India's lost cult films
Are you one of those who were awake that night? Be warned that answering ‘yes’ will identify you as nearing 40 now, but back then in 1988, you were a bored, disaffected, possibly dope-smoking late adolescent who stayed up late to watch Doordarshan (DD) because there wasn’t anything else to see back then, and not much else to do late that night.
So you sat through all the crappy, presumably cut-price shows that DD filled its late night slot with: dour German detective serials, dull Russian costume dramas, bad British sitcoms, pathetic pop shows, and only very rarely something good, like when it showed Hanif Kureishi’s My Beautiful Launderette.
That was a jolt, but it was nothing like the jolt that we got late that night in 1988 when a film with a really weird title was shown. Because In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones wasn’t set abroad, but in Delhi. And the kids in it weren’t foreigners, but students like us. And they didn’t speak American teen lingo, but the sort of Hindi laced slang we all used. And they dressed scruffy like us, and were almost definitely smoking dope and they had the same dim view of teachers that we did, and they were happy to cheat at exams. And while the lead actress — who also was the scriptwriter — was stunningly beautiful, she was in scrappy, sexy way quite unlike any other Indian actress we had ever seen. And it was funny, in a real, irreverent, smutty way that was miles from any Bollywood comedy.
It seems hard to imagine that many people saw it late that night, released without any publicity, and yet there are so many people whose eyes will light up if you mention Annie, Yamdhoot, Radha, Mankind, Kasozi’s worms, Lakes' crystal bowl and the fruit trees on the side of the railway line.
One night...
It would have to have been that night because DD never showed it again. According to Pradip Krishen, who directed the film, it almost didn’t get shown at all. “The film was commissioned by Bhaskar Ghosh who had promised to release it without changes. And he was actually watching it for the first time when he got a call from Rajiv Gandhi’s office telling him he was being sacked,” says Krishen.
Ghosh’s rather spineless successor had no desire to show such a pathbreakingly frank and funny film, but finally agreed to that one, late night, unheralded release. A few people did record it, and those videos became precious commodities, loaned grudgingly, watched to the point of disintegration and finally lost.
Since then the fate of Annie, as we’ll call it for short, has been much speculated on. One story is that DD has locked it away and refuses to release it from sheer perverseness or revenge for its irreverence. Another was that a producer had made away with the negatives. Or that the negatives have degraded. Over time the film’s mystique has developed, not always for the expected reasons.
I'm definitely not 40 and I've never doped. Watching the film made me remember what freedom tasted like. Once you've lived through the eighties, you'll always be a child of the 80s. Though technically, mine were the 90s. But it too was free of the glut of wealth and glitter.
Delhi seemed like a grey ole town in the film, and how I longed to live in it instead of the loud, boisterous city, a corner of which I now inhabit.
And I miss Doordarshan, miss the glut of choice, the dull, hot afternoons, often without electricity, the trance the heat would send you into.
Life was simpler, even if as sad. I really, really miss it.
So you sat through all the crappy, presumably cut-price shows that DD filled its late night slot with: dour German detective serials, dull Russian costume dramas, bad British sitcoms, pathetic pop shows, and only very rarely something good, like when it showed Hanif Kureishi’s My Beautiful Launderette.
That was a jolt, but it was nothing like the jolt that we got late that night in 1988 when a film with a really weird title was shown. Because In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones wasn’t set abroad, but in Delhi. And the kids in it weren’t foreigners, but students like us. And they didn’t speak American teen lingo, but the sort of Hindi laced slang we all used. And they dressed scruffy like us, and were almost definitely smoking dope and they had the same dim view of teachers that we did, and they were happy to cheat at exams. And while the lead actress — who also was the scriptwriter — was stunningly beautiful, she was in scrappy, sexy way quite unlike any other Indian actress we had ever seen. And it was funny, in a real, irreverent, smutty way that was miles from any Bollywood comedy.
It seems hard to imagine that many people saw it late that night, released without any publicity, and yet there are so many people whose eyes will light up if you mention Annie, Yamdhoot, Radha, Mankind, Kasozi’s worms, Lakes' crystal bowl and the fruit trees on the side of the railway line.
One night...
It would have to have been that night because DD never showed it again. According to Pradip Krishen, who directed the film, it almost didn’t get shown at all. “The film was commissioned by Bhaskar Ghosh who had promised to release it without changes. And he was actually watching it for the first time when he got a call from Rajiv Gandhi’s office telling him he was being sacked,” says Krishen.
Ghosh’s rather spineless successor had no desire to show such a pathbreakingly frank and funny film, but finally agreed to that one, late night, unheralded release. A few people did record it, and those videos became precious commodities, loaned grudgingly, watched to the point of disintegration and finally lost.
Since then the fate of Annie, as we’ll call it for short, has been much speculated on. One story is that DD has locked it away and refuses to release it from sheer perverseness or revenge for its irreverence. Another was that a producer had made away with the negatives. Or that the negatives have degraded. Over time the film’s mystique has developed, not always for the expected reasons.
I'm definitely not 40 and I've never doped. Watching the film made me remember what freedom tasted like. Once you've lived through the eighties, you'll always be a child of the 80s. Though technically, mine were the 90s. But it too was free of the glut of wealth and glitter.
Delhi seemed like a grey ole town in the film, and how I longed to live in it instead of the loud, boisterous city, a corner of which I now inhabit.
And I miss Doordarshan, miss the glut of choice, the dull, hot afternoons, often without electricity, the trance the heat would send you into.
Life was simpler, even if as sad. I really, really miss it.
4 comments:
dnara, goromkal-ta hok, dilli-te-o hobe, load shedding. but hm. a childhood of clasdestine tv watching, and not much even at that.
hm, ok, how are you? i want to see more pictures of your flat.
ei cinemata kothay pele? konodino naam shunini. ami dekhte chai.
amar kachhe achhe: khub kharap print but achhe. Oh and Shahrukh KHan stars in a minor role in it!
The scriptwriter, Kaichu, is arundhati Roy (Pradip Kishen is her husband/ex husband)
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