Movies - The Beginnings ..........

First love is heady.... the first feelings of that sweet moment never fade away from one's consciousness, it's like magic..... everything looks so much more enticing and beautiful.... the first flush of love is always so intoxicating..... and it always leaves behind a number of deep memories and sweet feelings of remembrances.... and just like Alice says in Alice in Wonderland..... it only gets curiouser and curiouser

The first film I ever saw was the reincarnation drama Madhumati.... a movie shot in black and white but with a lyrical base that dramatized it's undertones, accentuated it's effects and gave it a very sublime feel....... and what a coincidence it was.... for the movie starred the greatest actor ever to grace Indian Cinema, Dilip Kumar.... the greatest star actress ever to grace Indian Cinema, Vyjayanthimala and the greatest director of Indian Cinema ..... Bimal Roy.

I must have been only about 3 years old at the time, but the movie stayed on with me and even today I find it the most beautifully shot movie..... surprisingly the very visuals that make it seem so beautiful also make it enchantingly mysterious. The clinical sweep of the camera over the majestic landscape, the sweet caressing of the camera over the pristine and almost boundless nature makes one go gaga over the cinematography by Dilip Gupta.... you can feel him almost in love with his job.

That early tryst with cinema never left me and even today when I look back to my thirst for creating quality cinema, my heart does not look back at Mother India, Mughal-E-Azam, Guide, Ganga-Jamuna or Sholay, arguably among the greatest works of magic in Hindustani Cinema and although all of them have their own special place in my heart...... my heart looks beyond them to a movie, that made me fall in love with the medium of story-telling through the eyes of the Camera..... Madhumati.....

Everything about Madhumati was perfect......... the star cast, from Dilip Kumar and Vyjayanthimala right down to Tiwari as the henchman to the evil Zamindar so well-played by Pran.... the direction by Bimal Roy, the story, screenplay and dialogues by the two literary giants Rajinder Singh Bedi and Ritwik Ghatak, the enchanting and haunting musical score by Salil Choudhary, the crisp editing by Hrishikesh Mukherjee and the beautiful songs sung by Mukesh, Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi and Manna De all of them adding to the sher magic of the movie. Each and every song is a classic and has it's own value attached to it

Someday I will definitely pen down my thoughts about this movie that brought me face to face with my deep love for cinema but today I would like to just remember those days of carefree abandon when each film would be a a source of so much happiness

Madhumati, in my consciousness, was soon followed in quick succession by that 70s fun starrer Hum Kissi Se Kum Nahin...... I still remember myself singing at the top of my voice, always off-key and often moving well-eared people to tears with my horrendous rendition of the great Mohammed Rafi song... Kya Hua Tera Waada!

Sometime much later on, whenever I would watch the great comedy Padosan..... and whenever I would come across the scene where Kishore Kumar tries his best to teach Sunil Dutt the art of singing, though unsuccessfully..... I would laugh at my own days of musical virtuosity...... indeed those were the days when my love for the world of silver celluloid began...

This would lead me to another love-affair .... that with Music (That I was drawn towards the cult of free love and total love and love-for-everyone was I think quite evident in these early days itself when I could fall in love simultaneously and with complete dedication and devotion to Movies and Music at the same time) and my love affair with Music continues unabated.......

My third biggest love in Life has been Books...... again it is no small coincidence that it was movies that made me love books so much..... and specifically at that point of time...... it was Magazines that captured my attention and Comics...... It so happened that Dad took me for a screening of Super Man and I was bowled!!! It was so fascinating and my dad, being the smart man that he is..... he immediately bought me a Superman comic and told me that you could read it all here.....

Obviously, I turned out to be quite a diligent and sincere student... even if the reason I learnt English was to read Filmfare and not Freud and the reason I learnt Hindi was to be able to read Mayapuri and not Munshi Premchand...... (Well..... I was on the way to become a polyamour..... and that too before I even knew what it all meant)

Bachche Ke Paanv Palane Men Nazar Aate Hain