Posts Tagged ‘Rockford’
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in other sites without the knowledge and consent of the web administrator of atulsongaday.me, then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.
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This is the story of a Telugu man born in Hyderabad in an upper middle-class Naidu family. He completes his schooling in a Boarding school in Yercaud. After graduating in Chemical Engineering from Osmania University, he proceeds to USA and completes M.S. in Chemical Engineering. He gets a good job in the USA as an Environment Consultant. So far so good. The boy has met successfully, the sequential schedules of most of the middle and upper middle-class families – Good schooling and college, higher studies in the USA followed by a good job there. The next in the sequence is finding a good bride for the boy to settle down and showcase him among the family and friends. But at this stage, there a break in the sequence of our Telugu man.
During his stay of about a decade in the USA, our man develops interest in film-making. Perhaps, he was influenced by watching many Hollywood films during his stay in the USA. Slowly, this interest turns into a passion. Now, he finds his job monotonous. One day, he resigns from the job and enroll himself in film making and acting courses. Armed with the story, screen-play and dialogues for his film, he returns to India. He selects himself as the actor who is the protagonist in the story of his first film in the making. He finalises a couple of other actors and actresses who are fresh faces. But his first obstacle in making the film is finding a financier who can invest money in his film.
Our man spends about a year in Mumbai for studying the nuances of film making and also finding a financier. He is disillusioned by the way Bollywood works. He also fails to find a financier for the film. He comes to the conclusion that if he wants to make a film on his own terms, he needs to finance the film himself. So, he goes back to the USA, works there for about a year and saves US$40000/-. With this money, he returns to India for good. In his earlier visit to Hyderabad, he had met a lady who is the boutique fashion shop owner. After audition, he ropes her in the film as an actor and makes her the partner in his film production company. The film’s shooting commences and is completed in 17 days at the total cost of about 17 lakhs. The film is submitted to the Censor Board for certification. And here our man faces the second hurdle.
The Censor Board suggests about two dozen of cuts including a kissing scene to certify the film. Our man visits to meet the Censor Board officials. He finds that if he agrees to the cuts suggested by the Censor Board, the entire sensibility of the film is lost. On the other hand, Censor Board is not prepared to certify the film without the cuts suggested by it. He files an appeal to the Appellate Authority of the Censor Board for the review of the cuts. The Appellate Authority upholds the views of our man. The film is certified without any cut but a couple of words in the dialogues are muted. Now the film is ready for the release. Here our man faces the third obstacle.
The film remains in the cans for nearly a year as no distributor is willing to take up to release the film. First, the film is in English language. Second, the film maker is an unknown entity to the film world apart from the absence of star value in the film’s cast. Third, the film’s story would have attracted only a section of the audience. In desperation, our young man releases the film on Doordarshan in 1997 on a paltry sum of Rs.2 lakh. But this gave the film some exposure to the English-speaking audience.
In the meanwhile, the film is shown in MAMI film festival in Mumbai sometime early 1998 and receives encouraging responses from the festival audience including Shyam Bengal. On the recommendation of Shyam Bengal, one of the leading film distributors of Mumbai watches the film in a preview theater and agrees to distribute the film. The film is released and receives tremendous support from the audience as well as from the critics. The film is a box office success. A new name of the producer-director is added to the list of parallel film-makers in India.
The young Telugu man is Nagesh Kukunoor and his maiden film is ‘Hyderabad Blues’ (1998). The owner of the boutique shop is Elahe Hiptoola who became the partner in Nagesh’s film production company, SIC, besides acting in some of his films and assisting him in the direction. The film revolves around a NRI who after spending a considerable time in the USA, is caught in a cross fire of Indian and foreign cultures. The film was in English language though a few dialogues were in Telugu and Hyderabadi Hindi.
After the success of ‘Hyderabad Blues’ (1998), Nagesh Kukunoor has produced and directed films such as ‘Rockford’ (1999), ‘Bollywood Calling’(2001), ‘3 Deewaaren’ (2003), ‘Hyderabad Blues-2’ (2004), ‘Iqbal’ (2005), ‘Dor’ (2006), ‘Bombay To Bangkok’ (2008), ‘8×10 Tasveer’ (2009), ‘Aashaayein’ (2010), ‘Mod’ (2011), ‘Lakshmi’ (2014), ‘Dhanak’ (2016) etc. Although many of his films have been critically acclaimed, some of which got national and international awards, most of them had failed at the box office collections.
Nagesh Kukunoor also tried his hand in producing and directing a couple of the ‘middle of the path’ films by taking Bollywood stars. In ‘8×10 Tasveer’ (2009), he got Akshya Kumar to play the lead role. In ‘Aashaayein’ (2010), he roped in John Abraham. Both these films did not fare well at the box office. So he has reverted to parallel cinemas again.
‘Rockford’ (1999) was Nagesh Kukunoor’s second film in English which revolved around the story about ‘coming of age’ boy who is admitted to a boarding school. Film shows his transformation from a naive, scared boy into a confident teenager after facing some problems in adjusting to new environment. There is a scene in the film in which he develops a soft corner for the only lady teacher (Nandita Das) in the school. His day-dreaming about singing ‘shokhiyon mein ghola jaaye…’ from ‘Prem Pujaari’ (1970) with the lady teacher is hilarious. He then finds her sitting with PT teacher (Nagesh Kukunoor). Now his imagination takes him to Nagesh Kukunoor singing with the teacher. He becomes jealous. Watch the video.
‘Rockford’ (1999) have six songs of which 2 songs are in Hindi. The song ‘yaaron dosti badi hi haseen hai’ sung by KK is from his non-film album which is used in the film. The other Hindi song which I am presenting today is ‘aasmaan ke paar shaayad aur koi aasmaan hoga’ is rendered by Shankar Mahadevan who has also composed the music with his music partners, Ehsaan Noorani and Loy Mendoca.
This song in CD version is of 6-minute duration. However, in the film, this song is used only for 1:35 minutes in the background of the main credit titles at the beginning of the film probably to set the mood of the film. A promotional video featuring Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and the three actors in the role of students in the film, namely, Rohan Dey, Imran Mirza and Kailash Athmanathan was also released. The theme of the music video is a trip to the down memory lane. Shankar Mahadevan, in his interview at the time of the release of this music video had revealed that he had composed this song in Raag Jog in combination with Raag Kedar. What a violin interlude between 2:51 and 3:22 in the audio clip in Carnatic music style!
There was no need for me to search as to who wrote lyrics for this song. A reading of the mukhda of the song with unusual imageries undoubtedly pointed to Gulzar. Yes, the lyrics are by Gulzar saab.
baadalon ke parbaton par
koi baarish ka makaan hoga
I like it.
Acknowledgement : The ‘story’ of Nagesh Kukunoor is based on a number of interviews he gave on visual and print media over the years.
Promotional Video Clip :
Audio Clip :
Song-Aasmaan ke paar shaayad aur koi aasmaan hoga (Rockford)(1999) Singer-Shankar Mahadewan, Lyrics-Gulzar, MD-Shankar Ehsan Loy
Chorus
Lyrics (Based on audio clip)
sansana
albela sansana
sansana
albela sansana
aasmaan ke paar shaayad
aur koi aasmaan hogaa
sansana
albela sansana
o
aasmaan ke paar shaayad
aur koi aasmaan hogaa
baadalon ke parbaton par
koi baarish ka makaan hogaa
main hawa ke paron pe kahaan
jaa raha hoon kahaan
kabhi udta huaa
kabhi mudta huaa
mera raasta chala
ho ho ho ho o
main hawa ke paron pe kahaan
jaa raha hoon kahaan
ho ho ho
ho ho ho
ho ho ho
ho ho ho
mere paaon ke tale ki
yeh zameen chal rahi hai
kahin dhoop thhandi thhandi
kahin chhaanv jal rahi hai
is zameen ka aur koi
aasmaan hoga
hogaa aa aa
aasmaan
ho aasmaan hogaa
main hawa ke paron pe kahaan
jaa raha hoon kahaan
in lambe raaston par
sab tez chalte honge
ho o o
in lambe raaston par
sab tez chalte honge
copy ke pannon jaise
yahaan din palate honge
shaam ko bhi subah jaisa
kya sama hogaa
hogaa aa
kya samaa aa
kya shama hogaa
main hawa ke paron pe kahaan
jaa raha hoon kahaan
aasmaan ke paar shaayad
aur koi aasmaan hoga
aur koi aasmaan hoga
baadalon ke parbaton par koi
baarish ka makaan hogaa
hoga
ho o o
main hawa ke paron pe kahaan
jaa raha hoon kahaan
kabhi udta huwa
kabhi mudta huwa
mera raasta chala
o ho ho ho
main hawa ke paron pe kahaan
jaa raha hoon kahaan
main hawa ke paron pe kahaan
jaa raha hoon kahaan
main hawa ke paron pe kahaan
jaa raha hoon kahaan
ho ho ho
ho ho ho
ho ho ho
ho ho ho
ho ho ho
ho ho ho
ho ho ho
ho ho ho
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