What Umrao Jaan meant to me

I was nine when Umrao Jaan found me mdash or perhaps when I found myself in Umrao JaanYeh kya jagah hai doston What place is this dear friendsThose haunting words mdash set to Khayyamrsquos aching composition delivered in Asha Bhoslersquos eternal voice and filmed by Muzaffar Ali with shadows and stillness as much as with actors and sets mdash formed more than a song They were a message A whisper through timeI was a young gay boy with no vocabulary for myself No label No path No mirror The world around me had no space for someone like me But Umrao Jaan opened a portal In Rekharsquos eyes I saw defiance in grace In the character of Umrao I saw a woman broken by fate and stitched back together by art beauty poetry and dignity And in her I found the first version of myself that felt wholeFrom Silence to SongAs a student of Indian classical music the film didnrsquot just affect me visually mdash it rewired how I heard soundAsha Bhosle didnrsquot just sing for Umrao Jaan mdash she bled into every note Every breath every pause every glance from Rekha was mirrored by the music It wasnrsquot playback singing It was prayer It was ibadat She showed me what it meant to become one with your music And those words mdash by Shahryar mdash cut through the fog I lived in They gave me language They gave my confusion a shape my grief a rhythm and my hope a melody Every song in that film is a phase of my life lsquoDil Cheez Kya Hairsquo reminded me of my selfworth lsquoJustuju Jiski Thirsquo helped me mourn silent losses And lsquoYeh Kya Jagah Hai Dostonrsquo mdash that was my prayer for survivalIrsquom grateful that new generations will see what we saw says Suvir SaranRekha A Mirror Made of FireRekha didnrsquot act as Umrao JaanShe was Umrao JaanEvery flicker of her eyes carried generations of silenced women unseen artists misunderstood souls She moved like a poem Her pain was elegant her elegance was defiantAs a broken boy with no compass Rekha became my true north She showed me how to survive ruin in style How to wrap despair in dignity She made devastation desirable mdash not because it was romantic but because it was real She wore her wounds like jewellery And I wanted to be like her mdash whole even in pieceslsquoWhat Muzaffar Ali did with Umrao Jaan was revolutionary in the quietest most refined way possiblersquo All pics courtesy Mapin PublishingMuzaffar Ali The Gaze That Saw Us AllWhat Muzaffar Ali did with Umrao Jaan was revolutionary in the quietest most refined way possible He made a film that dripped in beauty yes mdash but also in truthHe didnrsquot portray the tawaif as a fallen woman He gave her wajood mdash essence Identity Dignity He saw her as an artist an intellectual a philosopher of love and longing He filmed her with the same reverence one reserves for temples And he gave that reverence to all of us who watched and felt invisibleHe saw me at age nine in the shadows of a room somewhere in Delhi He gave me a story that told me I was not alone That sadness could be made majesticThe Film That Grew with MeOver the years I watched Umrao Jaan again and againIrsquove made every partner Irsquove ever had mdash fleeting or lifelong mdash sit through it with me Not just because I love it but because if they wanted to love me they had to understand Umrao Jaan It wasnrsquot a movie mdash it was my instruction manual My blueprint My cathedral My escape hatch My elegyEach viewing meant something different As a teenager it was rebellion In my twenties it was healing In my forties it is meditation And not a single year of my life has passed without me watching it Thatrsquos how deep the roots golsquoIn Rekharsquos eyes I saw defiance in gracersquoAn Emotion Not Just a FilmUmrao Jaan didnrsquot just entertain me It raised me It held me when I had no one It lit a candle in a very dark hallway and whispered ldquowalk mdash there is something at the endrdquoIt gave me a feeling of anchor tutelage mentorship A sense of lineage A belief that I came from a tradition mdash not by blood but by spiritIt pulled me back from the edge mdash from suicide to survival from hopelessness to audacity It made me dream It made me believeThe Legacy We Live InsideNow with its rerelease Irsquom grateful that new generations will see what we saw That the dialogue the visuals the ghazals and the performance of Rekha the devotion of Asha and the genius of Muzaffar sahab will live forever mdash for someone somewhere who needs it just as desperately as I didBecause Umrao Jaan isnrsquot just a film mdash it is an inheritance a whisper across decades A reminder that the broken can still be beautiful That longing can be light That poetry saves lives And that cinema when it is truthfully made can do what nothing else can mdash it can make us wholeExcerpted from ldquoWhat Umrao Jaan Meant to Merdquo by Suvir Saran in Muzaffar Alirsquos Umrao Jaan edited by Meera Ali and Sathya Saran published by Mapin Publishing Ahmedabad in association with SK Jain amp Sons and Kotwara Studios Pvt Ltd