumahri Kasam), to which they had added some jhankaar beats and given it a totally different flavour, one of my favourites. That’s how the title popped up in my mind,” he reveals.

The film’s ensemble cast was also a surprise for everyone but Sujoy. Almost two decades later, he points out that for Deep he needed a nice guy with a pleasant face since he was going to sing all the songs and Sanjay Suri fitted the bill. “As his better half, Shanti, I wanted someone who was a wife, daughter, mother, friend all rolled in one, someone who for us Bengalis is the eponymous boudi (sister-in-law) who has the keys of the house tied on her pallu and whose 'no' is law even for someone like Rahul Bose’s hot-headed Rishi. Juhi Chawla was that person as not only was she apt for the character but was also a star. I have to thank her then manager K S Sanjay who set up a meeting with her and she kindly agreed to do the film if I agreed to cut out one scene,” he recounts. Which one, you prod. “Of a gigantic, fluorescent condom dancing,” he confides with a twinkle, pointing out that while many remember Vidya Balan from Kahaani, it was Juhi who was his first ‘pregnant’ heroine. “I’m obsessed with pregnancy, a woman looks so beautiful when she is on her way to becoming a mother,” he says dreamily.

He found his young Cupid-struck couple, Neel and Nicki, in the tall, lanky, somewhat awkward Shayan Munshi and Rinke Khanna who was recommended by sister Twinkle. And in Rahul Bose he had his perfect Rishi. “Rahul seems like this intense, serious guy, but he has a very Brit sense of humour and cracks jokes when you least expect it. I remember when I took the script to him, he told me that he would not lip sync to the songs. But then he did, that’s Rahul,” Sujoy says fondly.

However, before he could roll with Jhankaar Beats, the initial journey with his first film script was disheartening. For three years he approached every filmmaker and nobody could understand what he was trying to say through a story where “nothing really happens”. Sujoy admits that he was also handicapped by the fact that since this being a first for him, he did not know how to give a narration. Then, just when he was beginning to despair he found a producer with a vision in Pritish Nandy who not only greenlit his slice-of-life script, but also surprised him by suggesting that he direct the film too. “Having now turned producer myself, I know just how difficult it was for him to take this bold step. It takes just one person to see your vision and believe in your dream for a Jhankaar Beats to happen,” Sujoy signs off from London.