Edited by

SIMRAN CHADHA

RESEARCH INDIA PRESS

New Delhi (INDIA)

 Author

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Acknowledgement

vii

Introduction

ix

Notes of Contributors
ADAPTATIONS

IN

xvii
CONTEMPORARY HINDI CINEMA

1. Refraction or Parallel Narrative? The Imaging of

R.S Bedis Ek Chadar Maili Se
Jasbir Jain

2. Madame Bovary and Maya Memsaab: Narrative and

Image Vis--vis Form
Anand Prakash

17

3. Fiction into Film: InterSemiotic Translation as

Interpretation and Adaptation in Junoon
Anuradha Ghosh

29

4. Rudali: From Mahashweta Devi to Kalpana Lajmi

Pragya Gupta

46

5. Adapting Jane Austen to Hindi Cinema

Smita Mitra

62

6. Screening the Novel: Umrao Jaan

Kathakoli Das Gupta

81

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BOLLYWOODISING LITERATURE FORGING CINEMA

7. Consider the Source, But How Much? Ruskin

Bond & Vishal Bhardwaj, The Blue Umbrella
Prem Shristava & Shweta Teiwari

96

8. From Devdas to DevD

Amitava Nag

117

9. Usne Kaha Tha: When the Camera saw too much

Nirmal Kumar

132

10. The other Side of Nationalism in

Rabindranath Tagores
Novy Kapadia

146

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS
11. Hindi Cinemas Adaptation of the Hitchcockian Idiom
Priyadarshini Shanker

173

12. The Colonial Discourse of British Heritage Cinema

Vijaya Singh

196

PARTITION: TEXT

AND

FILM

13. Celluloid Representations of the Partition of Punjab

Somdatta Mandal

213

14. Cracking Earth: Deepa Mehtas adaptation of

Bapsi Sidwhas Cracking India
Donna Coates

242

15. Pinjar: Amrita Pritam to C.P Dwivedi

270

ADAPTING SHAKESPEARE
16. Tough Love: Reading the Politics of Violence and
Desire in Omkara
Sonali Pattnaik

287

17. Dissidence and subversion within Power Structures:

Maqbool and Macbeth
Shilpi Malhotra

319

Conclusion

327

For this anthology, I am grateful, first and foremost, to the

contributors - for their conviction and unstinting support
regarding this venture - a testimony of their passion for two
extremely powerful mediums of social expression.I feel humbled
by the faith they reposed in me and theirgraciousness in the
interim period between their submissions, my other academic
forays and the final version.
I am grateful to the following institutions and persons,
without whose help this manuscript would perhaps still be
meditating on my bookshelf:
The Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla:
for ensuring an environment conduciveforuninterrupted work.
Mr Prem Chand, for the generous supply of books on Indian
cinema.

I simply do not know how to thank my teachers at the University,

particularly Professor Manju Jain for introducing us to Film
Studies; ProfessorIra Bhaskar, Professor Richard Allen and
Professor Robert Stamwho in myriad ways beeninspirational.
Professor I.S Bakshi, Principal, Dyal Singh College, for being
an unfailing source of encouragement and advice; my colleagues

viii

BOLLYWOODISING LITERATURE FORGING CINEMA

and students at Dyal Singh College for the charged discussions

regarding cinema; Mr Suman, at Research India Press, for his
patience with my handwriting. My friend Nirmal Kumar whose
voracious laughter at my early-morning mail suggested selfpublishing followed by his dissertation regarding what he
thought of such-type books!
Above all, my father, Maj Gen M. S. Chadha and my mother,
Mrs Kanwal Chadha for stepping in as surrogate parents for
my daughters, Meher and Piya.
Simran Chadha

The pre-eminent Russian director, Sergi Eisenstein, once

declared rather exasperatedly at a press conference that cinema
didnt just come out of thin air. With this enunciation,
Eisenstein had in mind more than the technological evolution
that had facilitated the then fledging art of cinematography or
for that matter, the indelible influences of the performative arts
- vaudeville, mime and commediadelle arte - on early
cinematography. Eisenstein statement, as recorded in his essay
Dickens, Griffith and Ourself, refers to the narrative art of storytelling with its antecedents in myth, epic and folklore.
The bond between cinema and literature established during
this embryonic stage was forged, though arguably, in terms of
an anxiety of influence.1 This was perhaps because the new art
of cinema as opposed to the established one of literature was
perceived as churning out commercially-viable, escapist
entertainment meant for the working class. In a bid to establish
the credentials for cinema, Eisenstein, as recorded in his essay
Dickens, Griffith and Ourself, resorted to stressing the literary
antecedents of this new art. For instance, attempting to explain
advanced cinematic techniques such as the dissolve or the fadeout, Eisenstein drew attention to the intrinsic cinematic and

BOLLYWOODISING LITERATURE FORGING CINEMA

visual quality inherent in the narratives of canonical British

authors such as Charles Dickens and Gustav Flaubert. Likewise,
Charles Chaplin in his autobiography entitled My Autobiography
recalls the manner in which scenes would be detailed before
being shot at the sets. Chaplin iterates how instructions would
be effectively imparted to actors by referring to well-known
literary personages. For instance, a phrase such as this is
Falstaffian or this is the modern Madame Bovary helped
establish the tenor of the scene to be shot and doing away with
endless rounds of takes and re-takes before the camera started
to roll. For that matter, as Chaplin insists, even the word shot,
which is such an normative part of cinematic vocabulary,
was instituted by the clap boys on the sets as they referred to
the scene being enacted in terms of a shot (Chaplin, My
Autobiography).
Griffith too relied on citing literary examples when he first
introduced shot-composition and rapid-intercutting in his films.
While this raised the bar regarding effects of dramatic intensity,
the novelty of the experiment did not go quite well with the
team of The American Biograph. The conversation between the
director and his team is recorded thus:
How can you tell a story jumping about like that the people
wouldnt know
what its about,
followed by Griffiths quick retort:
Well, dosent Dickens write that way?
to be met with
yes, but that Dickens, that novel writing, thats different,
leading to Griffiths clinching of the argument with the iconic
sentence:
oh, not so much, these are picture stories, not so different.

INTRODUCTION

xi

It is on Griffiths not so different that the weight of adaptation

history rests and it is those ramifications that we need to unpack
here.
While cinema, with its life-like images and soundtrack was
clearly a new frontier as far as realist modes of representation
were concerned, the role of the Victorian novel, particularly its
adept deployment of the contraries of realism and melodrama,
cannot be discounted. Early modes of film-making which
imitated tableaux-like performances where characters made
conspicuous entrances and exits before the camera soon gave
way to the dramatisation of the narrative sequences and finally
the mode that continue to be in vogue scriptwriting. At the
same time, the likes of Edwin Stanley Porter, E. W Griffith
and Mark Sennet were exploring the malleable possibilities
available with this new medium and this brought into the
reckoning techniques such as continuity-editing, parallel-action,
sharp-focus, inter-cut, fade-out and so forth.
With novels provided the raw matter for script writers,
societies such as the Societe Film d Arte were founded with the
sole purpose of figuring out how best a literary classic may be
adapted for the silver screen. The films produced by the Societe
however didnt do much towards extending the potential of
the new medium as they were concerned more with the
problematic of adapting literary modes such as ambiguity for
instance. However, since literary texts deemed canonical were
being transformed into movies, soon murmurs in literary circles
regarding the fidelity of the adapted work became increasingly
audible and this may well be regarded as the beginning of the
idea of adaptation.
Early adaptation theorists show the influence of western
epistemologies of influence when they accord to the literary
text the status of the Ur or original text. This methodology

xii

BOLLYWOODISING LITERATURE FORGING CINEMA

focussed on ferreting deviations made by the adapted work. At

the same time there was the realisation that an adaptation must
not be a pictorialization of the novel, for indeed the best form
for such as work would be the voice-over. Moreover, if a film
was too close to the novel, it was dismissed as displaying a slavish,
lack-lustre mentality on part of the auteur. The controversy may
be better illustrated by example. In his adaptation of Charles
Dickens novel Great Expectations, the director David Lean works
on a narrative which focuses on the vagaries of love between
Estella and Pip (Pip here being metonymic of the social mobility
typified by the Victorian age). Integral to Dickens social critique
Magwitch - the escaped convict is treated by Lean as no better
than melodramatically tangential to the Pip-Estella plot and
accorded a few shots that define him as a semi-civilized barbarian
habituating the marshes. Leans adept use of close-focus
photography in the scene on the marshes is instrumental in
keeping the attention on Pip and the effect this sensationalist
creature has on a sensibility such as Pips the Victorian lad on
his way to becoming a gentleman. If Leans narrative even as
much as attempts to capture the fears, fetishes and changing
power valences of this society being fast transformed by
industrialisation, it is through the emotional turbulence caused
by the presence and/or absence of Estella on the Pip character.
The strength of the Dickensian classic however lay in its
capturing the effect of the power of this emergent class on
established social hierarchies.
So, while the book may have been germane for the film,
the end product clearly needs to be evaluated on its own terms
- and these had better not be hierarchical. So, to access the film
purely on grounds of its difference from the written text is a
fallacy of the old school, as the essays in this volume testify.
Ranging from adaptations of canonical British and European

xiii

INTRODUCTION

texts to Shakespearean tragedy, short stories from the Hindi

and Urdu and activist fiction - the idea spurring a collection as
eclectic as this is to show the methodology as enabling selfreflexivity and even subversion since what is laid bare in this
movement across spatio-temporal contexts are the power
valences of the society for which the adaptation is being made.
II
With mainstream Hindi cinema as the focus of this volume,
one needs to acknowledge the influences affecting the genre.
Firstly, it was with the influx of migrant population, particularly
from the Frontier provinces following Partition that Hindi
cinema assumed the proportions of an industry. The metropolis
of Bombay became the meeting ground for performers, writers
and lyricists and soon production houses were set up by the
Kapoors, the Sippys, the Chopras, the Anand brothers among
other migrant families. Popular indigenous traditions of Parsi
theatre, such as the (in) famous love-triangles were instantly
taken-up by screen writers, as were the mythological micronarratives comprising the epics, the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata. The spirit of nationalism on the rise at this point
in time found space in the narratives of this cinema. This
diversity of influence was also due to its rather heterogeneous
audience body. For instance, the production house of the Wadia
Brothers scripted narratives from the Arabian Nights with fearless
Nadia performing as the inimitable Hunterwali. They even held
screenings exclusively for children and young adults. The Dada
Sahib Phalke group on the other hand specialised in scripting
mythological tales. Phalkes Raja Harishchandra, screened at The
Coronation Cinematograph has been cited as Indian cinemas official
debut. Babu Rao Painters Savkari Pash, adapted from a novel
about social reform has likewise been considered a forerunner

xiv

BOLLYWOODISING LITERATURE FORGING CINEMA

in the genre of adaptation.2 The prime factors governing an

adaptation have been classified as: audience response;
commercial viability, technical aspects and the direction imparted
by the auteur. This book has been divided into three sections.
The section entitled The Novel and Bollywood, discusses
adaptations of Mahashweta Devis short story Rudali by director
Kalpana Lajmi; Mirza Hadi Ruswas Umrao Jaan Ada adapted
and directed by Muzaffar Ali; Gustav Flauberts Madam Bovary
directed by Chetan Anand; two adaptations of Jane Austens
Pride and Prejudice Bride and Prejudice by Gurinder Chadha and
Aiyesha by Rajshri Ojha; the multiple cinematic renderings of
Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay classic text Devdas, Chandradhar
Sharma Guleri Usne Kaha Thai directed by Mani Kaul; R.S Bedis
EK Chadar Maili Se directed by Sukhwant Dhadda; Ruskin
Bonds A Flight of Pigeons adapted and directed by Shyam Benegal
as Junoon and Ruskin Bonds short story The Blue Umbrella adapted
and directed by Vishal Bhardwaj.
The section Theoretical Perspectives chalks out determining
though lesser-known influences on Hindi cinema such as the
repertoire of Raj fiction that lent itself to popular adaptation
and categorisation as British Heritage Cinema and the enduring
influence of Alfred Hitchcock on Hindi cinema. For Raj fiction
we look at the following films: E.M Fosters Passage to India
directed by David Lean; Paul Scots Raj quartet Jewel in the Crown
directed by Jim O Brien and Christopher Morahan and M.M
Kayes Far Pavilions directed by Peter Duffel. The Hitchcock
influence on hindi cinema will be considered through the films:
Woh Kaun Thi directed by Raj Khosla; Khamosh and Parinda
directed by Vidhu vinod Chopra and Samay directed by Bobby
Grewal.
In the section Filming Shakespeare, filmmaker Vishal
Bhardwajs adaptations of Macbeth and Othello as Omkaara

INTRODUCTION

xv

and Maqbool will be discussed. In the section Filming Partition,

the following adaptations will be discussed: an unpublished short
story by Ismat Chughtai directed by M.S Satyu as Garam Hawa,
Bhisham Sahnis Tamas directed by Govind Nihalani, Bapsi
Sidhwas Ice-candy Man directed by Deepa Mehta as Earth 1947,
Saadat Hasan Mantos short story Toba TekSingh, Khushwant
Singhs Train to Pakistan directed by Pamela Rooks and Amrita
Pritams Pinjar directed by C. P Dwivedi.
Finally, as history bears witness, the most enduring of art
forms have developed through constant cross-fertilization
between the arts. Hindi cinema, in this regard then, as a
symbiosis of cultural practices, influences and adaptations, is
truly a post colonial hybrid.
Simran Chadha
Note: A condensed version of the article Amrita Pritam, Pinjar and
Right Wing Ideology, was printed with the All India Womens
Conference journal issue under the title Of Women Born: Author to
Auteur.
A condensed version of the article From Devdas to Dev D:
Reconstructing Sexuality above Chastity was printed in Himalmag
and may be accessed at http://himalmag.com/devdas-dev/

Notes
1.

2.

The term was coined by the literary critic Harold Bloom to denote
the (subconscious0 influence that an established writer/artist may
in all probability exert, over a younger even if radical writer/artist.
As used here, the term anxiety serves to express the relationship
between the two mediums, particularly in the west.
Although a well documented fact, it nonetheless bears mention that
the introduction and rapid dissemination of the novel form on the
subcontinent provides ample testimony to the popular reception
and adaptation of colonial influences onto a culture so different.

Anand Prakash: Marxist, Activist, Writer & Critical Thinker;

former Associate Professor, Department of English,
Hansraj College, University of Delhi.
Anuradha Ghosh: Film Scholar & Associate Professor,
Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, New
Delhi.
Amitav Nag: Published extensively on contemporary Indian
Cinema; is a Freelance Writer & Journalist based at
Shantiniketan.
Donna Coates: Pre-eminent scholar and Professor Emeritus
University of Calgary.
Jasbir Jain: Pre-eminent postcolonial scholar and former
Professor Emeritus, University of Rajasthan.
Kathakoli DasGupta: Editor with Prevention & Health
magazine; formerly associated with the Department of
English Miranda House, University of Delhi.
Novy Kapadia: Journalist, Sports Critic & Commentator;
Associate Professor, Department of English, Khalsa
College, University of Delhi.

xviii

BOLLYWOODISING LITERATURE FORGING CINEMA

Nirmal Kumar: Visiting Professor Universities of Aarhus and

Vienna; Associate Professor, Department of History,
Venkateshwara College, University of Delhi.
Pragya Gupta: Associate Professor, Department of English,
Gargi College, University of Delhi.
Prem Shiristav: Preeminent scholar, American Studies;
Associate Professor, Department of English, Maharaja
Agarasen College, University of Delhi.
Priya Darshini Shanker: PhD candidate, NYU; Media
Practitioner & Critic.
Shilpi Malhotra: Scholar,Victorian Studies; associated with the
Department of English, Motilal Nehru College, University
of Delhi.
Smita Mitra: Film-Scholar associated with the Department of
Art and Aesthetics JNU; Associate Professor, Delhi College
of Arts and Commerce, University of Delhi.
Shweta Teiwari: Freelance editor and writer with research
degrees in Film & Literature.
Somdatta Mandal: Professor, Department of English,
Shantiniketan.
Sonali Pattnaik: PhD candidate, University of Mumbai;
formely Assistant Professor, Department of English,
KiroriMal college, University of Delhi.
Simran Chadha: Visiting Faculty, Valparaiso University,
Indiana; Associate Professor, Department of English, Dyal
Singh College, University of Delhi.
Vijaya Singh: film Scholar; Fullbright Scholar, Researcher with
Indian institute of Advanced Study; Associate Professor,
Institute of English Teaching, Chandigarh, Punjab
University.