Perhaps the time has come to acknowledge that as journalists we will never be able to tell the whole story unless we carry a documentary camera in our hands.
As someone who has written a fair bit about the film industry and tried to bring the glamour, the grit and the craziness of it to light with words, I realised how meagre has been my attempt when I saw the BBC documentary Bombay Superstar, shot in 1973, on Rajesh Khanna.
It is a most extraordinary insight into the life of a man at the centre of the world’s biggest film industry at one of the most crucial junctures of his life: he has just ended the seven-year-old relationship with his live-in girlfriend, has had a shotgun midnight wedding to a 16-year-old emerging star, and is on the brink of the release of one of his make-or-break films, Daag, which comes on the heels of five clanging flops.
The documentary is extraordinary because of the access its makers have been afforded: right inside the star’s bungalow where minions run up and down with clothes on hangers for the superstar and his young bride to choose from; the faces of star-struck socialites as he enters a party at the Taj’s Crystal Room; shots of the superstar and his wife inside their car as they are driven to the premiere. Shots of a sulking, chess-playing Hrishikesh Mukerjee as he waits on the sets for Khanna to arrive (two-and-a-half hours too late) and of course the flotsam and jetsam of India as it stands on the sidelines to watch the great Indian Bollywood Fantasy Carnival as it passes.
Could any of this be conveyed with all its intensity, immediacy and nuance to a reader, even in the hands of the most skillful writer?
The sudden fire in Mumtaz’s eyes as she lashes out at Devyani Chaubal, the indomitable columnist of Star & Style, for casting aspersions on her family’s antecedents. The dreamy, seductive manner in which Khanna himself flirts with the camera and the British interviewer as he replies in a strangely staccato accent to his probing questions (note to reader, having heard Khanna, Dimple Kapadia and Mumtaz’s speaking voices, it sounds suspiciously as if their responses have been dubbed).
For someone who has experienced most of this firsthand, and tried to capture it for readers, I realise now that words on a page can never tell the whole story. Why ever did we think they could? A movie camera and microphone in the hands of even the most inexperienced amateur is worth a thousand words.
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Which brings me to the dire need to record as much as we can of the wonder that is India around us. Not the “breaking news” clips of news channels, nor the commissioned hagiographies on “the great and the good” around us, but insightful, unbiased, and truthful accounts of the lives of people who make India what it is.
It’s a humbling experience when after 30 years in a profession you realise its limitations. But perhaps it’s never too late. I have watched Bombay SuperStar at least half a dozen times since I first learnt of it recently.
I urge you to do the same.
Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer malavikasangghvi@hotmail.com