Filmmaker Shyam Benegal’s Farida Jalal and Surekha Sikri starrer Mammo completed 31 years today. The film was co-scripted by eminent film critic and journalist Khalid Mohamed. It started a trilogy between Benegal and Mohamed, which continued with Sardari Begum (1996) and Zubeidaa (2001). Interestingly, all three movies are inspired from the lives of women from Mohamed’s family. He looked back at the film in an interview with us.
Khalid, on March 3, Mammo, which you co-scripted for Shyam Benegal completes a ripe young 31. How do you look back on the experience?
Ripe? Subhash, it isn't a fruit or grey hair. I look back at Mammo with immense pride. It gave me a Plan B to go beyond journalism, and culminated in collaborations with sir (Benegal) on Sardari Begum and Zubeidaa too, a trilogy on Muslim women. However, Mammo remains a favourite with the younger generation of today perhaps because they are reminded of their own wonderful elders in the family. There is one more script, Rutba, based on the mysterious murder of my half-brother Jodhpur's Rao Raja Hukam Singh, but sir had shifted gears to other various projects. So there's Rutba dozing in my computer files.
Every year, some kind soul reminds me of the anniversary of Mammo, and thank you for that. For me, that opportunity of conceiving the film Mammo, my grand aunt, a bolt out of the blue was heaven-sent. Shyam Benegal sir's initial offer was that could he have the rights to the story? Tentatively, I asked him if I could write the screenplay, and this was at a meeting over tea at Bombay Gymkhana. He was surprisingly okay about it but asked to see the first draft. I'd already been attempting screenplays jointly with friends, both were rubbish -- one about a love story that begins at an Udupi cafe, somewhat in the style of Basu Chatterjee, and the other a Hitchockian mystery inspired by Family Plot. Very amateurish. And my friends I abandoned them and binned them. Yes, I am credited with the story and screenplay, because whatever the tweaks and nicks, which may have been made, Mammo is a piece of my heart, and always been. Crediting Shama Zaidi for additional screenplay? Never mind the slight disappointments.
Rajit Kapoor played a character modelled on you. Did he make a convincing Khalid Mohamed?
The first draft was okayed cheerily by Shyam sir, but there was a problem. The main character myself named Riyaaz was a college boy. Sir wanted to cast known actor from the mainstream but returned with rejection slips. So, he said let's make Riyaaz a precocious schoolboy, no stars required. The part of my grandma, he had already chosen the great theatre actor Surekha Sikri. For Mammo, we flew to Bangalore to meet Waheeda Rehman but she didn't want to portray a Muslim woman in a story which could be controversial. I suggested Jaya Bachchan. He wasn't sure. Shaukat Azmi was considered but by a stroke of luck, he met Farida Jalal, and she was in.
As for the young Riyaaz, he was played by Amit Phalke from the Dadasaheb Phalke family. Produced by NFDC on a bootstring budget, it began shooting at Jogeshwari. Sir had met the real-life Fayazi and Mammo, and he kept their quirks and strengths in mind. I was credited with original story and screenplay, but surprisingly with additional screenplay by Shama Zaidi. That was a fait accompli, happens.
As for Rajit Kapur, as the grown-up Riyaz, he was fine except in one scene in which he was struggling to typewrite, contrary to a journo's character. Rest, of the way, I was thrilled, especially when it was shown as opening screening of the Bombay film festival, with Madhuri Dixit in the audience. Not that she ever remarked on the film, possibly thinking it was too arty. Grandma and Mammo refused to see it at home on video, grumbling that Rekha and Raakhee should have played their roles. Typical of them, both shy and affronted at the same time.
Shyam Benegal and you collaborated on Mammo and then Zubeidaa, which too was partially based on your life. What was it like working with this hard taskmaster?
I was never on the sets, but for Zubeidaa, thanks to its producer Farouq Rattonsey, I was called over to Jaipur and even lodged in a dream-like suite of the Rambagh Palace Hotel. It was abundantly clear that sir had approached all the three films with dignity and respect. Whatever my flashes of anger in the script were directed with restraint thus preventing any melodrama. It's wonderful that Zubeidaa is especially liked by women audiences and its music by A R Rahman is still on playlists. The mehndi song has become a staple at wedding ceremonies. And the royalty costumes designed by Pia Benegal --- be it the ceremonial outfits or authentic jewellery for Rekha and Karisma Kapoor-- are still a class apart.
For Mammo, of course, the lower middle clothes and burqas worn by the real-life characters were real to the core and looked lived-in, instead of being just bought off randomly at Mohammed Ali Road shops. By the way, its ending was changed. Instead of Mammo being deported forever to Pakistan, she had cleverly obtained a death certificate somehow and returned to spend her last days with us. Released at the cavernous Metro cinema, the film was a no-no commercially. However, when sir won the Best Film National Award (Urdu) and Surekha Sikri the Best Supporting Actress, its frequent telecasts on Doordarshan, recovered I guess a little more than its piffling investment.
Mammo featured two of our finest actresses Farida Jalal and Surekha Sikri giving their career best performances. Walk me through their casting. Were they first choices? What was your rapport with them?
Farida Jalal did win the Best Actress Filmfare Actress Award (Critics). I think she needed recognition at the National Awards too, but then that's being greedy.
If Mammo were to be made today, would it be able to say what it had to?
Obviously, it would still allude to the trauma of the Partition, the plight of an aged woman who wanted to return to her roots. Also, it still makes a point that even a brat like me then should have looked beyond his nose and embraced the unconditional love of one’s elders. And what else, I think there's a somewhat of a subtext: cinema offers a release, the escape or growing up of children on watching world cinema, reading books and recognising the glory of classical music as Riyaaz does listening to Beethoven. And finally it says, cherish your elders. Once they've gone, you have lost your anchors…. which is true of all generations...no one is immortal except for the memories you leave behind of them, and you can only slap yourself, ‘Why was I such a damned self-centred kid?’ Now as I age, Mammo and Fayazi maa are a priceless virasat gifted to me by Benegal sir.
More Pages: Mammo Box Office Collection
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