Week S of the Authors' Tips Series is proving to be a pathbreaking one. 

In a second post for Alphabet S, Jaideep Sen writes about the significance of social messaging in films, particularly the kind of progressive writing as categorised in Master Screenwriter Salim Khan's films.

Read on...

Satyen Kappu in Deewar

Kumar Gaurav in Naam

What has stayed back with me is how progressive this piece of writing is which can only be a product of extremely noble minds who through art influence society to become a better place to live in. This in turn raises the contribution and respect of cinema to a dignified pedestal.

Sanjeev Kumar and Iftekhar in Sholay

This quality of Salim Saab-Javed Saab’s inspirational writing found its voice in last season’s KBC TV show, where one of its contestants from Himachal Pradesh mentioned that one sad spot in their family was that her younger sister (who was in the audience along with their parents) had lost her husband at a young age and that though they were trying to get her remarried, they were finding it difficult because even today it’s not a very socially accepted norm. The family was in tears at this point and to reassure them Mr. Bachchan had mentioned how he and his fraternity of performing artistes try to do their bit for society through their films. He had also quoted none other than the Epic film Sholay and his track in the film with Jaya Ji as an attempt to create awareness that a widow is entitled to remarry and live a happy life once again.
This just shows how foresighted the Masters of Writing were -- what they wrote in 1973 (released in 1975) is even in 2019, and shall always be, the reference point of the power of a progressive pen. 

Jaideep Sen is a filmmaker and a connoisseur of the art of storytelling

Welcome to Week S of Authors' Tips A - Z of Writing. 

If this is the first time you are visiting this series, here's a quick recap. 

Authors share their tips on writing fiction and each week we talk about various aspects of writing. This time, I'm doing a slightly different kind of piece. I hope you enjoy it. 

Screenwriting is to filmmaking what a story is to a novel. Without a script or screenplay you can't make a movie.

Indian screenplay writers have not enjoyed the limelight until a few decades ago. And perhaps the most celebrated film writers are Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar.

However, Indian movies have a long and chequered history. Films have been made in India for more than a hundred years. And while we know and have heard of the pioneer auteurs of Indian films -- such as Dhundiraj Govind Phalke who's better known as Dadasaheb Phalke -- rarely has the Independent Screenwriter (who was not also a director) been talked about.

I have been reading Mihir Bose's excellent book titled Bollywood: A History where I came across the person who might well be called the Father of Indian Screenwriting -- Agha Hashr Kashmiri. Born in 1879 as Muhammad Shah, he hailed from a family of Kashmiri shawl merchants. His first play Aftab-e-Muhabbat was published in 1897. At the tender age of 18, he began his career as a playwright in Bombay.

According to Wikipedia he joined the New Albert Theatrical Company and his first play for the company was an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale titled Mureed-e-shak. It was a big success and he went on to adapt many of Shakespeare's plays. So much so that he came to be known as the "Indian Shakespeare", writes Bose. Kashmiri also Indianized the adaptations by adding short songs and dialogues with local idioms.

Among his most popular plays were Sita Banbas based on the Ramayana and Bilwamangal, the story of a poet who falls in love with a courtesan, Aankh Ka Nasha, dealing with the themes of prostitution and treachery, and Rustom O Sohrab, a tragic Persian folk story.

In 1914, Hashr, joined one of the biggest film companies of the time, Madan Theatre in Calcutta. He adapted many of his plays into silent films and when the talkies era began, so did his career as an independent screenwriter.

One of his most popular plays was Yahudi Ki Ladki (The Daughter of a Jew) which was published in 1913 and became a classic of the Parsi-Urdu theatre circuit. It was adapted for silent movies and was made into films during the talkies era as well. The most prominent of these adaptations were Yahudi ki Ladki in 1933 by New Theatres, and in 1957 with the same title. Bimal Roy's film based on the same play, Yahudi,  released in 1958 and featured Dilip Kumar, Sohrab Modi and Meena Kumari in lead roles. (On a personal note, my father, Desh Mukerji, worked as an assistant art director in Roy's Yahudi).

Mihir Bose writes: "Such was his (Hashr's) prominence that Urdu, the linguistic product of the meeting of Islam and Hinduism, exerted a tremendous influence on early Indian films, both in terms of the language used and the techniques of the Urdu stage. Hashr also introduced an innovation that has remained to this day: of having a comic sub-plot in every Indian movie, even if the film itself is far from a comedy. By the time he died in June 1935, at the age of 56, his countrywide reputation was so immense that all studios and theatres closed for the day as a mark of respect."