In his new documentary,writer and film-maker Vijay Singh explores the history of modern India using Bollywood songs When Vijay Singh wanted to capture the history of India,the Paris-based writer and documentary film-maker did not want to do it the conventional way. Instead,the 58-year-old decided to map Indias history from the 1940s to the present day using eight Bollywood songs down the years in an hour-long documentary called India By Song. A St Stephens College and Jawaharlal Nehru University alumni,Singh moved to Paris to finish a PhD in 1980,and stayed on in France. Hes left India (or half left it,as he says) 30 years ago,and this gives him the privilege of being half inside,half outside it. In Delhi to prepare for the film screening,Singh whose previous films are the critically received Jaya Ganga and One Dollar Curry- says,You cannot tell the history of contemporary India without having a layer of Bollywood songs which reflect the emotions of millions of people. Every decade has its film song the post-independence nation-building of the 1950s,with its poverty,unemployment and eight million refugees,finds voice in Raj Kapoor singing Awaara hoon in 1951. In the 1960s,it was Madhubala defiantly crooning Pyar kiya to darna kya ,the visual extravaganza opposing the mood of a country which was picking up the pieces after a crushing defeat in the Indo-China war and getting over Jawaharlal Nehrus death. A new energy comes into being in the 1990s,with the economy opening up. I have incorporated a section on how foreign TV channels influenced our thoughts, says Singh,pointing to the poster of the documentary,which has Madhuri Dixit from the famous Choli ke peeche frame. Apart from the songs,India by Song also has archival footage of landmark events in history,including images of the Golden Temples destruction following Operation Bluestar,as well as interviews with the commentators of modern history. We travelled from Mumbai to Amritsar by car,interviewing people,both famous and little-known,to capture the essence of India, he says. So from Mahashay Dharmapal of the MDH masala group,a Partition refugee,talking about the horror,to cricket legend Bishan Singh Bedi speaking on Operation Bluestar,and historian Romila Thapar talking about how Indira Gandhi saw that the kind of people whose support she would have liked to have were not in her favour there is a gamut of opinions. The director has also included unknown faces like a business school student,a domestic help and an an actor called Tirrtha. The film,which featured at the Cannes Market Screening in May,was shot at locations ranging from the Dharavi slums in Mumbai to the Rashtrapati Bhavan to the fields of Punjab,over six weeks last year. We have filmed on a shoestring budget, he shares. The film will have its India premiere at the India Habitat Centre on August 14 before it is screened at the Montreal World Film Festival later this month .
