Telling a filmi story

BOOK EXTRACT

Mihir Bose's new book is being promoted as "the first comprehensive history of India's film industry that now rivals Hollywood".

This is a hefty claim for a work that is episodic, gossip-laden, repetitive and heavily reliant on earlier sources (besides being poorly edited and scattered with typos ). However, the book does have several nuggets of information for anyone who's interested in Bollywood.

In a sense, the criticism of Lata Mangeshkar is due to the fact that she has always had a shrewd sense of her own worth and has not been bashful in making the most of it. In a country where the culture is not to ask for money upfront, Lata has been an exception.

Before Lata, the norm was for singers to be paid a flat fee. But these songs would then be released by a music company and sold in their millions. Lata demanded that the music companies should pay a royalty.

This led to a fight with Raj Kapoor about royalties which lasted for almost a decade. Lata started by demanding 5 per cent and then settled for 2.5 per cent, a target she eventually achieved when Kapoor made the film Bobby in 1973.

But then you could argue she knew her worth. Look at her impact on Raj Kapoor's films.

Kapoor, post-Nargis, had Padmini and then another south Indian, Vyjayanthimala, as his lady in white, playing in movies that were more sexually charged than during the Nargis era. Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai featured Padmini as a voluptuous bandit princess and Kapoor as the simpleton, reformist hero.

This film, backed by Lata's songs, was a success, as was Sangam in 1964 where Raj Kapoor, having found another actress from the south, Vyjayanthimala, now gave Indian audiences, most of whom would never leave India, a glimpse of London, Paris, Venice and Switzerland. The story was banal "" three friends and the girl they grew up with. The settings were exotic but it were the songs that were arresting.

Lata was clearly realising her worth. And not having received her final payment for Sangam, she did not sing for Mera Naam Joker in 1970, where Abbas wrote what was in effect Raj Kapoor's life story through the guise of a clown. It took four hours and fifteen minutes, Kapoor even bringing the entire Russian circus, and a ballerina from the Bolshoi, for the film but, despite all this, it was a disastrous failure.

Whether this was solely due to the lack of Lata is hard to say but it clearly played a part. It would be too much to say that Lata made Kapoor's films but she was a very important part of them. She did return for Bobby in 1973, but there was again a problem for Satyam Shivam Sundaram in 1978. as her biographer, Raju Bharatan, said, she did turn up for the recording of the last song but did not sing it.

She sat outside in her white Ambassador car while Kapoor, with folded arms, waited for her. She then drove off. "The look on Lata's visage as she thus took off was one of score-settling triumph."

There was probably more than money involved. She had been less than pleased about the idea for this film, which she had discussed with Kapoor, and which had an anthem of the body and the soul. Kapoor and she had spoken about making a film about a girl with a beautiful voice and an ugly body.

The result, which featured Zeenat Aman with the concentration on her beauty and breasts, did not go down well with Lata who, says Bharatan, "did not like the body beauty theme. She expected the fusion of emotion and vision, and got fusion of vision and passion."

Whatever the reason for the differences, Lata Mangeshkar had finally determined the worth of the singer.

Mohammed Rafi was not happy when the Guinness Book of Records listed Lata as having sung the most ever songs in the world: 30,000 recordings.

Rafi wrote to Guinness saying he had started earlier than her, was of better physique than the small petite Lata, and must have sung more. As it happens, when this dispute was resolved in 1989, it emerged that the real winner was Lata's sister Asha, who by 1989 had sung 7,500 songs [sic].

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BOLLYWOOD: A HISTORY

Author: Mihir Bose
PUBLISHER: Roli Books
PAGES: 381
PRICE: Rs 495