I had been asked by Icon to interview or at least record a conversation with the film and TV software mogul Satish Anand, the head of Eveready Pictures, since I have known him closely for at least three decades. But there was too much on my plate, so I kept postponing meeting Satish (you don’t call him Anand for that is still reserved for his late father Jagdish Chandra Anand). Meeting the younger Anand in his office has an extra attraction for me, since he always orders delicious chicken biryani from a dhaba quite close to Eveready Chambers. Little had I imagined that my deferment of the meeting would lead to another villain to spring out of the shadows! In short, the coronavirus pandemic cropped up.

As a septuagenarian, I was advised time and again to refrain from leaving my house, and Satish, being in his mid-sixties I presume, is also vulnerable to Covid-19’s evil designs. Luckily, the cellphone came to my rescue — but I had to make do with a phone interview and without that chicken biryani.

“Last year, at the Karachi Literature Festival, you described the period then as challenging for movies and TV plays. How would you label the current situation?” I questioned when I phoned him.

“It’s much much worse,” replied Satish unambiguously. “There is uncertainty here, there and everywhere. All over the world. There can be no Plan B at the moment. There is just one Plan A, and that is known only to Allah the Almighty.”

Film and TV software mogul Satish Anand is largely considered to be a thorough professional who expects the same levels of commitment and professionalism from his associates. But his real strength is in his being a fine human being who wins friends easily

Knowing Satish as someone who plays golf or tennis almost daily, and who attends or convenes one meeting after the other, I found it difficult to imagine what he must be up to in his long waking hours, unable to leave his home. And I told him this.

“I meditate, I use WhatsApp much more frequently,” he replied. “In the evenings, I walk for at least an hour. There is much less traffic in the lane my house happens to be in, and you know what? There is no pollution. And let me answer the question you ask me frequently: I don’t read books. I’m not a bookworm like you,” he said, presumably with a sardonic smile.

Satish doesn’t reveal his age because he says his mother has forbidden him to, since that would give people an idea of how old she happens to be. But I decided to try. “Okay, what’s the date of birth on your passport?” I queried.

“Next time when I travel abroad and you happen to be on the immigration desk, you will come to know what you are insisting on finding out,” came the reply. “Shouldn’t we change the subject?”

I changed the subject as Satish wished and we began talking about Eveready Pictures which was set up by his father before Partition, initially to distribute movies produced in the Subcontinent. It is the oldest and still one of the major distributors in Pakistan. The company has, since its inception, distributed as many as 700 films, including Hollywood and Bollywood fare. But soon after Partition, the elder Anand also started making films himself. In 1954, Eveready’s maiden production Sassi was released. It turned out to be the first non-Noor Jahan starrer to celebrate a silver jubilee. By the way, in those days, jubilees were genuine. One counted the actual weeks of release, and not the combined weeks of the cinema houses a film was screened in.

Satish pointed out that all the movies that were produced under the Eveready banner related to subjects that were locally resonant. Examples, if examples be needed, are Heer (1955), Miss 56 and Hatim (1956), Ishq-e-Laila (1957) and Hasrat (1958). A film that will not be forgotten is Noor-e-Islam (1957), mainly because of its devotional title number — Shah-e-Madina. Soulfully composed by Hasan Latif, the chorus composed in honour of the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) has continued to be a chartbuster all these decades, but sadly the original na’at cannot be located any more. Its cover versions are in abundance, however, on YouTube and elsewhere. Interestingly enough, in the two original recordings of Shah-e-Madina, the lead singers, Salim Raza and Irene Perveen, were both Christians.

Satish, who graduated from the London School of Economics in 1971, had to rush back to Karachi, leaving behind his emerging business, when his father passed away suddenly in 1977. He took over the reins of Eveready’s production and distribution wings. There were lots of trials and tribulations. His company had the distribution rights for 30 films, which would have seemed enviable to others in the field, but those were the times when VCRs had been introduced and pirated Indian movies had come within the reach of the masses, thus affecting the cinema business very badly.

Around the same time came the rule of the military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq, who unleashed a stringent censor policy which also badly affected the movie industry and the film distribution business. The movie business continued to decline through the 1980s.

“Pushed against the wall, I switched over to television,” says Satish. “NTM [National Television Marketing, a private concern], which had bought time on the semi-government channel Shalimar TV Network, opened new avenues for local talent. It became my nursery. Thus Eveready conducted long-running shows such as Music Challenge and Acting Challenge. Soon after, PTV also opened its doors. We did TV plays for the prime time viewing audience, and also morning shows. The country’s first corporate TV programme, Pakistan Business Update, was also produced and presented on PTV for years by us,” he says with not a small amount of pride.

Satish also recalled the successful TV serial Janey Anjaney, which was scripted by Haseena Moin. It was shot in picturesque Mauritius and was sponsored by Channel 4, which, like the BBC, had decided to open its space to Pakistani content. Thus Eveready entrenched itself in the world of the mini-screen also.

So why did Satish never set up a TV channel himself? After all, people with much less — and sometimes no — experience, have done so. “Look, the answer is simple,” said the Eveready chief. “When you run a TV channel you can’t avoid interference from clients, and that would amount to compromising on professional values, which I would never do.”

In an industry known for fly-by-night and opportunist operators, Satish and his company are known for their professionalism. A common friend, who prefers to remain anonymous, told me that once Satish asked him to write a proposal for a TV programme for PTV, which he did. He learned later that the proposal had been turned down. The gentleman nevertheless received a cheque for his efforts, delivered by courier. “So what if the show has been shelved? That’s not your fault. You put in efforts and ought to be paid for that,” was what Satish told the writer when he tried to return the amount.

TV producer-director and documentary filmmaker Samina Aslam who worked for, and also with, Satish for 20 years refuses to accept that he is a hard taskmaster. “He is a thorough professional and he expects his workers and associates to be professionals too. I have learnt a lot from him. He is a fine human being and cares for everyone, whether it’s his friends, family members or those who work for him,” Ms Aslam told me separately on the phone.

Satish’s entire family, almost, seems to be in the infotainment business. Of his three daughters, Tania, works from the UK and the youngest, Neha, operates from Dubai. The middle daughter is an exception — she is in the medical profession. But in terms of popularity, no one can beat his first cousin, Juhi Chawla, the Indian film star. That is a major connection within Bollywood that no one else in Pakistan can match though, ever the gentleman, Satish prefers to keep family and professional ties separate.

When he wants, Satish can win friends and influence people at the drop of a hat, which was something I witnessed firsthand at the Penang Film Festival in Malaysia, where he and I were representing our country. The Indian delegation at the festival comprised 14 people. The South Indians were five while those from North India numbered nine. The South Indians formed a separate group while their compatriots from the north, led by actor Sunil Dutt, joined us, largely because of Satish’s sense of humour, a quality that has seen him through all phases of life.

PS. Just as I am about to turn in the text of the interview, I get a call from Satish, this time from his office. He says “Look, I’m back at work and I’m in touch with many persons. I want to tell you that our people in the infotainment world cannot sit still. They are making plans for completing under-productions… movie cameras will soon spring into action. In a matter of weeks, you should see new TV plays and it won’t be too long before the cinema curtains will go up.”

Published in Dawn, ICON, April 26th, 2020