For the Love of Anarkali

It took them two months just to find out who owned the film’s copyright. Eventually, they learned it was held by the movie’s producer, real estate magnate Shapoorji Pallonji. Pallonji’s son, Shapoor Mistry, had little interest in colouring the epic, but directed Dwivedi to an associate, Dipesh Salgia.

Salgia of Sterling Investments (a Pallonji company and the original financier of the film) had been negotiating with Hollywood for seven years to colourise Mughal-E-Azam, but was deterred by the quotes—Rs 8 crore to Rs 20 crore. ‘‘When I gave him a 2 crore budget, he got shocked,’’ Dwivedi says. ‘‘‘Can it be done in 2 crore?’ he asked. I told him ‘Yes. The technology is indigenous’.’’

But Dwivedi initially encountered skepticism. Would the movie get pixelised as he proposed, he was asked. Would the public accept colourisation of a historical movie? So he offered to first colour a one-minute clip of the movie, on the basis of which his ability to execute the project could be judged. He learned the original negatives were at Famous Studio in Tardeo, and headed there.

He was shocked to find almost six of the 20 cans that contained the negatives were broken, and the negatives themselves were dusty and mildewed. One of the broken cans—number 10—contained the film for the classic song Pyaar Kiya To Darna Kya.

‘‘Not only were the cans broken, but the negative sprockets were damaged,’’ says Dwivedi. Fixing the film on the scanner became very difficult, he explains, which compounded the problem of stabilising the images in what was already an old, jerky movie.

The grandeur of the movie—making it had cost eight times as much as contemporaneous films, and it had taken 500 days to shoot rather than the typical 60-125—made colourisation especially challenging.

‘‘It was very tedious,’’ says Dwivedi. He made trips to Salarjung Museum in Hyderabad and the National Museum in Delhi to see Mughal costumes. Research also took him to university campuses.

Dwivedi had run into a problem with a war scene where Salim is pitted against his father, Akbar. Should the flags of the warring kin be differentiated?

Historians, such as Romila Thapar of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, showed Dwivedi text in which Emperor Akbar described his flag. On their suggestion, he also distinguished Salim’s flag with two yellow lines.

Dwivedi’s labour of love has been described by some as desecration of a classic. His defense is that they are not only colouring, but also preserving a heritage movie. The film he found was full of ‘‘scratches, grains, pinholes’’, and there was ‘‘a hiss in the sound’’, he says. These have been rectified, which is especially important if the movie is to find new (read, young) audiences, he adds.

Besides, Dwivedi reports, Dilip Kumar was in tears during a private screening of the colour version. When it ended, he had just one reaction. ‘‘This was my dream,’’ the legend said. ‘‘I want to be involved with this project.’’

And Naushad, the sound director of the original who also recreated the music for today’s Dolby Surround Sound-equipped theatres, saw the final product and said, ‘‘I never believed you could give this film colour.’’