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| CULTURE & SOCIETY |
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BOOK REVIEW |
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Read the screenplay to evoke the movie magic
By Anwesha Madhukalya
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Sahib, Bibi Aur Ghulam:
The Original Screenplay
By Dinesh Raheja, Jitendra Kothari
Om Books International
202 pp | Rs 595 |
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THE PROPHETIC Ghadi Babu declares time and again that ‘ghadi brahmanashini hai. Taj-o-takht nahin rahe, mahal nahin rahe. Yeh haveliyan bhi nahin rahengi’. Ghadi Babu is a somewhat more eccentric and foreboding antecedent to the omniscient Samay from BR Chopra’s Mahabharat. When Bhoothnath returns as an overseer to demolish the haveli, we know and understand that time has played its cards and the prophecies of Ghadi Babu have been realised. The result has been the annihilation of a way of life and not only the metaphorical but also the literal demolition of the havelis.
The Original Screenplay of Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam published by Om Books International under the initiative of Vinod Chopra Films celebrates 50 years of the depiction of this bygone era by Guru Dutt. The film itself is a treasure trove of contemporary ideas and brilliant film-making techniques. The cinematography, especially in the song Saaqiya aaj mujhe neend nahin aayegi, the play with light and darkness, the nuances of the camerawork while showing Bhoothnath’s point of view, the depiction of the gradual change of the characters mostly towards debasement and the increasing change from a feudal society to a colonised one are only a few of the things that make this movie worth preserving.
In only six meetings, Chhoti Bahu and Bhoothnath establish a very personal but platonic bond. From being an outsider to the debauched lives of the zamindars, he eventually becomes the Chhoti Bahu’s confidante, so much so that he finds he has entry to Chhoti Bahu’s bedroom through the secret room. The director Abrar Alvi and Guru Dutt took immense pains to sustain the ambiguity of their relationship till the end. They deleted a scene from the final cut where Chhoti Bahu tells Bhoothnath how she wished Chhote Babu was more like him because Alvi and Dutt thought that it would give a pronouncement to the relationship they wanted to preserve as platonic yet ambiguous.
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It is a fitting tribute and a captivating testimony to the brilliance of the magician Guru Dutt |
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Though mesmerised by the Chhoti Bahu and her unparalleled beauty, Bhoothnath nevertheless falls in love with his employer Subinay Babu’s daughter Jaba. Jaba is the well-educated daughter of the progressive owner of the Mohini Sindoor Karkhana. Jaba is Chhoti Bahu’s anti-thesis. Unlike Chhoti Bahu, Jaba is practical, as independent as women were allowed to be, assertive, willful and outspoken. But like Chhoti Bahu and Bhoothnath, who do not ever cross their limits even in times of utter intoxication, Jaba and Bhoothnath do not break any of the social norms even in the most tragic and trying of times. To make the contrasting characters of Jaba and Chhoti Bahu more evident, the cinematographer VK Murthy always showed Chhoti Bahu in the dark and Jaba in light.
THE MOVIE ends with the shutting of the book which is entitled Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam. Alvi detaches himself as the teller of the story by using the book as a symbol either to establish the story in history or to attribute the story as a creation of Bimal Mitra’s novel by the same name.
The Original Screenplay of Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam is a fitting tribute and a captivating testimony to the brilliance of the magician that Guru Dutt was.
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