Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; June 15, 2019)

She had already taken the curtain call by the time we met but Shyama ji was still a star, conducting the interview from her four-poster bed, surrounded by four wardrobes which, she admitted, were full of clothes none of which had been worn more than once and many not even once, while the cosmetics strewn across the dressing table had been flown in from Dubai. But what caught my eye were the photographs on the wall, many of them clicked by her late husband, cinematographer Fali Mistry, which were pointers to their beautiful life together.

“Have you seen any of my movies?” she asked, flashing that maar-dala smile.

Nodding shyly, I muttered, “Aar Paar (above), you were Guru Dutt’s sweetheart Nikki and your 'Yeh Lo Main Haari Piya' ranks amongst my all-time favourites.”

She responded with peals of laughter, “Yes, on screen, I was Guru Dutt’s girl, but off it, everyone knew I was Fali’s girl and our cinematographer V K Murthy who had been his assistant, kept a hawk’s eye on me on the set, ensuring I wasn’t out of line with our hero.”

Not that there was any chance of that ever happening because as Shyama ji went on to reveal, she had accepted the film only on Guru Dutt’s singer-wife Geeta’s request. “Geeta didi came home to convince me to do Aar Paar, how could I say no? I told her I would not even charge my price, she could give me whatever she wanted,” she recounted more than four decades later.

The whiff of a real romance was tantalizing and I pressed her for details. Her eyes dancing, she recalled how her Fali had once reduced her to tears on the sets of Sazaa, a 1951 family-drama directed by him. “Why?” I wondered. “Because he insisted on chopping off my beautiful tresses and giving me a cascade of fashionable curls,” she replied with a twinkle, adding that she had been absolutely aghast when the hairdresser, Mrs Green, had strolled in wielding a pair of scissors. “If this was my sazaa for becoming a heroine, I told Fali and her, I didn’t want to be one, I’d rather save my hair. Of course, neither of them listened to me.”

In time she came to fall in love with the debonair Parsi boy who courted her for two years despite her parents’ outraged protests. Then, one morning, she slipped away to tie the knot with him before reporting for shoot only to be told that she was getting married on camera too.

Born Khurshid Akhtar in Lahore, Shyama ji, like Alice, had entered wonderland by accident, when she had come to Prakash Studio with a bunch of her friends to see her idol, Noor Jehan, in action. Zeenat was being filmed and the film’s director and the leading lady’s husband, Shaukat Rizvi, suddenly caught sight of the young girls and wondered if they would like to feature in a qawwali being shot. While the others were too surprised to react, Khurshid instantly nodded, “Hum karenge, we will do it.” And that’s how two years before the Partition which took Shaukat Rizvi and Noor Jehan across the border to the newly-formed Pakistan, the girl with the sparkling smile made her debut with a song.

From the chorus, she graduated to become a child star with Parwana. Interestingly, it was because she shared her name with one of Meena Kumari’s siblings, along with a popular vamp, that Khurshid was rechristened Shyama by Vijay Bhatt. “I liked my new name. There were other Khursheeds but no Shyama in Hindi movies, neither then, nor in later years, which made me unique,” she pointed out, her laughter tinkling like ice cubes in a glass.

Among her films as a heroine, beside Aar Paar, she is also remembered for Barsaat Ki Raat (right), which featured some of the best qawwalis, including “Mujhe Mil Gaya Bahana Teri Deed Ka, Kaisi Khushi Le Ke Aaya Chand Eid Ka”. This song was to be picturised on Madhubala but I read somewhere that she wasn’t too impressed with Sahir Ludhianvi’s lyrics and refused to shoot for it. Since Roshan had already set it to tune, it went to Shyama ji on the rebound.

When I quizzed her on it, she told me simply that Madhubala wasn’t keeping well, so the director (P L Santoshi) decided to film it on her because she too is in love with Bharat Bhushan in the film. Interestingly, Ratna, Bharat Bhushan’s wife in real life, is also seen matching her, step for step, swing for swing, in the qawwali sequence.

On November 14, 2017, Shyama ji passed into the ages to join her Fali and continue with their love story. But her songs live on, as does the memory of that tinkling laughter, even though we never met again.

Three generations of the Jaaferis on what it takes to keep audiences entertained
Kunal Guha (MUMBAI MIRROR; June 9, 2019)

All of 80 years, veteran comedian Jagdeep has an elephant’s memory. Precisely half-a-century ago, he escorted his son to the premiere of his film Anmol Moti (1969) — the first Indian film to feature an underwater fight sequence —in which his character wrestles with an octopus. When the creature eliminates his character in the scene, his son Jaaved Jaaferi, barely six then, was reduced to a howling mess. “He felt his father was no more,” says Jagdeep, whose film career spans over 70 years. Ahead of his grandson, Meezaan’s debut in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Malaal, three generations of the Jaaferi clan collect at the patriarch’s Versova home to mull over their shared legacy.

Most know Jaaved as an accomplished actor, host and voiceover talent, the one who introduced Indian audiences to freestyle dance. But ask Jagdeep about his son’s earliest achievements and he returns to the filming of Wardat (starring Mithun Chakraborty) in Kashmir. At an after-shoot party, Javed, then just 15, beat the film’s baddie Shakti Kapoor in a dance battle. “Woh bola ‘kiske saath mukabla kara rahe ho?’” the veteran actor recalls. Looking back at the incident that occurred four decades ago, Jaaved, credits his youthful exuberance for the win. “I was in Class 10 then, and could dance for an hour non-stop.” He remembers being introduced to freestyle dancing on the streets of New York in 1983, while on a family vacation. “We came across street performers ‘body popping’ and ‘moon-walking’, and we were so mesmerised by their moves, we watched them for a whole hour, I remember.” On his return, Jaaved worked on mastering those moves, and, it proved a game changer at college fests — he topped the All India Dance Competition the following year.

Jaaved remembers accompanying brother Naved Jafri to nightclubs — “only during the day” — to put his skills to test. “We would brave muggy Mumbai afternoons to frequent a place near the airport called Take Off (later dubbed Go Bananas) every Sunday, dressed in shimmery outfits,” says Jaaved, who also remembers that his parents didn’t entirely approve of those ‘nightclub visits’. “Before disco became a thing, nightclubs had a negative connotation, because films depicted them as dens for sharab, jua and cabaret,” says Jaaved.

On becoming a parent, Jaaved says, he allowed Meezaan more room to keep up with his social calendar. “By my time, no one went out dancing though. Most of my friends would just go out for a drink,” says Meezaan, who played basketball for Maharashtra. He also attended New York Film School before dropping out to assist Sanjay Leela Bhansali in Padmaavat, an experience he describes as “a learning experience that no film school can possibly deliver”.

“I was well-versed with the industry and my parents prepared me for every job that comes being on the sets. I was told, ‘Even if someone says ‘chai laao’, you have to do it,’” says Meezaan, who will be making his debut in Bhansali’s forthcoming production. Javed was delighted and apprehensive about Meezaan’s decision. “I wanted him to complete the course. But then, Sanjay [Bhansali] convinced me that he would groom him,” says the concerned father.

While Meezaan’s entry into Bollywood seems meticulously planned, Jaaved’s was left more to chance. In his final year at RD National College, when he was the secretary of the drama club — and would hold a crowd with his immaculate impressions — he learnt about a casting call. “Subhash Ghai’s wife had seen me dance at college fests. So when he [Ghai] was looking for someone to play a suave villain, who could dance — something that was unheard of then — I decided to give it a shot,” he says about his debut film Meri Jung (1985), when he created quite a stir with his slick moves in the number Bol Baby Bol.

“Jaaved ke dance ne disco ko maar diya,” says Jagdeep proudly, who, for his part, got a head start as a child actor in films such as Afsana (1951) and Do Bigha Zamin (1953). His modest beginnings carved his socialist outlook — something he shared with filmmakers who he worked with at the time — K Asif, Guru Dutt, V Shantaram and Bimal Roy. “When Aar Paar became a hit, people asked Guru Dutt to throw a party at Taj Mahal hotel, but he refused. He said ‘I won’t host a party at a place where my workers will feel uncomfortable’. Eventually, the celebrations took place at a film studio,” he says, remembering the stupendous success of the 1954 noir comedy.

Jagdeep, who played a minor in that film, remembers how resourceful Dutt could be when it came to ironing out production niggles. “A mob of 500 had assembled in the garage where the song Sun Sun Sun Sun Zaalima was being shot,” Jagdeep recalls. “The crowd was making it impossible to get the desired shot. The ruckus even ticked off the garage owner who demanded that the shoot be wrapped up soon,” says Jagdeep. It didn’t help that the film’s female lead Shyama, a huge star then, was willing to shoot for only three hours. “So, Dutt asked cinematographer V K Murthy to set up his camera inside the car and experiment with angles and close-shots to ensure the crowd didn’t spill into the frame,” says Jagdeep. The end result was a number that was lauded for its avant-garde picturisation. “Necessity is truly the master of invention,” says Jaaved.

An enterprising maverick himself, Jaaved reinvented his career in TV after his son Meezaan was born in 1995. “When I moved to TV, people said only flop film actors turn to the small screen, but I was confident that I was connecting with the youth,” says the actor-turned-VJ, who engineered a new coolth with his ‘Hinglish’ speak. “They were saying ‘Yo’, but I flipped it, and started ‘Oye’.” Straddling music and film-based shows, Jaaved soon became the highest-paid actor on TV. “I was making a lakh per episode then,” says the actor known for his exceptional impersonations of virtually every Hindi film actor, as well as his original avatars, such as ‘Abdul Cutpiece’ and ‘Irani Boxer’. Like his son, Jagdeep, too, was known for his masterful impressions. “I would encounter these colourful characters while travelling by train and bus, and at Irani hotels, and adapt them in my onscreen avatars,” says the Jagdeep, whose iconic turn as Soorma Bhopali in the 1975 blockbuster Sholay turned him into an overnight sensation.

But Jagdeep modestly shifts the praise to Salim-Javed’s writing. “Javed would actually demonstrate the Bhopali twang, I only had to copy it,” says Jagdeep, crediting the writers for detailing the nuances of the quirky character. The character itself, he says, was borrowed from a theatre production the writer duo worked on 15 years prior to Sholay.

Today, as Meezaan enters the industry his father and grandpa have made a mark in, Javed feels his journey will be different. “When I got into films, the hero had a mould — he flaunted the same hairstyle for 10 years, and was different from the character actors. But today, the hero alters himself based on the character.”

He trusts his son will wear the Jaaferi name like a badge of honour. “When I came into the industry, I was known as Jagdeep’s son, and I am still proud of that tag. My father was a comedian, and I was introduced as a stylish actor who could dance. But then, you have to make it on your own.”

The Jaaferis will, no doubt, be keenly watching, like the rest of us, to see how Meezaan shapes his own identity. 

MUMBAI MIRROR (July 28, 2015)

Recently, in Kangna Ranaut's film, Tanu Weds Manu Returns, a snatch from Geeta Dutt's evergreen hit, Ja ja ja ja bewafa, rang across the auditorium bringing back nostalgic memories of a heartbroken Shyama in Guru Dutt's Aar Paar. Interestingly, the singer herself had approached the actress to act in her husband's 1954 noir comedy.

"I was so touched that I told Geeta didi I would not charge anything, she could give me whatever she wanted," Shyama had admitted in an interview, listing Aar Paar as one of her favourite films and Guru Dutt as a wonderful director who would act out every scene for his artistes. He also choreographed the songs which ranged from the above mentioned Ja ja ja ja bewafa, Arre na na na na tauba tauba and Sun sun sun zalima to Babuji dheere chalna, Mohabbat kar lo ji bharlo and Ye lo main haari piya. There was also the title track Kabhi aar kabhi paar crooned by Shamshad Begum and Shakila's cabaret track, Hoon abhi main jawaan aye dil. The songs were shot in real locations like a car, a club, a zoo and a garage, in real time. It was O P Nayyar's first hit score as he struck a chord with lyricist Majrooh Sultanpuri and entered people's hearts with Geeta's versatile voice.

Apart from the music, the thriller revolving around a cab driver, Kallu, a car chase and a bank robbery, is remembered for its evocative monochromatic visuals, credit for which go to Guru Dutt's cinematographer V K Murthy. However, for Shyama, Murthy turned out to be a spy in disguise.

Cupid had struck on the sets of Sazaa (1951), though it wasn't love at first sight. Fali Mistry, the cinematographer who directed the Dev Anand movie, did not endear himself to the film's leading lady after he ordered her hairdresser, Mrs Green, to snip off her unfashionable Rapunzel tresses. "We'll have a cascade of ringlets instead," he decided. Shyama sobbed her heart out as she watched her lovely locks fall to the ground, wondering why she was being punished for wanting to become a heroine.

Fali, a perfect Parsi gentleman, wiped away Shyama's tears, wooed her with his quiet words and won her heart with his gentle smiles. Soon, they started meeting clandestinely and then after a while, got bolder.

Fali would often drive past her house, honking loudly. That was Shyama's signal to rush to a window and flash him one of her bewitching smiles. Unknown to them, this exchange was watched by Johnny Walker, who was a regular at the restaurant beneath Shyama's house.

"We tried to play it cool but Johnny bhai suspected we were up to something. Slowly, word spread in the industry that Shyama was Fali's girl and that made things really difficult for me," Shyama had laughed at the memory.

Johnny Walker was a part of Aar Paar but more than him, Shyama learnt to be wary of V K Murthy during the shoot. Fali's former assistant kept a hawk's eye on her and if he ever caught her even playfully trifling with her hero, he would immediately report to the boss who would pull up Shyama that evening.

"I'd wave him away saying, 'Of course, I'm your girl Fali, but thoda flirting kar liya to kya,'" reminisced Shyama, adding that deep down, her Parsi boyfriend knew that she was his. She proved it by going against the wishes of her orthodox Muslim parents and tying the knot with him quietly one morning. Later, she reported on the sets of Laadla where she was told to her bemusement that they were shooting a wedding sequence. "But I got married this morning," she giggled. No one knew that she was serious.

Aar Paar elevated Shyama into the top league and Guru Dutt wanted to pair up with her again in Mr & Mrs 55. But this time, she asked for double the amount she had been paid for Aar Paar. And he dropped her for Madhubala.

MUMBAI MIRROR (April 8, 2014)

Renowned cinematographer and Dada Saheb Phalke awardee V K Murthy, who won encomiums capturing breathtaking images in Guru Dutt's classics like Pyaasa, Sahib, Bibi Aur Ghulam and Kagaz Ke Phool, died in Bangalore yesterday at the age of 91.

Known as 'Guru Dutt's eye', Murthy also worked with the pioneer of Indian cinema in Aar Paar and later teamed up with Kamal Amrohi in Pakeezah and Razia Sultan.

"He passed away this morning at his Shankarapuram residence here; he had only age-related issues," said Murthy's niece Nalini Vasudev. The ace cinematographer is survived by his daughter Chaya Murthy.

Murthy was the first technician to be honoured with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, Indian cinema's highest honour, since its inception in 1969. He won the award in 2008. Murthy, who shot India's first cinemascope movie Kagaz Ke Phool in 1959, also won the International Indian Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award at Amsterdam in 2005 during his four-decade-long career. His picturisation of the song Chaudavin Ka Chand is still considered one of the best cinematographic works that Hindi cinema has seen and his work in films like Kaagaz Ke Phool and Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam won him Filmfare Awards.

From his early collaboration with Guru Dutt in the 50's to his work in Shyam Benegal's mega-serial Bharat Ek Khoj, Murthy has also to his credit one of the most acclaimed Kannada movies titled Hoova Hannu in 1993, where he made his acting debut, though he never tried his luck in acting after this. Born in 1923 in Mysore, Murthy earned his Diploma in Cinematography from S J Polytechnic, Bangalore, in 1946. He later shifted base to Mumbai, where he met Guru Dutt. 

—Agencies