The return of ‘Garm Hava’
MS Sathyu’s ‘Garm Hava’, a New Wave icon, is being restored and is set to release in theatres. With it, a near-forgotten phase of cinema will be resurrected
It was 1972, and the Indian New Wave was coming along nicely. The government-funded Film Finance Corporation (FFC) was handing out loans to directors who wanted to break away from the escapist and formulaic movies being churned out by the Hindi movie dream factory. Some film-makers were more interested in nightmares, among them M.S. Sathyu, who had earned a name for himself lighting and designing sets and directing plays for the stage. A script submitted by him to the FFC was rejected, so he handed in another one—a story about a Muslim family that chooses to stay back in India after Partition in 1947 but gets uprooted from within in the process.
It was 1972, and the Indian New Wave was coming along nicely. The government-funded Film Finance Corporation (FFC) was handing out loans to directors who wanted to break away from the escapist and formulaic movies being churned out by the Hindi movie dream factory. Some film-makers were more interested in nightmares, among them M.S. Sathyu, who had earned a name for himself lighting and designing sets and directing plays for the stage. A script submitted by him to the FFC was rejected, so he handed in another one—a story about a Muslim family that chooses to stay back in India after Partition in 1947 but gets uprooted from within in the process.
That script became Garm Hava, one of the best-known examples of cinema about Partition. Sathyu’s directorial debut is routinely included in “Best Films” lists, but its finely etched characters and deeply felt humanism have been largely hidden from public view since its theatrical release in 1974. The movie disappeared from sight—no VHS tapes or DVDs were made—surfacing occasionally on Doordarshan. All that will now change with the completion of a privately funded restoration process that started over a year and a half ago. A restored version of Garm Hava will be re-released in theatres within the next few months. The picture and sound quality in the close to 200,000 frames that make up the movie have been individually treated. The original negative has been cleaned up, and the sound has been digitally enhanced to suit the latest formats. “It’s like a new film now,” says Sathyu.
The rebirth of Garm Hava is the result of passion, doggedness, and deep pockets. The process was started by Subhash Chheda, a Mumbai-based distributor who runs the DVD label Rudraa. Chheda approached Sathyu a few years ago, asking for permission to produce DVDs from the film’s negative. The negative had aged badly and was damaged in many places. The idea then took root of expanding the scope of the project—to re-release the film in theatres and re-introduce audiences to its sobering pleasures.
“The film was visually corrected in consultation with Sathyu,” Chheda says. “We have also upgraded the sound. Dolby digital, 5.1, whichever format is there, the film is now available. People should not feel that they are watching a dated film.”
The project, which cost 100 times more than the movie’s budget, was bankrolled by Pune-based developer R.D. Deshpanday, whose businesses include the company Indikino Edutainment Pvt. Ltd. Indikino ploughed close to Rs 1 crore into the restoration, supporting its picture spruce-up by Filmlab in Mumbai and the sound quality improvement by Deluxe Laboratories in Los Angeles, US. “The voice enhancement alone has cost us a fortune,” Deshpanday says. “It’s like adding sugar to milk and then separating the milk from the sugar.” He wants to organize domestic and international premieres of the movie, and has approached Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles for a screening. A book titledHistory’s Forgotten Footnote, written by journalist Satyen K. Bordoloi, will be released along with the movie. Blu-ray discs and DVDs are also in the pipeline.
“We are keen on bringing other timeless Indian classics to the surface,” Deshpanday says. “The film touches upon a very live subject. If you showGarm Hava today, anybody will think it’s a contemporary film. It has that kind of depth and timelessness.”
The attention lavished on Garm Hava is a bit ironic, considering that the film nearly didn’t make it to movie halls. The Mumbai office of the Central Board of Film Certification rejected the film, citing its potential to stir up communal trouble. Sathyu used his contacts to approach the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi. She ordered the film to be released without any cuts. But even the all-powerful Gandhi—she was only a year away from imposing Emergency on the nation and revoking the democratic rights of citizens—couldn’t ensure a smooth theatrical release. “N.N. Sippy took up the film’s distribution, but he backed out when we showed the film at a festival ahead of its release,” Sathyu says. “I eventually approached a friend in Karnataka who owned a distribution company and a chain of cinemas, and he released the film first in Bangalore.” Only then did other distributors step in to ensure that movie goers saw for themselves the tragedy of a Muslim family that opts for India over Pakistan.
Garm Hava is about choices and consequences. Salim Mirza, a shoe manufacturer in Agra, has elected to stay back in India after Partition, but his decision gradually tears apart his family. A prospective son-in-law migrates to Pakistan, while business suffers because lenders don’t want to advance money to Muslim traders who may up and leave without repaying their debts. His daughter, Amina, decides to marry a suitor, but has her heart broken a second time when he too migrates. The Mirzas lose the mansion in which they have lived for generations. Salim Mirza is plagued by self-doubt. Should he have left in 1947 itself? Where is home—and what does it mean to be a Muslim in India? The movie’s original title was Wahaan.
Shama Zaidi, Sathyu’s wife and the screenplay writer of several Shyam Benegal films, based the script on a conversation she had with Ismat Chughtai, the Urdu novelist who has written extensively on Partition. Chughtai shared with Sathyu and Zaidi accounts of her family members, including an uncle who worked at a railway station and watched Muslim families gradually leave India in hopeful search of a better welcome across the border. The couple showed the script to poet and writer Kaifi Azmi, who wrote the dialogue and added to the screenplay his experiences of working with shoe-manufacturing workers in Kanpur.
The movie was made on a minuscule budget even by 1970s standards—a loan of Rs 2.5 lakh from the FFC and Rs 7.5 lakh borrowed by Sathyu from here and there. Like so many movies produced on the margins of the Hindi film industry, Garm Hava was made possible by the kindness of friends. The film was shot by cinematographer Ishan Arya—also making his debut after working in plays and advertisements—with a second-hand Arriflex camera loaned to the crew by Sathyu’s friend, Homi Sethna. Sathyu’s involvement with the Leftist Indian People’s Theatre Association (Ipta) resulted in parts for many actors from Ipta troupes in Delhi, Mumbai and Agra. The only real star on the set was the venerated Balraj Sahni in the role of Salim Mirza. Sahni, whose immensely dignified performance is one of the movie’s many highlights, was paid Rs 5,000 for his efforts. Shama Zaidi doubled up as the costume and production designer. Ishan Arya co-produced the film apart from creating its memorable images, which include a lovely moment of Amina and her new lover, Shamshad, consummating their relationship on a riverbank opposite the Taj Mahal. “We were all in tune with the kind of film we were making,” Sathyu says. “Ideologically, we were all alike and that is important.”
The cast included Geeta Kak as Amina, Jalal Agha as Shamshad, Shaukat Kaifi as Amina’s mother Jamila, and Farooque Sheikh, also making his feature film debut as Sikander. ..
