Reading Movies

In The Dialogue of Pyaasa,a book that contains the dialogue of Guru Dutt’s 1957 classic,you can hear the back-and-forth of its tragic,doomed trio of characters — Meena,Gulaab and the struggling poet,Vijay.

Gulaab: Duniya ko tumhaari zaroorat hai,tumhaari shaayeri ki zaroorat hai.

Vijay: Duniya ko kisi ki zaroorat nahin. Hum ne apni shaayeri duniya tak pohchaane ki kitni koshish ki,lekin jaanti ho us duniya ne us ka kya mol lagaaya? Raddi ke chandd tukde jo das aane mein beche gaye. Meri zindagi ka mol das aane hai,Gulaab.

It does not only speak of the distraught anger of a poet,or reveal the felicity with which dialogue writer Abrar Alvi brought the characters to life,the book also maps the journey of the film. It includes handwritten pages of Kash-ma-kash,a story Guru Dutt wrote in English and which later became the blueprint for Pyaasa. The story reveals the changing cast of characters,as is evident in the lines that cross out names — Susheela morphs to Sushama and then to Meena; Rani,the beautiful prostitute who comes to the poet’s aid,becomes Gulaab. It also includes other trivia,anecdotes drawn from the making of the film,and a detailed commentary by Nasreen Munni Kabir.

While film scripts being released as books is common in the West,Hindi movie fans have now found another must-collectible. The screenplay book,which offers more than the dialogue or the screenplay. It has interviews with directors and writers,the discussions that went into a piece of dialogue,as well as deleted scenes and lines.

Over the last two years,and especially over the past few months,scripts of Hindi films — as new as 7 Khoon Maaf or as old as Pyaasa — have been published as books. It began in 2006,when Oxford University Press published The Immortal Dialogue of K Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam. Last year,3 Idiots: The Original Screenplay (Om Books),The Dialogue of Mother India (Niyogi) and The Dialogue of Awaara (Niyogi) were published. This year,The Dialogue of Pyaasa (Om Books),My Brother Nikhil: The Screenplay (Yoda Press) and Susanna’s Seven Husbands: 7 Khoon Maaf (Penguin) have been released.

Kabir has a succinct answer to the question: why read a movie? “Because it’s important to study the text of films. They are stories after all. To take the texts more seriously is another way of legitimising cinema itself. Think of the many theatre plays that are in book form,so why not cinema?”

Smriti Kiran is creative director at the screenplay publishing division of Vinod Chopra Films,set up exclusively to publish film scripts,with a fund of Rs 10 million. She says screenplay publishing has resulted from corporatisation of Bollywood. “With the film industry becoming an industry in the true sense of the word,young people are looking at it as a serious career option. Film institutes are mushrooming. It’s time we documented our scripts so that students could use them,” says Kiran,whose team is currently working on the screenplays of Parinda,and three Guru Dutt classics — Chaudhvin Ka Chand,Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam,and Kaghaz Ke Phool.

Most published screenplays,though,are basically transcripts of the released film,says Anjum Rajabali,who teaches screenplay writing at the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune. “ The original script goes through several changes on the sets and during editing. But we don’t have a practice of preserving original drafts,” he says. Lack of documentation drove filmmaker Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra to develop the screenplay book of Rang De Basanti,which is expected to release in August. “My collection of 250 scripts doesn’t include a single Hindi one,” he says. Rang De Basanti’s published screenplay will include deleted scenes and dialogue,as well as unpublished photographs and “sketches of characters”. “I doodle my characters — matchstick figures with smiling faces — on the sets. Some scenes are ‘conceived in my head’,which will be put in a strip,alongside the actual scene executed,” he says.

It’s features such as these,besides the screenplay itself,which,publishers hope,will draw in the film buff. Lage Raho Munnabhai’s screenplay,published by Om Books,had just the script and a foreword by the writer,Abhijat Joshi. It didn’t do as well as 3 Idiots’ did,which had interviews with the directors,scriptwriters,actors as well as detailed notes on how the writers thought of a line or a word. The conversations throw up interesting trivia: how in one previous draft of the film,Pia (Kareena Kapoor) was the ex-girlfriend of Farhan (Madhavan) and the wife of Chatur (Omi Vaidya) in the other . “We printed 3,000 copies first,and within a week,we had to do a reprint,” says Ajay Mago,publisher,Om Books.

The screenplay of Parinda,which will be out next year,Kiran says,will have chapters devoted to production design,the legacy of gangster films,and costume design. “The idea is to help the film lover get into the mind of the filmmaker,” she says.

Memorabilia collectors would love to collect classics,believes Bikash Niyogi of Niyogi Books,which,last year,published The Dialogue Of Awaara and The Dialogue Of Mother India. “In the absence of documentation,publishing the screenplays of classics would help keep them alive,” he says. Unlike screenplay books of recent films,those on classics — including The Dialogue of Pyaasa and The Immortal Dialogue of K Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam — emphasise on a lost idiom,which drew heavily from Urdu. The latter,for instance,is used to teach Urdu at the National Institute of Oriental Languages in Paris.

The books are aimed at a niche audience,and the average number of copies printed is between 1,000 and 3,000. Few are reprinted. Sometimes,filmmakers or authors have to bear or share the cost of publishing. Vinod Chopra Films is putting in its own money. Kabir,too,partially funded The Dialogue of Pyaasa,and is sharing the cost of publishing Devdas. Filmmaker Prakash Jha says he is ready to self-publish “all my screenplays”. Perhaps the bestselling work so far is 7 Khoon Maaf; its publisher Penguin says it managed to sell 8,000 copies in three months but admits that is because the book included Ruskin Bond’s novella,on which the screenplay was based. Yet,Penguin plans to publish the screenplays of Maqbool and Omkara. “These books command a smallish but dedicated readership that will grow,” says Udayan Mitra of Penguin.

For Kabir,the books are also a way of giving writers primacy. “Screen writers have always had to fight for their corner. It’s a medium primarily for stars and then directors. I think Hindi film industry insiders give a great deal of credit to screen writers and lyricists. But the wider public isn’t always aware of who has written a film,” she says.