Mamta Kalia
Mamta Kalia
Mamta Kalia
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I first met Bhanwari in Mumbai’s Birla<br />
Kreeda Kendra, where Kiran Bedi was<br />
felicitating her in a programme organised<br />
by a women’s organisation. She was a<br />
thin dusky figure huddled in a chair.<br />
When asked to speak on the mike, she<br />
spontaneously sang a song in Rajasthani.<br />
That time her hair were black. But the<br />
trauma of the past seven years--the<br />
judgement against her and the hostility<br />
of her own people after the film--has<br />
turned her life upside down. Her now<br />
silver hair are witness to this.<br />
A woman who had never wanted and<br />
never dreamt that she should be the<br />
subject of plays and novels, that films<br />
and documentaries be made on her life,<br />
suddenly found herself in the limelight<br />
because of these series of demonstrations.<br />
All she had desired was that the accused<br />
should be punished and she should be<br />
able to live a normal life away from<br />
media glare. Unfortunately the reverse<br />
has happened after the film. I blame<br />
myself also as a co-writer of this film<br />
as much as the film’s producer for her<br />
plight.<br />
When Jagmohan Mundra had started<br />
research for the film in January 1999,<br />
Bhanwari’s case files were gathering dust.<br />
I agreed to write the film in spite of<br />
opposition from my well-wishers. They<br />
had seen his cheap formula films like<br />
‘monsoon’ but I had only seen<br />
‘Kamla’(scripted by Vijay Tendulkar)<br />
which impressed me. There is no dearth<br />
of film writers but I thought I will be<br />
able to do more justice to Bhanwari’s<br />
character. But I was misguided. The film<br />
as a medium belongs to the producer<br />
and director. A writer is never allowed<br />
to be a part of it.<br />
I gave a brief draft of the film to<br />
Mundra in March ‘99.When he told me<br />
140 :: April-June 2010<br />
to write a full version, I thought he<br />
had taken my work seriously. When I<br />
went to my daughter’s house in America,<br />
in June ’99, my briefcase was full of<br />
write-ups and reports on Bhanwari. I<br />
remained in touch with Mundra through<br />
e-mail and wrote the whole screenplay<br />
along with complete dialogues. This took<br />
more than a year.<br />
The script was near completion when<br />
Mundra said that he was ‘hiring’ another<br />
writer who had won that year’s National<br />
Award and he would improvise my script.<br />
This was a blow to me. I had taken<br />
this film as my moral responsibility,<br />
working ceaselessly on it for more than<br />
a year. Then he asked me to write a<br />
couple of scenes which were not<br />
acceptable to me. One was a scene in<br />
which the women activists were shown<br />
to be exploiting Bhanwari’s name for<br />
their own end. I argued vehemently on<br />
this point. Bhanwari’s case had gained<br />
prominence because of the active support<br />
from women’s groups and showing them<br />
in a dark light would not only distort<br />
their image but also disturb focus of<br />
the film. I was forgetting that every<br />
director had his own vision . If that<br />
vision is prejudiced, it will become<br />
evident in one scene or another. Since<br />
I had given a lot of my time in writing<br />
this film , I wanted him to consult me<br />
if any changes were made during the<br />
shooting. But he did not keep in touch<br />
after the full script reached him. Later<br />
I came to know that he had ‘hired’<br />
someone else for dialogue writing.<br />
After the writing of the film, I was<br />
posted a long agreement which stated<br />
that the script was now the property<br />
of the director and I could not get it<br />
published etc etc. I refused to sign saying<br />
that my name should not appear in the