(Transcendence 50x65 in. by Kashmiri Khosa father of Rajan Khosa .)
WELL DONE RAJAN KHOSA
“Hum Parvarish e lauh o qalam karte rahenge
Jo dil pe guzarti hai raqam karte rahenge
Ek tarz e taghaful hai so voh un ko mubarak
Ek arz e tamanna hai so hum karte rahenge ”
( Faiz Ahmed Faiz )
( Forever will I nurture pen and paper,
forever express whatever my heart undergoes.
This posture of indifference, let it be their prerogative –
For me, it will always be my desire’s entreaty .)
Some days back, I read in a newspaper that ‘Gattu’, a 2012 feature film directed and co-written by
Rajan Khosa has been declared one among top ten
internationally recognized Indian films along with ‘Aawara’,
1955 and ‘Lagaan’, 2001. Gattu was premiered
at Berlin Film Festival (2012 ), winning a
Special Mention - Best Film, and between the years 2012-13, this film alone
had received fourteen plus international awards with many honours following these awards.
Rajan Khosa’s another film , Dance of the Wind (1997 ) which was a co-production between six
countries, the very first of its kind in India was distributed worldwide
winning accolades and awards. The film was premiered at Venice Film Festival and won
major awards (Best Director, Best Actor, Audience Award etc.) at the various
festivals including Rotterdam, Chicago, London and Nantes . The film is based
on Guru-Shishya Parampara of Indian classical music. Renowned artist B.C.
Sanyal, Kapila Vatsayan (scholar of Indian classical dance, art, architecture
and art history), Kitu Gidwani and some well-known names acted in this film.
In 2009-10, Rajan created India’s first feature-length multi-media
biopic, combining film and holography, on Sadhu Vaswani, the well-know social worker
and spiritualist who worked for upliftment
of the mankind. And in 2014-16, he developed a large scale feature film with
Disney based on a Satyajit Ray’s novella.
Rajan has also several
short films to his credit including half-hour film ‘Bodh-Vriksha’ (Wisdom Tree)
that deals with the theme of nursing and caring for the old people. It brought him a National Award
and three Oberhausen Awards in 1987.
His latest directorial venture is a biopic on tribal leader Bhagwan Birsa
Munda (2020 ).
ORIGIN AND ANCESTRY OF RAJAN KHOSA
Ancestors of Rajan Khosa were from Syed Ali Akbar locality,
an area close to Fateh Kadal, Srinagar . This locality is close to Sri
Raghunath Ji Temple, Kali Temple, Sri Ram Trikha Ashram , Ziyarat of Shahi Hamdan, all situated on
the banks of the river Jhelum. This is the locality where the *European
missionaries established the first school for imparting modern education to Kashmiris. A
vibrant locality that used to breathe centuries-old composite culture and peaceful
co-existence. In 1983, David Lean selected this area for shooting sequences for
his film ‘A Passage to India’.
Rajan’s great grandfather,
Pandit Shambhu Nath Khosa was a well-known saint and a spiritual personality
who moved to Hampi caves in Karnataka around 1920s, and did penance renouncing
Grihistha ( householder’s life ) until he passed away in 1939. He became famous
in that area for healing people with the ashes from his ‘Hawan-Kunda’ or sacred
fire . His devotees of local Vaish community donated two hills for his ‘Sadhana’
and discourses. Mahatma Shambhunatha Guhe is a place of pilgrimage today, and
people climb the hill to pay respect to his life size black granite sculpture.
Shambhu Nath’s son Som Nath Khosa, who was left in the care of
his mother
in Srinagar, studied Art at Sir Amar Singh Technical
Institute, Srinagar where his teachers
included F. H. Andrews and J. C. Mukerjee. Inspired by Mahatama Gandhi’s
freedom movement, Som Nath Khosa started
doing realistic paintings depicting Gandhi Ji on his mission. As a young man, in 1937, he
took his would be bride to Hampi caves and got married in the presence of his
father. After the partition of the country , he moved to Delhi in 1950 with a
desire to paint monumental scenes form Gandhi’s life and exhibit them to
masses. As his work became popular , his studio in Delhi was frequented by
several dignitaries. Mrs. Indira Gandhi,
Lal Bahadur Shastri and Babu Jagjivan
Ram supported his mission, and his exhibitions travelled extensively until the
end of his life in 1983. Som Nath Khosa’s
paintings are still on display in several Gandhian institutions in India
and abroad.
Rajan Khosa’s father,
Kashmiri Khosa is a well-known artist based in Delhi
. Inspired by the family tradition, he reflects Indian philosophy in his language
of modern art, which won him a ‘National
Award’ in 1981 and President of India’s silver plaque in 1974. His paintings
are on display in many national and international art galleries, and also in
the significant collections of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Lalit Kala
Akademi and Sahitya Kala Parishad. A documentary on his life and art was
released by Doordarshan in 2003-2004.
Rajan’s sister,
Anjali Khosa Kaul is a sculptor and a painter whose works can be found
in the National Gallery of Modern Art , New Delhi and with many private
collectors world over. She is a recipient of AIFACS Award and Ministry of
Culture fellowship. Ashok Kaul , husband of Anjali Khosa Kaul practices
industrial photography and art photography.
Rajan Khosa knows and understands Kashmiri in spite of the
fact that he was
born and brought up outside Kashmir. A search for roots
brought him to Kashmir where he lived for two years ( between 1988-1990 ) with **Swami Lakshman Joo (renowned Shaiva
Scholar) studying Kashmir’s treasured Shaiva-Darshana . During this time , he
built strong association with Shaiva scholar ***Dr. Bettina Baumer . At this
period of his stay in Kashmir , he saw
armed militancy arriving in the beautiful valley. Tragically ,
he also witnessed his relatives
being forced to flee along with half a
million Kashmiri Pandits who were exiled from their homeland .
About his family influence , Rajan Khosa informs this :-
‘Visual language gets embedded in you when you grow up with
painters. My father would show me a
painting and then ask me, ‘Why isn’t the composition working?’ ‘What is negative space?’ ‘What is balance?’
‘What do these colours do?’ As there was this dialogue going on all the time I
was taught these things early in life. Painting was therefore always in my
blood. It was the first thing I did as a kid. I went to a my father’s studio
when I was sixteen or seventeen, learned still life, and was very good at it.
It helped me later on when unconsciously I would translate these things into
films, drawing frames, for example.’
About resurgent India , Rajan Khosa informs this :-
‘India is changing as well, and is becoming more Western,
but I would also say that mystical values persist. The final goal of life is to
surrender to that presence and to constantly reaffirm its value in a material
world. It is such an intangible thing and of course intangibility does not have
much place in western culture. Only what is verifiable, quantifiable or
tangible has a place and is given a value.’
About feeling the Cultural gap while living in the western society , Rajan
Khosa informs this :-
“ You can’t really penetrate a culture. You get a very
different view of it when you are an outsider. You can admire it, you can love
it, you may embrace it, but you will never get to know its nuances. The rituals
of any one culture are tied to emotions and feelings. When I was given my
Brahmanical thread there was a ceremony for it. I went around and touched the
feet of the 200-odd people who were there. You wear this thread and an orange
garment. The colour orange signifies the burning of the ego, the sunset … the
Upanishadic poems are all about walking into the sunset. It is symbolic of
20,000 different things, which your mother or grandparents had told you about
in your folklore. You can never really leave your culture and you can never
communicate it.”
ABOUT GATTU
Gattu is a film about a street kid’s ambition to become a
kite-flying champion.Made on a tight budget, the movie was shot in and around the
streets of Roorkee in the Himalayan foothills. The aerial scenes were taken
from a Para glider . The lead character, Gattu, is played by newcomer Mohammad Samad,
who was given the role after attending a local workshop held by the production.
In India, Gattu is now free to watch on
YouTube channel.
This is what Gautaman Bhaskaran wrote about Gattu in the ‘Hindustan Times’ of February 12,
2012:-
“The movie is a
fascinating portrayal of India's have-nots and the dreams of children living in
want. However, unlike Danny Boyle in his Slumdog Millionaire, Khosa is subtle
in his presentation, and chooses to train his camera on smile and optimism.
There is no garbage and dirt in Gattu, and the school song that celebrates
India is not conveyed as a pun or ridicule. In the end, Samad's Gattu, despite
his uncle's unfairness that keeps the boy in the crevices of illiteracy,
radiates a kind of joy that one often sees in some of India's gloomiest slums.
Using humour, Khosa builds a script which is beautifully balanced, and without
the usual clichéd pitfalls.”
"
Khosa's skill as a director is evident in the manner
the screenplay unfolds, without preachiness or stilted dialogues, just a few
small town folk scraping an existence without giving much thought to the
helpless kids who are an integral but irrelevant part of the landscape. The
stray dogs, the garbage, the buzzing flies are the reality of Gattu's life, not
props engineered by a scheming director who wishes to endear himself to a
western audience. The film runs for 82 minutes and the pace doesn't flag even
for a single minute. The other children in the film have small insubstantial
roles; Gattu carries the film on his slender shoulders alone. Gattu is a must
watch for all but most especially cynics who believe 'there is no hope for any
of us'. It took Gattu just a little less than two hours to prove"
And some of the awards won by Gattu could be listed as
under:-
* Special Mention - Best Film; Grand Prix of the Deutsches
kinderhifswerk
Berlin International Film Festival 2012.
* Nomination for Best Children’s Film (APSA - Asia Pacific
Screen Awards)
2012.
* Colors Screen Award for Best Child Artist (India) 2012.
* Audience Choice Award for Best Feature (International Film
Festival of Los
Angeles) 2012.
* Honourable Mention of the Jury (International Film
Festival of Los Angeles) 2012.
* Citation of Excellence Award (Tel Aviv International
Children’s Film Festival - Israel) 2012.
* Bronze Castle Award (Castellinaria Film Festival -
Switzerland) 2012.
* Pemio ASPI Award (Castellinaria Film Festival -
Switzerland) 2012.
* Audience Award (Seoul International youth Film Festval -
South Korea) 2012.
* Diploma of Honour (42nd Roshd Int.Film Festival,
Tehran-Iran) 2013.
* Best Performance by a Child Actor (China International
Children’s Film Festival) 2013.
* Best Feature Film (New York Indian Film Festival) 2012.
* Best Young Actor (New York Indian Film Festival) 2012.
Driven
by the market and business considerations,
a general fall in the quality, themes and standard of our cinema may be true to
some extent. The loud music and foot-tapping dance sequences may have also
brought some repetitive boredom to serious viewers. But then men like Rajan
Khosa are a
real
hope. Driven by a passion, these filmmakers have changed the form, content and
brought much needed human reality and simplicity in our cinema.
"Nahin hai na-umeed 'Iqbal' apni kisht-e-veeran se,
Zara nam ho to ye mitti bahut zarkhaiz nai Saqi"
( Iqbal )
(Iqbal does l not despair
the present barrenness of his
land ,
A little rain and this land
shall bear grand harvest once
again .)
(Avtar Mota)
3
Footnotes.
*
Founded by Rev J. H, Knowles during
the last quarter if 19th century , Fateh Kadal Mission School was
the first school opened in Kashmir valley to impart modern
education to kashmiris . Before this , Maktabs and Paath-Shalas run by
Molvis and Pandits were imparting education in the Kashmir valley. The Fateh Kadal school was
followed by other ‘Mission Schools’ opened by European missionaries at Rainawari, Nawa-Kadal, Habba-Kadal,
Amira-kadal and a high school at Anantnaag in Kashmir .
**
Swami Lakshman Joo ( 1907-1991 ) was
a world renowned mystic, author and scholar of Kashmir Shaiv Darshana. His
Ashram is located at Ishber locality on
the banks of Dal lake in Srinagar , Kashmir . Swami Ji had many disciples both within the country and abroad.
***
Dr Bettina Sharada Baumer (born 1940
) is a renowned Indologist and one of the foremost expounders of
Kashmir Shaivism . Born at Salzburg in
Austria, she was awarded the ‘Austrian
Decoration for Science and Art ‘ by Government of Austria in 2012 and ‘Padma
Shri ‘ by Government of India in 2015 .
CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.