[From my Economic Times column]
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An important trope of the Hindi cinema I cherished as a child – the action-oriented, male-centred films – was the one where a weepy-faced boy would dramatically morph into the adult star 15 minutes into the narrative. Sometimes it happened during a chase scene: the child actor’s legs would turn into sturdier, jeans-clad ones, a boy would jump off a bridge and land on a train as the dashing hero. Or a match cut or camera swish might render Master Mayur into Amitabh Bachchan, and the whistles and yells of approvals could begin. 
I was amusingly reminded of those scenes while watching the excellent restoration of Muzaffar Ali’s 1981 Umrao Jaan on a big screen recently. Mid-dance (or mid-twirl) the young girl Ameeran – sold into a Lucknow brothel and renamed Umrao – turns into the adult version of the character, played by Rekha. To my mind, this scene was as star-heralding in its own way as the ones I mentioned above. (In even the relatively grounded Middle Cinema of the period, you could expect a burst of sparkly music upon the first appearance of a protagonist played by Sanjeev Kumar or Jaya Bhaduri.) But Umrao Jaan is, of course, a very different sort of film otherwise from my childhood favourites, and I found myself rapt by this languid, introspective, woman-centric narrative – in a way that I wasn’t as a youngster. This must be what it’s like to grow up.
There was so much to absorb and savour here: the songs most obviously, the costumes and sets, the interactions between assertive women and effeminate or suppliant men. Or little details such as the tribute-casting of the veteran Bharat Bhushan (who had once played both Baiju Bawra and Tansen on screen) in a small part. Or the realisation that the child Ameeran here is played by the daughter of Shama Zaidi and MS Sathyu.
Much has probably been said about female solidarity (commingled with female conflict) in Umrao Jaan – about the balancing of scales not just between the sexes but also among women; about their interrelationships in precarious situations, where vulnerability goes hand in hand with the exercising of dignity and power. Dim childhood memories had fixed this as a story about Lucknowi tehzeeb – soulful poetry and music taking precedence, even in a setting where women’s bodies are traded; a world where even a wild-eyed bandit might be respectful towards the heroine – but the actual film is more dynamic and varied than that, and gets much of its impact from the profane moments that joltingly remind us where we are: the unexpected use of the word “randi” in an exchange, or the veteran Dina Pathak spitting out the line “Aise haraam zaade marte hain kabhi?” 
For me, Umrao Jaan is also inseparable from my shifting view of Rekha, who was not one of my favourites as a child – I saw her as one of Bachchan’s less interesting heroines (not as sophisticated or modern as Parveen Babi, not as naturally sweet as Jaya Bhaduri or as unconventional as Raakhee), and my interest in her tawaif roles was limited to Muqaddar ka Sikander. But over time, this yielded to a greater interest in the maternal aspect of the Rekha persona, as well as the image – supplied in 1980s and 90s film magazines – of the woman living in solitude, childless, partner-less, her closest companion a beloved dog who often appeared in those pages**. One’s view of the bereft Umrao Jaan can be deepened by what one knows (or thinks one knows) of Rekha’s real life – including her being cut off from a secure family life early on (much as Umrao is) despite being the child of a superstar.
But there is also something about watching an old, familiar film alongside someone with whom you have a long, complex history. My viewing companion and I have been in a strained relationship, imbued with sadness and separation – and yet when it came to little observations or childhood-memory-triggers around the film, we leant in and whispered to each other, as unselfconsciously as in the good old days. Compare Rekha and Naseer with their roles in Ijaazat later in the decade; look at how “seedha” Farooque Shaikh is here and how “tedha” Naseer is, in contrast to their roles in Katha; how much the Shabana Azmi of the present day resembles her mother Shaukat Kaifi (who plays the kotha madam Khanum Jaan). For a few moments, a shared experience of a film, and the many memories associated with it, had transported us back to a time and space when things were gentler between us. Maybe that’s why they call it a restoration.
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**P.S. Recently the actress Trisha Krishnan's dog died and she wrote an Instagram post saying simply "I have lost my son", with a video. It was a very brave thing for her to do on social media, because you can imagine the vicious trolling in the comments, including from people who were supposedly her fans but said they wouldn't follow her now because "how can you compare an animal to a human kid" etc. It was horrendous, and also predictable. Anyway, I was reminded of Rekha in those magazine interviews referring to her Pomeranian Pisti as her child, and one of my mother’s visiting friends saying something utterly nasty like "jab khud ka asli bachha nahin hota toh aise bakwaas karte hain".
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