There was much more to filmmaker Kamal Amrohi than Pakeezah. Daaera, which Amrohi directed a decade before Pakeezah, was the story of a very young woman married to a man old enough to be her father. And before Daaera, there was Mahal, Indian cinema’s first ghost story to attain blockbuster status.
Kamal Amrohi’s proud son, Tajdar Amrohi, feels injustice has been done to his father’s memory. “It pains me to say this. Both the film industry and the government of India never gave him his due recognition. My father learnt to write from his mother’s womb.Iss aadmi ne likhna apni maa ki doodh peekar sikha. He never assisted anyone. At age 17, he wrote Pukar and became a big-name writer in Hindi cinema.”
Adding, “My father was a pioneer and a trendsetter. In Mahal, he brought the suspense genre to Indian cinema. And if in Mahal my father had not given Lata Mangeshkar the song ‘Aayega aanewala’ (in which her name was not in the credits of the film) would the legend called Lata Mangeshkar have happened? Main unhein bahot izzat deta hoon. I called her Lata Baaji. She was like my mother. The venus of Indian cinema, Madhubala, was given her legendary aura in my father’s Mahal.”
Tajdar reveals that Madhubala was not the first choice for Mahal. “Do you know the studio Bombay Talkies, which was on the verge of bankruptcy, who produced Mahal didn’t want to sign Madhubala. They wanted Suraiya, who was a big heroine at that time. But my father insisted on Madhubala. And my father’s Daera was the first arthouse film of India even before Satyajit Ray made Pather Panchali. But Bengal knows how to honour their artistes to the extent that they make gods out of them, as though no other artiste stands up to the Bengali stalwarts. And his last film as director Razia Sultan is the most talked-about flop in the history of Indian cinema. Even the most renowned poets who worked in my father’s film allowed him to change words and lines. They knew there were poets and writers, and then there was Kamal Amrohi.’”
Speaking about Kamal Amrohi’s most celebrated film Pakeezah, Tajdar, who witnessed the film’s making, says, “Kya main nahin hota toh film poori ho paati?(would the film have been completed if not for me?). Unlike the other heroine-oriented classic Mother India, Pakeezah cannot be made again. And let me tell you something truly surprising. The third acknowledged classic of Indian cinema, Mughal-e-Azam, couldn’t have been possible without my father. He wrote 90 percent of the dialogues. Agar likhi nahin jaati toh Mughal-e-Azam banti kaise?…Pakeezah took 17 years to complete, and not only because my father and Choti Amma had differences. This is the same film whose music today is considered perhaps the best ever in a Hindi film. And yet, during that time, distributors insisted that the music of Pakeezah be changed. Baba refused, arguing it would be an injustice to the music composer Ghulam Mohammed, who was dead.”
