Zikr: In the Light and Shade of Time
By Muza! ar Ali
Penguin Random House
ISBN 9780670096107
264pp.

A good book creates a world of its own and makes the readers a part of it. While engulfed by it, readers lose themselves in it for some time. Renowned Indian film director Muzaffar Ali’s autobiography, Zikr: In the Light and Shade of Time, is one such book.

It can be called a tale of cities — Lucknow, Calcutta (not Kolkata) and Mumbai. The first one is omnipresent. Muzaffar portrays the characters of the cities just as he does characterisation in a film, providing minute details to bring the characters to life.

If a character stands out in the book, it is of his father, Raja Syed Sajid Husain of Kotwara, whose appearance coincides with the decaying culture that he represents. Though he shares fond memories of his father and the life he had coming from the taluqdar (aristocrat) family of Awadh, he could not escape the underlying sadness in the depiction of characters, both from his family and Lucknow.

“Abba Jaan, as we called my father, saw Lucknow slip into decay before his eyes. The city went from a peaceful and culturally rich setting to one whose fine arts and cultural values underwent an ugly degeneration,” writes Muzaffar.

Renowned Indian filmmaker Muzaffar Ali’s autobiography is a portrayal of a bygone world as well as a search for his authentic self

The portrayal of Abba Jaan’s character comes alive with Muzaffar’s father’s fascination for fine and elegant dress and his love for horses and classic cars such as the Isotta Fraschini. His love for cars led him to drive the Jaguar Mark 2, Jaguar Mark V, MG TC Roadster 1948 and Jaguar Mark VII at different stages of his life. Muzzafar was heartbroken when he had to sell his father’s Isotta Fraschini during rough times.

Abba Jaan had experienced a transformation with his entry into politics. His English Savile Row Company suits were replaced with coarse hand-spun khaadi kurtas after 1947 and he donated his collection of books to a library. It was perhaps an influence of the Communist Party of Scotland that he had joined as a student in Edinburgh.

Along with the memories of his father, Muzaffar Ali’s remembrances of that time sound mythical as well as believable. It is a portrayal of a bygone world. After the profile of his Abba Jaan, Muzaffar’s own character starts taking form from his childhood, bedecked with stories, anecdotes and other characters on the cusp of the transition from pre-Partition Lucknow to post-Partition India.

Later, he takes his readers to Aligarh University, where his personal, political and poetical life move side by side. It was during this time that he saw Faiz Ahmad Faiz for the first time in a mehfil (gathering), beginning his lifelong fascination with the poet.

Those days at Aligarh gave shape to a Muzaffar different from the Muzaffar known by the world. He was quite a mischievous soul on campus. However, it is in Calcutta that we come to see the Muzaffar Ali we know. This was where he started his career in advertising, which led to filmmaking and painting.

The advertising firm that he joined was led by none other than the great Indian director and screenwriter Satyajit Ray. It was also in Calcutta that he met the future superstar Amitabh Bachchan, who was part of a theatre group there before he came to Bollywood.

From advertising Muzzafar went on to become a deputy publicity manager in Air India, which eventually took him to the world of cinema.

The book is not just a depiction of fond memories but of the unfulfilled dreams Muzaffar still intends to turn into reality. If we divide his book into three parts, it’s mainly about his family and upbringing in Kotwara, his films and his fascination with classic cars.

When he ventured into films, he looked to a few ahead of him for inspiration, including Shyam Benegal, Saeed Mirza and Dilip Kumar. He felt that literary giants in the cinema had turned into dwarfs in the face of a cut-throat financial system that has lately gone into the hands of global players.

About his debut film Gaman, he writes: “the medium of Gaman came to me from Calcutta, its inspiration from Aligarh, its soul from the heart of Awadh and its palette from my paintings. I had sketched out each frame of the film as it took shape in my mind.”

In the chapter on Gaman, Muzaffar talks about his attempt to cast Amitabh before Farooq Shaikh for the lead role, which got turned down by the latter, who said that he had “developed an image of a fighter and huge amounts of money change hands in my name. So I cannot take the risk.”

Muzaffar details the production of the film, how he got the music composed by Jaidev for ghazals written by Shahryar (Akhlaq Mohammad Khan).

Muzaffar’s story would remain incomplete without reference to Umrao Jaan, which may be called his magnum opus, as it made him a household name. The actress Rekha’s name is also synonymous with the film. He reveals how he selected Rekha as the lead for the movie.

“One day, I saw a pair of eyes looking at me from a magazine at a barber’s shop in Taj Mahal Hotel. I picked up the magazine. It was Umrao Jaan’s gaze. It sent shock waves through me.”

In his next venture, Aagman, the subject was sugarcane farmers in rural India and their troubles before and after independence in 1947. Muzaffar used Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s poetry in the film, as it has not been used here in Pakistan, including his iconic poems, Nisaar main teri galiyon ke aey watan ke jahaan and Subh-i-Azadi (yeh daagh daagh ujala yeh shab-gazeeda sahar).

“Shooting Aagman was like an intensive course in living in a cane-growing district,” writes the filmmaker. “In fact, every district magistrate should be shown this film in the IAS Academy. But it was the poetry of Faiz Ahmad Faiz used in Aagman that truly gave me its desired pathos, created by the poet out of the angst and oppression of his time.”

Muzaffar continued with Faiz and Shahryar in his next venture Anjuman, the film about the chikankari workers of Lucknow, with Shabana Azmi and Farooq Shaikh in the lead. He has used Faiz’s famous poem Intisab and the ghazal Kab yaad mein tera saath nahin in the movie. The film is set in the Lucknow of the 1980s. It was never screened in cinemas, although it’s available on YouTube. The director doesn’t say why it never made it to the theatres.

Most of Muzaffar’s films were filmed in Kotwara and Lucknow. Referring to this, he says: “All my characters are either born in Kotwara House, 10 Qaiserbagh or had drifted in and out of there sometime in the past. I was reliving all these Lucknow characters in my films.”

Muzaffar Ali faced a mainstream Indian cinema that mimicked Hollywood and followed big money regardless of art. It was a tough call for anybody swimming against the tide. To provide a glimpse of his challenges, he narrates an incident with Mahesh Bhatt at a party.

“Seeing me, he shouted at the top of his voice. ‘People like you should not be allowed to make films.’ I was taken aback, both aghast and speechless. It was then that I realised that Bollywood was not what it appears to be. How alcohol could turn absolutely normal people into demons and morons, whatever genes they had in abundance.”

It left Muzaffar in a fix. He later wrote: “The idea of universalising one’s roots was not so easy. On the other hand, Bollywoodizing one’s art was equally tough. Was Mahesh right?”

How tough it was for Muzaffar Ali in the Indian cinema milieu can be gauged from the fact that Anjuman could not be released while Zooni, his film on Kashmiri poet Habba Khatoon, remained incomplete.

Zooni posed real challenges for him as an artist and filmmaker, along with prompting a need to rediscover himself. To know what happened to this dreamer filmmaker after that, one needs to read his autobiography.

The reviewer is a member of staff. X: @IrfaanAslam

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, December 10, 2022