“Brother, no matter what you achieve from doing petty everyday things, remain closer to the bigger, more important things. That is life” said Lakshman Rane. He too begged for food, smoked Ganja and slept on the stone staircases. He too had a long gray beard and a moustache. But he wasn’t Swamy Maharaj because he didn’t wear a Khavi. He deliberately refused to wear them. He would have earned some money along with the usual greetings and offerings. He wouldn’t have had to plead alms from other Sadhus. But Lakshman Rane chose to always introduce himself as ‘Lakshman Rane’.
It was not so surprising to hear him utter these ‘words of wisdom’ all of a sudden. All those who walk down the streets of Kaashi have crossed that invisible margin in life. Life, for them, was distant, either buried deep in the soil or floating away in the air. This made them address life in precisely framed sentences. “We eat the earth for a while and then the earth eats us”; the Baba, who used these famous phrase to describe the sixty years he had spent on this earth, was lying on the stone staircase drooling in his Ganja stupor. They say that he had lost his wife, eight children, his home, cows, farm and everything that he had possessed in the earthquake in Gujarat.
I looked at Lakshman Rane contemplatively. “Let me explain, we get immediate success from these small petty affairs. We enjoy it and the happiness we get from them is ours for the taking. They make our everyday life sweet. But the truly monumental affairs are like mountains. They keep moving away as we approach them. They make us seem small and insignificant. They leave us with a great deal of disappointment and regret. If we emerge triumphant in the end, the joy of victory will be shared by thousands of men. It’ll leave us with nothing but a minuscule measure enough to lick.”
Lakshman Rane’s eyes are like those snails on the banks of Ganges. There’s always that wetness filming his eyes.
“But I would still advise you to go towards those bigger things. Do bigger things. At least try to stay close to them because those are history. Your life is meaningless if you are not a part of history. Millions die like that. Like these bubbles in the water, we’ll all fade away. History alone will remain. And so…”
The same line again. But he added something to it this time. “A fly fluttering about, where history is made, also becomes a part of it…” I took the Ganja from his hands and took a gulp. Fear filled my insides and I blew the smoke out immediately.
Lakshman Rane chuckled. “Moron….you wasted a puff of Ganja. Ganja should reach deep and touch your soul. Our soul is like a giant honeycomb. When the smoke touches it, the bees fly around….boom!” he said, making an exploding gesture with his hands, “…they swarm around it. Rrrrr…Some bite…it may hurt. But once the bees move away, you see the honeycomb. Sweet nectar dripping from it…slurp!” He licked his lips. “You are a coward. You don’t want to live on the ground like the others. You don’t have the courage to plunge into the Ganges. You stand on the muddy shore. You…”
I felt the need to distract him. I’d had enough with all these advices. Even the boy who sold Idly at the nearby cafe said, “Malayali Baba, you better go home.” Giving the pipe back to Lakshman Rane, I said, “you mean to say that you were a fly in the history”.
“Ha ha ha! That’s right. A fly in the history…excellent imagination. Nice…” he said smoking the pipe.
“Actually…it’s yours”
“Oh?” he said shaking his head. “Yes, a fly in the history. There’s nothing it can do. So it keeps flying around gazing with a thousand eyes. It wouldn’t leave no matter what you do. Wow! You’re a poet…it’s a nice way of putting it.”
I smiled.
“Gandhi has seen just one movie in his entire life. Do you know that?” he said.
“Really?” I asked.
“Yes. Shree Ramrajya. It was released in 1943. A brilliant movie…”
“Oh” I said.
“In 1944, Gandhi stayed at the Juhoo beach in Mumbai. To be precise, it was June the 2nd. The movie’s director and producer Vijay Bhat tried, for at least a month, to make Gandhi watch the movie. Finally, he managed to talk to Pyarelal and through him approached Gandhi. Gandhi said that he didn’t have the patience to sit and watch a whole movie. Vijay Bhat had a plan. He called for a local singer and made her sing all the songs in the movie. Gandhi sat listening to those songs solemnly. He agreed to watch the movie the very next day. There was a special screening for him. Patel also came to see the movie. After watching the movie, Gandhi called Vijay Bhat and said “good movie” and gave him a hand-made thread roll. It stayed in the Bhat family for many generations. “
Taking a deep puff, Lakshman Rane said “Brother, I worked for that movie. When Gandhi was watching the movie, I was standing near the wall carrying Vijay Bhat’s leatherbag. I stood there for two hours, watching the expressions shift on Gandhi’s face in the faint light of the screen…”
I looked at him in wonder.
“God appears in every man’s life at some point. No one can say how or when. If he had the wisdom, he would see God. If not, that moment would just pass away just like these waves in the Ganges…” Lakshman Rane said. “That was my divine moment. I saw God. But I realised that only after 30 years.”
“Did Gandhi cry?”
“No. But I understood why everyone called him ‘Mahatma’. He was over 70 then. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. His body seemed worn out, thin and black. His lips moved in curious ways because he had lost most of his teeth. He wasn’t in any way different from an old Gujarati farmer. But his eyes…they did not belong to a man who had lived for seventy years at the heart of history. They were not the eyes of someone who had gone through so much pain, worries, disappointments, hopes, betrayal, praises and criticisms. They were the eyes of a boy, a boy who was just brought from a remote village and made to sit in front of the screen for the first time. He was startled at first, and then he was totally engrossed. He sat in awe throughout the movie, with eyes sparkling. He folded his hands in prayer whenever Ram came on the screen. “
“A great opportunity” I said.
“I got this job in 1934. My job, initially, was to clean Vijay Bhat’s office. I was twelve then. I had enough money to live on. I slept in the office. I was even able to send the rest of the money home which was in a small village called Khondagewadi near Pune. The little money that I sent was enough to sustain eight members. Those were my days of adventure. Vijay Bhat was building the Prakash studio in East Anderi. He was a Gujarati Brahmin. There’s a place called Palitana in Gujarat. He was born there.”
“Oh…the place with a thousand temples on top of a hill?”
“That’s it…” said Lakshman Rane. “Vijay Bhat was the son of a railway employee. He studied in Mumbai. He wrote many plays when he was a student, and with the money he earned he built a small studio. He made some mini budget black and white movies. During that period, it was very easy to make money from movies. Initially he was a partner in a company called ‘The Royal theatres’, and then he quit and built his own company, Prakash studios. It was quite big then, with eight floors, recording studios, offices and apartments for the employees; it was like a small town. They made the film ‘Bombay ki Mohini’ in that studio. Vijay Bhat himself was its director. Actress Panna Rani was the Bombay Mohini. I went to the studio, with Vijay Bhat’s cigarettes and files, everyday. It was like a land of never-ending celebration. How can one possibly leave? Slowly I entered into world of cinema…”
“What were you in the world of cinema?” I asked excitedly.
“Like I said…I was a fly” said Lakshman Rane grinning with his yellow teeth. “Those days it wasn’t easy to learn filmmaking. There was a team of many great writers from Maharashtra and Gujarat who came to write screenplays. The Iranians dealt with the cinematography. I was interested in editing. Every morning Vijay Bhat would look at the negatives which were printed the day before. Seeing my enthusiasm, he asked me to number those negatives. From that day on, I began to work in the editing process. It’s been forty years now.”
“You’ve edited movies?”
“Yes, nothing much though. But why am I saying all this? What was I talking about? It was at that period they began to film “Ramrajya”. It was the golden period of cinema. Ramrajya…an epic movie…”
“That was period when they started making movies, right?” I said.
“Yes…but that was its golden period. The early stage, when a man eagerly explores the infinite possibilities in the new form of art, is its golden period. Every new invention is bliss. Then slowly, conventions are created. After that, art is all about breaking or bringing about small changes to those conventions. The initial leap is impossible.”
I wasn’t in the mood to disagree, so I just nodded.
“Prem Adib played the role of Ram in Ramrajya. He had acted as Ram in many Gujarati dramas. His face had that majestic, tranquil and mournful temperament that we normally associate with Ram. He had already acted in two other movies as Ram which made everyone look at him with utmost reverence. People, even older men, worshipped him and fell at his feet whenever they saw him. I’ve seen people do that even in the set. He would walk past them with his eyes closed, hands folded in prayer and reciting ‘Ram saran Ram saran’ so that their greetings should go to Ram and not to himself. He was that kind of a man…”
Lakshman Rane continued, “Shobhna Samarth acted as Sita. You wouldn’t have heard of her. She belonged to a very noble family and looked like a queen herself. You would probably know her daughters, Nutan and Tanuja. They became great actresses later.”
“I don’t know them” I said.
“Oh!” said Lakshman Rane. He dusted the pipe and started to clean it with a thin rod.
“How long did it take to make this movie?” I asked him.
“In those days, it took years to make a movie. Ramrajya took a year and a half. Most of the studios were built without the roof, so that the light entered the studio where the actors were made to act. And they filmed only at high noon because the celluloid, those days, needed a lot of light. In addition to that there were baby-lights and reflectors. But there was no saying when the light would fade. It was in Prakash studios that we made movies filmed completely in artificial lighting for the first time. There were huge, six foot tall lights, baby-lights for the face and mini-lights for the body. Lighting should be evenly distributed throughout the frame. But most often if the face was lighted, the body was in the dark and if both were lighted, a huge shadow fell on the background. Sometimes the shadows of the hands and arms fell on their chests. We were lucky if at least four or five shots came out good, in one day. Sometimes we go through an entire week without even a single worthy shot” said Lakshman Rane. “Like I said, cinema in those days was like a huge celebration.”
“Was it a hit?”
“What kind of a question is that? It was a grand success. The whole of India went crazy for that movie. Sholay and all those other blockbuster movies cannot even come close to the profits Ramrajya brought. Money started to pour in. Vijay Bhat paid all his debts. He built houses and gave donations for the freedom struggle. He didn’t know what to do with so much money. Even now, the movie is being screened in some theatres in those remote villages in western India…”
He lit his pipe again. “The songs in that movie were the main reason for its success. Shankarrao Vyas was the music director. You wouldn’t have heard of him…he’s music director Narayana Vyas’ brother.” Observing my eyes he said, “Haven’t heard of them both? Thought so. They were from Gwalior Karana. They were the students of Vishnu Digambar Paluskar. Don’t ask me who he is.”
“No” I said.
“What do you know? He was the one who composed Gandhi’s favourite song ‘Ragupati ragava raja ram….’ Shankarrao Vyas was a great singer during that period. After Ramrajya he became known as a distinguished music composer through the country. What music! Wow…the whole of India was in a daze. Twenty years…yes…they sold those records for twenty years. There’s a song in that movie, it goes like this, ‘beena mathur mathur kach bhol..’” Lakshman Rane sang the song.
I said, “I’ve heard a Malayalam song ‘veenae paaduga priyatharamai…’ with the same tune.”
“This song has been written in all languages…” said Lakshman Rane. “Its in Bimblass raag. You would call it Aberi. The raag pulls at your heart-strings. This song is about separation. It makes your heart quiver with pain.” Humming that tune Lakshman Rane smoked his pipe. Then with bloodshot eyes he looked at me and said, “a splendid song. Saraswathi Rane was the singer.”
“A relative?” I asked.
“I’ll kill you! What kind of a person are you if you don’t know Saraswathi Rane.”
“I’m not into music that much” I replied.
Lakshman Rane cooled down a little bit. “She was a great singer then…she’s the daughter of the king of Hindusthani music, Ustad Abdul Karim Khan. Her birth name was Sahina. Her mother, after she left her husband, came back to Hinduism and changed her daughter’s name from Sahina to Saraswathi. Saraswathi started her singing career when she was seven. She earned two hundred rupees per concert. It was a huge amount back then. You could buy a house in Mumbai with that money. She had many hit records when she came to sing for us.”
“I was with them when they wrote and recorded that song” said Lakshman Rane with a smile. “A black car. It seemed as if a huge black pearl was rolling down the road. Like a deep pool it came floating with shadows moving over it. It stopped in front of our office. A thin pale young lady got down from the car and walked inside. She was wearing a white silk saree with golden border. Diamonds sparkled in ears and around her neck. She had long face and a sharp nose that looked like it was carved out of marble. I thought she was an actress. But they said she was going to sing a song. I’ve never heard her sing before. She was just eighteen years old then. She left immediately after signing the contract. We were reluctant to walk on those paths where her delicate feet had touched. Honey was dripping from the ceiling for two days, in our office.”
“I was in the room where the song was made” said Lakshman Rane. “…it was the room next to the recording studio. The floor was padded with mattresses. Vijay Bhat came early and was sitting on the matted floor. I stood there beside him holding his bag. Vyas entered. His brother came in after him with a harmonium. Song writer Ramesh Gupta was in the other room. The song’s lyrics were given to Vyas, his brother and Vijay Bhat. They sat murmuring the words. There was no other sound to be heard except the occasional coughs and clearing of throats. Vyas was silent for a while, with his hands on the harmonium. Then, he asked for a betel leaf and just sat there chewing it for what felt like hours. Suddenly, the harmonium voiced out a tune that would someday set the whole country in a trance. ‘Thaanaa thanana thana thananaa…’ I was in raptures. Bimblass is my favourite raag.”
“When Saraswathy Rane arrived, the tune was almost completed. She had her own veena. Saraswathy Rane actually wanted to become a veena player, but somehow she became a singer. Her voice was not appealing to the ear but when she sang, people became obsessed with it. They had to forget the instrument after a while. You know why? Her soul was in her voice. She filled her songs with very real emotions. Her song was never just a song. It was a moment of truth, a moment of pure emotion. That’s music. What is there in a pleasing voice?”
“Saraswathy sat down with the veena on her lap. Vyas himself sang the song with the lyrics. He also mumbled the notes for the veena. Saraswathy looked into the lyrics several times with her fingers sliding impatiently over the strings of the veena. I was not sure if the veena was moaning the tune or if it was in my mind…you probably think I’m exaggerating all these details. The song ends with the words, ‘viraga vethanai peruruvam kolgirathe’ (the pain of separation crushes my soul). I saw that intense agonizing pain in her face; all the sorrow, this world has ever seen. Her eyes betrayed the undying misery of Urmila, being born a thousand times to lead the same forlorn and forsaken life. She placed the veena on her lap. Without tuning it, she started off with the song. Beena mathur mathur kachu bol…”
I saw Lakshman rane flush with exhilaration.
“It thrills me even now. How would a woman, who saw Mahatma Gandhi as a child, feel many years later? I feel the same way now. What a song! An extraordinary song…”
Then he sat, for a while, musing.
“Where was it recorded?” I asked.
“Right there…but it took four months to record that song. However, the records were released before the movie. Thousands of copies were sold. When I was going for the filmmaking of that particular song, I had to cycle through the streets reverberating with the very same song. That song took to me to places I cannot describe. That was why I thought the scenes can never be the same as the song. But I was surprised when I saw the negatives at the editing table. The visualisation was perfect. You can see that song if you searched for it, a little bit. Try and find out how many songs are so impeccably visualised…”
“Really?” I asked.
“I know you don’t believe me. In those days, the camera movement was so little and each shot required intense lighting. So the songs were made within a small area with a very few shots, meaning that there was no room for interpretations. Things go wrong when you start to film your interpretation of the music because frankly there can never be one perfect way to show music as visuals. I could imagine a bird soaring up through the clouds when I hear a song and if the director shows me a stream it would be frustrating to watch. In those days, they simply filmed the actors lip-sinking to the songs. In Ramrajya too, the visuals shown for the song are of Urmila, in intense pain, singing with the veena on her lap and finally breaking down in grief; Sita, with tears in her eyes, gently swinging back and forth on her swing-bed; and Ram listening to the song from a nearby room feeling the anguish of Urmila. That’s all. I could watch it a hundred times, each time with a renewed interest. I have watched it hundred times at the editing table. I never felt that it was tedious, not for a second.”
“You know why? The actors, all of them; they simply gave themselves in to that song. We played it again and again on set and filmed the whole scene. After a certain point, everyone was tears whenever we started to play the song. None of them was acting. They were all genuinely reacting to the very real and very intense torture that is human suffering, which was universal. That is how great songs are filmed.”
“I must watch it” I said.
“But there was a mistake in the filming of the song. Vijay Bhat’s assistant pointed out to him that by the end of the song Ram’s reaction to Urmila’s climactic breakdown was not there. Vijay Bhat felt that it was necessary. He called Prem Adip to come to the set again. Prem Adip had already begun rehearsing for a play in which he was acting as Vikramaditya. He had grown sick of everyone seeing him as Ram. He wanted to play a vibrant, young philandering King like Vikramaditya to change his stoic image as Ram. When he came back to film those last shots he couldn’t reach that height.”
“Vijay Bhat tried taking the shots in different ways for at least a week. Just one shot…one shot of Ram responding to that intense agony of Urmila would have been enough. But we couldn’t even get close to what we actually wanted. In the end, Vijay Bhat decided to go with an okay-looking shot. Urmila cries out in grief, Sita twists and turns in her swing-bed as if she had been touched by flames, and Ram simply shakes his head as if he was saying ‘no no’. One could clearly see that he was acting. There was no real pain in his face.”
“Did you realize it then?” said I.
“Yes, for me it stood out like a pebble in the midst of diamonds. But I wasn’t in a position to say all that. I shut my eyes every time I happened to watch that particular shot. But I just couldn’t forget it. It’s amazing to think of all the ways the shot transformed in my mind. At first I couldn’t watch it at all but I still saw it clearly in my mind. Then I got reminded of that shot whenever I heard the song. Later I began to like it. You know how we grow fond of the blemish on a beauty’s perfect cheek. We somehow feel that the imperfection adds to her beauty.”
I laughed.
“Life is mysterious.” said Lakshman Rane. “After that I used to go to all the shows and watch the film wherever it played. I never missed a show. I became obsessed with that shot. Whenever the song starts to play, my limbs tremble with excitement and it reaches a sort of culmination with that shot. Then a calm spreads through me. The film stayed in the theatres for twenty years. I’ve watched it hundreds of times.”
“It’s a psychological problem I believe” I said.
“No…it wasn’t just my problem. You know why? In every Ramleela plays that were performed on stage after 1943 had that song in it. The actors played the same scenes but their expressions varied in every play. But every actor who played Ram unmistakeably did that shaking of the head. Everyone had noticed that mistake and they had all, in the same way, grown fond of it” said Lakshman Rane. “I have seen several stage performances of the Ramrajya. Every single of them had that shaking of the head…”
“Fascinating!” I said. I actually couldn’t quite believe what he said.
“Vijay Bhat later remade Ramrajya in Technicolor. It was released in 1967, twenty five years after the original. Bina Rai played Sita. Vasant Desai composed the music. They remade the exact same 1943 film but it didn’t have the emotional depth of the original. Vasant Desai had also composed a song in Bimblass for that scene, which goes like this: ‘Rain bhayi so ja re pancchi’. A good melody. Lata Mangeshkar had sung that song. But when compared to ‘beena mathur mathur kach bhol’, this song looked like a maidservant standing next to a queen.”
“Lata has sung great melodies as well” I said.
Lakshman Rane acted as if he didn’t hear me say that. “When this second film was released I wasn’t working in the film industry. My wife had just died. And I was simply drifting from place to place without any strong hold onto anything. I watched the movie in an old theatre in Berhampore. I had decided not to see it but I just couldn’t help myself. My nerves were taut like a tightly secured bowstring. I desperately wanted to see that shot. When the song started to play, I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I waited for that mistake. But apparently Vijay Bhat had also noticed his mistake and had replaced that shot with a shot of Ram tearfully looking on and as the song ends he collapses. The bowstring snapped. Disappointed, I fell back on my seat. After a while I felt the tears gushing out of my eyes. I stood up and walked out into the rain. I felt like dying. My whole world had suddenly disappeared and had been replaced by something utterly meaningless and futile.”
“The very next day, I went to Bihar. I was looking for theatres which were still playing the 1943 film. There must be at least one. In Surajpur, in a small theatre with metal-sheet roofing 1943 Ramrajya was being played. I saw the poster from the bus. I cried out ‘Stop! Stop’ and jumped out of the bus before it came to a full stop. I ran to the theatre. The film didn’t start for another two hours. I sat there waiting. People must have thought that I was insane. That didn’t matter. I was quite insane and I knew it.”
“The film finally commenced. I went inside and sat with my hands folded in prayer. Ram! Come and take hold of me. I kept murmuring to myself ‘Ramsaran Ramsaran’. The song began to play. The music unfolded like an enormous trunk of an elephant; twisted and clutched my entire being and carried me off towards that moment. He shook his head. Ram! I cried as I collapsed on my seat.”
I was staring at Lakshman Rane as he refilled his pipe. I couldn’t quite grasp the point that he was trying to make. It was a sort of madness. Everyone who had reached the shores of Ganga were consumed by this chaotic madness, including myself.
“I never saw another film after that. I just left for Kaashi” said Lakshman Rane.
“Okay. But…I don’t get what you’re trying to say” said I.
“That you have to stay where history is being made. Saraswati Rane, Vijay Bhat, Vyas, Prem, Gandhi…it was a historic moment!”
“But what you said didn’t have anything to do with that” I said. I didn’t understand why the things that he spoke about made me feel so disconcerted.
“What I’m trying to say is-” said Lakshman Rane. “I don’t know how to put it in words. Wait! Let me try it this way. God creates his art through man. Right? Or you can say it in another way, in a more elegant way. God creates art by combining man’s Atman and Anatman. No…that doesn’t sound right.”
“How is this related what you were talking about earlier?” I asked.
“Leave it” said Lakshman Rane. “I simply felt like saying it.” Lakshman Rane opened a polythene bag and took out a Laddoo. He split it into two and gave me one half, savouring the other. I’ve seen a lot of people in Kaashi enjoying sweets after smoking Ganja. I took a bite of the laddoo humming that indelible melody.
—the end—
