KARACHI: Once Pakistani cinema’s favourite mummy who typified herself as an uncouth rural woman despite being a student of Lahore’s Convent of Jesus and Mary sees the industry doomed in all practical purposes and blames leaders of her own community for failing to improve their infatuation with gandasa, which started in the late 1970s.
“It started with the advent of action filmmaking as it happened elsewhere. But what happened then that we stuck to our gandasa and the world moved on,” said Bahar Begum, who was just 14 when she started her acting career in 1956 in Anwar Kamal Pasha’s Chan Mahi.
She was a guest of honour on Sunday at the Karachi Press Club, where she spoke at length about the good old days of once booming Pakistani cinema and the days when it struck fall, which, according to her, continued still.“We are falling in an abyss and what makes things more dismal is that we don’t realise it as a serious casualty. We have lost our cinema and that is not a small breakdown,” said the actress — equally fluent in Punjabi, Urdu and English.
She was awfully obsessed with the good old days which she spent with both respect and artistic satisfaction.
“Those days were wonderful. It was time when none of us wanted to go home from the sets. It was so fantastic that we learnt something every day and were hungry to learn more when we headed towards the studio.
“India did see the long years of action films, but they moved on and perked up. We stuck to the movies full of graphic details with gandasa (a large agriculture implement with large stick and blade on one side) as the key weapon. In one movie, the director even showed a gandasa dug out from a grave where the body of my husband and Sultan Rahi’s father was supposed to be buried,” she smiled with a one-liner.
She said in one film the director had even shown the villain’s body being minced by a moving blade. “Viewers got too disturbed with the graphic details, they were so sensitive then that they verbally abused us for making such a movie.”
She had complaints from the current actors, who gave no time to learning and acting and their main concern was earning money.
She spoke about some tips she picked from her first director, late Pasha, who directed her not to memorise dialogues but concentrate on rehearsals and loudly read out long dialogues in one go, which helped her had a good breath for better delivery.
She said she saw learned and educated directors who knew every technique related to the business, but that institution had virtually ended now. “Now, we have no director left, we have our financer as the ultimate boss whose caprices have the final say to decide what a movie should contain.”
“The world has techniques far superior than us and we are still stuck with those same conventional techniques, which can no longer amuse the increasingly aware viewers,” she added.
She pinned little hope on the possibility of the revival of Pakistani cinema, especially in its cultural capital, Lahore.
“Unless we are blessed with good professional people, directors in particular, there is no possibility of revival. Our great era is virtually over,” she said.
She was not happy with the artistes taking pride in recognition they got from India and said working in Indian industry should not be compromised on Pakistani artistes’ dignity.
“Once a director interviewed me and asked me what I could feel if was given a role against Amitabh. I rudely asked who is Amitabh and eventually lost the role. Now I realise, it was not good to be so rude then.”
Bahar Begum, who has 600 Pakistani films on her credit, shared an assortment of depressing moments, which she came across while witnessing the fall of the industry, but one great thing still makes her boastfully proud.
“People still identify me as the mother of Sultan Rahi. I feel very proud when I overhear someone telling another: look Sultan Rahi’s mother is going.”—Hasan Mansoor