Indian Writing

On seeing this post about Mrinal Sen’s film Bhuvan Shome (which was also cinematographer KK Mahajan’s first film) Praba Mahajan sends me these paragraphs about KK in Mrinal Sen’s words:

In the mid-sixties, when the wind started shifting and I smelt a certain madness in the air, I like some of my colleagues and fellow travelers felt an irresistible urge for a change. I thought it was a good enough time for me to launch a breakaway from the existing convention and try my hand at creating a new one…

That was the time when I had accidentally run into a minor work by K.K. Mahajan—a diploma film of the Institute directed by his batch-mate Kumar Shahani, and photographed by K.K. I saw the class-room exercise and loved it immediately. I loved it for a different reason…for venturing to shoot in adverse conditions. Soon after, I met him. I was at the Film Institute, and the triumvirate-Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani and K.K. walked in. I spoke to him, I spoke a lot as I always do, and he answered my questions, quite a few of them, mostly in
mono-syllabic yes’s and no’s. And that was our first meeting, way back in 1966.

Two years later, in 1968, I got a loan from the then Film Finance Corporation, and happily there were no strings attached. I formed a team, almost all having very little or nothing of “commercial” content and having an abundant measure of verve and courage. I asked K.K. if he would do the photography as a sort of love’s labour, so to say. K.K. readily agreed and perhaps beamed inwardly.

That was the beginning of a journey, a long one, which perhaps in just two cases, that too under unforeseen circumstances, never broke. K.K. and I, we worked together, starting from BHUVAN SHOME and continued unabated, once a year, in various places, various languages, and interestingly, in diverse situations. In the process, I learnt a lot and so, I believe, did he and we have been growing together steadily, happily, clumsily. True, we had initial problems to understand each other but neither he nor I took unreasonable time to get to know ourselves and then coming out of one film and walking into another, year after year, we became, as was expected, almost one inseparable entity.

We are still growing strong, even at my age, and he with his seventy-fifth film. The last thing about K.K: Success, till this moment, has not gone into his head, which is what has kept his body and soul together and which, every time I think of him, gives me the impression that he has remained the same, delightfully the same, as he was in 1966,the year of our first meeting, -shy but confident.

And as a postscript: K.K. is still mono-syllabic in his articulations except, however when he is made to speak on occasions such as the Convocation Address at the Film Institute of India where he, along with his batch-mates, was groomed wonderfully, deliciously, inspiringly.

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KK Mahajan went on to work on over 80 films across four decades. Praba tells me that he is very ill at present. My thoughts are with her and the family. This post is for KK, wishing him a speedy recovery.