Mughal-e-Azam redux is a sight to behold

Decades in the making, K Asif’s all-time blockbuster Mughal-e-Azam (1960) would have lumbered on incomplete were it not for an inspired financial bailout by the Mumbai tycoon Shapoorji Pallonji, grandfather of Shapoor and Cyrus Mistry. Mr Pallonji wasn’t into film production; he was only interested in Emperor Akbar. The epic hasn’t stopped being a money-spinner since, including a dazzling colour re-release in 2004. Financially profitable or not, it remains the $5 billion Shapoorji Pallonji (SP) conglomerate’s most valuable cultural asset.

In contrast, theatre director Feroz Abbas Khan’s stage musical of the movie took two-and-a-half months to be readied. “When Feroz came to see me about the project he offered a royalty of Rs 5,000 per show. I was shocked,” a bemused Deepesh Salgia, director of SP’s real estate arm, told me from Mumbai. “I said, ‘Get ambitious, and come back with a vision document.’ Having handled the Mughal-e-Azam brand for 20 years we wanted scale — a mesmerising multi-dimensional experience — never before seen in India.” Mr Salgai held his faith; and Mr Khan delivered.

A collaboration between SP and the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) — “a happy marriage between a corporation and a charitable trust” says Mr Salgai — the stage spectacular has run, in four cycles over seven months, without a spare seat in Mumbai.

In remaking movie history, with live dialogue, songs and dancing, Mr Khan combed far corners of small towns, and overseas, to assemble a 250-strong cast and crew, combining new-found talent with award-winning Broadway and Bollywood leaders in lighting, projection, production and costume design.

Wisely, he doesn’t tinker with a terrific script. “That would be a travesty,” he says. “Also, I can’t give you enthralling Madhubala and Dilip Kumar in close-up, nor Lata Mangeshkar and Bade Ghulam Ali Khan’s sublime singing.” What he achieves instead, through leaps of artistic and technological innovation, is a driving narrative sustained by ensemble sequences and set pieces.

The uncluttered stage, save for occasional startling props, relies on son-et-lumiere effects and vast projected backdrops that plunge you straight into mirrored durbar halls and doom-laden dungeons. Similarly, the choreography and music take from techniques of corps de ballet and choral arrangements.

Generations of filmgoers who have exulted and wept at the romance, rebellion, heartache and horror of a royal prince’s passion for a low-born court dancer will find subtle embellishments. In a dream-like passage where Prince Salim actually marries Anarkali, the background score fuses a traditional Rajasthani love lyric with an Amir Khusrau qawwali; it underscores the film’s enduring appeal of Hindu-Muslim assimilation against its emotional conflict of class and ruptured father-son relations.

The love story of Prince Salim (later Emperor Jahangir) and the smouldering beauty is an invention but it may be a form of literary conceit. Historically, it echoes two controversial events in the life of the impetuous, obsessive, violent Jahangir. In 1599, he rebelled against his father in an attempted takeover of the throne — apparently they only reached a truce on Akbar’s deathbed. Later, he ardently pursued a married (and foreign-born) Shia courtier’s daughter, crowning her as the powerful Nur Jahan.

Mr Khan now brings this rich hybrid to Delhi. And everything about the Delhi production is bigger than Mumbai’s — the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, a weight-lifter’s arena, seats 2,000 compared to the NCPA’s 1,100; the 60-foot proscenium; the props conveyed in 50 trucks.

Several things, too, about the 58-year-old director, known for longstanding stage hits like Tumhari Amrita and Gandhi My Father, suggest his Pathan origins. From his physical appearance to his elegant speech, he is in the genre of Prithviraj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar — both Pathans, and the main pillars on whom K Asif constructed his mighty edifice.

On the penultimate day before opening night he is a far cry from a battle-weary general. Between back-to-back production meetings, he is inquiring after a dancer’s fever, looking at seating plans, introducing me to his youthful choreographer from Bengaluru, and, on his iPad, showing  how his scene breakdown developed, with images, sketches and colour palette. “In theatre, there’s parallel casting — two Anarkalis, two Salims — proficient dancers who can’t sing, and vice versa. Also double costumes, one to wear, another to clean. Emperor Akbar can’t order a 19th retake. Anarkali can’t cry in pain at the bruises left by her shackles in jail.”

I asked Mr Khan how Delhi’s establishment — it’s bossy political class, intractable free-loading bureaucracy and the police —were treating him. “Incredibly!” he said, all smiles. “I went to see the Police Commissioner about security, and was out in five minutes. He said, “Feroz sahib, aap hamay bataaiye, aapke liye hum aur kya kar saktey hain?” (Tell us, sir, what more we can do for you?). This is the capital of India and the beating heart of history.”

Being an expensive enterprise, Mughal-e-Azam’s tickets run from a reasonable Rs 500 to a wallet-bending Rs 10,000. But even if I were penniless I would stand for nearly three hours in the aisles to see it.