Saaz and awaaz

Several key incidents and characters in the 2 hr 20 mts long film, packed with songs and fine performances from Shabana Azmi, Aruna Irani, tabla wizard Zakir Hussain and Raghuvir Yadav, are either inspired by or closely resemble happenings and people in the true lives of the Mangeshkar sisters. The film8217;s opening shots are of a drama in progress in a small town in Maharashtra, much the kind of play that Lata and Asha8217;s father Dinanath Mangeshkar used to perform in the Kolhapur-Pune region during the 19308217;s and 19408217;s.

In fact, a sequence of a drunken Dinanath called Vrindavan in the film and played by Raghuvir Yadav standing in pouring rain and singing a malhar in order to pay for his liquor is based on an apparently true incident about Dinanath recorded in the memoirs of the well-known Marathi director and playwright Vishram Bedekar.

Although the film takes the precaution of a title asserting that 8220;all resemblance to persons living or dead are purely coincidental8221; and many events in the lives of Mansi and Bansi Vrindavan, the two sisters in Saaz, are clearly fictional, several others echo facts that are either true or widely assumed to be true. When Mansi the elder sister based on the Lata Mangeshkar character and played by Aruna Irani moves to Bombay and gives lessons in bhajan-singing to neighbourhood ladies, it approximates situations in Lata8217;s life; also when Bansi8217;s the Asha Bhonsale character played by Shabana Azmi marriage to a husband who ill-treats her breaks down, the saga of marital discord may contain hints of the collapse of Asha Bhonsale8217;s first marriage.

More telling is the chronicle of sisterly love souring as Mansi fiercely guards her numero uno status against Bansi8217;s inexorable advance as a singing star in her own right. Flashpoints occur not only in their professional association with top music directors 8211; both Indranil and Hemant, the music directors in the film played by Amar Talwar and Zakir Hussain, seem to be modelled on O P Nayyar and R D Burman. But one particular incident causes the final rupture between the sisters. This is when Bansi is requested by officials to sing a patriotic song and Mansi steals the assignment from under her sister8217;s nose through subterfuge.

Film industry insiders have long speculated whether Lata Mangeshkar could have come to sing her famous nationalist number Ai Mere Watan Ke Logo in similar circumstances.

Curiously enough some of the inspiration behind Saaz was inadvertently sparked off by the Mangeshkar family. It was Shabana Azmi who first spotted a magazine article by Asha Bhonsale8217;s daughter Varsha.

8220;It was a very frank and moving piece about her relationship with her mother Asha, with her unmarried aunt Lata and also her deep affection for her mother8217;s companion and husband R D Burman. As a woman and member of the film industry I have often wondered what it must be like for a woman in a male-dominated industry to keep the top jobs in playback singing. I took the idea to Sai and begged her to consider it.8221;

Given her long association with Marathi threatre Sai Paranjpye was game but she strongly resists the notion that parts of her film violate the privacy of the Mangeshkar family. 8220;My film is a fabrication and I make no other claim. I am not capitalising on anything sensational. Certain incidents or characters may be drawn from real life but such happenings and people are in the public domain and it is my creative prerogative to fictionalise them. So the argument for intrusion of privacy doesn8217;t hold.8221;

Amid rumours that Lata Mangeshkar may sue, Paranjpye insists that Saaz deviates widely from known facts about her or Asha Bhonsale8217;s life. 8220;My film shows the heroine losing her singing voice through trauma. No such thing, God forbid, happened to Ashaji. It shows the girls8217; mother dying in childbirth, certainly not true of the Mangeshkar family. It delves deep into a mother-daughter relationship for which, if anything, the inspiration came from my own life8230;.8221;. And so her defence of the film continues. But there are others who think that the saga of Saaz has just begun.