A couple of years ago, just before Cinema Excelsior downed its shutters in Lal Kuan near the Chawri Bazar Metro Station, I saw posters of Dilip Kumar’s films Vidhaata and Mazdoor gracing its gallery. Their faded colours told the story of a long stay at the cinema which, like Filmistan, was known for playing reruns of Dilip Kumar films. One look at the Mazdoor poster and my mind went back to that popular song with a profound message, “Hum mehnatkash iss duniye jab apna hissa maange gey”. Penned by Hasan Kamal, the song celebrated the power of the labour. Hardly surprising considering the film’s name was Mazdoor . Less of a surprise that the film did well at Cinema Excelsior in its multiple runs considering a large chunk of its audiences was brought up by daily wage earners.
Around the time Cinema Excelsior was preparing to bid adieu to the world of entertainment leaving behind just a handful of posters and plenty of memories, Robin Talkies in Old Subzi Mandi had already called it a day. I had been there too; just a mesh iron gate leading a little passage to a cinema that too carved out its niche by playing old Hindi films. At one time it showed films in naturally cooled environs, this being a euphemism for the absence of fans, coolers and air-conditioners. The faceless masses, often seen in vests with holes and trousers fraying around the ankles, accepted it all. Here I found a couple of posters of Mithun Chakraborty films like Mujrim and Daata , the time he did mainstream Hindi films before starting his own economy model of filmmaking in Ooty.
On the first floor canteen, outside the so-called balcony section, hung a framed poster of Duniya , an early 80s film of Dilip Kumar that won’t exactly go down among the best of the legend’s 50-odd films in a six decade long career. Then, in a little corner, half covered with cobwebs hung a poster of Naya Daur , B.R. Chopra’s 1957 classic. The film was a roaring hit when it first released elsewhere in the city with three of its songs “Ude jab jab zulfe teri”, “Reshmi salwar kurta jaali ka” and “Maang ke saath tumhara” staying long on the popularity charts. Yet it is the film’s song “Saathi haath badhana”, Sahir Ludhianvi’s ode to socialism, that stays in my memory. Whether the song forced Robin Talkies with a dedicated working class audience to show the film will never be known. But the fact that Naya Daur ticked all the boxes when it played here more than 20 years after its release lends credence to the belief that the have-nots loved Dilip Kumar’s projection of their issues.
I was not the only one thinking of cinema as a poor man’s vehicle for expression rather than mere escapism. Soon I was in august company thanks to Lord Meghnad Desai. The renowned economist penned “Nehru’s Hero: Dilip Kumar in the Life of India”, a Roli Books publication. He came up with his own perceptive analysis wherein he drew a parallel between the films of Dilip Kumar and the emerging nation’s tryst with socialism. The Naya Daur song emphasising the power of united labour fit perfectly with Desai’s description. And my visit to two relatively lesser known cinemas strengthened the notion that whenever our poets or lyricists wrote songs about the struggle of the have-nots, the masses turned up in great numbers. If in the ’50s, they soaked in the promises of egalitarianism, by the ’80s, they were itching for their pound of flesh – hence the difference in the tenor of the lyrics of Sahir Ludhianvi and Hasan Kamal. Much before Amitabh Bachchan reflected their angst in the ’70s, Dilip Kumar had led the way first with Naya Daur and later a film like Gunga Jumna . Interestingly, Dilip Kumar had pencilled in Vyjayantimala, his heroine of Naya Daur , for Gunga Jumna while shooting with her in Bhopal for B.R. Chopra’s film.
Of course, Desai did not limit himself to just a study of the parallel growth of Nehruvian socialism and Dilip Kumar’s career. Until he said as much, it had not struck me that throughout his career, Dilip Kumar was always a Ram or Shyam, a Devdas or a Gunga but never ever a Sultan or a Salim. The real life Yousuf Khan had been embraced as Dilip Kumar by the industry right from the time Devika Rani found him suitable for Jwar Bhata . Yet nobody in the early years of independent India had a Muslim character for him. That is until there came along K. Asif’s magnum opus Mughal-e-Azam . There too, as Desai said, he played a period role, not one throbbing with the touch of contemporariness.
Though Desai’s book could not be classified as biography, it filled a significant gap in bringing home the crests and troughs of Dilip Kumar’s life. Yet in a society where a Shah Rukh Khan biography finds pride of space on a thousand bookshelves, there was none on Dilip Kumar until the master himself sought to fill the void with the book “Dilip Kumar: The Substance and the Shadow”, an autobiography made possible thanks to his many conversations with Udayatara Nayar.
A 450-plus page turner, Dilip Kumar’s autobiography which sheds fair light on the person he is – apparently, he has been a voracious reader with thousands of books at home – sent me back to the halls that used to play his films again and again in the city.
Robin is long gone. Same with Cinema Excelsior, even Filmistan which once played a daily change festival of his films in the 1960s is consigned to mere memory. Time then to go back to Desai’s book.
And maybe book myself a date with the tragedy king himself.
