एक्ट्रेस शबाना आजमी ने श्याम बेनेगल के साथ अपने एसोसिएशन को याद करते हुए उन्हे अपना मेंटर और गुरू बताया।
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00:00The first image I have of Shyam Benegal was in 1973 and what struck me most about him
00:15was his wide, warm smile as I went to visit him in the ASP office where he was the creative
00:25director looking to cast Ankur. The last image I have of Shyam was on 14th December, 24,
00:40when Neera and Piya had organised a celebration for his 90th birthday.
00:49After spending a beautiful hour with all of us, I saw him being whisked away
01:03with that same warm, wide smile.
01:10Shyam Benegal was my guru, although a reluctant one. He didn't want to be called
01:20anybody's guru, but he was my guru, nevertheless. Not only because he was my first director,
01:28but also because by just being around him I learnt so many little, little, little lessons
01:36of life. He was also my mentor. I consulted him every now and then about a project that perhaps
01:48I should do or not. He wanted to be neither my guru nor my mentor. He was my friend,
01:59my equal, and he created that space for this friendship. He never
02:11jataoed any ownership on me, although in the relationship it would have been very natural
02:18for him to do so. Never. He gave me equal respect and equal ability to stand on my own while also
02:32respecting the work. I could fill chapters about my relationship with Shyam,
02:45but there are little, little snippets I'd like to talk about. I remember when I was doing Mundi,
02:53okay, I must say that he was also a very canny person because when we were doing Mundi,
03:00we were 40 of us, people either from the Film Institute or the NSD, and everybody was there
03:10for 40 days, 40 of us for 40 days, and we saw that there was great camaraderie, and
03:16everybody was everybody's friend, and I marveled that, you know, there was no friction, no bad
03:25moment, and I wondered how he made that possible. And then many years later, an AD of his shared
03:32with me that Shyam had called them right at the beginning of the shoot and said,
03:40these are 40 actors who are going to be together for 40 days. Some of them have big parts,
03:48some of them have small parts, but all of them are very talented people. See that you never bruise
03:57anybody's ego and see that you look after the people with the smaller parts more than the
04:06people who have the main parts. I don't think that any director before that or after that could have
04:16shown that kind of empathy. I remember when I was doing Mundi, I was very concerned that I was too
04:24young to play the Madame of the Brothel. And so I decided to look up some of them myself.
04:32So I went to Pila House, and I saw that they were very young girls, even the Madame of the
04:40Brothel was very young, and they were all dressed up like the popular film star of that day.
04:50So I came away a little more convinced that, all right, maybe this is possible.
04:58Who do you think took me there? The famous Kabbali singer Aziz Nazam and my college mate
05:08Farooq Sheikh. I found it prudent never to ask them how they had full access to Pila House.
05:15After that, Rukhsana Sultan took me to GB Road in Delhi, and I found Rukmini Devi there.
05:26The put-on nazakat, the over-exaggeration of courtesy, the idea of the person Rukmini was
05:38of the person Rukmini was came from that. Then Shyam and I went to Heera Bazaar in Hyderabad,
05:49and we saw this young woman without a dot of makeup in one white blouse and a nylon sari.
05:56I don't know, Neera, whether you know this or not, but she stood there with her head down, and then
06:03somebody told her to dance. And so they put on a record of mine from a film called Fakira,
06:12which is an almost devotional song that I sing to my husband, Pooja Karungi Teri.
06:19And she broke up into the most raucous version of Pooja Karungi, kahan se main pata nahi sakti,
06:27but let me tell you, it was navel downwards. So I was absolutely shocked. Through this whole thing,
06:33there was one man sitting in a corner, completely expressionless, sitting on his
06:40anshes, not at all getting involved with what was happening. And Shyam said, that's my Tumrus.
06:49And that is the character Tumrus that Naseer has played so memorably.
06:56So why I'm saying this are the little, little things that he would pick up. Once I was humming
07:01a ditty, a Hyderabadi ditty, and he said, yeh kya gaali ho? Toh mein rekha hai, yeh meri mami
07:06gaati thi, yeh Hyderabad ka. And then I sang, main kitti baar bhuna naaji. He said, well,
07:10I want this in the film. So let me put a scene. And then he put the scene where Rukmini
07:18Devi sits in front of the mirror and she's doing that. He was constantly picking up from life.
07:26His relationship with his actors was amazing because he loved them. And he never told them
07:34exactly what he wanted them to do. He would explain the situation to them and let them free.
07:42Now, I think what he did was give the actors so much confidence that you could, you could dare to
07:52go into uncharted territories. You didn't have to play safe. You could try something knowing that
07:58if you were making an ass of yourself, Shyam will reign you in. That kind of trust between a director
08:07and an actor is the best thing that a director can give, for sure. There are many, many, many such
08:17incidents that I can go on. Once I remember, I told him, I said, what do you think is the
08:21difference between commercial cinema and what is called parallel cinema? And he said, without
08:27blinking, he said, you know, mainstream cinema whitewashes all the details. They don't locate
08:36you in reality. They locate you in an alternative reality, whereas independent cinema tries to
08:46locate you totally in a recognizable place. So the diction is important. The way they are dressed
08:55is important. The locale needs to be important. And that's the difference. What struck me was that
09:02it made me understand that, you know, when I was working in the 80s, in most of the mainstream
09:08films, it used to drive me mad that whether it was a police inspector's house or whether it was
09:14a millionaire's house, when you walked into the bedroom, on the dressing table, there was one
09:20body cologne bottle, there was one charmless cream and there was one talcum powder and a dirty brush
09:28and a comb, obviously hastily borrowed from the makeup man. And it used to drive me mad. And then
09:35I realized, okay, so they are switching to a suspension of disbelief. Let's not worry about it.
09:43So it was little things. What struck me was there was no judgment. There was no judgment. He was not
09:51saying, wo theek nahi hai, hum betar hai, never. And that's how he was throughout his life. I don't
09:59see him ever passing judgment. So many young people, so many filmmakers, so many inspired
10:09writers come and would like to pay abuses at his feet. And he would shy away from it all.
10:18He just embraced people. And that is his warmest quality that will always remain with me. Like
10:34Shivendra said he loved jazz. He loved telling tales. He was a great raconteur. He
10:44liked holding conversations. And I've had many, many conversations with him. And I look forward
10:54to many more conversations with him, wherever he is. You know, recently,
11:02another great artist Zakir Hussain passed away. We were looking at a lot of interviews that he
11:08done. In one of the interviews, he said,
11:38Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.