Ab Aayega Mazaa – an odd (and oddly enjoyable) little relic of the 80s

After Farooque Shaikh’s passing late last year, I watched some of his old work – Gaman, Saath Saath, other reasonably well-known (by “parallel cinema” standards) movies. But a few days ago I found a DVD of the 1984 Ab Aayega Mazaa lying about (I think I had bought it after Ravi Baswani died a few years ago) and started watching it, only to be gobsmacked by what an unusual little film it was.

It begins with the actor Raja Bundela dressed in a black cloak, prancing about a graveyard with a crucifix, talking about how the dead have to reserve their "plots" in advance because things are getting crowded. This is revealed to be a nightmare: the film’s hero Vijay (Farooque Shaikh) awakes suddenly to find he has overslept and is late for office as usual, and wouldn’t you know it, his old grey scooter isn’t starting again. While waiting at a bus-stop (this, boys and girls, is what people used to do in the pre-liberalisation days – you know, before India became all shiny and Lamborghinis and iPhones dropped from the sky into the backyard of every house) he meets a sweet girl named Nupur (Anita Raaj). She lives in Golf Links and has three phones in her house (in 1984 even the prime minister didn’t have three phones) while Vijay occupies PG quarters in Patel Nagar, which is a pointer to their very different social statuses. But romance begins, as it did in those distant days, with a glass of water bought from a roadside stall, and an argument with a vendor who doesn’t have change for 50 paise. 

At this point Ab Aayega Mazaa seems set to be your regular early 80s middle-class romance centred on two of the most un-starry leading actors of the time. But the story soon heads down a garden of forking paths, and it turns out that the dream scene in the graveyard wasn’t an anomaly – it was representative of the film's overall madcap tone.

For anyone interested in the non-mainstream cinema of the time, this movie’s title credits have many points of interest. It was the directorial debut of Pankaj Parashar, who would helm the popular TV show Karamchand shortly afterwards, and go to make Jalwa, Peechha Karo and (the relatively big-star, big-budget) Chaalbaaz, all of which had traces of the manic energy one sees in Ab Aayega Mazaa. More amusingly, this very youthful film was co-produced by two actors who would soon acquire an “old man” image through their work in television: Alok Nath, who would play Haveli Ram in Buniyaad (and who has been enjoying a late-career resurgence recently, after being the subject of Twitter jokes about his “babuji” image), and Girija Shankar, the doddering, self-pitying Dhritarashtra in BR Chopra’s Mahabharata (a good performance, but one that annoyed my generation of viewers who wanted to watch battle scenes instead of endless self-mortifying conversations between the blind king and Vidura).

Shankar acts in Ab Aayega Mazaa too, in a part that reminded me a little of Pankaj Kapur’s oily Tarneja in Jaane bhi do Yaaro: he is the boss in an advertising agency that is really a front for the wicked activities of a Godman who uses incense sticks to peddle drugs. Which is a logical (or illogical) extension of the more straightforward early scenes that detail corruption and self-interest in the advertising industry: someone even proposes a soap made of adrak because consumers appreciate “natural” things. (“Zaroorat ke hisaab se aadmi ko phasao”. Cheat a man according to his needs.)

That isn’t the only JBDY connection: the tone of this film – especially in the scenes that play like deliberately thrown together college skits – is often similar to that of Kundan Shah’s movie. And that probably has something to do with Satish Kaushik writing the dialogue (and also playing a small, amusing part), as well as with the presence of Ravi Baswani, whose excellently over-the-top America-returned accent and defective Hindi makes Satish Shah’s DeMello seem like a Bharatiya ladka. Rajesh Puri is here in a short role too, and the young Pawan Malhotra – an assistant on the earlier film – has a weird little part as one of the Godman’s minions, who wears a bright purple robe and sits atop trees commenting on proceedings. There are funny sight gags (like a lamp that switches off and on if you make a coughing sound near it), throwaway lines (a “dying” man tells his friend “Meri motorcycle bech kar apne scooter ko paint kara lena, dost”), and some non-sequiturs, as in the scene where Sidey (Baswani) creeps up on a saucy ayah thinking she is Nupur, throws his arms around her and asks her to guess who he is (“Main tumhaara bachpan ka saathi hoon”), and she exclaims “Badri? Par tum toh aam ke ped se gir ke mar gaye thay.” Little moments like these make up this salad bowl of a film.

Ab Aayega Mazaa is hit and miss, but a notable thing about it is how it takes many of the clichés of mainstream Hindi cinema – the lovers separated by an authoritarian parent, the foreign-returned swain who becomes the third corner of a love triangle, a villain trying to pinch diamonds hidden in a statue, even a lost-and-found narrative involving a daughter who went missing in an accident years earlier – and treats them with a mix of parody and homage. On one hand there are many droll, deadpan scenes where it is obvious that the film is winking at its audience. On the other hand, it does seem to wholeheartedly throw itself into some of the tropes of commercial cinema: straight romantic songs (gaane bhi do yaaro?), a scene in a bar where Farooque Shaikh has fun playing a Bachchan-like comic drunk, a couple of fight scenes that are milked for humour (but that could simply be because people like Baswani are doing the fighting). There is some tongue-in-cheek “filmi” dialogue too: those who are used to standing in bus lines get a cold when they travel by AC cars with rich people, says Vijay sadly, when his love life turn sour. And though Nupur’s father - another Tarneja-like character - is a slight figure who speaks in a mannered tone, he says the sorts of things that would sound beautiful in Amrish Puri’s booming voice. “Insaan sab se jeet ta hai, par haarta hai toh sirf apni aulad se. Tumne mujhe jeete jee maar diya. Aaj ke baad tumhaara ghar se nikalna, sab bandh.”

Actually, given that much of this story is about how to “present” or “advertise” yourself (Nupur, who works with a theatre company, points out that "Zindagi mein bhi toh hum acting karte hain" – we behave differently depending on whom we are with), one could suggest that this low-budget film with lunacy in its DNA is occasionally disguising itself as something more mass-audience-friendly. That results in a tone so erratic that it definitely isn't for all tastes, but much like the Jaane bhi do Yaaro crew they must have had a grand time putting it together.

A memory of Farooque Shaikh

Less than a week before I heard the saddening – and most unexpected – news of Farooque Shaikh’s passing, an SMS written in a familiar style lit up my phone screen. “Adaab,” it said. “Wish u a Merry Christmas, a Joyous New Year and a v happy life ahead. Best luck, always.” A few minutes later, the same message arrived again. This could have been a network glitch, but having seen Mr Shaikh (or Farooque saab, as it seems more apt to call him) a few weeks earlier, wrestling with and frowning at his handset – something I can often relate to – I could picture him having re-sent it accidentally.

Either way, I had become used to the courtliness of his SMSes (even when written in shorthand) in the previous two months, ever since I first contacted him in connection with a writing project. In mid-October I had texted him – in the supplicating tone of a journalist seeking a few minutes of an Important Person’s time – asking if we could speak for a short while; on the phone would be fine. He replied with an “Adaab sir”, adding that he happened to be coming to Delhi at the end of the week, and it “wd be a plzre” to meet then “at a mutually cnvnnt time”.

We met, and it was a pleasure – for me, at least – even though the conversation was short and unexceptional. He was everything you’d expect from his screen persona, warm and unfailingly polite in his direct addresses, though he did get a little agitated when he spoke more generally about falling standards in popular culture. I had a couple of specific talking points to cover, but we were quickly done with those, and for the next half-hour he talked mainly about how commerce had completely taken over the film world, and expressed annoyance about the hegemony of the Rs 200-300-crore cinema. “Vaahiyaat filmein agar 300 crore ka business kar rahe hain, toh aur log aa jaayenge, and they will go down the same route.”

Much of what he said – if you simply transcribed it – would read as relentless complaining, and I didn’t agree with all of it. Some of it mixed deep idealism, a yearning for a fabled past where things were always so much better than today, and a narrow, subject-oriented view of “good” and “bad” cinema. There were capricious asides: while making the (reasonable) point about Hollywood’s technical excellence masking deficiencies in content and not allowing any other type of film to get breathing space, he suddenly brought up films “jiss mein spaceship yun zor zor se awaaz karti hai, phir girne lagti hai – whereas it is a basic fact of zero gravity that a spaceship will not fall like that even if it breaks up.” And he clearly wasn’t a fan of Jaws and the summer-blockbuster culture it spawned: “Ya toh ek machli aisi hai jo logon ko khaamakhaa marne lagti hai. This kind of stupidity has to stop.”

But the discontent came from his strong views on the relationship between a society and its popular culture, and his keenness to fix responsibility. “Cinema is a willing or unwilling appendage to society, so we may as well have some quality in it. Otherwise it’s like saying ‘Naashta toh mujhe karna hi hai, sada hua bhi chalega.’ But why not have a good meal, even if it is a small one? You risk your health if you eat chaat all the time. And then we complain ‘hamaaray society mein auraton ke saath yeh hota hai.’ You can’t pretend that cinema doesn’t have an effect on our minds – it’s a big thing.”
 
It wasn’t all about venting though. The meeting reminded me of conversations I had had with other, very likable men of integrity of his generation, Kundan Shah and the late Ravi Baswani – a tone that combined irritation and frustration with the ability to step back after a while and crack a quiet joke about one’s own irritability. And a genuine, boyish curiosity about what the younger person sitting in front of them felt about these things. (I have memories of Kundan, Ravi and Farooque saab – separately, of course – pausing for breath after a rant, then chuckling and asking a version of the question “Do you agree with any of this? Or could it be that I feel this way only because main budhaa ho gaya hoon?” And the question was asked sincerely, not rhetorically.)

Farooque saab spoke with pragmatism (“it is unreal, and perhaps even unfair, to expect that a filmmaker is going to do good to society at a loss to himself”) but perhaps had an unrealistic view of the power wielded by the “thinking” audience (“...and so the discerning viewer has to make his presence felt. With the internet you can get back to the filmmaker immediately if he has made a bad or bawdy film, and tell him off. He will take that seriously. He depends on the ticket that the viewer buys.”) He moved between optimism and cynicism (“But as is the norm all over the world, the major audience is males aged between 15 and 25 years. They are the ones who decide whether a film will run or not”) and used humorous analogies: “Aaj kal ke movie reviews mein star ratings aise bikhte hain jaise langar mein khaana bikh raha ho.” And “You know the Sea Link in Mumbai? It cuts down travel time dramatically while you are on it – but when you exit it you’re in trouble again. That’s how the industry today is. Film toh complete ho jaati hai but then the intelligent, sincere filmmaker is in a surrounding that he cannot control: agar 3,500 screen kisi big-budget film ne le liye hain, then you get the one or two remaining shows, and the show time is such that your own wife won’t go for it.”

Near the end of our chat, he – consciously or otherwise – used an analogy closely linked to the plot of one of his most beloved movies. “There are two people in the race – the sprinter and the evening walker,” he said, marking the difference between money-obsessed filmmakers and the ones with a social conscience. “The promenade walker will not get ahead because he isn’t in it for the race, he’s out for a stroll – the sprinter is the one who wants to get ahead, and he will always win.”

In Sai Paranjpye’s Katha, based on the hare-and-tortoise fable, he was cast against type as the wily hare (or the sprinter). I alluded to the film and he merely nodded and gave a quick smile, not pursuing the point – he wasn’t much interested in talking about his own movies, or at least his contribution to them. When he brought up Listen…Amaya – as another low-budget film that was released in only a couple of halls – this is what he said: “Recently ek film thi, Listen... Amaya, jiss mein Deepti ji aur Swara Bhaskar thay...” No mention of himself. 

Which may be a reminder that he wasn’t “in it for the race” himself. I have no doubt that he took a project seriously once he had committed to it, but he came across as being blasé about his own career, unconcerned with such things as staying in the public memory. Still, he had done some fine work in the past couple of years – in Shanghai, Listen…Amaya, even in his short part in Yeh Jawani hai Diwani – and there may have been more to come. 

I don’t usually get too affected by the deaths of public figures, even those whose work or achievements I admired. But this was a little different, because of the immediacy of having met him so recently, and because he was too young. Notwithstanding his own indifference to fame or plaudits, with the right mix of subject, writer and director he might easily have had a notable second innings as a screen actor. For now, we have the past work: old favourites like Chashme Buddoor and Katha, of course, but also films like Gaman (now available in a restored NFDC print) and Saath Saath, which deserve to be revisited and rediscovered. And I have the rueful knowledge that despite having had opportunities, I never got around to seeing a performance of Tumhari Amrita.

[Related posts: a tribute to Ravi Baswani, Shaikh’s co-star in Chashme Buddoor; a review of Sai Paranjpye’s Katha; a piece about Listen Amaya, and about watching Shaikh and Deepti Naval on screen together after all these years. And on two excellent films in which Shaikh had small parts, 40 years apart: Garm Hava and Shanghai]

A short meeting with Ravi Baswani

Very sad to hear about the passing of Ravi Baswani. I met him in March last year in Mumbai, and at first glance he looked a bit sturdier than I’d expected; his two best-known roles - as Farooque Shaikh’s rascally bachelor pal Jai in Chashme Baddoor and as the high-strung photographer Sudhir in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro - had fixed him in my mind as a wisp of a man permanently in danger of being blown away by a strong breeze, in the style of the great silent-screen comedians. One of the best sight gags in Chashme Baddoor has him leaping nimbly to and fro in a single-minded effort to kick-start a scooter into life; it’s slapstick, but it’s also balletic and done with tremendous comic timing, and it’s my favourite Baswani memory. Watching it, you almost feel like the scooter will kick this little man back.


Nor was I prepared for Ravi’s thick moustache, which made him look vaguely like a major-general (and which he carefully combed with his hands at regular intervals throughout our conversation). But his voice was still just as boyish as Sudhir’s. “It says ‘Push’ but you can’t push it, you can only pull,” he complained jocularly about the recalcitrant door of the Café Coffee Day in Andheri, “This is like the bloody political system – nothing works around here!”

We talked mainly about Jaane bhi do Yaaro and about that tiny window of time in the early 1980s when Ravi played the two movie parts that got him such a large fan following. In the late 1970s, he told me, he was a Delhi boy sporadically involved with theatre – he had been into acting since his school and college days but never really thought of it as a profession. “I worked as a management trainee after college, and that's where I was exposed to such fine terms as Job Satisfaction,” he said with a chuckle. Going to Bombay in search of film work was not something he was thinking about – “I thought if cinema was ever going to be a part of my life it would come to me.”

Which is what happened. Naseeruddin Shah – whom Ravi knew through the Delhi theatre circuit – was getting ready to film Sai Paranjpye’s Sparsh and he happened to show Ravi the script. “I was so impressed that I told Naseer I have to be involved with this film, even if it meant working as his personal spotboy.” Eventually Paranjpye asked if he would handle Properties for the film, and Ravi and his theatre group (called “Non-Group”!) became closely involved with behind-the-scenes work. Paranjpye was so impressed (in an interview to Filmfare, she said “Thanks to Ravi Baswani and his team, if I asked for a pink elephant at night, it was there in the morning”) that she cast him in Chashme Baddoor.

After the Bombay premiere of that film, he was going to return to Delhi to resume his theatre work when a friend asked him to direct and act in a play for him. Kundan Shah, who had enjoyed Chashme Baddoor, attended one of the shows and was enthralled by Ravi’s talent for manic humour and by his glass eye, which gave him a mad-scientist look at times. He had already thought of Ravi for the role of the high-strung Sudhir, and this performance made up his mind.


“To me, Ravi WAS Jaane bhi do Yaaro,” Kundan says today, “He was the comic cement of the film. When I got him on board, I knew that a key component had been taken care of.” Ravi would bring exactly the hoped-for qualities to the role. His Sudhir is hyper-excited, paranoid, marked by childlike swings of emotion: when he’s morose he is the picture of incurable pessimism, but a few seconds later he’s on his feet again, this time impractically cheery even when there isn’t much to be cheery about. In scenes such as the one where he yelps “Jaane nahin doonga!” at the rent-collector, he resembles nothing so much as a Chihuahua snapping away at someone’s heels. This makes him a perfect foil to his more poised, idealistic partner Vinod (played by Naseer). It also places the responsibility of pulling off the broader comic scenes on his shoulders – something that would carry a real-life resonance during the shooting, as Naseer became increasingly unconvinced about some of the comedy and Ravi occasionally had to mediate.

In fact, Ravi was one of the very few people involved with Jaane bhi do Yaaro who was sold on the script at first reading. “I didn’t think there was anything unacceptable in it. It made perfect sense to me and I believed in the absurdity, the dark humour, etc.” On more than one occasion, his confidence and talent for improvised zaniness was a morale-booster to the other members of the cast and crew during a very difficult shoot where people were often asking each other the immortal question “Yeh kya ho raha hai?”

“During that shoot there was innocence and there was the passion to do something really well,” Ravi told me, “We weren’t competing with each other or looking over each other’s shoulders. Aisa laalach kabhi nahin tha ki main lead role kar rahan hoon ya kuch aur kar raha hoon? Everybody was throwing suggestions around, multi-tasking...you can't imagine the level of enthusiasm. When Kundan shouted 'Taking!', there were 15 voices that answered in a chorus 'Giving!' We had absolutely no idea that we were involved in something that was going to be a cult or a landmark or whatever. We were just doing our work as best as we could. It was like the Gita’s philosophy: Aasha kiye bina apna karm kar lo.”

His own career never really took off post-1983, but he was stoical about it, preferring to dwell on the positives. “After satellite TV came in, the repeated telecast of JBDY and Chashme Baddoor has led to a resurgence of viewers who talk to me as if the movies were made just yesterday. When I speak to college students or young interns at workshops, the admiration is there to see – there is a quiet pride that one was involved with such films.”

His first VHS copy of Jaane bhi do Yaaro came from Doordarshan as late as 1990, eight years after the film was made. “Now it’s more widely available but sad to say, though we are told the prints are digitally remastered and rerecorded and all that shit, the quality is still very bad.” There isn’t much of a culture of film preservation in India, I remarked, and Ravi nodded in agreement but then let out a short laugh. “True, but kya iss country ki priority film preservation hai? You know what I mean, right? There are so many other things that need to be preserved, which is not happening.”

Towards the end of our talk, a trace of regret showed itself. “We’ve all lost our innocence now,” he said. “The loudness of comedy in recent times is very disheartening. It’s all about verbal diarrhoea – all this Laughter Challenge nonsense. Even some fine comedians are getting involved with this circus, purely for money’s sake.” But he said even this with a smile, and with the same matter-of-fact humour he showed when he quipped in a magazine interview a few years ago that he should have taken a cue from James Dean and died immediately after Chashme Baddoor and Jaane bhi do Yaaro were released. “I would have been a two-movie legend by now.”


[Did a version of this for the Hindustan Times. Photos courtesy Aditya Arya, who knew Ravi well since the 1970s and who worked as stills photographer on JBDY. More on that here]