On a sultry Sunday last year, I returned to Masjid, stepping off the train at Masjid station and taking the bridge that led me out west before walking up a gentle incline crowded by paan-bidi shops. Turning right I walked in the direction of the Bhat bazaar (rice market) whose history is almost as old as the history of Bombay itself. The narrow road led me past small shops that appeared to function as efficiently above the level of the road as below it. To conduct business with a shopkeeper of a basement shop, I had to bend and transact business through the narrow opening that opened out at the level of the road. I was none the worse for the effort. Above the shop sat another whose shopkeeper was oblivious to what was happening in the shop below his.
Walking through Bhat bazar in Masjid near the Bombay Docks from where Indian Muslims set sail to the Annual Haj, I passed teams of local youth playing cricket in narrow lanes lined by old buildings on either side. Walking past them, and occasionally ‘sprinting’ up the wooden stairs of a building or two and speaking with curious residents emerging from darkened staircases or corridors that ran past their doors while dodging faint shadows, I soon realized that not all old buildings in Masjid now sport old names.
I meandered past Ananth Niwas; opposite it an older building was simply named Juna Ananth Niwas. Juna in the local language, Marathi, and Gujrati, means old. It is possible that the older building was named Ananth Niwas before the new one was built. Then, it was time for it to pass on its name to the new kid on the block, and acquire the prefix ‘Juna’. I would have thought that it might have been simpler for whoever it was that built the new building to have let the old building retain its name, and called the new building by a different name.
As I stood there and looked around at other old buildings in the Bhat bazaar area, I turned my gaze once again in the direction of Juna Ananth Niwas. I wondered if it was not the case that its residents on shifting to a new building did not want to let go of the identity the old one gave them, and the moments spent growing up in its embrace. There is no other reason I could think of. But this is not always the case with other old buildings there. On changing hands, some buildings in Masjid simply changed their names. Most old buildings change names more than once in their lifetime. The new name all but erases the old one even if the identity and the character of the building remains the same. In time when the older generation shifts to new residences or simply dies out, the old name goes out with them.
For the second time in two days, I took the stairs of the old building in the vicinity that sits unsteadily in the street in Bhat bazaar. Across the building the fountain and the clock tower shone in the mid day sun. It took me a while to adjust to the lack of light in the short corridor that led to a flight of wooden steps. I looked up the staircase as it faded out in the darkness. Behind me the staircase appeared to descend tunnel-like to the street outside where a car sat on the kerb. There was no one around. The wooden steps were bunched up closely, overlapping one another. I’m accustomed to staircases whose steps do not overlap. It is easier to ascend staircases where each step ascends to the next at a right angle, leaving ample foot space with which to negotiate the steps. But here, in climbing up the stairs, I had to withdraw my foot from under the step protruding above before I could place it on the next step. Descending the steps became trickier still. On the way down, the steps do not begin from where steps above them end; instead each step begins from well under the step above it. After almost stumbling once, I took care to place my heel after accounting for the disconcerting overlap between the steps. This construct accounts for their steep descent.
Of the wooden staircases in old buildings that I’ve seen around Mumbai, their construction does not differ greatly. As I came up to the landing on the first floor, I was taken aback by rows of red lights from electricity meters glowing in the dark against a large board fixed to the wall. To its right, a window opened out on the street below. Behind me the staircase appeared to descend tunnel-like to the street outside where a car sat on the kerb. Strangely, for all the noise in the street outside, an eerie silence enveloped the building. It was as if I had stepped back in time, passing a corridor that connected different worlds, removing me from my surroundings. For a moment I hesitated, wondering if it would be wise to explore any further. However, it was difficult to resist the urge to explore the building, so I continued past the swarm of red eyes that seemed to circle maddeningly around themselves, vibrating to a silent melody in the darkened corridor, wriggling like fluorescent earthworms in a continuing nightmare.
I was yet to see any life in the building though the rooms that opened in the corridor ahead seemed occupied even if disconcertingly quiet as if weighed down by its long history. Later I learned from one of its residents that the building was over hundred years old. A window in the side of the corridor looked out on a square shaped opening covered on four sides by walls of other buildings, or maybe by living quarters of the same building. It was difficult to tell from where I stood. It was the reverse of a courtyard; here the back portions of living quarters enclosed the space while their front portions opened along corridors on each floor. Pigeons walked about on sheets shading the windows. Someone had strung hemp rope across the vertical bars which I suspect was to keep the pigeons out. It was cool where I stood. Standing there I could smell the years gone by.
I recollected the conversation I had the previous day with Shantilal Patel when visiting the building with a friend while we were looking for Sookaina Manzil in Masjid. I was curious to find out if the 3, Sakina Manzil from the play of the same name by Jamini Pathak actually existed. It did, though by a slight variation in its name as we found out later that day when we came face to face with Sookaina Manzil near the post office where the postman, Salve, was tolerant enough of me while I climbed up on their sorting table to look up buildings on a map on the wall while he waited down as I read him names off the map. The sorting table had swayed alarmingly under my weight. The next day I returned to Masjid, alone, to meet Qurban Ali. Shantilal had asked me and my friend in the course of a conversation about the 1944 SS Ford Stikine explosion that had rent the dockyard area asunder, if we remembered EC TV. His former work-place was near the EC TV manufacturing unit in Bombay he said. We were conversing by the staircase near the balcony that went from being four feet wide before the explosion of the ship to two feet after the smoke had settled. “Silver bricks thrown clear in the dockyard explosion crashed into the balcony,” he told us. Two women sat by the open door listening to Shantilal tell us both of those days or what little he remembered of it sixty years later. He was born in May, 1946, two years after the explosion that sunk other ships and killed over 800 people, injuring scores with flying debris. Then he told us about the building. “This building was built by Budda Dosha,” he continued, “a rich Gujrati businessman. He owned many more buildings, over a hundred of them. They were five brothers. After they died, their children finished everything.”
On my way out, I passed the landing where we had met Shantilal the day before. I walked across the Narsi Natha Street in Bhat bazaar to where the fountain stood, a monument in stone where, the previous day, a man in green vest was filling water in shiny brass pots from a drum shaped water carrier fixed to a haath gaadi (hand cart).
Later he joined some acquaintances on the platform where they shared a joke while Nandi sat silently facing the street. On a marble plaque fixed near the bottom of the fountain structure was written in clear letters:
The Kessawjee Naik Fountain and Clock Tower.
Erected by Kessowjee Naik & Son Nursey Kessowjee at a cost of rupees 23000 and presented to the city of Bombay for the use and benefit of the public was opened by His Excellency The Honorable Sir Philip Edmond Wodehouse, K. C. B Governor of Bombay on the 8th day of January 1876.
Designed by R.G. Walton, Municipal Engineer.
Sir Philip Edmond Wodehouse was the Governor of Bombay between 1872 and 1877. He died on 25th October, 1887 when he was 76.
Later in the day, on our way to Carnac bunder, before visiting Pydhonie, Bhendi Bazar, Mohammed Ali Road, and Dongri, passing Sandhurst Road station before returning to Masjid, Kurban Ali stopped the taxi as we neared the fountain. We got off. There he told me of how Kessawjee Naik used to sell water from a leather water-carrier in his early days after arriving in Bombay. Later, Qurban Ali told me, Kessawjee Naik built a fortune, and in obvious acknowledgement to the city that helped him find his feet he dedicated the water fountain to the public, and it is over 128 years now of quenching thirst.
I walked past the fountain to what was essentially a chai shop but was named Mahavir Hindu Hotel. Pausing in front of the chai menu on a large board outside the shop, I mulled the choices of chai listed on the board.
Disco chai - 4 = 00
Rajwadi chai - 5 = 00
A1 chai - 6 = 00
Ukala - 5 = 00
Kesri Ukala - 7 = 00
I asked for Disco chai. The owner welcomed me in where I took a picture before drinking Disco chai. It tasted different though I couldn’t place my finger on what made it different. He smiled at me. I smiled back. Outside his shop, people sat nonchalantly on a wooden bench, watching the world go by while a truck emptied its load.
The fountain demarcated the narrow playing areas I now picked my way through, dodging children screaming ‘dead ball’ ‘dead ball’. The green plastic ball they were playing with could not have been more alive in the grey surroundings and the heavy silences characteristic of places weighed down with history or age; mostly both. A red plastic stool substituted for wickets.
The previous day these lanes were choc bloc with people, some of whom had stopped by the fountain where a man in a loose fitting shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows sat on a folding chair on the fountain’s raised platform, a brass vessel in hand, and filling brass tumblers with water for thirsty passers-by. The man in green vest would pass the man on the chair brass pots filled with water from the water carrier which he placed by the side of the chair to fill the brass vessel that he used in pouring water into tumblers. Behind the fountain was the office of the Haath gaadi association. Several empty haath-gaadis were parked in front, and some of the haath gaadiwallahs operating in the area sat on a low platform, talking. There was a relaxed feel to the place.
To the other side of the fountain, barely five metres from the first team, another cricket match was on. This lot was older, but the passion was indistinguishable from the previous lot. Taking a left turn ahead on my way to Kurban Ali’s house across the street, I passed yet another cricket team, the third in less than two hundred metres from the entrance to the bhaat bazaar. Excited cries rent the air as the batsman scored a hit. I smiled to no one in particular as I looked up at the sky and marveled at the vastness of it all.
As I walked past Patel Restaurant, a radio rung out an old hindi tune mere sawalon ka, jawab do. Do naa. I looked in the direction from which the song was floating out and saw a youth in the hotel eating batata wada while another man reclined on his haath gaadi on the pavement outside the hotel, his hands crossed beneath his head, eyes open and facing the sky.
Mere sawalon ka, jawab do. Do naa.
Further up, devotees visiting the Siddhivinayak temple in Prabhadevi await BEST buses at the bus stop near the Kabutarkhana where, in the heat of summer, they step up to a coconut vendor behind the bus stop for tender coconut water (nariyal paani). The vendor sits under a ceiling made of mirror so when you look up, the coconuts stacked up on the floor appear to hang over your head. I visit the vendor for nariyal paani whenever I happen to pass that way.
I never attempted to bicycle to Tambdi Surla ever again. Once was enough.
After I got off the scooter and thanked the scooterist for the ride, I walked the final stretch to the stone temple at Tambdi Surla, passing silent trees, and dodging the shadows they threw on the even quieter road. Traveling to Tambdi Surla, known to be home to the ‘only known specimen’ of Kadamba-Yadava architecture in basalt available in Goa, is a pilgrimage I’ve undertaken several times over the years. The fact that it nestles in the mountains, far away from tourist-traffic, often overwhelming, that other temples in Goa are witness to, starting with the end of monsoons in Oct-Nov, and petering off as Carnival comes around on the eve of the season of Lent when Christians fast and offer penance, makes it an attractive travel destination in my scheme of things. In two months time after the Carnival the first monsoon clouds wind their way across the Arabian Sea for their rendezvous with the Western Ghats. And I imagine the stone temple at Tambdi Surla, nestling in the Western Ghats mountain ranges, is among the first to welcome the monsoons to Goa.
The temple is situated in the Bhagwan Mahavir wildlife sanctuary. I particularly remember one trip when I was showing Jai around the place when he jumped up in alarm at seeing a Green Whip snake crossing his path. I set off in pursuit as it dodged stones and plants until I cornered it by blocking it path. Promptly it climbed up a small plant, curving up in classic Whip snake pose. As I moved cautiously in a semi circle, covering its exit, it swayed gently, as if undecided on its future course of action. It was a beautiful specimen; setting off its fluorescent green against the brown of the earth. I took pictures, framing it on the green plant. Then it left. However, photographing the Skink proved to be more difficult.
Where the road comes to an abrupt end not far from the tree, visitors cross a small bridge to get to the temple. From here, the temple unveils itself between branches of trees that crowd the cobbled path leading to the temple. In the spring of 2001, I took the flight of steps down to the dry stream bed in search of a Laughing Thrush whose call I had heard while exploring the length of the temple plot adjoining the stream. Instead, on rounded stones set off by brightly colored Gulmohar flowers blown free from Gulmohar trees on the banks of the stream, I saw several Skinks quick-stepping across the stones that littered the stream bed. It was awhile before I finally managed to take a picture of one skink basking on a stone amidst petals of Gulmohar flowers. By then I was sweating from chasing them only to find them disappear under the stones just when it appeared that I might pull off a good photograph.
Butterflies are aplenty in the wildlife sanctuary, and so are various lizard species. I particularly remember seeing a mass migration of Common Crow (a butterfly species) near Caranzol in early 2002, not far from the entrance to the wildlife sanctuary in Mollem. Philip and I had paused on seeing the sight unfold before us, dodging them lest we trample any. They must have numbered over six hundred. Three hours later when Philip and I returned by the same path there was no trace of them. On another sojourn to the temple, I managed to photograph a Common Crow as it rested under a leaf in a thicket by the temple. I suspect it was laying eggs though I couldn’t be sure in the gathering dusk. By then, Jagdish and I had spent the last daylight moments clicking a Forest Calotes on a plant near where we had gone to relieve ourselves. Talk of unlikely opportunities!
Later, as Jagdish and I sat on a large rock in silence watching several insects enact a riveting drama in a pool of water stagnating in a depression in the rock, I took my eyes off a frog that had disturbed a Stick insect in the pool to look at a Dragon fly that had landed on a bamboo shoot overhanging the small pool. Behind the Dragon fly, dusk had fallen, silhouetting it against the faint blue of the sky. An occasional noise in the jungle alerted us to life beyond the stillness where we sat on the rock, covered on all sides by vegetation, but from where we sat those noises took shape only in our imagination. Jagdish sat leaning on his hands stretched out behind him. His Pentax K1000 rested by his side. After several hours walking in the vicinity of the temple, looking for butterflies and birds we could photograph, he was relishing the drama being played out in the stagnating pool in front of us. Without getting up on my feet, I dragged myself forward, cautious not to startle the dragonfly and took a photograph. 
As the shutter came down in a booming click, heightened by the silence, the Dragon fly took off.
And, each time I pass the Victoria lamp on the wall behind the door where the stairs wind their way up, passing among other artifacts statues of Hindu deities, and a steering wheel of a ship, I cannot help but wonder about the horse that drew the Victoria carriage along quiet roads in the light of the lamp. Sometime ago the lamp cracked, and a thin line now snakes along its length. But the glow of the bulb it houses is undiminished, like the spirit of the man who put it up there. Percival Noronha turned 83 last month.
The landing, covered by red carpet and lit up by light from the window that Percival Noronha uses to peer out to check on visitors ringing his door bell in the street below, opens into a sitting room. A brass-lamp stands in the corner by the door, and another hangs from the wall above it. Inside the room, intricately carved furniture wear their Portuguese influence in the same easy manner that Fontainhas, Goa’s Latin Quarter, wears its Portuguese identity in the heart of Panjim, its Indian context inextricable from its Portuguese past. Then, as always, after looking around the room I rest my eyes on the black and white pictures of his parents framed on the wall.
We wait in the hall while he answers the phone in the other room. I picture him standing by the window overlooking the narrow street, the map facing him. Eventually, I turn my face up to look at the picture of his mother, Aurora Vital e Noronha (1896-1980). She was from S. Matias in Mallar (Divar), an island near Panjim that I last visited with A. K. Sahay three years ago, and where Percival Noronha once found a piece of meterorite years ago as it crashed down near where he stood in the countryside. He showed it to me sometime back. I doubt if he remembers where it is now. It must have passed hands, and ‘disappeared’. His mother has a kindly face. Light from the verandah to the back of the house streams in through the open door where his cat sits watching us, and reflects candle-like off the spot where her collar bones meet. I hear his cat purr. Not too long ago, the cat knocked a large vase off its rest, breaking it. Later in the evening as we prepared to take leave of him I asked him the name of the cat. He smiled and said, "One of the students named the kitten Priti taking it to be a female. As the cat grew up I realised it was a male, so I changed its name to Pritam."
Standing there and looking around, it’s like nothing has changed in the years since I first met him when I was in college, starting out in life. I’m still starting out. Percival Noronha has grown older, and so have I. Once in a while I go to Fontainhas to visit him, and we spend time talking. And each time, I leave his place amazed at the energy and enthusiasm he brings to bear in our conversations.
His father, Antonio Jose de Noronha (1884-1962) came from Loutolim, a sleepy village near Borim where Mario Miranda, the legendary Goan cartoonist, has his home. Antonio Jose left Goa for Uganda in search of work, bringing up young Percival in the African country. In 1929, the year Percival Noronha turned seven, the family returned to Goa, and Percival went to Lyceum to complete his schooling. That he did not is another story, and it probably helped him be his own person. In 1961, India reclaimed Goa from the Portuguese. At the time Percival Noronha was the Chief Information Officer and reported to the last Portuguese Governor General of Goa, Vassalo da Silva, a man Percival describes as 'efficient, and very energetic'. Talking of his time working in the Portuguese administration, he said, "Each Saturday morning, I accompanied the Portuguese Governor General to Daman by plane."
"The Governor General used to check on the progress of development projects, and attend to routine administrative work before traveling to Diu to check on the same. Sometimes, we flew to Diu directly before traveling to Daman. In the evening we returned to Goa," Percival said. Goa, Daman and Diu, along with Dadra and Nagar Haveli were part of Portuguese India for over 460 years. After India drove the Portuguese out in 1961, Goa, Daman and Diu were administered as a single union territory before Goa was granted statehood in 1987.
Percival's house dates back a long way as do most houses in Fontainhas. Its façade is painted deep red, the colour of red oxide. “When I was renovating it in 1987, I found a corroded beam that was marked 1884. I asked the carpenter to cut out the dated portion of the beam and save it. The rest, I asked him to dispose off,” he told me recently over the phone, his voice betraying disappointment as he continued, “and that carpenter, dunno what he did, disposed off the whole lot.” His voice trailed off.
In the other room I hear him return the receiver to the telephone stand. Footsteps sound in the room behind the wall as he walks in through the door, hair askew on his head from the breeze blowing in through the door that opens into a balcony. He pats the few strands down and smiles. He leads us through the door to the dining room that functions as his study. Piles of books and papers are scattered across the large wooden table. Its legs end in finely carved lions. I pull a chair back and sit down, taking care not to place my feet near the lions.
Light streams in through the balcony in the corridor behind us and bounces off a book on the table before glinting in his spectacles, lighting up the book in his hand. It is late afternoon in Fontainhas. His fingers turn the pages in the book where his paper titled Old Goa in the context of Indian Heritage is published in the anthology Goa and Portugal: Their Cultural Links. He presented the paper at the International Symposium on Inter-cultural Relations: Portugal and Goa organized by the University of Cologne in 1996. The book is a collection of 21 papers presented by scholars attending the symposium. Silence settles in the room. I catch sight of the cat siddling to its food bowl in the verandah. As I sit there waiting for him to turn to the page, I take in the smell of wood, books, and life, and it feels good. It's been a long time.
"Ah, here it is,” he says, his eyes lighting up as he holds the book, Goa and Portugal: Their Cultural Links, out to me. I bend forward to read the title on the page: Old Goa in the context of Indian Heritage. Behind me, another cat joins the first one at the food bowl, and the first cat, Pritam, is not amused.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
In the two and half hours that it takes the Down train to cover the hundred kilometers stretch from Khed to Ratnagiri, the railway passes over three bridges spanning the rivers Vashisthi at Chiplun, the Gad at Aravali, and the Shastri near Ukshi, then through sixteen tunnels, the last six of which are strung together in close succession across twenty-odd kilometers before Ratnagiri. The train plunges through the first of these six tunnels after crossing the bridge over the Shastri. On emerging from the sixth tunnel at Karbude, before Bhoke in the Ukshi-Bhoke section, the train floats in the air when inching across the two viaducts at Khedshi, and Mahalaxmi before pulling into Ratnagiri to a swarm of vada-pav vendors awaiting its arrival. The fragrance of hot vadas would tempt the stoutest heart into eating them. As the train comes to a halt in Ratnagiri, the stillness of the windswept Konkan is broken by vendors calling attention to rows of vadas and pavs they’re hawking, and it happens as suddenly as when the landscape outside the window is abruptly terminated when the train plunges into tunnels. And when the breeze blows in strongly from the west in the summers I smell salt in the air, the same smell that wafts in from the sea along narrow Goan roads that criss cross dwellings along the coast before ending up on the beach. On occasions, the Konkan breeze brings in the smell of fish mingled with that of salt, washing my lungs with old memories by boats by the sea at Colva, near Margao in Goa. 
As the train slows down on its approach to Ratnagiri, I trail my eyes over large factories set back from the tracks. From the train I can only imagine what they might be. It is a relief to emerge from the slew of tunnels and feel the warmth of sunshine streaming in through the windows. 
The notice on the board reads
I buy Ratnagiri Times, the local marathi-language newspaper. A headline reports the Jodhpur court verdict sentencing the wayward film star Salman Khan to five years in jail for killing a Black Buck on a hunt in Rajasthan. The station resonates to conversations of people milling on the platform. An old lady gets into the train with a basket of bananas and looks up and down the length of the compartment to check if there’re sufficient passengers around to buy bananas. The train pulls out of the station, and later passes by houses with sloping roofs made of tiles and nestling among trees. Their walls are made of uncovered laterite stones. I steady my hand and take a few pictures. Past Ratnagiri, five more viaducts and three tunnels line the fifteen kilometer stretch between Ratnagiri and Nivasar. Of the five viaducts, the Panval Nadi viaduct, eight kilometers off Ratnagiri, spans 424 metres across the Panval river, and glides high over canopies below, and is among the tallest railway bridges in Asia, its piers rising sixty-four metres above the bed. As the train runs the length of the viaducts off Ratnagiri in quick succession I find myself riding valleys in the sky, keeping pace with pigeons riding the breeze alongside. 
I sat on the floor beside Sanjay while he instructed the unit-hands on where to place the lights. He was looking for a sedate effect. It required him to improvise to fit his equipment in the space available, and there wasn’t much of it to go around. Earlier that day while they were filming the accident scene on the road that led up to the temple, I visited the temple and shared conversation with Satyaprakash Karambelkar, the temple caretaker. He had just finished up with scrubbing the floor when I walked in. Looking up at the statue of Lord Dattatreya now, my eyes almost reached up to the roof. Wires snaked all over the floor, leading to cameras, sound recorders, monitors, and to things I couldn’t quite identify in the jumble. Then the camera rolled. Ashish Ubale okayed the take before calling it a day after twelve straight hours of filming. All along, I watched from the sidelines, turning every once in a while to look at the Manori creek shimmering in the moonlight behind me, setting off the Mumbai skyline on the other side like a Christmas tree resting sideways, all decorated and nowhere to go.
Sanjay Khanzode had a lot at stake in this film as did Ashish Ubale. The film also stars Vikram Gokhale, and Asavari Joshi. I missed out on the shoot involving Asavari Joshi. Sanjay was particularly happy about how that sequence turned out. "The lighting went well, and Asavari stands out wonderfully in her short cameo in the film," he told me later, and mailed me the picture above. The film was Sanjay’s first independent charge as a cinematographer after several assignments working in teams, sharing camera duties. Likewise, the film was Ashish’s first directorial venture after several stints as an Assistant Director. They both go back a long way to the same institute in Pune in the early Nineties when they passed out with a Diploma in their respective disciplines. I first met them in 1996 when they were staying at Yari Road in Versova, sharing their apartment with two others, each searching for a toehold in Bombay, like I was. Bombay was still Bombay in those days if you know what I mean. Over the years Sanjay and I kept in touch through M Satish, a mutual friend. By then Sanjay had shifted out of the Yari Road apartment to Thane, got married, kept up with a steady stream of assignments in Hindi, Marathi, and Punjabi television serials, music videos, documentaries, advertising films, and feature films. Jai Jai Gagangiri Maharaj was his first independent assignment as a cinematographer. Interestingly, Randhawa, a Punjabi, was producing the marathi language film, a fact not lost on Sanjay, a Maharashtrian brahmin. “It’s his first foray as a producer,” Sanjay told me.
Outside the room where the unit was filming a dream sequence featuring Gauri Karyekar, Randhawa sat patiently on a sofa in front of a monitor, his large face betraying nothing, while Sanjay passed instructions to the crew outside as they adjusted the cutter in front of the window, controlling the light streaming into the room from a powerful studio light source placed outside the window. Inside the small room, barely measuring eighteen feet by fifteen feet, I sat on a chair between Sanjay and Ashish watching silently while technicians went about their jobs, my camera loaded and ready.
The room was transformed from an ordinary pad with a rustic bed and scattered items of everyday use, into a dark room with black curtains setting up the dream sequence featuring Gauri Karyekar, Rita Bhaduri’s other daughter-in-law in the film. Eventually, the cutter was in place lighting up Gauri to Sanjay’s satisfaction. The room tensed up in anticipation. Then, Ashish called out ‘Camera, ACTION. The camera rolled. Three takes later they canned the shot.
The film unit broke up for a round of poha and chai before getting back into the room to film the scene where Rita Bahaduri sees a vision of Gagangiri Maharaj, feeling his presence heal her of her ailment before hurrying to the door looking for the vision she just saw, a surprised look on her face. Then she heads for the temple, followed a little later by her daughter-in-law, Aishwarya, who comes looking for her on finding her bed empty.
All the film sequences I saw that day were about lights and lighting. Sanjay went about methodically setting them up, displaying an innate ease that only comes from spending time with what you like doing, and doing it well.
When Sanjay left his hometown Akola for Mumbai, his first stint was with Debu Deodhar, the legendary cinematographer who filmed most of Amol Palekar’s films, starting with Ankahee (1984), Bangarwadi (1995), Daayraa (1997), Kairee (1999), to Anaahat (2003).
Speaking of those early days, Sanjay said, “Debuda said to me, ‘Sanjay, pehle backlight seekh lo,’ (Sanjay, first learn to use the backlight). Then he told me, ‘Understand why, for a camera position in a film sequence, the backlight is sourced from position A, and not from B.’ My learning curve took off from there.”
Sanjay started off on the sets of Sukhi Sansarachi Bara Sutra in the mid-nineties, a Satish Films production starring Ashok Saraf, the evergreen comedian from Marathi films, and Sanjay’s favourite actor. Debu Deodhar was the cinematographer, while Sanjay picked up the nuances, watching from a corner. It didn’t come easily. Remembering those early days, Sanjay said, “The first few days after the filming commenced all I did was make notes and diagrams of where the lights were placed for each scene in relation to the camera, and the subjects. I said nothing the whole day nor interfered with their work. Debuda noticed this and one day he called me over to his side and asked me what I was doing standing in a corner and making notes. I showed him the pages. Then he pointed to one of my diagrams and asked me, ‘Do you know why I’ve set up the lights in these positions?’ I replied, ‘No’. Then he said, ‘To know why is important. The day you learn why I’ve set up the lights in a particular way, you’ll have learned lighting. Once you learn lighting, it’ll mean you’re on your way to becoming a cameraman’,” Sanjay narrated, adding, “Tab se main kyun ke peeche lag gaya (Since that day I’ve been pursuing the ‘why’ of things.).”
Sanjay believes that many cinematographers in the film industry belong to the ‘Old School’, ‘Old’ as in their approach to lighting. “It has to do with the lack of adequate equipment, technology, and assistive tools like Video Assist in those days, limiting their scope, and forcing them to improvise, eventually shaping their approach. It’s not easy to change later.” Video Assist is mounted onto a movie camera (inside the viewfinder) to optically tap what the camera ‘sees’ and to transfer it to a monitor, usually placed away from the scene, where the director gets to see what the cinematographer is filming to ensure that the sequence is being shot exactly how he visualized and planned it. Video Assist came to be used widely in the Indian film industry in the Nineties. “But the advertising people got hold of it first,” Sanjay said. “Eventually the filmwallahs latched on to it.”
“Abhi aapko director kis tarah ka shot bataya, aur cameraman usko kis tarah se ley raha hai .... aapko monitor pe dikhta hai aaj, Video Assist hai (Today, the director can get to see how a cameraman executes his scene requirement on the monitor while he is filming it.),” Sanjay explained, continuing, “In the days before the monitor came to be widely used, when the Director described the scene to the cameraman, nobody except the cameraman knew what he was filming.”
Things were no different when Sanjay started off with Debu Deodhar. “I used to take permission from Debuda to peer through the viewfinder to see his frame compositions, querying him on his choice of lens for a given scene. It helped me to understand the role of lenses. Later, I tried predicting to myself the lens Debuda would use for each scene, to see if I’m getting the thinking right. Over a period of time I began to get my predictions correct most times. It was a step forward. I did the same with the lights,” he said.
“Kisi bhi shot mein lens ka selection important hai (In any film scene, the selection of the proper lens is important),” Sanjay said, adding, “Lens ka selection ke baad hee agey ka sab hoga, lighting hoga, trolley shot istemaal hogo, job hi baki ka techniques woh lens lagne ke baad hee hoga. Sab se pehla selection hai lens ka. Tho woh Director ko kya chahiye, aapko kis tarah ka scene establish karna hai, scene kis tarah se aagey progress hoga, woh isaab se lens ka selection hota hai. Shot actually choreograph hota hai. Tho ek scene ko kayee shot mein divide kartey hai apne requirement ke isaab se. Tho woh sabse important hai . . . lens ka selection.” As I listened to him, his words shook free in the night air and floated past, their passion powering them past me.
By then I was beginning to feeling thirsty. Back in the temple while they were filming the last sequence for the day, I had emptied the bottle of water I found on the window shelf. I suspect it belonged to the temple caretaker. Now I was feeling thirsty again. “Come over for the shoot at Madh tomorrow,” Sanjay said to me, tilting his face sideways so I could hear him over the rush of night air, and the phut-phutting of his bike. “Sure, I will try,” I replied.
The night air enveloped us as he took the left turn and headed out of Manori, towards Gorai. It was nearing midnight, and the roads were still. The wheels churned up the road as Sanjay picked up speed, slowing down as we came upon groups of people walking ahead, holding plastic chairs. It perplexed me to see so many people out on the road this late in the night. I wondered aloud to Sanjay if the Manori-Gorai stretch was readying for a film show out in the night, under open skies. Up ahead, over hundred people milled around a makeshift screen strung across the road, and held down by stones dangling from strings tied to corners of the screen to keep it from swaying in the stiff breeze blowing in from the west. People were gathered on either side of the screen, watching a black and white film. As we slowed down looking for a way past the open air film show, Sharmila Tagore made an entrance on the screen. Sanjay couldn’t help smiling. I held his suitcase tight while he negotiated the bike past people scattered all over the road. The stones brushed my leg as we squeezed past.
After we got to the other side of the screen I turned back to see the scene as it steadily receded behind us before disappearing after we took a right turn, slowing down at a speed-breaker. I doubt if I’ve ever ridden over the number of speed-breakers I did that night on the Manori-Gorai stretch. We had a long ride home, through Gorai, Mira Road, Ghodbunder, stopping over at a roadside stall for a cup of ice-cream.
“That is what I call spirit,” Sanjay said of those people enjoying an old hindi classic in the middle of a quiet road late in the night, opening the visor of his helmet so that I could hear him in the nip of night air rushing past.
“Yes,” I replied, rewinding to my memories of similar settings for films I saw under the open skies back in Goa. I particularly enjoyed Amitabh Bacchan’s Zanjeer in the backyard of an Electricity Sub-station long ago. It’s not an experience one easily forgets.
“They’ll never enjoy a film at Inox the way they’ll enjoy it out there in the open, under the night sky,” Sanjay said, “And that’s how a film should be seen.” His time back in Akola where he grew up aspiring of films were not very different from the rustic setting of Manori where people bring their chairs along for a film show on a road, or for that matter of my own memories of traveling theatres back in Almel, in North Karnataka, where they put up tents, advertised the film from a hand held loudspeaker and mounted on a bicycle, screened daily shows before moving on to the next village, repeating the same cycle all over again. I missed none of them on my vacations from school.
I went quiet for a while, lost in thought, and reflecting ‘Oh, to watch stars parade their talent on screen while stars ‘ride’ in the night sky many, many light-years away.’
Note 1 : The two pictures showing Sanjay Khanzode behind the camera filming Asavari Joshi (in red sari), and the scene in the balcony were passed on to me by Sanjay, the rest of the pictures I took during my time on the sets .
Note 2 : I got a sms from Sanjay today that said: 'Chandigarh me hu, punjabi film ka shooting chalu hai. Sab sardaronke sath me full timepass ho raha hai. 30th ko vapas . . .'
Back on the road it wasn’t until we slowed down on catching sight of a family of Langurs frolicking in the middle of our path that I realized the mud was unusually red. The langurs had changed colour to that of the mud. For just a moment I was perplexed on seeing these red creatures until one of them loped off the path with others following suit in that graceful manner of langurs. It was about then that I tasted mud. We pulled the windows shut but a thin layer of red had settled all over us. I tried wiping my camera clean but without much success, then drank from the water bottle to remove the taste of mud from the mouth. Phillip gripped the wheel hard as the jeep bounced uncomfortably on the mud-road that ran on to the Dudhsagar waterfall where rocky stretches in the road laid bare the pounding the thin ribbon of red winding through eighteen kilometers of deciduous forest gets from local jeeps ferrying tourists to the waterfall that cascades 600 metres down a cliff as it rises steeply, almost abruptly it would seem, over the South-Central railway line connecting Vasco to Londa, stopping by Collem in the Western Ghats mountain ranges. 
