All that we can't leave behind

For accessory and fashion designers, filmmakers, graphic artists and musicians today, the 1970s and '80s offer inspiration like no other decade does. Hairstylists in New York, fashion gurus in Milan, publishers in Delhi and directors in Mumbai are bonding unconsciously over a time that passed us 20 years agoSmuggling Coca Cola and cheese burgers from Singapore -- foreign commodities precious in pre-liberalisation India -- is perhaps 34 year-old screenwriter Anuvab Pal's most vivid memory from the 1980s. Iconic characters from Hindi films that marked the decade, come a close second for the Mumbai-based author of the recently published Disco Dancer: A Comedy in Five Acts.In the last one month, HarperCollins India has published three novels on films from the '70s and '80s, priced at Rs 250 each. Disco Dancer's book jacket says, the book tries to understand what it was about the film that drove Osaka, Japan, to build a Jimmy statue... How can we forget Jimmy, Ajit, Mogambo or Shakal? asks Pal. I'd be hard-pressed if I were asked to name a memorable character from the movies of today.Pal's interest in the decade isn't unique. Publishing house HarperCollins India is out with two other novels in their film series --Deewar: the Footpath, the City and the Angry Young Man by Vinay Lal, and Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro: Seriously Funny since 1983 by Jai Arjun Singh, both books on films from the 1970s and the 1980s respectively.Although we crack jokes and make ironic references to films from the '80s, we must recognise the work that went into making them. Given the limited resources they had back then, those movies showed us it's okay to dream big, says Pal.Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro for instance, was made on a budget of Rs 7 lakh in 1983, and is widely regarded as Bollywood's definitive black comedy. Others can't boast of a similar reputation.In his book, Pal makes a case for the cinema of the '80s -- what many agree was the worst phase in Bollywood -- since he believes, without any intention of irony, that many of those films can be regarded as the stuff that brilliant comedy is made of. Disco Dancer, he believes, is representative of more than an improbable story line, laughable dialogues or bad dress sense; peculiar afflictions of that decade. No matter how much we stress that he (Jimmy, the protagonist of the 1981 film) is foolish or cheap, his was an India we have lost forever. And only in his ambition to become a disco dancer can we see it, know it and know who we once were, says Pal, in a recently published article about his book in Reuters.In socialist India, when cinemagoers were being offered protagonist-versus-system films, this film spoke of Jimmy's turn of fortune story, achieved not by fighting the bad guy, but through disco dancing. It made us who we arePal wrote his book to preserve those memories for a new generation of 20-somethings who have probably never encountered a typewriter or changed the direction of a Television antenna for better signal. But for Delhi-based graphic artist Sarnath Banerjee, whose exhibition of sketches that draw from life in India in the '70s and '80s opened on Saturday at Blue Frog Studios in Lower Parel, nostalgia has little role to play in his works.The Eighties was when my foundational myths were laid. My identity was developed then, and what I am today is a continuation of that decade, says the 38 year-old. My works are a recording of history, as I remember it.Tito, a series from the exhibition, tells the story of a Bengali boy in 1984, whose only ambition was to own a pair of Nike keds. Then there are frames with Phantom, the hero of the comic book that found a place on the bookshelf of every adolescent growing up in the two decades. Beneath each work, or set of works, stands a headset that plays an original music score specially composed by musician Ashutosh Phatak. The 39 year-old too has plumbed into his memories to create 15 tracks that, he hastens to add, don't make a retro album, but certainly lend an 'old' vibe.Graphic novelist Sarnath Banerjee and musician Ashutosh Phatak have collaborated on an exhibition of satirical works that draw from consumer products and icons of the '70s and '80s. The show titled The Psychic Plumber and Other Lies, displays a series of works at Lower Parel's Blue Frog Studios, each with a headset attached to it that plays Phatak's compositions. PIC/ Sameer MarkandeThis work by Sarnath Banerjee is titled Complan Boy, and portrays someone who'd have wanted to grow up to be a man who is big, strong, and powerful. He pits the promise that the nutrient-packed drink offered against the size of Lilliputian men. Phatak has employed chord progressions typical of the decade, and in some of the tracks, the lyrics hark back to advertising jingles synonymous with those times. I didn't make a conscious choice to bring the 1980s into my music. I wasn't making a spoof, says Phatak. If the decade lurks in his tunes, it's mostly because like Banerjee, Phatak's 'foundational myths' -- the rich minefield of imagination created by cultural phenomena -- were laid then. Frontman of rock band Pentagram, and one half of successful composer duo Vishal-Shekhar, Vishal Dadlani says the Ek nazar mein bhi track they composed for Taxi No. 9211 was a '70s tune with a modern dance production. In Golmaal, the Kyun aage peeche number was influenced by the nasal singing of the '60s. In Om Shanti Om, we had Main agar kahoon, which was again a song typical of the '70s, he says.In a country like ours, where 40 per cent of the population is younger than 35, it's perhaps natural that the current generation of artists, filmmakers, designers and writers should look back to the decade they grew up in, and that a majority of their audience can easily relate to.I have grown up watching the cinema of the '70s and '80s. Whatever I have learnt from those films is portrayed in my film, says Abhinav Kashyap, director of the recent Salman Khan-starrer, Dabangg; a film that many believe carried a strong whiff of '70s Hindi cinema.Emotions ran highThe emotional content of films from the '70s should remain in our cinema; emotions are what bind Indian society. The charm of people from that decade was their innocence, and we have retained that charm in our film. Cinema evolves with every decade, but the essence of the '70s, I think, we should hold on to, says Anil Pandey, co-writer of this Friday's release, the Ajay Devgn starrer, Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji.The film's director Madhur Bhandarkar is a fan of Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Chatterjee, both eminent filmmakers associated with the 1970s. And with Devgn playing a 38 year old in the film, making his character a product of the '70s, the influence was bound to shine through. Omi Vaidya plays an idealistic lover. That's a character we don't see these days. Idealism is reminiscent of the cinema of Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Chatterjee, says Pandey.For Vinay Lal, the 49 year-old professor of History at the University of California, however, the '70s are significant for an altogether different emotion. The decade was marked by the Indo-Pak war, the first nuclear test, the Emergency, and the Naxalbari uprising, all fuelling a disillusionment among the common man, reflected distinctly in the cinema of the time.And Deewar, a 1975 blockbuster that starred Amitabh Bachchan (establishing him as the angry young man), Shashi Kapoor and Parveen Babi, is iconic in the way it shaped Hindi cinema says Lal. The film, he believes, is significant in its portrayal of the disenchantment Indians felt in independent India, with spiralling prices of essential commodities, unemployment, and corruption.The dream of an independent India created on a different ethical standard, had soured. Deewar in fact, was released a few months before the Emergency, remembers Lal.Kitschy, but still aroundFor 42 year-old Mumbai-based Italian accessory designer Diana Linda, the '70s signify the hippie culture. Much of what Linda makes today is inspired from symbols of that era. Diana LindaWe can relate more to the sensibilities of the '70s, with its openness and acceptance, than to the close-mindedness of previous decades, says jewellery designer Sannam Chopra, the 27 year-old behind kitsch, low-brow art that mocks itself. Both attest to the enduring popularity of these products. Linda's clutches that carry images of Rekha, and other popular 1970s heroines, are hot-selling items.With inputs from Rachana Trivedi and Krutika Behrawala,u00a0Bollywood News Service

All that we can't leave behind

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