The first thing which strikes you when you read When Ardh Satya Met Himmatwala is that it is written with knowledge and love. Avijit Ghosh is a senior journalist but more importantly he loves Hindi cinema passionately. Unlike a host of ‘Film Appreciation Course’ trained “film critics” now so visible in media, here is someone who has through his childhood onwards in small towns and cities watched films religiously and then researched them. The result is an eminently readable book on a Hindi cinema of the 1980s.This is an important phase in Indian cinema which altered the contours of films in more ways than one.
As Ghosh puts it appositely, “The eighties were essentially a decade of contradictions in Hindi Films.
“It was the time of Ardh Satya and Himmatwala. Of K Ravindra Rao and Govind Nihalani. Of Paap ko Jala kar raakh kar doonga and Sataha se Uthta Aadmi. Of Indeevar and Vasant Dev. Of Bappi Lahiri and Vanraj Bhatia. Of Kundan Shah and Kadar Khan.”
Avijit Ghosh
When Ardh Satya Met Himmatwala
Speaking Tiger, 2023
It was also the time of upheaval. Of generational change. Of the coming of television and video. It was the decade when the number of screens came down from 1,310 to 1,100 even as the production of films went from 500 to 900. The middle class, the bulwark audience of popular cinema, just turned away from watching films in decrepit, dated theatres, which then spurred the shutting down of more cinemas.
As mentioned in the book, several things happened at the same time disrupting the decades-old world of cinema in India, especially Hindi cinema. The new wave of the ‘70s gathered pace as several of the best films were made by old and new directors. While Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Basu Chatterji and Shyam Benegal were the most prolific there were others like Basu Bhattacharya, Gulzar, Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, Govind Nihalani, Saeed Mirza, Ketan Mehta, Sai Paranjpye, Kundan Shah, Vinod Chopra, Vijaya Mehta and Sudhir Mishra who came into the limelight. NFDC with little money, and even less political backing, did its bit. Sadly, while some excellent films were made and a few made it to the Cannes Film Festival, most ended up in Cans Film Festival – only winning awards but with no audience. No wonder the whole new wave filmmakers reluctantly moved towards television and consequently, Doordarshan got some of its best programming in the ’80s.
During the Asian Games in Delhi in 1982, television colour across the nation. From a few thousand TV sets, by the end of the decade we had a few million. It was a common sight all over the country to see clusters of people gathered in front of a TV set in neighbours’ homes or even outside TV shops watching a cricket match or the weekly feature film or shows like Chitrahaar.
By the time Ramayan and Mahabharat came on television, viewership had reached millions. Soon TV Serials like Hum Log, Buniyaad, Karamchand, Khandaan, Rajani, Nukkad, Darpan and Ek Kahani became popular. I shot the first music video in India in 1984 with Nazia and Zoheb Hasan which was telecast on Doordarshan. I was also the executive producer of Buniyaad and a few more serials.
Rajesh Khanna, the super star of the ’70s, gave way to the phenomenon Amitabh Bachchan – whom India Today in a cover story famously called the one-man Industry. While Dilip Kumar switched to doing older characters, Dev Anand gamely carried on. Dharmendra was still a big star but surprisingly as Ghosh points out, it was Jeetendra who reinvented himself down South and teaming with Jayaprada and Sridevi came up trumps.
It also brought a spate of South made “remakes” of their own hits in Hindi much before the likes of Bahubali, RRR, Kantara and KGF.
It was directors like K. Raghavendra Rao, K. Bapaiah, T. Rama Rao and others who were ruling the roost even as Manmohan Desai, Prakash Mehra, Ramesh Sippy and Yash Chopra turned out hits in Mumbai with Bachchan. Jackie Shroff, Anil Kapoor and Govinda were the new stars.
Hema Malini, Rekha, Jaya Bachchan Zeenat Aman, Parveen Babi, Reena Roy and Neetu Singh competed with Poonam Dhillon, Tina, Ranjeeta, Meenakshi Seshadri and Rati Agnihotri. Interestingly a handful actors straddled both off beat and popular cinema – Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil shone in various genres. Amol Palekar, Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Anupam Kher acted in all kinds of films successfully.
The southern onslaught was like the the second coming of South after family dramas of the ’60s. This time the thrust was on loud, garish films with racy music and suggestive lyrics. Jeetendra had a terrific second innings with several hits like Himmatwala, Tohfa, Mawalli. Bappi Lahiri became the favourite music director, turning out hits by the dozen often with raunchy, double meaning lyrics, and Kadar Khan the favoured dialogue writer.
This Southern attack further unsettled the big producers in Mumbai. Already reeling under the pressure the video and TV onslaught and rampant video piracy and high taxes, the industry went on an unprecedented strike. I was actively involved in it, often rushing to Delhi to take the help of film industry MPs like Amitabh Bachchan and Sunil Dutt. The government appointed a committee headed by Maharashtra finance secretary Madhav Godbole to look into the demands. Some concessions were given but the industry continued to hobble along. It would take another decade before a revival of sorts would happen in mid ’90s.
Avijit Ghosh.
This book is well researched. Unlike most books on cinema, it lays equal emphasis on the commercial aspect of film making as it does on the creative. I was surprised to read about certain prolific directors like Rajkumar Kohli, Shibu Mitra and B. Subhash, who are normally not written about, along with all the well-known filmmakers of the time, both from mainstream as well as art cinema. There is a fair amount of detail which one doesn’t get so easily these days. Box office success is evaluated along with critical acclaim. Avijit Ghosh has spoken to dozens of people across the spectrum of filmmakers, distributors, exhibitors besides actors, directors, composers and writers.
For me the ’80s are an important part of Hindi cinema both at a personal level as well as for the industry. Like the great Amrit Manthan of Mahabharat, this was a period of upheaval and cataclysmic change. New stars appeared on the horizon even as the old ones disappeared. Technology changed the dynamic of films. New media proliferated amid the chaos of failure and despair but simultaneously good cinema flourished as never before. Film music too changed gears, and amidst piracy and new formats, creativity bloomed. The book covers the rise of television in fair detail, as it does the menace of audio and video piracy.
Avijit Ghosh captures all this and more in this eminently readable book which is a must for any follower of Hindi cinema. It brings you the madness and frenzy of the films and the times. It is a treasure for trivia hunter yet it has enough material for the serious student of Hindi cinema. The book informs and entertains without being didactic or patronising. As filmmaker Sudhir Mishra says, it’s a deep dive into the Hindi film industry of the ’80s. A must read for lovers of Indian cinema.
Amit Khanna is a film producer, director and lyricist.