Surrendering to ecstasy

LUNCH WITH BS/Film-maker Muzaffar Ali

It would have been an interesting affectation if Muzaffar Ali's choice of the Triveni Tea Terrace had been for reasons other than convenience, but with an exhibition of his paintings at the nearby Shridharani gallery, it lapses into mere expedience. Even so, it isn't without its bout of nostalgia.

In 1969, Muzaffar had been a regular at this cultural hub of Delhi, its proximity to the office ensuring he was a regular for its parathas and shami kebabs. He moved on to Mumbai and larger things, and it's been over three decades since his return like the prodigal to taste the cafeteria's famed home-food lunches once more.

The lunches have remained the same, right down to the taste of the chutney, but Muzaffar has changed. From advertising account executive to working in Air-India's creative cell to film-maker, artist, calligrapher, fashion-designer and spiritualist (his annual Jahan-e-Khusrau festival of Sufi music opens later this month), he has continued to re-invent himself so that, at 59, when most people are winding down, Muzaffar's career is careening down an even faster track.

Our order is simple: parathas, pulao, palak-paneer, raita and "" as an afterthought "" the famous shami kebabs, and is as swiftly served. Muzaffar's stylishly elegant persona is at home at the cafeteria where artists and actors eschew cerebral masala for home-cooked curry. "I've achieved a point," he says biting into a kebab and wincing "" he has an abscess in his mouth "" "where I can present myself as a very important film-maker for the world."

But it's been a long journey to get to the point where Muzaffar feels he can now take on the world. And for those who came in late, its antecedents lie in a feudal set-up called Kotwara, near Lucknow, that was to have been his inheritance.

His father, even after doing a Masters from Edinburgh, returned to the estate since "it was very difficult for him to find someone to work with. And if the zamindari hadn't been abolished, I, too, would have been a Raja, and there would have been no need for me to work."

Not that the young Muzaffar who went to Calcutta in the late-1960s was looking for work. "I didn't want a boxwallah's job, I didn't want to be a tea planter, I wanted to do something creative."

Advertising agencies were an option, but when he joined Clarion for Rs 150 a month, he found it expedient to avoid copywriting or visualising "because that would have made me subservient to a client's need and I did not want to be trapped: I wanted to fly."

Fly he did, after a while, having observed the world of Satyajit Ray, to Delhi "with a big jump in salary", before moving on to Mumbai where he joined Bobby Kooka's team at Air-India: "There was a totally different dimension to that work," he recalls, "we bought paintings for the office, designed uniforms for the crew, even designed the interiors of aircraft."

Through it all, Muzaffar continued to paint and exhibit and even made his first film, Gaman, starring Smita Patil. That transition was his most important, for it brought him into closer contact with what he considers the font of creativity: poetry.

By some quirk of fate, his work ever since has revolved around that muse. By the time he made his next film, Umrao Jaan, with Rekha in the leading role, and needed time off from Air-India for post-production work, he was dabbling seriously in the medium.

Leave was refused, so Muzaffar did what nobody expected: he quit the corporation. "Leaving Air-India was a tough thing. I had got a wrong deal from the sponsor of Umrao Jaan and was ekeing out an existence. None of my films [by now he'd also made Anjuman and Aagaman] made money for me because of the way the contracts favoured the financier, but fortunately I'd had the sense to buy a house in Bombay, and that gave me a lot of strength. It was big enough to make films happen and people could come and go."

In time, Muzaffar quit the "city of dreams" too, to return to Kotwara. That was when Zooni, his incomplete film on Kashmir, had stalled because of insurgency in the state, and Muzaffar refused to shoot elsewhere. "Kotwara gave me a lot of strength," he says, and Muzaffar began to intervene in handlooms and apparel, setting up craft centres.

In turn, these went to feed the label he launched with his wife Meera, called, expectedly, Kotwara. For now, the label has three outlets in Delhi and one in Mumbai, and Muzaffar has returned to live in a farmhouse on the capital's edge. "The strongest link for me in Delhi is Sufism. So many saints have lived and been buried here that the main pull for me is the fragrance of the Sufis."

The interest in Sufi poetry is also what kindled his interest in the 13th-century Afghan poet Jalaluddin Rumi. And it is Rumi that Muzaffar is fascinated by, having completed the first draft for a screenplay on a person he invests with the ability to save the world from destruction with his message of co-existence.

"Rumi's poetry, its essence," he ruminates over sips of Pepsi served somewhat inelegantly in a bottle, "cuts across all barriers. He is a symbol of universal ecstasy and surrender. Other people have their limitations, but Rumi's message is a simple one, that what you're searching for is within you, and you have to reach out and unearth that secret."

If, unlike Umrao Jaan, Muzaffar wants to turn the film on Rumi into an international project, it's because "competing on the national level with Umrao Jaan would be very difficult" on the one hand, and because, on the other, "it needs the highest technical and creative excellence". "The US, to me, is most important for the marketing of the film. Rumi, through America, can change the world."

If Muzaffar is obsessed enough with his subject to be exploring an international cast "" Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman have been mentioned to play the lead roles "" he insists he's not going to begin till he's totally satisfied with the script. "It's not an easy story," he says. "And to make people excited is a very difficult job, so," he sighs, "I may do a smaller, lighter film before then."

But that's not all that's keeping him busy. Besides his Sufi fest, he journeys often to Kotwara to check on the progress of the weavers and dyers and other artisans who work on his fashion label. "My interest is emotional and aesthetic," he says.

Besides, he also runs a school at Kotwara in a 14-acre mango grove aimed at providing "humanistic values and employment-oriented education". The haveli of his forefathers has been refurbished to provide a facility for tourism, even though it doesn't throw open its doors to the yuppie roadster.

"It's meant for people who're interested in Sufi music, or craft, or those who want to come and write, or have an interest in rural education," Muzaffar is unrepentant about his choice of visitor, "because it is a place where you feel anything is possible. Besides, I have a great reverence for craftsmen; they're big spiritualists, and so crafts regions anywhere in the world are highly charged."

While I tend to the small matter of paying for what must be Business Standard's least expensive lunch to date, Muzaffar shares one last tip on the liberated life: "I'm not employed by anyone," he says, "I used to dread going to office." For the millions who suffer the same fate, how's that for a thought?