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His way with words
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Javed Siddiqi on why writers need to be invisible
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PHOTO : P.V. SIVAKUMAR
In Conversation Mohammed Ali Baig and Javed Siddique
“A film or a play where the writer is visible can be disastrous,” says theatre and film writer Javed Siddiqi. “The writer should remain submerged, allowing the script and the character to do the talking. In all these years, I haven’t written my own dialogues. I’ve written to suit the diktats of the script and the characters. The dialogues of Umrao Jaan reflect the language used in Lucknow in the 19th century, Soni Mahiwal had a liberal sprinkling of Punjabi and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge spoke the language of contemporary youth. Know your words, for they are alive,” he explains.
Javed Siddiqi was in conversation with Mohammad Ali Baig on the power of the word in theatre and cinema. Tongue firmly in cheek, Siddiqi says, “When I was requested to talk about the power of words, I thought what the world would be like without words. Perhaps the world would be beautiful. Raj Thackeray, whose complaint is about people like me who cannot speak Marathi, would perhaps be happy if we didn’t speak at all.”
Having studied Urdu and worked as a journalist in the 70s, he recollects his transition into theatre and cinema. “During emergency, one couldn’t write the truth. So I shifted to films where I could write everything else but the truth.” His first film as a dialogue writer was Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj Ke Khilari. “I remember Ray telling me to use words only when the pictures stop speaking. In cinema, you need not describe what the audience can see on screen. It is a visual medium. So I’ve kept my usage of words to the minimum. In fact, director Subhash Ghai accuses me of being miserly with words,” laughs Siddiqi. His all-time memorable play, Tumhari Amrita, Baig points out, is his own interpretation of the A.R. Gurney’s original English play Love Letters. “We had a format and a play before us that was timeless, in the sense that the story can be identified with at any point of time. It was a story of relationships. It was a challenging task, since we had to engage the audience with just two actors and a stage where two chairs and tables were the only props. I had to interpret Love Letters in my own way to the Indian context,” says Siddiqi.
SANGEETHA DEVI DUNDOO
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Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
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Kochi
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Visakhapatnam
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