Saturday, August 08, 2015

Bawarchi, meet dusht raakshas: four original artworks for the book

And now, a look at four paintings all done by the wonderful Gunjan Ahlawat, for the Hrishikesh Mukherjee book.

Scenes from Bawarchi...


Chupke Chupke...



Mili...



and Guddi...


I’m not always a great one for taking initiatives, but I have been patting myself on the back for this decision I made a few months ago. Since I was getting tense about the official cover design being delayed, I decided to independently commission paintings from Ahlawat, whose work I had recently been impressed by. Even if the publisher decided not to use these artworks (or used them and didn’t compensate me for them), I figured they would have promotional and sentimental value – I could use them on social media, on the blog, maybe get a few posters made down the line.

The Ahlawat work that first caught my eye, incidentally, was his design for Anees Salim’s novel The Blind Lady’s Descendants, especially the little watercolour he did for the author’s profile pic. When I first met him to discuss illustrations for the Hrishi-da book, my head was full of complicated ideas that, I now see, could not have been worked out on short notice (and would also have exceeded my budget). One of them was a drawing of Hrishikesh Mukherjee looking down at his chessboard – he often played chess while a scene was being set up, and I had a photograph of just such
a moment – and on the board, in place of pawns, would be tiny but instantly recognizable figures from his cinema: Kusum in her distinctive school uniform in Guddi, Parimal Tripathi in chauffeur’s uniform, Anand on the beach with the balloons. 

Another design idea, which I had discussed with Penguin months earlier and been told wouldn’t work, was the façade of a house (the “makaan” of Hrishi-da’s cinema is a running theme in the book) with different characters and scenes viewed in a few of the windows facing us (and possibly Hrishi-da himself sitting on the roof, alongside the Amitabh character in Mili, looking through his telescope).

Anyway, Gunjan and I toned down these thoughts and streamlined them into four character-oriented artworks that would capture vignettes from the Mukherjee world. The results, which you saw above, have been very pleasing (not least because these were scenes that I had selected as being both iconic and lending themselves to artistic treatment of this sort).
 

This should be obvious, but I’ll point it out anyway: the paintings were intended to be impressionistic rather than realistic representations of the characters’ faces – the whole idea of using very familiar clothes/elements was that anyone who knows Hrishi-da’s cinema would immediately “get” it. In fact, one reason why the Chupke Chupke image is (very marginally) my least favourite of these four is that the two faces come very close to looking like Dharmendra and Sharmila Tagore. (Or Bobby Deol and Saif Ali Khan in drag, if you view it from a certain angle.)

I also enjoy placing the Bawarchi and Mili drawings next to each other, because there is something oddly symmetrical about the tanpura and the telescope. Seen one way, it is almost like a faceoff between the two superstars who worked so often with Hrishi-da: dusht raakshas Bachchan pointing a rifle at the gentle, music-loving Rajesh Khanna; the Angry Young Man vs the Dreamy Romantic Hero. Anyway, the design amuses me (and also makes me feel that something subconscious may have been going on when I selected these two scenes, because I certainly wasn’t thinking of a connection between them at the time).

P.S. we are using these paintings in the book, on a frontispiece page – am looking forward to seeing them in print.


[More of Gunjan Ahlawat's work, especially his book designs, can be seen here]

9 comments:

  1. how about a collage of movie posters? the font can be the one you had originally (the one that looks like 70s' film credits)

    ReplyDelete
  2. My favourite is that painting which has Dharamendra and Jaya. That scene is one of my favourite too from his body of work. Jai - On a funny note, these posters seem more artistic (in a nice way) than most frames of Hrishi Da's movies. But, may be, I am wrong, been long that I watched his films

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, of course! These are impressionistic paintings, not photographs. No surprise that they would look more "artistic" than a still from a live-action film. And HM wasn't an aesthetics-obsessed director anyway.

      Delete
  3. Wouldn't the images have worked better if Bawarchi had been on top and Mili below? That way the telescope could have been pointing at Raghu.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yes, and that's how they are used inside the book: the poster here is just an image that was done without much consultation. (Though another way of looking at it could be that the RK character is placid and grounded - hence at the bottom of the image - while the AB character is restless and has his sights set up above.)

      Delete
  4. Love the artwork - wish copies of these were available to buy, along with the book...

    Best wishes Jai...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Impressive artwork. Captures perfectly the nostalgic memories we have of these movies. Sometimes when we are trying to over-intellectualise a commentary on someone's work - we tend to also overlook the emotions the creator would have had in conceptualizing them. At the basic level, they are more simplified than complexed we make out them to be -- your post and selection of the artwork seems a perfect time-capture moments of those movies. Bawarchi's tanpura - the Manna Dey classic "tum bin jeewan" and Milis' haunting Kishore gem "badi sooni sooni" that also is the soul of those both movies, is what these art is saying. Best wishes,Debapriya

    ReplyDelete
  6. I may never be able to unsee Saif Ali Khan in drag....

    ReplyDelete
  7. Very Creative and Beautiful work of Art . Chupke Chupke is My Fav .. :) :)

    Amit lamba
    Amit lamba

    ReplyDelete