FILMING. A love Story by Tabish Khair

This is a novel of about 400 pages long. Unlike many others the author used a format of filming a story. The narrator is supposed to be researching on the history and development of Hindi cinema in Bombay. He introduces one syayam sevak ruminating on the pre-partition and post partition riots in India and Pakistan. He is filled with hate of the father of the nation Mahatma and spits venom and abuses on him for standing up against the violent fanatics on both sides. He finds the Mahatma coming in the way of the revenge seeking mobs and wanted him to be dead but at a Muslim hand. This could inflame the feelings of all the Hindu population and there will be no stopping until the entire Muslim population is exiled or massacred. Then there will be Hindu Raj and any secular pretensions will be out. This sevak comes at the beginning of all the reels i.e chapters in the novel.

The story starts with the bioscopewala Harihar resigning from his job in a Post Office and taking up his long wished plan to become rich and famous thru cinema. He teams with one young prostitute who was the mother of his son and willingly joins him in his business. They tour the countryside with their touring cinema to earn enough to change the business but at no time they were able to spare enough. Luckily they come to a haveli of a rich landlord. Their fate changes with active help of the younger lord and the lady of the haveli. The two teamed to form a film studio in outskirts of Bombay leaving the son of Harihar with the lady. Hari his supposed wife Durga and the young Rajkunwar establish their business in Bombay and start making films. They assemble necessary men and materials at a place belonging to the landlord family.

The story ends with the destruction by fire of the studio in the outskirts of Bombay by fanatical communalist elements along with the films and occupants. The organiser of this arson and destruction did not get his due recognition for the ‘heroic’ act of his and ruminates at the powers who control the show.

There is an angle based on the narrator’s interview with a script writer living abroad somewhat resembling Sadat Hassan Manto. Some of the episodes are supposed to be from those long interviews. But Manto was not abroad as I recollect from my FSU (Friends of Soviet Union) days.

The story goes back and forth encompassing two generations.