Muzaffar Ali’s ‘Umrao Jaan’: A classic revisited, restored, re-released

Immortalised on celluloid by director, poet, art aficionado and designer Muzaffar Ali, the heart-wrenching saga of Umrao Jaan continues to mesmerise and enamour audiences even 44 years after its release. The 1981 film, based on Mirza Hadi Ruswa’s Urdu novel ‘Umrao Jaan Ada’, has been restored and re-released. To commemorate the re-launch, an evocative coffee table book has been published by Mapin. It curates a series of essays, unseen photographs, handwritten notes, costume sketches, calligraphic scripts and poetry.

The film is set in the erstwhile princely state of Awadh in 1855. This was a time when the British Raj’s impact was being felt amidst the nobility and the royal families, who were otherwise engaged in dance, music and poetry. From the architecture of their havelis to the grandeur of their carriages, everything had an air of elegance and poetic nuance.

Muzaffar Ali, with a penchant for fine detailing and quest for authenticity, created the saga of Umrao Jaan beginning from her childhood, when she was abducted and sold at a kotha, to how she evolved into a poetess and ended in the throes of solitude.

Instead of choosing a heroic male character from the mid-19th century India, the filmmaker decided to narrate the story of a courtesan. As he says, “Hafez was in my soul. I kept telling myself, I have no desire to know about conquerors like Alexander and Darius. Ask not of me anything but graciousness and devotion. This was the grace and devotion that embodied the tehzeeb of Lucknow and the persona of Umrao, the wounded deer, the poetess of pain. She was what Lucknow was going through from the outside and Umrao from within. I was to recreate Umrao in a Lucknow lost to the world.”

The titular role was rendered with such emotion and grace by Rekha that it won her the National Award and the Filmfare Award. Singer Asha Bhosle, whose voice echoes throughout the film, also won the National Award. In tandem with Khayyam’s lilting melodies — who won both the National and Filmfare awards — and ghazals by Shahryar and a classic by Amir Khusro, ‘Umrao Jaan’ is a timeless piece of cinema that has excellence etched in every single shot.

As author Sathya Saran, co-editor of the commemorative book (along with Meera Ali), opines, “The objectification of the tawaifs of Lucknow began when the East India Company officials started looking at them with loathing and suspicion, especially after the 1857 uprising. They classified the tawaifs as prostitutes; this attitude would be compounded by Victorian notions of morality and later modern India would inherit those biases. Culture would deem to be the preserve of the virtuous women of the middle classes, not ‘fallen women’ like the tawaifs.”

She says that since Muzaffar Ali was a Lucknawi from an elite family, he understood the nuances of the culture practised by the tawaifs, and could easily portray that lost world of grace and elegance because he brought no judgment to it, “only appreciation, compassion and admiration”.

Architecture and landscape were integral to the filming and cinematography of ‘Umrao Jaan’. As art historian Dr Alka Pande, who has contributed an essay to the book, puts it: “Each frame of Praveen Bhatt’s cinematography is like a frame from the Mughal miniatures. For me, what stands out is the chiaroscuro of the Venetian masters, the delicate use of light and shade, which brings out the mood and tone of melancholy, romance and the ‘dard’ or anguish in Umrao’s life and times. There is an overarching tenderness in the warm tones of light used by Bhatt.”

Another contributor is historian Rana Safvi. She says ‘Umrao Jaan’ evokes the refined world of 19th century Awadh, where nawabs ruled and Urdu flourished as the language of art and elegance. “As a poet, Umrao Jaan embodies this world, with each ghazal of hers becoming the soul and pulse of the story. This poetry echoed in the kothas to the beat of ghungroos; these were spaces of music, poetry, dance and cultured grace, patronised by the elite. Each frame of the film captures this lost world with exquisite detail — from costumes and settings to the nuances of Awadhi tehzeeb… Visiting a kotha was not a secret indulgence but a part of the cultural ethos of the time.”

Muzaffar Ali adds, “If there was anything to reshare with the world about my milieu, it was this. Today, when each of us is going through love, betrayal and heartbreak, poetry is the ultimate balm. The melodies of Umrao’s poetry mirror her life journey and the ethos of Lucknow. It is the bedrock of emotion that takes one to unimaginable heights.”

The film released in theatres on June 27.

— The writer is a New Delhi-based contributor

Arts