Wasiq Khan, the production designer of ‘Goliyon Ki Rasleela Ram-Leela’, on creating magic and realism

It was Dhankor’s first scene in the movie, and a debate was raging about the curtains.

Should they be ornate like the apparel and jewellery in which the fearsome matriarch of the Saneda clan in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s  Goliyon Ki Rasleela Ram-Leela is swathed, or should they provide a dash of simplicity?

There were close to 200 samples from which to choose. Production designer Wasiq Khan asked an assistant to put up a roughly textured jute curtain on the wall. Bhansali loved it. The curtain stayed in the scene.

Bhansali’s superbly choreographed treatment of  William Shakespeare’s  Romeo And Juliet is also his lightest work till date. Here, as in his previous productions, are the epic sets that create a cosmos of impossible beauty, the decorative touches for ordinary objects, the perfectly coiffured men and women. But here is also a grungy underside to the flourishes, playful backdrops, and the co-existence of grandeur and rusticity. Bhansali’s choice of Khan, who has for years created the illusion of reality in modestly budgeted productions, has resulted in a gypsy opera that is more tethered to verisimilitude than previous ventures like Devdas, Black, Saawariya and Guzaarish

Ram-Leela might be a mild departure for Bhansali but it has set Khan firmly on the road to bigger things. An acolyte of renowned production designer Samir Chanda, Khan has worked closely with film-maker Anurag Khashyap as well as designed such films as Dabangg, Rowdy Rathore andBesharam. He is among the people who create Hindi cinema’s newfound love for lived-in texture, and the go-to man for a level of detailing that seems utterly natural despite being utterly manufactured.

“My school is the Samir Chanda school, which is more realistic and rustic,” Khan says. “In the old days, production designers were called art directors but many of them were glorified carpenters. All rooms had that painting of Arjun and Krishna from the Mahabharat and two sunmica tables. The villain’s den had to have a stuffed tiger. Nobody bothered talking to the art director about costumes.” Greater attention is being paid to costumes, sets and locations than ever before, he says. “Audiences do care for realism, and you can’t take them for granted any more.”

Khan cut his teeth on such Kashyap films as Black Friday, set in the middle-class neighbourhoods and slums of Mumbai, That Girl in Yellow Boots, which unfolds in the city’s grungy parts, and Gangs of Wasseypur, shot at over 300 locations in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. “I did my first commercial film because there was gadbad (trouble) in my kitchen,” he says. “Even when I did Dabangg, I maintained a sepia tint and a rustic feel. But on a film like Ram-Leela, you can open your mind and imagine things, let the artist inside you wake up even as you try to maintain the realism.”

Bhansali came calling because of Rowdy Rathore, which the filmmaker co-produced. He wanted to keep the Baroque style for which he is known but also wanted to create a parallel universe that would be believable, Khan says.

The merry mix of magic and realism is what makes Ram-Leela so special. Everything is decorated, from tattooed bodies to encrusted guns and bandhini-patterned cellphone covers. There are nods to Baz Luhrmann’s anachronisms and  V.  Shantaram’s invocation of temple art and architecture. The porn movie parlour run by Ram, the movie’s Romeo, is designer seedy, with neon-lit cut-outs and lurid poster art. In the weapon- storage room, guns peek out of straw baskets and from inside shimmering back-lit glass cases as though they were diamonds. The love story’s Juliet, Leela, exchanges naughty SMSes with Ram in a chamber that has Raja Ravi Varma paintings and diaphanous curtains. Glasswork patches liven up rough-hued walls, not unlike homes in the Kutch region whose craft traditions and folk culture have influenced Ram-Leela’s design and narrative.

“We worked primarily with two colours, black and burgundy, and tried to give a rustic feel in every set,” Khan says. (Bhansali didn’t respond to interview requests.)

The extended and expensive production schedule—over 200 days—was very different from what Khan is used to. He is something of a heartland specialist in his ability to conjure up a “gareeb (poor)” aesthetic, as he says. “Whenever people don’t have budgets but want to make their films look good, they think of me.”

Khan learnt his craft from the man whom he calls Dada. Chanda, who died in 2011, followed in the tradition of celebrated realism specialists Bansi Chandragupta, Satyajit Ray’s long-time collaborator, and Sudhendu Roy, the leading art director for Hindi films from the 1960s to the 1990s. Chanda recommended Khan to Kashyap for Last Train to Mahakali, his contribution to the fictional drama series, Star Bestsellers, that aired on Star TV in 1999. “Dada introduced me to Anurag as his best product, and told him that he should take me away and not send me back,” says Khan.

He had meagre resources to work with on Last Train to Mahakali, as well as for Kashyap’s unreleased debut feature,Paanch, made in 2003. The resourcefulness born out of need combined with the belief, drilled into him by Chanda, that sets would be convincing only when they looked lived in. “There are sets and then there are sets that indicate that somebody has lived there,” Khan says. “A place must have soul and feeling.”

Khan has been integral to Kashyap’s noir-influenced cinema right from the beginning. “We didn’t have a lot of money for Paanch, but we wanted to make the scenes look rich,” Kashyap says about his debut, in which members of a music band commit murder to fund their dreams. “There is a red room in Paanch that was Wasiq’s brainchild,” Kashyap adds. “I told him about my hostel room, with graffiti on the wall. He said, give me the graffiti and I will figure out how to do it, and he did. His ability to transform something from ordinary to extraordinary and make it look real and never lose character is why we work together.”

However, the two did not collaborate on Dev.D or Kashyap’s forthcoming Bombay Velvet. “We didn’t work on Dev.Dbecause both of us were in different zones, but we missed him a lot,” Kashyap says. “He is tremendous at turning minimal into maximum.”

Khan studied at the faculty of fine arts at the Jamia Millia Islamia university in Delhi. His family was far removed from the tinsel trade, and Khan was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and become an engineer. He met Chanda while he was a student, on the sets of Ketan Mehta’s Sardar. He got chatting with Chanda, who handed him a business card.

After his graduation in 1996, Khan arrived in Mumbai with Chanda’s business card in his pocket. He dialled the landline number listed on the card, only to discover that the line had been disconnected. He worked his Jamia contacts and got a job at the Kamalistan studio, painting backdrops for art director Ratnakar Phadke. Khan finally met Chanda a few months later, who recruited him as an assistant for Mani Ratnam’s period Tamil film Iruvar. Over the years, Chanda became a surrogate parent for Khan. “He was like my father, we would talk every few days,” Khan says.

He also picked up from Chanda the ability to improvise at short notice. When a shoot for Rahul Dholakia’s political drama Lamhaa in 2010 had to be shifted abruptly from Kashmir to Mumbai because of security concerns, Khan created a set with “truckloads of chinar leaves” that were brought in from the state. “People started calling me from Kashmir and asked me where we had shot the sequence—when you create realism, people do notice.

Chanda’s advice remains a lodestar for the 38-year-old production designer. “I still try and maintain the rules and standards Dada gave me,” he says. “He told me to never stop thinking that the job is done. I don’t do too many films—he used to tell me that money tends to come all of a sudden.” Yet, Khan has been unable to resist the demand for his services. He is now working on the Bhoothnath sequel, a biopic on the political prisoner Sarabjit Singh, a remake of the Tamil film Ramana, and 21 Topon ki Salaami, about P.N. Joshi, a put-upon government employee whose sons try to honour him with a 21-gun salute at his funeral.

Joshi’s chawl abode is a good example of Khan’s adeptness at mimicking reality. Packed into the tiny space are a stainless steel vessel rack, a goddess-themed calendar, a mezzanine storage loft and the ice-cream spoon holder with fake purple flowers that is a common sight in middle-class homes. “You can’t pinpoint it when you watch a movie, but you can feel it,” Khan says about the art of creating the invisible, yet visible, backdrop. “Everything should not be perfect, since life isn’t perfect.”

source: http://www.livemint.com / Live Mint / Home>  Leisure / by Nandini Ramnath / Saturday – November 20th, 2013

Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi today voted for Nahid Afrin, the young singing sensation from Assam, for the “Indian Idol Junior” Season II.

Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi today voted for Nahid Afrin, the young singing sensation from Assam, for the “Indian Idol Junior” Season II.

In a statement here, Gogoi said the young promising singer from Assam has been regaling the audience and viewers with her mellifluous voice and bringing laurels to the state.

The Chief Minister appealed to the people of the state to vote for Nahid, who hails from Sonitpur district, to enable her to win the coveted singing reality show.

Impressed by the singing of the 13-year old Visharad, a Part 2 student of classical music under the Bhatkhande Kala Kendra, the Indian Idol Junior Season 2 judges said she might get offers for playback singing by the end of this season.

Intense campaigning is on in Assam, particularly in her home town Biswanath Chariali, for Nahid’s victory in the singing reality show.

source: http://www.indianexpress.com / The Indian Express / Home> Entertainment> Television / by PTI / Guwahati – August 22nd, 2015

Comedian Azeem Banatwalla talks about the changing scene of stand-up in the country and his need to constantly reinvent himself

He’s been described as an ‘effortlessly likeable’ comedian, someone whose speciality is ‘merciless humour’. But at Azeem Banatwalla’s recent performance in Chennai, he struggled to find his footing. “It took me a while to get the audience warmed up. As a performer, I take some time to set up my jokes; that could be a reason. However, we settled in soon enough, and things were smooth from there,” he says.

He insists that his brand of humour is different from that of other Indian stand-up artistes. “My acts are all about things that appeal to me. I analyse religion without being offensive, and I absolutely don’t do political humour or over-the-top adult humour. I am more quirky in my approach with these topics; even when I touch upon religion, it is with tact. At the risk of sounding pompous, I’d say I’m into intelligent humour,” he laughs.

With the audience across the country evolving, keeping content fresh is a challenge for stand-up artistes, says Azeem. “The audience in places like Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata are good at picking up subtle humour, and they no longer shy away from calling out an artiste, if he or she is off the mark. If your material is stereotypical, you can expect to be booed,” he says, adding, “People are more well-read today. So we don’t just pander to the crowd anymore; we talk about things that we want. And I like this challenge of having to constantly reinvent my humour because, after a point, I get bored telling the same jokes over and over again.”

The 6-footer, who spent the initial part of his career writing for various publications, confesses that his acts were written like staid scripts. “I realised I was delivering the same lines in the same way, over and over again. That is no longer the case. I now just prepare a rough draft of points I want to touch upon during an act, and then go on to improvise my jokes based on how the audience receives them,” he says.

His stories stemming from frequent travels and his observation about life in general usually translate to humour on-stage. “It could be my take on the air hostesses or the crying babies around me,” says Azeem, who himself enjoys watching comedians like Bill Burr, Sundeep Rao and Anuvab Pal.

But the man, who manages to rack up laughs and guffaws throughout his acts, is quite reticent when he’s away from the spotlight. “I think I’m the most confident when I’m on stage. When I’m off it, I’d much rather sit in a corner, finish my drink and go home,” he laughs.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> MetroPlus /  by Ranjani Rajendra / September 05th, 2015

A tantalising novel pits art against new India

The Cosmopolitans | Anjum Hasan | Hamish Hamilton | Pages 275 | Rs 499

The title of Anjum Hasan’s newest book sets the tone for a novel chock-full of irony. In fact, the first word of the book is also a title and an exercise in irony. ‘Nostalgia was big,’ the book begins. Nostalgia is the art installation that appears in the very first chapter of the book. A living room with a vintage TV playing black-and-white news about death in jungles and government scams, the installation has travelled from Venice to Bangalore. Which is where Qayenaat, the protagonist of this tantalising novel about art and artists, encounters its strange, retro glamour.

The tension between provincials and cosmopolitans is a well-examined theme in Hasan’s work. Her first novel, Lunatic in My Head (2007), was set in Shillong and traced the lives of three characters waiting for their life to begin. Hasan has also published a collection of poems, a second novel,Neti, Neti: Not This, Not This (2009) as well as a collection of short stories, titled Difficult Pleasures (2012), a title that could very well apply to all her writing. In her current novel, the title is like a lightbulb in a living room, invisible in itself, but illuminating everything under it.

What’s in a title? Qayenaat is, after all, a woman who has bought a painting by the mysterious artist called NJ because of its ‘poignant, Shakespearean name’. As for her own name: ‘At twenty she had dropped her last name simply because it was Gupta and there was no way to reconcile the ordinariness of Gupta with the sublimity of Qayenaat. So, braving passport officials and census takers, strangers on trains who insisted she reveal her religion, caste and clan, and boyfriends who wanted to know her second name before they kissed her, she stuck to Qayenaat…’

And thus we have our unusual protagonist. A 53-year-old single woman and a failed artist, prone to wearing ‘corduroys the colour of horse shit and khadi the colour of dishwater’, assertive enough to shake off her surname, but willing to be perplexed about art, about whether galleries matter, about artists and their public responsibilities. But while Qayenaat has been busy preserving the dignity of a genteel, reflective life, ‘Something had been happening since the turn of the century to render everyone well-off except Qayenaat.’

Hassan’s precise, poetic voice soars when she describes the new wealth of Bangalore: ‘It was as if they’d all just been waiting for Pears soap and Italian pasta to hit the shelves before they disowned their alleged poverty, grinning sheepishly as they abandoned the swadeshi delights of their youth—the polka-dotted nylon saris, the low-roofed Fiat cars, the striped yellow packs of glucose biscuits, the synthetic orange juices, the bottles of royal blue Chelpark ink with which one filled fountain pens to write letters to faraway friends and which friends filled their pens with to write back.’

Hasan’s observation of the city is always scrupulous and affectionate, and a joy to read. With detail that is both deft and luxuriant, she describes the busy hunger on the streets of Shivajinagar during the Iftar hour, the women inburkhas and running shoes doing their rounds in Coles Park, how MG Road’s dream of being the modern centre of the city was interrupted by the malls and lifestyle enclaves and bistros of more nouveau riche neighbourhoods. Bangalore and the various ideals of cosmopolitanism it stands for are transmuted into a particularly suitable setting in this book about various species of cosmopolitans.

At first glance, Baban, the jet-setting artist, and Sara, the wealthy art collector, are the cosmopolitans of the novel, with their casual, easy relationship to money and art. Qayenaat, like MG Road, has been out-cosmoplitaned over the years. Then there is her former lover Sathi, a journalist from the boondocks of Uttar Pradesh. Sathi lives by Mahatma Gandhi’s dictum about asking yourself how one’s actions will affect the poorest. This makes him both pragmatic and idealistic. When Sara and Baban are discussing Baban’s newest idea for an installation: a mansion of water, ‘a liquid monument,’ it is Sathi who brings up the pathetic condition of municipal waterworks. Water, like money, is an object of abstraction for Baban and Sara, whereas for Sathi, and Qayenaat, living in Sir MV Nagar, an industrial township beyond the northern edge of the city, water and money are in short supply.

It is refreshing to read a book about a woman who needs money. When we first meet Qayenaat in the gallery, she is there because she is, she realises belatedly, in love with the artist Baban, the old friend who has reinvented himself as a world-famous artist, newly returned to the city of his youth. But before the story can settle into the expected romantic momentum, money or the lack of it becomes a central element in the narrative. Qayenaat needs money, and with Sathi’s help, briefly considers staging an art theft to con the insurance people. After she becomes responsible for the tragic death of a beloved art critic, Qayenaat abandons Bangalore. To do this, she has to raise money and she does so by selling her beloved The Painting of a Sorrow. But where can she go to make amends? The answer is provided by an old cutting from The Illustrated Weekly about a dying dance form, saved amongst her father’s memorabilia. ‘I’ll go into India,’ Qayenaat decides.

However, this external world of art openings and conversations and thought crimes and tragic deaths only exist as a backdrop, however, for Hasan’s meticulous exploration of her character’s inner life. Right from the beginning, the reader is stationed inside Qayenaat’s head. The story alternates between the languid pace of her rambling thoughts and the occasional spurt of action. Even the dance she is passionate about exploring is a means to an end in this philosophical novel; in terms of popular appeal and glamour, this art form created by the rulers of an erstwhile kingdom in central India is at the opposite end of the spectrum from Baban’s Nostalgia. Determined to study the dance, Qayenaat arrives in Simhal, a tiny town in the middle of the country whose tribals are at war with the Indian state—the kind of place that produces the bad news which the TV newscaster in Baban’s living room installation is mouthing.

Legend (or excellent public relations) has it that Orhan Pamuk was inspired to start collecting objects for his Museum of Innocence after meeting a former Ottoman royal who made a living as a ticket collector in an Egyptian palace. Apparently, the Crown Prince even considered taking up a tour guide position at the Ihlamur Palace, in Istanbul where he had grown up. In Simhal, Qayenaat, too, meets a monarch whose vocation has devolved into an all-consuming nostalgia, in a ruined palace whose red paint has faded to the colour of mud, stuffed with ‘racks of mouldy dance costumes and chests of rusty swords’.

+++

The king of this palace dreams of ‘a museum and a library dedicated to the dance; a five-star hotel that could house at least two hundred guests; and, finally, a university to teach performance arts to students from every corner of the world’. But there is already a museum of innocence in Simhal: a dusty, forgotten archive of legless statues, complete with a library where a young woman sits reading in the newspaper about landmines blowing up buses in the countryside near them. Here, Qayenaat makes a friend.

In another ruined building, she falls in love. Watching this, far away from the chaos and discontents of Bangalore, is one of the pleasures of this novel. The hope and lightness of love are weighed, again and again, against the larger world, full of violence and instability; Hasan is especially adept at this eternal conflict. What eventually saves Qayenaat, however, is not love, but friendship. The loyalty of Sathi, the generosity of Sara, the shy sisterhood that springs up between Qayenaat and the young librarian— eventually, it is friendship that saves Qayenaat and redeems her journey when the king betrays her ideals and his tiny sphere of influence turns into a gilded cage.

The Cosmopolitans begins with an art exhibition and ends in an art exhibition. NJ has been killed by those who are offended by the nudity in her paintings, and in honour of her, Baban is curating an exhibition of paintings by Bangalore artists. As the novel ends, Qayenaat walks through the gallery wondering:

‘Do they display resistance, these works that mourn and celebrate NJ, or have they just been produced to be consumed by the always open maw of that monster, the market? She did not know but felt at home as she walked among them. Here again was déjà vu all over again. Art, which was long in contrast to life’s shortness. Art, which she had been a student of all her adult life, burnt down one evening, left Bangalore to get away from, found in another form in Simhal, and then escaped yet again to return to where she’d started. Art, which had killed NJ and was perhaps the only thing that could avenge her death, bring her back to life in some small way.’

A book that began with nostalgia ends with déjà vu. Perhaps this is the difference between the cosmopolitans and the provincials. One is destined to long for the thing that is gone, and the other is sentenced to the banality of repetition. The Cosmopolitans is a lyrical study in how one feeds off of the other.

(Shahnaz Habib is a writer and editor)

source: http://www.openthemagazine.com / Open / Home> Books /  by Shahnaz Habib / August 07th, 2015