Tag: diaries and true events

Despite all this time spent in close proximity to the film-making process and the odd ‘film-child’ (heh) friend I had, I was shielded from the Bollywood world. The fuzzy memories I have of early childhood are all happy ones. I began my education at a small Montessori school not far from home, and once my mother and I made it through a harrowing first week involving a lot of tears, broken promises and her having to sit around directly in Baby Shaheen’s eyeline for hours at a time—it was smooth-sailing. Well, for the most part. There was one hysterical temper-tantrum (tiny balled up fists being beaten on the ground, screaming, sobbing, hiccups, the works) thrown in the aisles of a busy supermarket because I was denied a box of crackers, but my mother assures me that that was a one off and not a regular occurrence or some sort of dramatic foreshadowing of things to come.

And then, when I was five years old life changed in an instant, dramatically and forever. So far, I’d spent my entire life with the undivided, uncontested attention of my mother and those around me, but suddenly there was a tiny new person to share my world with. My sister Alia came into the world during the turbulent 1993 Bombay riots and from the first second I saw her pink, mousey face, life was never the same.

I had desperately wanted a little sister and I was giddy with excitement when Alia was born. She was my pride and joy. Every spare second I had was spent watching over her and playing with her—I soon became so possessive of her that I refused to let anyone else touch her.

Still, adjusting to life with a new sibling is challenging for any young child. As a five-year-old I thrived on being the centre of attention—a stark contrast to the shy and reclusive adult I am now—but the attention that once came solely my way was slowly redirected towards Alia. She was disturbingly cute as a child, and even then she had an effortless knack of drawing people to her. Always the natural performer, most evenings at home involved a spirited performance by Alia to her favourite song of the week, irrespective of whether anyone was watching or not.

My own powers of magnetism, on the other hand, relied more on a carefully crafted combination of jumping, violent arm-waving and incessant demands for people to witness my majesty than effortless charm—and I disliked having to vie for the spotlight.

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With Directors’ Diaries 2, Rakesh Anand Bakshi adds yet another volume to his ongoing series of conversations with Hindi cinema’s most iconic voices. This time he shares with us his conversations with some of the industry’s most eminent film-makers as well as significant but often overlooked behind-the-scenes crew such as spot boy Salim Shaikh, make-up artist Vikram Gaikwad and sound designer Rakesh Ranjan.

Read on to get a look at the workings of the behind-the-scenes crew of a movie:

• Spot boys have feelings too!

  Few people address us [spot boys] by our names. We like it when they [film crew] address as a Spot Dada, but it feels great when we know that they know our names. We spot boys do many odd jobs in the long chain of film-making and are largely unnoticed and sometimes appreciated by the crew. People who watch films are unaware of our work and our significance on the film set. Even the people who handle lights and the settings department have greater visibility than us. 

• Spot boys are the foundation of film-making

  According to me [Spot Boy Salim Shaikh], spot boys, light men and the settings department lay the foundation every day in film-making. These three departments together help the unit set up a shoot every day and clear things post pack-up, when all the technicians, actors, cinematographer, producer, director, have gone home. We stay around for at least two more hours after everyone has left and arrive an hour or two before the others. Yet, we are paid only for the duration of our fixed shifts and never for overtime.

   

• Make-up Artists Know Best!
  

  The job of a make-up artist is not only to apply make-up but to also tell directors when it is required and when it is not. Unfortunately, many actors, especially females, and directors do not understand or appreciate this. They force us to apply make-up even when it is not required. For example, if you want a young girl to look like a mature woman, simply apply a lot of make-up. But, if the aim of the story is to retain the innocence and youth of the character, by forcing me [Make-up Designer Vikram Gaikwad] to apply too much make-up, the actor or director is going against the essence of the character.

• If you’re working with prosthetics, too much heat is a problem!

  The craft of prosthetic make-up is a nightmare in India because of the heat and humidity. Prosthetics are usually created by the application of foam pieces or silicon rubber pieces over the skin. For the foam or skin-safe silicone rubber to stick to the skin, we use a ‘medical’ gum—a paste that is skin-safe. The problem that arises is that the sweat from the heat or humidity dissolves the medical gum, thus weakening the bond between the skin and the moulding.

• The sound designer is a very effective storyteller

  Yes! The sound man is a very effective storyteller. He has to his disposal the various elements of the narrative—such as the dialogue, location ambiences, foleys, BGM and most importantly, silences—all of which constantly manipulate the audience’s perception of the story along with the visuals and the visual edits. I [Sound Designer Rakesh Ranjan] consider the sound textures as themes, because the tonal quality of all the sounds plays a very important part in the narrative, and this varies from subject to subject. I create sound texture by working on the tonal quality of the actor’s voice, their footsteps, and other foley sounds.

Aspiring directors, book lovers and cinema fans should grab their copies Directors’ Diaries 2 today!

How much has India and its ancient Indian texts inspired your thinking and teaching?

Tibet’s first contact with Buddhism occurred with the arrival of a Chinese princess in the seventh century. But, a century later, the Tibetan Emperor chose to introduce Buddhism from India. He invited Shantarakshita, a venerable monk, philosopher and logician, and the foremost scholar of his day at Nalanda University, to visit Tibet. He advised the Emperor to initiate the translation of Indian Buddhist literature into Tibetan.

We Tibetans have kept this tradition alive since then, with its emphasis on the use of logic and reason and its systematic understanding of the workings of the mind and emotions. As a simple human being, a Tibetan and a Buddhist, I myself am a student of this tradition—indeed, every cell of my brain is filled with Nalanda thought. We learn fundamental texts by heart, study classic Indian and Tibetan commentaries to them, and, on the basis of logic and reason, debate what we’ve learned with each other. This sharpens the mind and yields deep understanding.

In the foreword you mention ‘Eight Verses for Training The Mind’, how much has the book influenced you?

This short text the ‘Eight Verses for Training the Mind’ contains instructions not only for developing the awakening mind of bodhichitta, the cultivation of warm-hearted compassion, but also for developing a view of reality. I first received an explanation of it from the then Regent, Tagdrag Rinpoché, when I was a small boy; later I heard it from my junior tutor, Kyabjé Trijang Rinpoché. I’ve been reciting it and thinking about it daily since then.

The text reminds us that when we give to the poor we should do so respectfully; we should treasure ill-natured trouble-makers and give the victory to others, regarding enemies as precious teachers. We should cultivate the practice of ‘giving and taking’ and regard all things as like illusions, asking ourselves whether things really exist the way they appear.

In my daily practice, to review the entire path to enlightenment I use the ‘Foundation of All Excellence’, but to renew my practice of compassion, I recite the ‘Eight Verses for Training the Mind’. There are other times too, when a flight is delayed and I might feel impatient—this is the text I repeat to myself.

If there was a message that you would want to give to the world leaders of today, what would it be?

We need to remember the oneness of humanity, that in being human we are all the same. When I see two eyes, one mouth, one nose, I know I’m dealing with another human being like me. I’m like those young children who don’t care about their companions’ background so long as they smile and are willing to play. To emphasise nationality, religion, and colour just creates division. We have to look at things on a deeper level and remember that we are all the same as human beings.

As social animals, human beings depend on the community in which they live, and these days that community is the whole of humanity. To meet the challenges that affect us all, such as the climate crisis, we must work together. Scientists have been warning us for some time of the dangers we face. We cannot simply exploit this planet and its natural environment; we have to take care of it.

‘City of Gold’, ‘Urbs Prima in Indis’, ‘Maximum City’: no Indian metropolis has captivated the public imagination quite like Mumbai. Bombay Before Mumbai, featuring new essays by its finest historians, presents a rich sample of Bombay’s palimpsestic pasts.

Here’s an excerpt from Preeti Chopra’s essay from the book:

The British colonial regime brought to Bombay the English term and ideal of ‘charity’, complete with religious, institutional and social connotations. Following the literary scholar and novelist Raymond Williams’s untangling of the word, ‘a charity as an institution’ was established in the seventeenth century, replacing the older meaning of the notion as ‘Christian love between man and God, and between men and their neighbours’. From the eighteenth century onwards, the institutionalization of charity resulted in a sense of revulsion to the term itself that came from ‘feelings of wounded self-respect and dignity, which belong, historically, to the interaction of charity and class-feelings, on both sides of the act’. This later led to the ‘specialization of charity to the deserving poor’ (a reward for approved social conduct) and to upholding the bourgeois political economy so that charity did not interfere with the need to toil for wage-labour.

British notions of charity and philanthropy intersected with, and influenced, Indian forms of gift giving. Douglas Haynes has underscored ‘the importance of gift giving in Indian ethical traditions’. Native businessmen in western India actively participated in this arena, which included the construction of wells, rest houses, support of festivals and Sanskrit learning or other arenas that were valued by their community. These were religious acts in the service of deities, through which the devotees hoped to earn merit. But gifting activities were also tied to the world of business. Writing of the merchants of Surat, Haynes emphasises the importance of a abru u (reputation), which required careful nurturing and maintenance, adherence to community norms and support of community religious and social life. A Abru u also denoted ‘economic “credit”’. It was essential for businessmen to establish a reputation of reliability in order to participate in vast commercial networks that were based on trust rather than enforceable legal contracts and modern financial institutions. Gifting was also used to exert political influence over rulers who came from outside the city and distinguished themselves from the culture and norms of the merchants. Here, the gifts made by merchants accorded to the norms of the rulers. According to Haynes, under British rule in the nineteenth century, this form of gift shifted ‘from tribute to philanthropy’, as merchants started to contribute towards secular institutions such as schools, colleges, or hospitals. Gifting for secular philanthropic works of ‘humanitarian service’, Haynes argues, diffused ‘an entirely novel ethic from Victorian England among the commercial communities of India’. Thus, even as merchants continued to uphold their reputations by gifting practices that maintained community religious norms and social life, they adjusted other practices to the norms of the ruling group. Building on and moving beyond Haynes, I underscore in this chapter how native elites also donated to charities that supported the European poor and, occasionally, Christian religious institutions primarily geared towards Europeans.

In the nineteenth century, colonial legal interventions transformed native practices of charitable gifting by making them transparent and bringing them under government control. As Ritu Birla shows, the Charitable Endowments Act of 1890 and the Charitable and Religious Trusts Act of 1920 introduced the criteria of ‘general public utility’ for determining charitable purpose. Yet, religious institutions were excluded from the category of charitable trusts until the Act of 1920 ‘established that religious trusts deemed of public import would also be eligible for classification as charitable trusts, and thus be classified as tax exempt’. An example of a religious trust of public import were dharamshalas, or travellers’ rest houses, which offered free room and board Primarily used by merchants, they were open to religious mendicants and those of ‘pure caste status’. Yet, in most cases, entry was denied to those of lower castes and untouchables.

From the 1890s onwards, as courts increasingly began to consider cases involving the ‘public nature of indigenous endowments … the question of public benefit came to rest less on equal access to all potential beneficiaries and became instead one of serving more than just the family or trustees.’ In the 1890s, the British saw dharamshalas as ‘valid religious but not public charitable trusts’. By 1908, however, they clearly considered them as institutions of public benefit. The 1920 statute allowed the Government of India to give local government and courts greater regulatory controls over public religious and charitable trusts, at the same time as it forced trusts to publicise their finances and accounts.

Thus, to summarise, in colonial India, charity retained a religious basis, serving specific communities, and excluding others. It remained distinguished from philanthropy, which had secular humanitarian goals, and served the public at large. While the institutionalisation of charity in Britain encouraged popular feelings of social revulsion and channeled aid towards the deserving poor, nothing suggests that all Indian communities felt the same way, at least in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Bombay Before Mumbai is a fitting tribute to Masselos’ enduring contribution to South Asian urban history.The book is available now!