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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

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