Sanjeev Bhargava produced hit films and ran successful businesses. Now he aims to make high culture popular again, he tells Kishore Singh
Sanjeev Bhargava orders a Carlsberg to my fresh-lime soda, an unlikely choice for someone who’s vying for the mantle of the country’s cultural czar, but he’s an unlikely contender anyway. Two decades ago, he might have had trouble casting himself in that role in the blockbusters he produced with not a little regularity, but when the film production company wound up in favour of a Maruti distribution agency, Bhargava turned corporate, vying for the big bucks and earning himself a neat little profit in the bargain.
“I want to see more mid-career professionals leaving their companies to work in culture,” he says now, decades after the making of alternate cinema and popular blockbusters — Aakrosh, Masoom, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro — is fading from memory. But that was when he’d inherited too much from his father: a career in distributing and producing Bollywood films, but also blood pressure, and heavy drinking and smoking “that killed him when he was just 46”. It might have “killed me before I was 30”, he says now, the blood pressure a chronic presence, enough for him to complain about the salt in his soup to the waiter, but his mid-career course correction has him more at peace with himself.
| ANANYA: THE PROGRAMME
At Purana Qila, from 7:00pm to 8:15pm October 3 October 4 October 5 October 6 October 7 |
The younger of two sons, he took on his father’s mantle not because his brother was already at Oxford, but more because he was the more creatively inclined. “I was doing plays with Amal [Allana] and Faisal Elkazi, acting alongside Neena Gupta,” as a consequence of which he went on to complete and release 17 films his father had left unreleased, among them the hugely popular Khel Khel Mein and Jawani Diwani. But having gone through the highs of cinematic experience, Bhargava renounced it in favour of making smaller films “with my theatre contacts”: Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, Raj Babbar, Naseeruddin Shah and Co. The way he set it up, Guru Dutt’s brother Devi Dutt would make the films, Bhargava would retain the international rights, and a new cinematic offering would become available.
The hugely successful Aakrosh came about as a result, and Bhargava discovered that the overseas market was very lucrative for his kind of films. This alumni of Modern School and St Stephen’s College would arrive at film festivals in Milan, Berlin, Cannes, Los Angeles, London or New York “with beta tapes in my backpack”, to “sell my films whether for £25,000 to one country, $3,000 to another”, even roping in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to show its first Indian film. Marketing of rights for regional films followed. “I was young, enthusiastic, good at marketing,” he says, the finances going into producing, first, Masoom with Shekhar Kapur, his senior from Modern School, as director, and later the cult Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro.
That stint ended with the arrival of the video cassette, which destroyed film viewing in cinema halls, and Bhargava packed his bags to head for Jaipur, to handle the distribution of Maruti cars, a business he built with as much rigour. “By 1991, I realised that peace, meditation, theatre, music, everything had gone from my life, that the tensions were back, I was competing with others for money, and that was overtaking my personality” — scars from which time have accumulated like the marks of dissipation about his face — and so he left the business to the family and walked away. At some stage, he built himself a little home as a Himalayan escape, outside Ranikhet, but Seher, his company for the promotion and marketing of classical culture, was born.
Plays followed at the India Habitat Centre, he ran the Basant Utsav at India International Centre, did theatre productions and book readings, and began a network to suss out lesser-known but brilliant talent. “That’s when Mrs [Sheila] Dikshit asked me if I wanted to do something on a bigger wicket,” he recalls, “something associated with the care and protection of monuments”, and a partnership with Delhi Government was launched. Seher now does five branded events in five Delhi locations: Ananya, a festival of dance and choreography which begins its 2009 season this evening at Purana Qila, the hugely popular devotional Bhakti Utsav at Nehru Park, a Gurbani festival at Talkatora Gardens, the annual Qutab Festival, and in Central Park, a Saarc music festival. “The Chief Minister’s mandate was to make Delhi a good place to live in, to promote harmony and a democratisation of culture,” something he’s achieved with entry being free to performances, so “a maali might be seated next to the British high commissioner”, he points out.
While Seher manages the due diligence for sourcing the best talent, and never repeats artistes, Bhargava says his challenge is to promote “good quality, classical culture for newer, younger audiences, for travellers”, with one objective, “to create a brand out of Indian culture”, something educated, elite audiences might want to watch as much as the hoi polloi, instead of the Bollywood rubbish and mindless entertainment that television offers. “Culture is an intangible heritage,” he says, and requires quality marketing and packaging, something he insists on, diverting funds to “first class communication” instead of hiving it off to his own bottomline.
However unlikely, does he see himself as a successor to Pupul Jayakar or Rajeev Sethi? “We need more events to create more Pupul Jayakars,” he says, programmes that are not one-offs, and which happen when a city decides to dedicate itself to that effort, wooing audiences in the thousands, something that will sustain itself irrespective of governments or their heads, which at the moment is not a given despite their popularity — Bhakti Utsav will happen now in Kolkata and Chennai, while the Saarc music festival will travel to the Saarc countries. “We’ve been criticised for running free programmes,” he cribs, “but we’re not in the business to make money, we’re in it to change people’s tastes.”
Bhargava says the response to Ananya, for instance, has been “overwhelming, I get so much adulation from the city” only because “I do what I love”, and “think big, such as presenting the India@60 event at London’s Trafalgar Square. Yet, it’s the small things he misses, such as “acting — that power of directly communicating with audiences”, which he’s had to give up in lieu of organising instead. As a member of the Censor Board, he’s kept on his toes and in touch with the Hindi film industry, but for now he must exercise his team for preparing the capital for the Commonwealth Games next year.
Seher will not handle the opening or closing ceremonies, he says, but “20 locations will come alive with different flavours”. These might include his repertoire of festivals such as Ananya and Bhakti Utsav, but also a rock festival, a jazz festival, a raga programme, another of musical instruments, a photography show, an art event, these taking place at historic city locations as well as, perhaps, at Metro stations. “We have been asked to make Delhi a better destination,” he says, and then, “Culture makes everyone a better human being.” You’d better believe it.
