‘Sone Chandi Ke Buth’ by KA Abbas: Learning film writing from the wizard of words

Nonika Singh

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Khwaja Ahmad Abbas was a socially conscientious filmmaker, an insightful critic and a prolific writer who wrote 74 books in 73 years. Winner of four National Film Awards, who also won the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival and the Crystal Globe at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, he was as much an insider in the sone-chandi ki duniya he wrote about as a dispassionate observer, who could see it for what it is.

Unsurprisingly, as his writings come to life in a translation by Syeda Hameed, his niece, and Sukhpreet Kahlon, a film journalist, these are not afflicted by the ‘I, me, myself’ syndrome. Even when his pen portraits of legendary actors reveal his proximity to megastars such as Raj Kapoor, it’s not a vanity trip. We learn how he gave Big B a break in ‘Saat Hindustani’ or how Dilip Kumar had the gumption to tell Abbas in public what a terrible film he had made in ‘Gyara Hazar Ladkian’.

Of course, Abbas also had the courage to question Dilip’s choice of films like ‘Azaad’, ‘Kohinoor’ and ‘Leader’ in an incisive essay on him. Even when Abbas wrote about his favourite actors, a critical assessment of their merit was never missing. Thus, while describing geniuses such as Satyajit Ray and V Shantaram, he does not fawn, only underlines what made them a cut above the rest. The manner in which he sums up the ‘star-lit’ galaxy that he was privy to is engaging. It’s almost as if he is recounting a fable. No doubt, anything written about stars does acquire that fantastical quality and anecdotes have a way of achieving a larger than life dimension. Abbas’ pen portraits brim with vim and vigour, yet are also a rare combination of excitement and profundity.

Those that stay with you are especially the ones on Meena Kumari, Sahir Ludhianvi and Amitabh Bachchan. It is almost as if he makes you meet these artists and the persons within with the flair of a wizard of words. Pithy and precise, sublime and fascinating… If Abbas emerges as a raconteur in his writings — credit for which must be given to the translators too — his skills as a storyteller are further cemented in the section of stories where fact meets fiction. A self-confessed agnostic, his heart clearly beats for those on the fringes of the glamour world — the extras and duplicates. Stories like ‘A Mother’s Heart’ are gut-wrenching. How all that glitters is not gold unravels in more than one story, as also the essay ‘Living for Films, Dying For Films’, which reads like a work of fiction, but is rooted in harsh realism.

If one were a reader of his reviews at that point in time, the grouse would have been that he almost gave away the entire story of the film. But that may well have been the style back then or his personal wont. However, there is much to learn from his writings; how a journalist can both be an admirer and a critic; how you needn’t be scathing or acerbic to make a point.

Thus, while hailing both Raj and Dilip as ‘great actors of India’, he dared to factor in their faults. As the rather delightful book takes us behind the camera as well as re-introduces us to film idols, we see it through the eyes and ink of a man who believed cinema is neither an industry, nor commerce.

“Film is an art,” he wrote, and his writings emphasise why it is imperative to be so.