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Home , Anurag Kashyap, Apurva Asrani, Asrani, Bombay (soundtrack), Cinema of India, Gangster (film series)

THE CINEMA OF

EDITED BY

LALITHA GOPALAN

• WALLFLOWER PRESS LO NOON. NEW YORK First published in Great Britain in 2009 by WallflowerPress 6 Market Place, London WlW 8AF Copyright © Lalitha Gopalan 2009

The moral right of Lalitha Gopalan to be identified as the editor of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transported in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owners and the above publisher of this book

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-905674-92-3 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-905674-93-0 (hardback)

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236 24 FRAMES SATYA 13 , 1998

On 3 July, 1998, a previously untold story in the form of an unusual came like a bolt from the blue. Ram Gopal Varma'sSatya was released all across India. A low-budget filmthat boasted no major stars, Satya continues to live in the popular imagination as one of the most powerful filmsever made in India. Trained as a civil engineer and formerly the owner of a video store, Varma made his entry into the filmindustry with Shiva in 1989. Oftenreferred to as a maverick, eccentric and one of India's 'most innovative directors: Varma's oeuvre has been diverse. Satya is his most enduring filmto date, described by the Encyclopaedia of Cinema as the 'most remarkable release of the decade'. Many talents came to the forewith the release of the film:actor Manoj Bajpai shot to prominence forhis outstanding performanceas a gang functionary; and were recognised for the quality of their script; the main cinematographer, Gerard Hooper, was hailed for the look of the film;at the 44th awards, editors Apurva and Bhanodaya, sound recordist H. Shridhar and music director won the top awards. In short, Satya was a team effortthat became both a popular and critical success. In reviews and articles about the filmreprinted in the Encyclopaedia of Hindi Film, writer Shobha De wrote, 'Satyaspoke the language of the streets - rough, crude, brutal, and yet it did not offendsensibilities. It perfectly captured the savagery of what has become our daily reality while also uncovering the final futility and pathos of mindless gang wars: Another reviewer referred to Satya as a 'no punches pulled movie mirroring, authentically, the visage of a sick society'. In an interview after the release of the film, Ram Gopal Varma said:

Mumbai has always attracted me because it is a fascinatingcity. In the process of making an ,I bumped into some of the people in the underworld. And I realised that the human side of theirs attracted me much more than what they did. It never occurs to us that anyone who is shot dead in an encounter with the police has a face. To us he is just a name in print to be forgottenthe very next day. Satyais the story of people who are put in a position that the average man may not be able to identifywith.

THE 237 While Varma himself has dabbled with the romantic musical (Rangeela (1995), Mast (1999)), the (Daud (1997), Road (2002)) and horror (Raat (1992), Bhoot (2003)), his real passion and talent is most visible in the gangster genre. Two filmshave been central to Varma's cinematic imagination - Francis Ford Coppola's The (1972) and 's /Flames (1975). In a sense, the combination of the gangster with the use of violence as a series of shock effects,comes from these two very differentfilms. Varma's second Company (2002) was mounted very differentlyfrom Satya. Thedirector claimed that while Company was like , Satya was more like 's Goodfellas (1990). Its point of view is that of the street while Company is crafted with an aerial perspective. This knowledge of international genres, a desire to be different and a deep interest in the city of , made Varma put together a team of filmprofessionals to craftSatya's urban vision. Satya tells the story of a new immigrant to Bombay who slowly becomes part of an accelerated flow of sporadic and random events that make him join the underworld. Gang wars, extortion and 'encounter' killings are staged in the film against a landscape of urban detritus. The city's wasteland saturates the mise-en-scene, formingthe heart of the city, not its periphery. The gangsters thrive within this urban decay and dereliction. As Bombay becomes a gangland, the desire for home, domesticity and peace continue to elude its citizens. The remarkable feature of Satya is its play with space and bodies to craft an urban jungle where the idea of the 'spectacular global city' is completely erased. The filmrevels in claustrophobic spaces, chawls (working-class tenements), crowded streets and traffic to embark on a spatial journey that moves fromprivate to public worlds, constructing a city of modern ruin. Bombay's disorder and crisis dominates narratives of contemporary Bombay in both jour­ nalistic and popular perceptions of the city. While some point to the loss of Bombay's cosmo­ politan imagination afterthe riots of 1992-93 when 'citizens' turned into 'strangers: others look at the city's overcrowding and trafficas root causes. Still others focuson the underworld to refer to the city's decay and degradation. In the multiplicity of narratives that evoke the decline of India's premier city, no single narrative can explain the exact nature of the contemporary crisis. Crisis is then both an intense experience as well as a metaphor forthe contemporary cityscape. Anurag Kashyap claimed that central to their scriptwriting strategy forSatya was the explora­ tion of urban space, rather than offeringa moral position or providing an analytical structure to the story. On the contrary, inhabiting the experience of Bombay's disorder was more impor­ tant than charting the causal reasons forit. Satya opens with visuals of the Bombay skyline, the boats, the sea and the city at night, followed by visuals of police officers arresting people. The soundtrack that accompanies this

238 24 FRAMES montage tells us in the 'objective' voice of a documentary-maker that Bombay is a city that does not sleep; it is a city where the underworld is powerful. The narrator moves from the 23 broader context of the city and its current problems to Satya (J. D. Chakravarthy), a man whose story the filmseeks to narrate. Crime becomes the framingdevice used to tell the story of a city with Satya emerging as a man who belongs to the crowd of this huge metropolis. Satya gets involved with the underworld afterhe clashes with an egotistical gangster, Jagga (). Using his contacts with the police, Jagga ensures Satya is sent to prison on the falsecharge of pimping. In prison Satya meets the gangster Bhiku Mahatre (Manoj Bajpei), thus setting the stage foran interesting male friendshipand Satya's entry into the underworld. Most cities coexist with a series of spaces on the margins that cannot be incorporated within a master design plan. As described in the Encyclopaedia of Hindi Cinema, such spaces, the leftovers and the discarded, have been referred to as residual space for they take a life of their own. It is this space of the residual that is inventively evoked in Satya's mise-en-scene with the stylistics of television reportage, candid camera visuals and a deliberately shabby aesthetic all combined with the dramatic use of Steadicam and editing strategies that evoke spectacle. Gerard Hooper, the main cameraman on Satya, saw the film's shooting style as something that resembled the work of American independent cinema. Hooper used very little light and tried to create a dynamic movement of the camera in claustrophobic situations. He was struck by Bombay's extreme congestion, its appearance as a city bursting at the seams and yet bustling and functioning, unkempt and out of bounds. Entering the city from the airport, Hooper was astounded by the packed streets where people would be sleeping and working in the same place. Bombay did not appear sprawling but compacted. According to the Encyclopaedia of Hindi Cinema, Hooper, drawing on these perceptions, gave a distinctive look to the film - an experi­ mental documentary style using very little artificiallight. As the emblematic spatial symbol of the city, the street becomes a place of violent crime, with gangs seeking to make their home on its margins. This is why Satya's architectural mise­ en-scene is so interesting. The convention of placing consumer products in the mise-en-scene of 'family ' is prominently absent in this film. At no point in the film are we dazzled by light. We move instead through the alleys and dark interiors of , half-constructed buildings with very little light, dingy rooms, street corners, a car park and a prison. In one of the major chase sequences early on in the film, two members of the gang on a scooter kill a film producer in his car at close range. As they run from the police, the camera follows them moving across spaces of Bombay that look horrifyingly shabby. Crossing walls, train tracks, narrow alleys, open drains, the camera makes sure that the chase takes place in real locations

THE CINEMA OF INDIA 239 and provides a fairly detailed account of the city's spatial topography - a space that evokes a maze of urban memories. These urban memories reside close to the surface for the people of Bombay. Bombay's famoustextile mills had once provided employment to almost two thirds of the city's industrial workers. The decline of the mills was accelerated by an 18-month strike in 1982-83. More than twenty years after the strike, stories of adventurism, deals made behind closed doors and the self-interest of the union leadership continue to circulate. There is little dispute that the strike gave rise to an entirely new situation of despair formany workers in the city. As Rajni Bakshi describes, while some saw the vast multitude of unemployed men as the reason foran increase in crime, others saw an element of nihilism and self-destruction emerging from the workers' inability to sustain the forceof the strike. For most workers, in the end, the defeat was a personal tragedy. The factory sites and residential areas of the workers in the post-strike period have become spaces where the pressure of local time, global imaginaries circulating through televi­ sion, and spatial claustrophobia collide to create a new urban landscape. Extra floorshave been added to pre-existing buildings with rooftopworkshops creating both noise and air pollution. The presence of hawkers and pavement-dwellers has only added to the congested streets. As both Thomas Blom Hansen and Sandeep Pendse point out, the overcrowding of chawls with multiple familiescaused a gradual destruction of privacy, ordinary conversation and personal worlds. This is the urban landscape of spatial disenchantment where despair shapes architec­ tural texture and density. It is this post-strike landscape that seems to haunt the mise-en-scene of Satya. Satya's small one-room apartment is placed next to a darkly-lit corridor with clothes hanging against both walls. The shortage of indoor space forces people out into this shared corridor. All the apartments convey a shortage of space and the camera almost always presents the busy street outside as a backdrop. These are the chawls in the most crowded parts of Bombay and Satya attempts to make sure our eye connects the outside to the inside rather than create a wedge between them. The space from where the gang operates is located inside an empty half-constructed building with dark alleys, wooden poles, a little table with a few phones and old chairs strewn around. This is a space that is hidden from the 'public', but one that exists in almost every other corner. In Satya's disenchanted city, it is survival and not a great desire forwealth that constitutes the heart of the gang's operation. This is conveyed throughout the film from its spaces, to its people and to the desires of the gang's members. Even technology is deployed for survival. Mobile phones help in the chain of communication that connects all the members of the gang,

240 24 FRAMES inevitably playing the crucial role in either planning an assassination or some formof interven­ tion. The role of technological debris is also craftedthrough a very conscious effortto mark the 23 film with what could be called second-level technology. Instead of all the new cars that have flooded the market since globalisation, we see ageing Fiats, Ambassadors (India's eternal version of the Morris Oxford), auto-rickshaws and a Maruti (Suzuki) van. The car as an emblematic symbol of freedomand fantasyis deliberately undercut. Cars do not shine; rather they perform the role of mundane technology. The transportation used by the assassins is a two-wheeler and an auto-rickshaw. Thiseffort to downsize the paraphernalia within which the narrative of crime unfoldsin the filmbecomes part of the larger context of the residual city. None of the gang members are experts at anything in particular. What binds them together is their will to survive. Their identity and friendshipis based on an association within the city. Where and how did these people get together? What is their past? How did they come to the city? The film steers clear of this kind of sociological analysis, moving instead in the direction of a psychological narrative of violence. When a builder refuses to hand over extortion money to the gang on time, Varma decides to stage an elaborate shoot-out sequence in an apartment block. The shoot-out here between two rival gangs is a speedy combination of dynamic Steadicam movement and stillness with corridors, stairways and railings becoming the stage forthe action. Like a theatrical perform­ ance, the play of bodies in this space presents a violent narrative inside an innocuous building. As Mahatre and Satya chase one of the rival gangsters, Narain, out of the building, through the streets and up a railway bridge fromwhere we can see both slums and a moving train, we are presented with the classic features of the gangster genre - action, emotional excess, violence and the urban chase. Guru Narain is brutally killed in a spectacle of visceral emotional release of bullets and anger on the bridge. With death framedagainst the image of the train moving across a static composition, we witness violence in the hub of the cityscape. Instead of the typical car chase of many action films,Satya's action sequences are deliberately played out as 'realistic: routine' and 'everyday'. The action is not spectacularised through tech­ nological extravaganza, rather the brutality of the violence becomes excruciating because of its existence within the banality of everyday routine. Most South Asian cities, says the architect Rahul Mehrotra, are comprised of two elements in the same space. The first is the 'static city' or the permanent city that is immov­ able. Made of concrete, brick and steel, this static city is monumental and can be traced in maps. The other city is the 'kinetic city' which, as Mehrotra and Sharda Dwivedi describe, is a city in motion:

THE CINEMA OF INDIA 241 Built of recycled waste, plastic sheets, scrap metal, canvas, waste wood - all juxta­ posed with dish antennas, webs of electric wire, cable, et al. - it is a kaleidoscope of the past, present and futurecompressed into an organic fabricof alleys, dead ends and a labyrinth-like, mysterious streetscape that, like any organism, constantly modifies and reinvents itself.

Large processions, festivals, hawkers, street vendors and dwellers are all part of this kinetic city. The kinetic city struggles forvisibility in Satya with a mise-en-scene of alleys, religious proces­ sions and makeshiftdwellings playing out the everyday world of urban living and survival. For instance, the use of the Ganesh Festival procession at the end of the film to stage the gang's boss Bhau Thakarey's ( Govind Namdeo) death evocatively highlights the place of the kinetic city. Varma creates a choreography that combines the urban crowd with religious fervour and emotional intensity to stage the murder. While Thakarey is performing religious rites at the Ganesh Festival procession, Satya moves through the dense crowd with a knife in a sequence that is edited with aerial shots of the festival and religious chanting. He finally reaches the site where Thakarey is praying and kills him with the knife. In the din of the dense crowd, Satya not only manages to kill, but also to escape. The killing sequence suggests that in the kinetic city, motion and density both produce and hide the spectacle of violence. With a decrepit city as the backdrop, purged of all commodities and the conscious use of an aesthetics of decay, we are in many ways provided with a metaphor of the city as garbage dump, a metaphor that treats bodies as unwashed, unruly and irrational, walking through a space of abun­ dant waste. Instead of mounting the idea of a racy 'speed city; Satya plays out a spatial topography of slums, chawls and dark alleys that are saturated with the memories of the recent past. Bombay in Satya is a disenchanted city where the gang becomes part of an everyday violence that can help its members escape the boredom of their existence, the banality of their situation, and the degra­ dation befallingeach one of them. Satya constantly thwarts the desire for a healing touch that can help provide closure by philosophically suggesting death as the climactic theatrical performance of urban violence. All the protagonists, except one, die at the end of the film. Although the urban world presented is bleak, the desire for an alternative ethical world is a recurring theme in Satya, elaborated through the idea of community and familial bonding. Kallu Mama's (Saurabh Shukla) presence as the head of a familyof men is deployed inventively to craft the gang's interpersonal relationships and camaraderie. As the wise and humane fatherfigure in the gang, Kallu Mama, evokes the bonds of familylife. The 'Kallu Mama' projects the idea of a differentkind of family through an overwhelmingly male space.

242 24 FRAMES In the song, Varma deploys the perfomativemode of street theatre to conduct a conversation between the gang members. Shot inventively through what can only be described as a swaying 23 camera, the song with its drunken disposition, sense of irreverence and conversational , projects a world of male friendshipand bonding. If Kallu Mama plays an avuncular role, then the friendship between Bhiku Mahatre and Satya encapsulates the experience of brotherhood in the gang. Satya's friendshipwith Bhiku Mahatre and his blossoming romantic involvement with his neighbour Vidya () function in the best tradition of the genre to express a restless inner world. The friendship and romance tracks alternate in the narrative, providing us with access to Satya's insecurities, anxieties and inner life. Satya's friendship with Bhiku Mahatre in a sense operates as a microcosm of the bond that keeps the community of the gang together. This is narrated through their first meeting in prison where Satya and Mahatre fight each other, to their developing closeness, to Satya's entry into the gang and up to the final climax. Some of the most interesting conversations between the two men are staged against a mise-en-scene that depicts a longing fora romantic myth of the city while also offeringa critique through its framing.There are two moments staged against the landscape of the sea. In the firstconversation, the Bombay skyline appears like an ensemble of dilapidated buildings against the . Mahatre expresses his anger at Bhau Thakarey forpreventing the former fromkilling a rival. Satya listens and persuades Mahatre to take revenge. This is played out against the seascape with Mahatre's raw and insecure masculinity on display. Immediately following is the shoot-out sequence and Guru Narain's death. The landscape of the sea is enhanced in a later sequence with more expansive shots including both skyline and sea. If in the earlier sequence Satya expresses his solidarity with Mahatre and persuades him to take revenge, the roles are reversed in the second sequence. Satya wants to confess to Vidya about his profession. He is worried about Vidya's safety and wants to leave the gang. Mahatre takes the active role and persuades Satya to say nothing. Mahatre wants him to go away to Dubai with Vidya. There is homoerotic energy in the friend­ ship; both men are not only drawn to each other but also trust each other. Mahatre's constant concern forSatya's safety and Satya's desire to support Mahatre's anxieties, functionwithin the structure of a romantic relationship. The inexplicable bond between the two men symbolises both the desire for community as well as its insecure formation in the gang. The friendship operates in the narrative to signal both the high point and the crisis point forthe gang, ulti­ mately leading to mayhem in the city. The romance between Satya and Vidya also runs almost parallel to the rest of the narra­ tive. This relationship is fragilesince Vidya has no access to or knowledge of Satya's gang life.

THE CINEMA OF INDIA 243 Thedeception works like in many other gangster films where the yearning to start a familyis presented as an impossible dream within the context of the gang. Theimpossibility of intimacy is also spatially suggested. Vidya's home is a small room and the camera almost never provides us with access to the whole space. When Vidya comes into Satya's apartment, they look out of the window and Vidya talks of the lost view of the sea because of the tall building now standing opposite their apartment. This passing remark suggests the idea of a city constantly changing through building constructions, disrupting both the perception of expanse and also the lives of the inhabitants. Even the street is not a place that provides any freedom from claustrophobic space. The most private moments between the couple take place on the terrace of their building. During the two love , their romance is set against a tranquil backdrop that is almost deliberately separated fromthe density of the city. The Bombay-Poona and tunnel, the beach and rocks, the terrace and gardens - these are the spaces within which romance is possible. Since the city cannot offerleisure spaces to its residents, romance is virtu­ ally a problem of space. An alternative topography needs to be produced forthe performance of romance, since Satya'soverall screen space is decrepit and dirty. When the couple decides to negotiate the city for their romantic pursuit, we are taken into a vortex of violence. This is precisely what happens when Satya takes Vidya to watch a film at a theatre. During the interval, a rival gang member spots Satya and calls the police. Soon the police are swarming around the theatre. All the exits except one are blocked. At this exit, the rival gang member is waiting to identify Satya for the police. Knowing that he will be caught unless he acts, Satya fires a shot into the ground. In the panic and turmoil that follows, Satya manages to escape with Vidya, but a stampede leaves 13 people dead and several injured. The violence inside the movie theatre becomes the turning point for Satya. Tired of deception, he wants to confess to Vidya and then leave the gang. It is at this point that Mahatre stops him, suggesting instead that Satya leave for Dubai where he will be ensured a legal job. But such endings are usually impossible within the gangster genre. Satya plays out the romantic track within a classical format. Romance brings out the good person, the tender and the nurturing personality. It also makes Satya dislike his own identity as a gang member, which leads to more deception. The proximity to violence makes him fear not so much forhimself but forhis beloved. The desperation to exit this life of decep­ tion and ensure a safe life for Vidya makes Satya yearn for escape from his life of brutality. Romance becomes the process through which Satya wants to redeem himself. His journey in the film then becomes the story of a migrant, his involvement with the gang and subsequent desire forescape and redemption. In the framework of the film, this is an impossible dream.

244 24 FRAMES One can never come back to the space of legality after having crossed it to the extent Satya does. His demise in the filmtakes place in tandem with the collapse of the gang. 23 In many ways the performance of violence operates in Satya to draw attention to a crisis of the everyday where random, unpredictable events challenge the mundane world of repetition. In this space, the 'death drive' of a community of men comes to signify both the nature of Bombay's everyday and the crisis generated within its routine. If the everyday is the realm of the routine, the mundane, the habitual, then where do we locate the terrain of unpredictability, violence and spectacular disruption? These are questions whose answers can only be tentatively advanced via forms that can help us journey through the subjectivity and the psychological terrain that forms the core of city life. Thelandscape of Satya provides us with insight into a world of despair, degradation and violence. This is a world that cannot be quantified. It is a world that is fluid, dangerous and shrouded in mystery. But it is a world that resides in the city both as fact and as fiction.

Ranjani Mazumdar

REFERENCES Bakshi, Rajni (1986) The Long Haul: The Bombay Textile Wo rkers Strike. Bombay: Build Documentation Centre. Blom Hansen, Thomas (2001) Wa ges of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay. Princeton & Oxford: Press. ,Nadir, and Saibal Chatterjee (eds) (2004) Encyclopaedia of Hindi Cinema: An Enchanting Close-Up of India'sHindi Cinema. New : Encyclopaedia Britannica. Mehrotra, Rahul and Sharda Dwivedi (2001) Bombay: TheCities Within. Bombay: Eminence Designs. Pendse, Sandeep (1996) 'Toil, Sweat and the City; in Sujata Patel and Alice Thorner (eds) Bombay: Metaphor for Modern India. Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta, Madras: OxfordUniv ersity Press, 301-06.

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