Awtar Krishna Kaul: Tracing an unfettered spirit

In 1973, when the Offended Younger Man was elevating his iron fist and a teenage Bobby was promoting moist goals on the field workplace, Awtar Krishna Kaul was busy documenting the inner and exterior journey of his nonheroic protagonist Sanjay in 27 Down (1974).
Partly shot on the Bombay-Varanasi practice, the introspective examine of a practice conductor whose vibrant goals are emasculated by an obstinate father, pushing the younger man with a creative bent of thoughts into main a lifetime of remorse on regimented rails paved the best way for the Parallel Cinema motion within the Bombay movie trade.
Made on a shoestring price range offered by Movie Finance Company (later NFDC), Awtar and Apurba Kishore Bir captured the rhythm within the chaos of Bombay’s working class via a hand-held Arriflex 2c digicam. Lengthy earlier than All We Think about As Gentle, the black and white frames shot with block lens created enduring pictures of a conflicted state of affection, loneliness, and longing in a sea of crowded platforms at Bombay VT railway station.
One swallow doesn’t make a summer time, however in Awtar’s case, his singular murals continues to search out love and add new layers even 5 many years after his promising profession was tragically reduce quick by a freak drowning accident.
The characterisation
Rakhee’s unvarnished magnificence and tenacious flip as a working girl proceed to beguile the discerning, Om Shiv Puri’s efficiency as a lonely and manipulative father fills you with disgust, and M.Okay. Raina’s portrayal of a mild-mannered man grappling with a muddled future and an indecisive thoughts tightens the throat.
Now, 50 years after Awtar’s loss of life, his nephew Vinod Kaul is piecing collectively the tumultuous lifetime of the unfettered soul by wading into the fading reminiscences of relations, buddies, and critics. A former senior govt producer at Rajya Sabha TV, Kaul’s efforts led to a screening of the restored model of the movie on the Worldwide Movie Competition of India-2024 in Goa.
Rakhee flanked by Vinod Kaul and A Okay Bir at IFFI Goa.
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Like Sanjay, Kaul says, Awtar had a tenuous relationship together with his father. “When he was on the lookout for inspiration, he requested the librarian of a Delhi library to offer him 50 books which have the least readership and picked Ramesh Bakshi’s Hindi novel, Athara Sooraj Ke Paudhe, for adaptation.”
Like his protagonist, Awtar needed to cross a number of actual and metaphorical bridges in his life. Mockingly, neither may attain the vacation spot. Recounting Awtar’s journey, Kaul says when his father threw Awtar out of the home, he discovered refuge on a railway platform and labored at a tea stall to maintain himself. “He didn’t enable the challenges to thwart his spirit. He shifted to Ambala, labored at a lodge, and managed to graduate via open faculty and made it to a class IV job within the Ministry of Exterior Affairs.”
A chequered profession
The job offered him with a possibility to serve within the US, which, in flip, opened a window to a filmmaking course in New York. “He labored as a copyholder for the Related Press and when the editor caught him studying Arthur Koestley’s Darkness at Midday, he realised that Awtar was well-read and supplied him the job of a information temporary author. Awtar held the job until 1964 earlier than becoming a member of The British Info Companies in New York,” says Kaul.
Within the US, Awtar additionally met his spouse, Anne. He returned to India in 1970, when he was employed by the Service provider Ivory Productions as an assistant director for his or her movie Bombay Talkie.

Awtar Krishna Kaul at a youthful age.
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Bir is filled with anecdotes of the challenges confronted through the capturing on shifting trains and crowded platforms with out drawing the eye of the group. He says the capturing fashion and Awtar’s insistence on the no-make-up look created doubts in Rakhee’s thoughts. She requested Awtar to point out the rushes earlier than shifting forward and got here to the theatre with apprehension. As quickly because the rushes unspooled, she was thrilled to see her depiction. The seasoned actor made a uncommon public look when the movie was screened on the IFFI.
Whereas capturing a platform from the bogey of the Bombay-Varanasi Categorical, Bir recollects, they have been hauled up by Military males who thought them to be Pakistani spies. “On one other event, Railway police in Bombay halted our capturing, hoping for a bribe. Every time we needed to attain out to senior officers and present them the papers that it was a government-funded venture, ” says Bir.
Multi-faceted filmmaker
Raina, who would converse with Awtar in Kashmiri, describes the filmmaker as one of many harbingers of New Wave cinema. “His coaching in New York, mixed together with his deep curiosity in literature, music, theatre, and Indian tradition, made Awtar an unique voice.”
“When he died, he had three scripts in hand and had he been round he certainly would have been an influential filmmaker.” He recollects that 27 Down was described as a “mini-miracle from FFC” by a number one movie journal because the movie ran for weeks in Mumbai’s Opera Home and Bengaluru’s Blue Diamond.

Nonetheless from the film 27 Down by Awtar Krishna Kaul.
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In the meantime, as 27 Down makes contemporary rounds of the pageant circuit, Kaul is looking for his aunt Anne and is eager on taking the second script of Awtar to the world. “It’s titled Chandu, once more a story of unrealised goals of a kid. I’ve come to know that he had approached Sanjeev Kumar maybe for one more movie.”
Printed – January 17, 2025 01:36 am IST