Chhaayaageet #203 - "Uncle, is this what you want?"
For a film based in rural India, on the face of it, the composer is an odd choice. He is one of the leading Western classical music composers in India, having studied music composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London, where he graduated with a gold medal. That had won him a French Government scholarship to study at the Conservatoire de Paris for five years. After returning to India he had continued pending a lot of time outside India. There was a time when he was also the head of the Western Music department at the University of Delhi.
So you can perhaps understand why the composer is an odd choice for a film whose story is based in rural Gujarat. But the filmmaker knows something we don't. The composer is the only one in the industry who arranges his own music. All of the big time composers have their own arrangers. The composers only come up with the tune and the melody. It is the arrangers who structure the whole song, with the instrumentation, the bass, number of strings, percussion and wind. Besides, the composer is widely considered the father of the ad jingle, being the first person to score music for an ad film in India. The filmmaker and the composer have a long association going back to their ad film days.
Today, we find ourselves in the composer's house for the rehearsals of a song. He is at his piano, trying out some tunes. He has a sheet of paper in front of him that has the lyrics of the song. The two sisters arrive. One is the playback singer, the other has been giving her company. The filmmaker also reaches.
The filmmaker looks at the sheet of paper in front of the composer. His face pales. The lyrics are in Gujarati. Understandably, the story of the film is based in rural Gujarat. But this is far from what he has in mind.
"Oh my gosh! This is not what I want," he utters. This is the only song in the film. It will have two versions, both fast and slow. The fast version will play at the title credits in the beginning and in the end. The slow version will play in the background multiple times as the story unfolds. It needs to be perfect.
The composer stops playing the piano. Everyone looks at each other not knowing what to do. The filmmaker voices their collective feelings, "What do we do now?" He starts pacing the room, looking down, hands on hips or scratching his thinning hair. "What do we do now?" he repeats, expecting someone to answer.
Unbeknownst to them, the singer's sister has been scribbling something on paper, just listening to the scratch tunes the composer has been playing on the piano.
"Uncle, is this what you want?", she thrusts the paper in front of the filmmaker. The filmmaker looks at the few lines on the paper. He looks at her. Back at the paper again. Then again at her. "This is exactly what I want", he exclaims.
He asks her to write more. The composer starts to set it to a tune. The singer starts rehearsing.
On the day of the recording, they are all in the studio with the musicians. The singer has been rehearsing the song in her husky voice. Before they decide to record, the filmmaker walks up to the singer and tells her softly, "I don't want you to sound like the Preeti Sagar of Julie. I want you to sound like the Preeti Sagar of Manthan."
"Ok uncle, let's go for it," she replies. The singer goes full throttle singing the folk song, so much so that she loses her voice for the following three days.
Shyam Benegal directed Manthan (1976) featuring the lone song, Mero gaam katha parey, sung by Preeti Sagar. The lyrics are written by Niti Sagar, and music composed by Vanraj Bhatia. The song is played in the background during scenes featuring the lead cast of the film, Smita Patil and Girish Karnad.
The film is inspired by The White Revolution spearheaded by Verghese Kurien. In 1949 Kurien was sent by the Government of India to run its experimental creamery at Anand. There he set up the Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union in 1950 which later became Amul. Amul organized the dairy farmers in the villages as a part of a collective linking dairy farmers directly to consumers. Kurien set up similar dairy cooperatives all across India making dairy farming one of the largest self-sustaining and employment generators in rural India. This led to multi-fold increase in milk output over the next few decades making India the largest producer of milk in the world in 1998.
Manthan is perhaps the only crowdfunded film in history with 500,000 farmers of Gujarat contributing Rs. 2 each to make the film. After the film's release, truckloads of farmers came to watch "their" film, thus making it a box office success.
Shyam Benegal is widely considered the pioneer of parallel cinema in India, with his first four feature films, Ankur (1973), Nishant (1975), Manthan (1976), and Bhumika (1977), being seminal works. He served as Chairman of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), and used the institute's new graduates, such as Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi, Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Amrish Puri, as lead actors in his films.
Vanraj Bhatia is the first person to score music for an ad film in India (for Shakti Silk Sarees). One might say he is the father of the jingle. Bhatia has scored over 7000 jingles for popular brands such as Liril, Garden Vareli, Dulux, etc. He went on to score music for pretty much all of Benegal's work, starting with Ankur, and also for Shashi Kapoor's Junoon, 36 Chowringhee Lane, Kalyug and the background score for Ajooba. He also composed for TV serials such as Khandaan, Wagle Ki Duniya, and the epic Bharat Ek Khoj.
Preeti Sagar had already sung My heart is beating for Julie when she was going to sing for Manthan. Hence Benegal's instruction to her to not bring the Sagar of Julie into her singing.
Shyam Benegal won the National Film Award for Best Feature in Hindi, while Vijay Tendulkar won the National Film Award for Best Screenplay for the film. Preeti Sagar won the Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer for the song.
Manthan was India's entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards in 1976. It is the first film digitally restored by the Film Heritage Foundation of India established by Shivraj Singh Dungarpur. The digitally restored film was released at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
Preeti Sagar singing the song live, looked on by Benegal. People like Shyam Benegal, Vanraj Bhatia, Smita Patil and many others live on through their work.
In 2012, the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) which markets the brand Amul released a tribute to Manthan with its own video showing how the efforts of rural milk producers helps meet the nutritional requirements of a child of an urban mother.
Lyrics: Niti Sagar
Music: Vanraj Bhatia
Singer: Preeti Sagar
*ing: Girish Karnad, Smita Patil
Director: Shyam Benegal
Film: Manthan (1976)