One of the questions that we – as media professionals – ask each other is where are the writers?
Where are the writers who penned amazing narratives. that made for such compelling viewing. Where are the men and women who could write with such insight and incisiveness. Just look at the classics of film – Pyasa, CID, Black Market, Deewar, Zanjeer, Shakti, Sholay – the great TV shows – Hum Log, Buniyaad, Khandaan.
It’s not me being nostalgic – the stories were truly better. The characters a lot better etched out.
And then it came to me with a flash. almost like a revelation. Those who wrote, lived life. They struggled. They moved with people apart from the “film/tv” crowd. They exchanged ideas, they were intellectuals – without being distant, and they were populist without being crass. And they made a socio-political comment. The entertainment was still there, as was the song and dance. It is just that it suddenly got a reference to context. They were politically aware. They were politically active. Their songs, their dialogs, the structure of their work reflected their own biases. their own opinions. Their own POV. And it doesnt matter if that view was right or wrong. The very fact that they had it made their work interesting.
Today when we programme or produce – there are some basic facts we have to keep in mind regarding our characters/story lines. No one faces month ends. No ones kids fail their exams. No one goes for a job interview. No one travels by bus any more. No one falls ill. People die, but they then come back to life.
Our writers act accordingly. They don’t read or live life. they watch DVD’s. The number of times this year i have been told : “madam, yeah usa mein bahut achi tarah chali hai, isko humne alag hi se indianise kiya hai” is not funny. If i had a tenner for everytime i heard that i would retire to the beaches of the east coast:)
Hi
The lack of writers also has a bit to do, along with other reason, with language access confusion. I raise this point not from the politicised pov that people have spoken about it before but purely as for analysing the problem objectively. And it is this – In India, English is the language that one adopts when one gets into college. In most cases, (I am not aware of many colleges that use other languages as mode of education for subjects other than language itself) English is the medium used to gain knowledge about different topics once you are in college. And hence, lack of English knowledge in some ways and to some degree proves as a disadvantage to individuals who are interested in gaining more knowledge and who would otherwise not have had problems moving higher up the “intellectual ladder”. Hence, we are in a state where “intellectuals” only include more of English using intellectuals and intelligent indv using other language gets marginalised. Also, as English becomes the language used by the “intellectuals” to put out new content, people using other languages wont be able to access this new content. (As an example: an individual interested in grasping the posts of this blog who uses only Hindi or say Telugu will not be able to do so, thus limiting that individual). And in this way a lot of ideas and content of this world that remains in English is locked away from such people. Unless translated in as many languages as India uses those people will never be able to access it and never reach the benchmark of intellect set by English using intellectuals. The English using “intellectuals” on the other hand read englsih and do not read content written in Indian languages (not many do, again for the same reason, they cannot friggin read tamil or telugu or hindi) and hence feel more connected to what critics call “western way of life” and their ideas are inspired by artists and thinkers who use English (I have moved from listening to hindi movie songs 6-7 years ago to classical Rock music, because after a point I could not find good combination of good lyric writing and good music within the Hindi music category). This makes it difficult for the English user to write content for the hindi user. And this I think is the greatest problem in popular Hindi cinema. So if I had to write something, I’d write it in English or a mixed version of hinglish, and then try to translate that into hindi before producing that content for TV or Film to each out to the billion. And words can be translated, but how do u translate way of speech, phrases, humour, a partiuclar way of expression, because when you do that you change style, and style is more important, style is the summation and integration of all that go into a writer’s work. Style cannot be translated. Or make an indian english film as is the trend and reach out only to a small small fraction. Maybe ur english film had a great Idea that the hindi guys could have liked, but they just couldn’t access. And this is the prob;lem caused by Language access confusion.
jeeez…. I really complicated this, din I? [try translating this line in Hindi and i bet the style would change – “Ram ram, ise to maine bada hi uljha diya, kyun?”]
[Of course this problem also has contributed towards some creativity, for example, check out Salman Rushdie’s works and Nagesh Kukunoor’s Hyderabad Blues.]