I was awestruck when I first watched the Marathi movie “Manus,” made in 1939. A love story of a constable and a prostitute was the movie’s most unusual and bold plot from that era. 1939, I would repeat that number in amazement. My father was just born that year; I could only think of this singular event from my life as I tried to fathom that number.
I have watched “Manus” time and again since then. I also watched “Kunku” and “Shejari,” other gems with the commonality of social issues at the core of these movies. All three movies, among others in that decade, were outstanding works of the legendary Director V. Shantaram. I googled him, and he looked so handsome then that he could have easily played a lead in one of those movies.
It wasn’t like I was coming across this name for the first time. I remember watching some of his movies in my school days that felt peculiar. He looked quite different in his old age. Dressed in Sherwani and Pajama, he wore a Gandhi cap made of fur and black glasses covering an eye injury almost hid his face. As the news of his death came in, the Doordarshan channel started a V Shantaram movie festival. They featured his movies every night, and My father and I watched a few of them. I hadn’t overwhelmingly liked any of them except Do Aankhein Barah Haath. I was young to understand the brilliance of others.
After watching “Manus,” the name V. Shantaram impacted me differently than the above-faded memory. I was eager to know about the stories behind these movies. Imagine my happiness when this time I went to the library, I astutely asked for V. Shantaram’s biography. In minutes, I was carrying home a bulky book of 500-plus pages. If I had doubts about finishing this book, they soon evaporated. Within the first few pages, I was absorbed. The book is written by his daughter, Madhura Jasraj, but in the first person and almost feels like his autobiography. This book is not just the story of the legendary V. Shantaram but a documentation of an era.
The book starts with V. Shantaram’s childhood in the princely state of Kolhapur in British India, ruled by Shahu Maharaj. Even 100 years after his death, the King is still remembered by people for his progressive outlook, embracing all religions and sheltering the backward castes. Art and industrial activities flourished during his period and region. I consumed the description of Kolhapur depicted in the book; it teleports you there. The book is a great justice to the story of the moviemaker because you are almost watching a movie rather than reading.
During his growing years in Kolhapur, young Shantaram slowly grasped that they were economically not well off. His father struggled to meet the ends for the family. Thus began a story of his hard work. Shantaramji, in his one-year stint as a junior artist in the Gandharva theatre company, in a fitter’s job in a railway workshop, or as an all-rounder job at Baburao Painter’s Maharashtra Film Company, gave it his all. He made every life experience a learning episode and soon became adept in filmmaking.
The book is like a pot of gold for Indian film history lovers. You see the evolution of Indian movies from an experimental level to a booming industry. After Dadasaheb Phalke made India’s first silent movie, Raja Harishchandra, its grand success encouraged many to try filmmaking. Baburao Painter was one of these filmmakers who formed the Maharashtra Film Company with the help of investors. He also built a camera from scratch. Lokmanya Tilak awarded him a gold medal for this first made-in-India camera. After the success of his first movie, Sairandhri, Baburao made Surekhaharan in 1921 (Mayabazaar). V. Shantaram debuted as lord Vishnu and Krishna in this movie. This, too, was a success like Sairandhri. Unfortunately, a fire broke out one day in the studio and destroyed these films and the camera. Shahu Maharaj reached out to help Baburao Painter, and Baburao filmed Sairandhri and Surekha Haran again. This time he renamed Surekha Haran as Mayabazar. Yes, it had the same plot as the Telugu Mayabazar made in the 50s.
I understood the working of a film studio around this period. How actors were hired as employees in those days. They were simply workers on monthly wages who acted, sang, or danced and worked on sets in various filmmaking departments, depending on their caliber. Imagine if they had to remake a movie collaborating dates of every actor like today!
Baburao Painter made an extraordinary silent movie, “Savkari Pash,” in 1925. The movie’s story was about a farmer who could not escape the deadly loan trap of his moneylender. V. Shantaram called this movie “Kaustubh Mani,” loosely meaning a pinnacle point of Painter’s filmography. It opened his eyes to making movies on social issues. He was always proud of Baburao Painter and mentioned him as his Guru, even when Baburao Painter did not actively teach him to make cinema. V. Shantaram learned everything on his own by being a help to people in every division of filmmaking! Baburao was not gracious enough with his words for his hard work or, as V. Shantaram expected, a pat on his back. Nonetheless, an investor took notice of young Shantaram’s accomplishments and asked him to lead the next movie in Baburao’s studio.
The story of the rise of V. Shantaram was very uplifting for me. When you think nothing beats the power of money in this world, here comes the story of a man who carved a path for himself with nothing other than unwavering hard work and not shying away from the first opportunity he got. He started working in the studio without a salary; even his food was paid for by his cousin. After months of proving his worth, he finally started earning Rs 9 per month!
One day, when V Shantaram was only 28, he and three more partners founded the Prabhat Film Company. He soon saw a day when he hired the people he worked under at the Maharashtra Film Company and Gandharva Drama Company. He rescued the legendary Bal Gandharva from his debt by making a movie with a lead role for him called, Dharmatma on life of Saint Eknath. Shantaramji even helped out Dadasaheb Phalke in his adverse times and contributed to building a home for him before Phalke’s death.
When Alam Ara, India’s first talkie, was released by Mumbai Imperial Company, it created a new box office record. Shantaramji was a partner in Prabhat and was making successful silent movies. He was pretty sure that talkies were a passing phase. This amused me the most in the biography. A young filmmaker with business acumen and a vision was reluctant to accept talkies!! Expressing through silent movies had become an art for him. He loved conceptualizing silent scenes and looked forward to them so much that he could not think of replacing them with talkies. In denial, he resolved to beat talkies by applying more grandeur to his art. Finally, he accepted the reality after the success of another talkie, Laila Majnu, and made the first Marathi talkie, Ayodhyecha Raja( yes, Raja Harishchandra), a big hit. Nevertheless, Shantaramji’s love for the silent era can be seen in every movie with a scene or two without dialogue.
It is a pity that many movies of those times are lost forever. The biographies like V. Shantaram’s are, therefore, the next best thing. His sharp memory has registered many details of his times and people. It’s not just movie details but people, his teachers, and his colleagues; he remembers them by their names. Because of this, I miss that he didn’t speak of other filmmakers and their work in the later part of his biography. He had no time. Just the same, I can’t help missing his take on his contemporaries and their movies.
His patriotic fervor has been the biggest motivation for the kinds of movies he made. After independence, he was wise enough to know that our society needed reforms and that freedom was only an opportunity to work hard to bring these reforms. He made movies on dowry, religious dogma, feminism, and in encouragement of our country’s spirit of unity in diversity. Though, many of his films are weighed down by idealism. He supported Hindi as our national language and did not like that the territories were divided based on language. He imagined that Hindi would eventually pick up words from other languages, like English, and everyone would have no qualms about the modified Hindi that accommodates everyone.
Idealism was definitely his way of life. He practiced whatever he advocated in his movies. He married off his sons without dowry and was quite proud of his family members, who came from diverse backgrounds. As a child of an interfaith marriage, it was natural. His mother was a Hindu, and his father was a Jain, which was again cool for those times – like before 1900!
Shantaramji was a make-in-India person. Here too, he walked the talk. It wasn’t limited to incorporating the best technology in his studio. To operate on his eyes, he found an equivalently good Indian doctor instead of getting treated by a specialist abroad. This he did keeping in mind an Indian fan who wished to get treated by the same doctor as V Shantaram.
He firmly believed in his hard work and never gave in to the superstitions we see even today’s moviemakers indulge in. In recent years, I encountered a post glorifying an old-time film critic whom filmmakers feared. I had become curious about this critic, but from the book, I learned he was a blackmailer, and Shantaramji refused to pay him for a favorable review of his movie.
I did expect a word from him on his bigamy(not polygamy because his second wife divorced him), and I read about it. It was astonishing, though, when he opened up about his physical intimacy in childhood, coming across semen issues in his adolescence and his wife’s periods. He always looked at movies as a means of mass education and has followed that belief in this book.
The book is full of movie trivia and firsts to V Shantaramji’s credit.
Ayodhyecha Raja was Marathi’s first talkie.
Sairandhri, directed by him in 1933, was India’s first color film. Although, it was processed in Germany and did not turn out to be a quality color film.
I did not understand this part well enough, but in Sairandhri, he taped music on records from the movie. Earlier, music companies made the singers sing again for the gramophone records.
His movie Amrutmanthan was the first movie to make a Jubilee record.
He made the first cartoon short movie in India to be displayed before his film, but lacking distributor interest, Shantaramji lost the desire to make more.
His movie Shankutala was the first to make a 100-week record at the box office.
There’s one shot-one scene in his movie Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani. Shantaramji is unsure but has reasonable doubt that he did it before Alfred Hitchcock.
Shakuntala was the first Indian movie released commercially in the US.
He was the first to use a Jump shot technique in his movie Dahej. Never mind that I’m unfamiliar with the word or the method.
His movie Dahej inspired first the state of Bihar to pass a bill against dowry, followed by the Lok Sabha.
The marketing of his movie Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baje was unique for that time as he traveled to cities across India for it.
Even if some of his first credits, like the one scene-one shot, could be arguable, you understand that he still was among the top movie makers who experimented a lot and is not credited enough for those experiments. He is not talked about enough, and the next generation, unlike us, isn’t exposed to his geniuses.
Below are short reviews of V Shantaram’s movies that I have watched, and then this post ends, I promise 😂.
Manus (Bilingual)
I was a little disappointed to know that the protagonist of Manus was not Maina but Ganpat. V. Shantaram wanted to create a hero in response to the suicidal character of Devdas from the movie Devdas, a blockbuster that had captivated the minds of young men. I still appreciate writing a character like Maina. For me, she was the manus. V Shantaram visited the red-light area in search of her and brought this character to life in the movie. A character of a prostitute who watches for her self-respect, her well-being, and not letting the guilt captivate her, knowing she didn’t choose this life. Then there’s Ganpat’s mom, who I liked. Her son’s happiness is her priority, and she treats Maina with love. She would have opposed nominally if Maina and Ganpat had confided in her; she seemed that loving. But she couldn’t have possibly held against social pressure to their union. To me, the major success of this movie was that some fans asked V Shantaram why he couldn’t give a happy ending to this movie.
I have often pondered tragic endings. They give a dramatic turn to a story, which people call art. But most of the time, a tragedy in fiction is more of an escape for a writer who cannot imagine a better end to the drama he/she has created. Here, in Manus, the tragic ending is justified as Shantaramji wanted his hero to survive the failure in love and thus counter Devdas with a positive message.
Ganpat is an anti-hero character. His temper makes him less likable. Though he represents the ordinary world that lives ignorantly of the life of a prostitute. He is learning and broadening his outlook through her. Falling in love with the idea of falling in love is romantic. In reality, for people living and abiding by social rules, this becomes a test when you proclaim your love for an outcast; the first test is fighting hesitations inside you. Ganpat’s struggles are honest, if not heroic when he tries to visit Maina at her new residence by walking past an acquaintance of his and fails to do so.
When the movie ends, Maina is composed as she faces her trial. Ganpat seems to be bogged down with the word “dutiful,” a person he is supposed to be now. I’m not sure he sends out a positive message with that sadness. Irrespective, Manus was a hit, and people delightfully received the story of Maina and Ganpat. Do watch this movie; not just the screenplay but the cinematography and performances of all actors in this movie are top-notch. “Aata Kashala Udyachi Baat” is an evergreen song that has entertained people across generations.
Kunku(Bilingual)
This movie was made in 1937, 2 years before Manus. It is the story of an orphan girl Nirmala living with her Uncle and his family. Her Uncle tricks her into marrying a 50-year-old widower by exhibiting another young guy accompanying the widower in a meet. The girl realizes she has been conned at the wedding but is forced to proceed with it and leave her uncle’s home. She sees that the marriage is never consummated and gives a hard time to her husband by constantly insulting him for deceiving her.
To give context, Maharashtra saw a surge of such cases in those times. Poor parents married off their daughters to old men to save on dowry and marriage expenses. While a Hindu upper caste widow did not have any rights to remarry, however young she was. Challenging these patriarchal customs came as a byproduct of the Indian Freedom Movement. Plays and novels were written to create awareness on this topic for years before this movie(This movie was an adaptation of the novel Na Patnari Goshta by N.H. Aapte). Yet I marvel at the constant verbal attack on the husband by the girl with unsparing words in the movie. She is, of course, unforgiving towards her uncle too. She is so unpacifiable and fiery because she has been brought up very lovingly by her parents, who died in a car accident. You notice how a person will react to injustice with different conditioning and honed self-esteem. The audience liked the movie, but critics did not.
Shejari( Bilngual)
Made in 1941, Shejari was a story of Hindu Muslim neighbors who lived like family until a third person caused differences between them. Communal clashes were rising in the country, and V Shantaram thought to make this movie. The movie was liked by people. It is a dated and melodramatic story today, but the thought is commendable. Its one Marathi song, Lakh lakh Chanderi Tejachi Nyari Duniya, was revived in a TV show by music director Ajay-Atul and, since then, quite frequently choreographed for film events. The original, too, is a pleasure for eyes and ears with the synchronized and rhythmic performance of dancers bearing fire torches.
Do Aankhein Barah Haath (Hindi)
This movie earned Shantaramji the International acclaim that he deserved. It received a Silver Bear Extraordinary Jury Award and an International Catholic Bureau Award from the pope at the Berlin Film Festival in 1958. Frank Capra was among the jury members, and Charlie Chaplin watched this movie twice. Do Aankhein also received the Samuel Goldwyn International Film Award in 1959, and an exciting conversation of V Shantaram with the Hollywood press is penned in the book. It was a box office hit in India and received the Best Hindi National Film award, the Director and Producer award that year. The plot was unique and based on a true story about a jailer trying to reform some hardcore criminals by living with them on the village outskirts without prison bars. Ae Malik Tere Bande Hum is a song from the movie about guiding the soul on the right path. It resonated with people beyond the regional states of India and was equally welcomed by the neighboring countries. It became the school anthem for many schools. The theme of evoking goodness in falling human beings unfalteringly moves every movie viewer. V. Shantaram played the central role of the jailer in this movie.
Pinjara (Marathi)
The Marathi movie industry saw its first color movie with the release of this movie. The film created history with massive success and is considered one of the Marathi movie industry classics. The plot was inspired by a German film, The Blue Angel. It was well adapted to Indian rural settings, especially the blending of a Maharashtrian traditional form of folk theater, Tamasha. Each and every song from the movie is popular even today. Actress Sandhya gave her best to the dance performances on the songs that were the best concoction of rhythm, lyric, and melody,
An ideal school teacher is trying to curb illiteracy in the village. The performances in the evening of the Tamasha dancers distract villagers, who skip their classes for it. The teacher visits the dancer to stop adults from missing his classes and eventually falls for her. He accidentally kills his arch-rival in a brawl with him over the dancer. The teacher flees with the theater troupe and lives as a fugitive among them. The village folks misidentify the dead body as the school teacher’s and mourn his death. After years, the police arrest the killer, and the court sentences him to death for his own murder. The school teacher prefers to stay mum and accepts the punishment as a form of redemption.
Even though I admire its storytelling, I did not like what people took home from this movie. A good teacher destroyed his life for a woman. Morality or the Gandhian path is misconstrued in Indian society. The wanting to keep an image intact instead of embracing truth is where we as a society go wrong. Falling in love with a dancer did not transpire into the teacher’s fall. It started when he first lied about it and ran away from the murder scene instead of surrendering to the villagers and the law. He prefers preserving the myth of him to the actual him. This story contrasts with V. Shantaram’s life ideology, his book, where he puts all his cards on the table.
I will add reviews of Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani and Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje here when I watch them. Needless to mention that I had a great time reading the book and writing about it. Now the post ends as promised.
Born Again 