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Love and loss
Dr. Agni Shekhar.
IT IS not often that a film based on a literary work satisfies fans of the author completely. For the author too, whether a novelist or a playwright, the process of transforming the written word into the language of cinema can often be painful, though instant fame and hefty payments help to make the bitter pill more palatable. For Dr. Agni Shekhar, Hindi poet and fiction writer, on whose short story the forthcoming Bollywood film "Sheen" is based, there was one more motive to accept the required compromises.
Ashok Pandit's directorial debut in commercial Hindi cinema, "Sheen" - expected to hit the screen in early February - attempts to tell the story of the Kashmiri Pandit community that has been rendered homeless due to terrorism in the Kashmir Valley. "I accepted the changes because I felt at least the struggle would come out. The mass exodus of 1990, the plight of people living in camps - these will come through," says Agni Shekhar.
From the point of view of a storywriter, the compromises have indeed been great, but then for Agni Shekhar, the founder of Panun Kashmir, creative expression is just another way of taking his beliefs and the movement forward. Changes to the outer shell, perhaps, are not so vital. In classic Bollywood style, the heroine of the movie, played by debutante actress Sheen, has a Prince Charming to serenade her amidst the beautiful locales of Jammu and Kashmir. But in Agni Shekhar's short story, there is no such romance. Though the protagonist is indeed called Sheen - which means snow in Kashmiri - the original story is a much more poignant tale of loss.
"It is the story of a father and daughter. The girl is to be married. The groom cannot make it to the marriage as the barat is attacked by terrorists and he is killed. But the priests suggest that to avoid missing the muhurat - auspicious time to solemnise the wedding - she should take pheras with a chinar tree. Then the news comes that the groom is dead and she becomes mentally disturbed," recounts the award-winning writer, who, while mentioning that Mahesh Bhatt feels the film "can go to Cannes" admits, "I do love the original story more."
Though Agni Shekhar, who has worked on the screenplay of "Sheen" with Raman Kumar and Ashok Pandit, points out, "My ambition is not to write for films," he has definite views on the state of Bollywood and does not hedge like other new entrants. He feels filmmakers who cite the taste of the masses as an excuse for showing mindless buffoonery, are only indulging in "bahaane baazi" and actually illustrating their "intellectual bankruptcy". He does not condone indiscriminate display of violence either, though he clarifies that he is not, including Ashok Pandit - whose film promos promise enough scenes of zinging bullets and gushing blood - in the discussion. "As a sensitive writer I have seen that the amount of violence shown by Bollywood has established it as a value system. People don't think of violence as such. When they hear of violence, they only count numbers."
Describing himself in favour of meaningful cinema, he is critical of inane Bollywood churnouts. "Let people come out with films like `Mother India', `Damul'. Let the audiences be shaken up," says this admirer of Bhagat Singh and others who "don't differentiate between their word and deed".
Though many of his writings are on the pain of the Kashmiri Pandits, he condemns persecution of people anywhere. Describing himself as a "pro-peace writer" he stresses that he went to Gujarat at the time of the Bhuj earthquake with Rs.8,00,000 worth of medicines and later during the communal violence there too. "There can be no shame greater than violence," he declares. "My ideal is Kabir. See my tragedy. I was breastfed by a Muslim mother besides my own mother."
This specialist in Kashmiri folklore says he had collected over 3000 literary specimens. "But I lost it while fleeing. I measure this tragedy as a loss of a secular tradition of Kashmir."
ANJANA RAJAN
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