Vishal Bhardwaj's Shakespearean trilogy

Recently we celebrated the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.  The bard’s continued relevance surprises (in a pleasant sort of way) all literature aficionados. Social media was flooded with many quizzes about Shakespeare’s works, and anyone with any nodding acquaintance with even a few of his plays would have scored high on those quizzes. I particularly liked the one that the London’s Guardian ran where readers had to identify whether the quotes were from Shakespeare’s corpus of work or from Miguel de Cervantes’s (take the quiz here: Shakespeare/Cervantes; I scored 8/10). Apparently, Cervantes also died on the same day as Shakespeare (23 April 1616).

The Guardian, among other newspapers, reported that according to a British Council survey, Shakespeare was more popular in the emerging economies (India, China, Mexico, and Turkey, among others) than in Britain.  The report explained that the low percentage of popularity for Shakespeare’s works in Britain was because Britons were taught Shakespeare in his original while in other parts of the world students often studied him in translations that used a more contemporary language. That may perhaps be true. I studied Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (in a more accessible version) when I was in middle school, and it is one of the two only things that I remember about being in Grade 8 so many years later (the other, of course, is the unforgettable Noorsultan Daruwala).

However, what has kept Shakespeare alive and relevant in India is the frequent adaption of his plays by popular Hindi cinema. There have been countless depictions of Shakespearean plays in Hindi cinema, and directors such as Gulzar (Angoor) have successfully Indianized the bard’s creations.  More recently, a director who has interpreted Shakespeare in a breathtakingly original manner is Vishal Bhardwaj. His trilogy Maqbool, Omkara, and Haider are cinematic masterpieces.

Maqbool (2003) reinterpreted Macbeth in a contemporary Bombay underworld setting, and treated the audience to a rare cameo by two of Hindi cinema’s stalwarts – Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri, who played two middle-aged cops (originally the two sisters in the play). The film brought into limelight Irrfan Khan (Maqbool), who along with Tabu (Nimmi), plot to murder Pankaj Kapur (Abbaji).

Omkara (2006) reinterpreted Othello. Bhardwaj sets the tragedy in rural India which remains in the stranglehold of political goons (mostly upper caste), who do as they please to gain political power. A competent set of actors turned the film into a gripping drama, with Saif Ali Khan (as Langda Tyagi) turning in a performance of his lifetime. Gulzar’s raunchy Beedi Jalaile set to tune by Bhardwaj and filmed on Bipasha Basu defined the film. The tragic dénouement was filmed with perspicacity and sensitivity.

Haider (2014) was Bhadrwaj’s reinterpretation of Hamlet. Set amidst the turmoil of Kashmir, the film is a bold portrayal of the contemporary realities of the desolation of Kashmir, both of the place and the minds of its people. The film belongs to Tabu, who gives a performance that will be remembered decades later. Shahid Kapoor also gave his career-best performance.

By setting the trilogy in a contemporary Indian milieu, Bhardwaj makes Shakespeare relevant to the Indian audience. Through his mastery at storytelling through his films, Bhardwaj succeeds in transcending the limitations of language and succeeds in reaching out to a global audience. Not surprisingly, the trilogy has won much acclaim in India and globally. Of course, the main reason for the critical and popular acclaim of the films is the strong stories and characters that Shakespeare created in each of the plays.

A decade in Toronto - 28

Celebrating Che's 19th birthday at Montana steakhouse

I’ve been writing these blogs on my decade in Toronto since 2018. When I began, I’d hoped to complete the entire narrative of ten years in 52 weeks. But as that line from Robert Burns’s poem To the Mouse famously predicts, “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley,” my resolve crumbled in the face of rapidly changing circumstances sometime in the spring 2018.

And a project that was to be completed last December, continues to drag.

Che: from adolescence to adulthood

Recently, I also complied all the posts into a Word document and realised that I’ve put together over 30,000 words so far (2008 to 2016) and I guess, when this exercise will be completed, it’ll all add up to nearly 40,000 words. In these days of shortening attention spans and the habit of reading falling side, 40,000 words is about the right sort of length for a decade of life.

Upon re-reading some of the posts, two things struck me:

The first was that most of the posts are based on my blog, which is sort of obvious because I’ve been blogging for the last decade, and the blog has become some sort of an unofficial journal, albeit one that mainly focuses on books and authors, poets, and book-related events.

To overcome that anomaly, I’ve taken some inputs from Facebook, to connect the narrative to my life, and to provide some context to the changes in my life in the last decade with what happened in the world.

I’m skeptical whether I’ve succeeded.  

The second was that I realized that this is a sanitized version of my life in Toronto, and I’ve kept out unpleasantness. I’ve commented on this briefly in one of my earlier posts, too. Nobody’s life is without unpleasantness, mine is no exception; if you’re looking for a life without unpleasantness, you’re likely to find it only on Instagram.

We choose not to dwell too much on unpleasantness primarily because those experiences are caused by our own expectations; expectation of what we want others to do for us or not do to us. And these others are not strangers that we exchange glances with and nod ever-so-slightly to on public transit, but people we consider our own – family, friends, co-workers, neighbours.

Before I’m accused of transmogrifying into a fake Baba, a sort of Buddha of Suburbia (and suburbia here being Toronto’s West End), let me quickly return to the narrative, with just a brief digression: I interviewed Hanif Kureshi after his debut novel was launched in India for The Daily at Strand Books. He was mildly annoyed at everyone constantly referring to him as following Rushdie’s footsteps.

I want to focus on the arts (mostly popular) in this post.

Popular Hindi cinema is a passion for both Mahrukh and I. We don’t miss any opportunity to go to a Hindi movie, especially if it has one of the three Khans in it. Lately, of course, two of the three Khans have only given duds, but they remain our perennial favourites.

All the three Khans gave memorable films in 2016. Fan was Shahrukh Khan’s valiant effort to move away from the stereotypical roles and do what he perceived to be different and challenging. It bombed comprehensively. Perhaps not as badly as his 2018 dud Zero. But Aamir Khan’s Dangal and Salman Khan’s Sultan (both based on wrestling theme) were tremendous hits.

I’ve found the moviegoing experience in Toronto so unique that I’m always tempted to write about it every time I go to see a movie. After going to the downmarket Albion cinema to watch Hindi movies for the first couple of years, we changed over to the Cineplex at Yonge and Dundas.

Here’s a brief passage of what I wrote about the cinema venue when we went to see Dangal:

I’d have thought that the first-generation immigrants such as Mahrukh and I would comprise a majority of the audience at the Cineplex in downtown Toronto because that is the kind of audience that comes to see Hindi movie in cinema halls.

However, for Dangal there were a good number of second and third generation Indo-Canadians, and a substantial number of students from India enrolled in Canadian universities.

All making for a rather raucous audience that was totally involved in the film; clapping, cheering, grunting, sighing and exhaling as the story unfolded.

Wisely, Cineplex had permitted audiences to get in half-an-hour before the show time, and the sprawling hall for screen 13 had filled up in no time. Once again, the sight of so many northeastern Indians surprised me.

A lot of nachos were being consumed, and a lot of Coke was being drunk. The smell of food was at once overpowering and nauseating.

In addition, there was almost a muted roar inside the hall; this is because wherever there are Indians, there is immense and unceasing chattering. As the movie began, there were a few whistles and a lot of clapping when Aamir Khan came on the screen.

For a more involved piece, I suggest you read the post on The Sultan Experience in Toronto. Salman Khan is one-of-a-kind, helluva of superstar. The audience participation for any of his film is qualitatively different.

2016 was the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare and it was a great reason to write about Vishal Bhardwaj’s Shakespearean trilogy – Maqbool (2003, based on Macbeth), Omkara (2006, based on Othello) and Haider (2014, based on Hamlet). Street Soldiers, a local, Toronto production, was an exceptional film that handled the drug scene in Toronto with a rare maturity and panache. Some of the actors in the film were theatre veterans (from the SAWITRI Theatre) and their performances were expectedly stellar.

In 2016, I suggested to Tushar Unnadkat, who’d been given charge of the annual community festival organised at Gerrard Street’s Little India. I suggested to him to have a literary component to the festival and he invited me to organise and moderate a panel discussion on South Asian Canadian theatre. He agreed with his usual alacrity. I invited all the South Asian theatre veterans I knew to participate in the panel discussion.

Panelists at the discussion
(l to r: Dalbir, Jasmine, Ravi, Andy and Sally)

The panelists were: Jasmine Sawant, actor, producer, writer, manager, and the Co-Founder and Artistic Co-Director of the award-winning SAWITRI Theatre Group, based in Mississauga; Jawaid Danish, a playwright-poet and translator, and the artistic Director of Rangmanch-Canada, a not for profit Indian Theatrical Group; Ravi Jain is a Toronto-based stage writer, director, performer who works in both small indie productions and large commercial theatre; and Dalbir Singh, a PhD Candidate in Theatre and South Asian studies at the University of Toronto, and recipient of the Heather McCallum award for Emerging Scholars. 

At the panel discussion, we were also joined by Nitin Sawant and Shruti Shah (both of SAWITRI), Andy Hazra of York University, Sally Jones of Rasik Arts, and Tushar Unadkat. I’d also suggested to invite Rahul Verma of Teesri Duniya from Montreal for the discussion, but budgetary constraints prevented his participation.

It was a fruitful and engaging discussion that explored the limitations, challenges and prospects of the topic we decided to discuss. The focal point was what is South Asian and what is Canadian, and does the canon have space for non-English language theatre. I’d urge you to read a report on the discussion here: South Asian Canadian theatre

That year, Ravi Jain’s company also brought Piya Baharupiya (Hindi adaption of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night) to Toronto, and SAWITRI brought Mohan Rakesh’s Aadhe Adhure. Both were exceptionally good.