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The passing of a dreamer

V S Srinivasan

Mukul Anand Click for bigger pic!

Sunday, September 7, 1997. A little over a year ago. That was when the heart of Mukul Anand, the flamboyant entrepreneur and director, gave up the unequal battle, and stopped working. Anand was just 46.

He was a genius who never quite find his rhythm, despite showing a promise that few others had. He made his mark in ad films first and then stepped into cinema, climbing up the ladder, directing first low budget films, then bigger ones, the last big one released being Trimurti.

The man had great dreams -- and the will to carry them out. And his passion for film-making was unquestionable. While he was shooting, he'd be totally engrossed in his work. But once off, he'd drink endlessly and bloat quickly back to his old proportions.

The intensity is quite natural -- he wasn't born with the silver spoon, and knew how easily it could be taken away.

When he entered the industry, his only claim to fame was that he was the nephew of dialogue-writer Inder Raj Anand. And that's hardly a qualification, considering the number of star children looking for an opening.

The odd thing was that every time he got a really big assignment, he flubbed it, the most famous being Sultanat and Trimurti. But even the other three big films he did, with Amitabh -- Hum, Khuda Gawah and Agneepath -- never achieved what they were expected to.

The man was at work on his dream project, Dus, when he died. One year ago.

Mukul had climbed the rungs of fame the hard way. Studying in a military school certainly armed him a toughness that prepared him for the worst life could hand out. And when it did, the attack was unsparing.

One of the things he liked in school was handicraft. Mukul was a sincere student and he became quite good at wood-carving. And that, it turned out, was a good thing.

"When I came out of school," he told me in an exclusive interview a few days before his death, "I realised I wanted to get into films. But there was no scope since my family was in a bad state and I couldn't become a struggler at that time. My father wasn't well and we needed the money. So I used to make and sell lampshades on Linking Road, Bandra.

A still from Hum. Click for bigger pic!

"I sold stuff for Rs 25 then to earn a living. It was a very bad phase, and I can never forget it. I was happy I could put to use some of the skills I'd developed to feed my family. That was something great for me. I was quite happy with myself; it gave me the strength to go on."

Incidentally, hardly anyone in the industry knew of this phase of his life till then. Despite his showmanship, he wasn't playing on the rags to riches theme. Flamboyant he was, yes, but the heart was never out there on his sleeve.

It was his day of rest too -- a Sunday. And that he spent only at home, with his wife Anita and children, Alishka and Mikhail.

"I named him Mikhail, since Mikhail Gorbachev was India's biggest friend around the time my son was born," said Mukul. "(When he was smaller), Mikhail used to have jumping sessions on my tummy for an hour or so. He had a lot of fun doing it then," Mukul told me.

It was a statement of friendship indeed, that I'd been invited, since he never called professional colleagues home on a Sunday unless they were also close personal friends.

Anita recollects those days. "He was at home for very short periods, but when he was there, he made sure that was spent totally with his family." He also spent his time washing his Pajero and other cars with no help from any servant. Then he'd go to the market and buy vegetables himself. In fact, behave like most other men on their day off do. Even otherwise, he lacked the filmi nature of the people he roamed with.

But he was sometimes considered an eccentric, prompting him, tongue-in-cheek, to name his outfit MAD.

The name was bestowed on him by his colleagues, though.

A still from Dus. Click for bigger pic!

"I was shooting for an ad films for Pepsi where we required 300 monks for a shot. But then there was some problem with the junior artistes association and the schedule was upset." Mukul decided to act. He rounded up 300 beggars in the area, gave them food and a hundred rupees each and had their heads shaved. And lo, he had his cast.

The scene was shot and aha, it had a great effect. Mukul Anand was nicknamed MAD by his colleagues. A little juvenile that, since MAD meant Mukul Anand Directs.

When he set about his last film, Dus, he was plagued with problems. People left, schedules were upset, and then the creator itself died. After some time of waffling about who could direct in his place, the film was shelved.

Due to his experience with wood and texture, Mukul was the first film-maker to introduce foliage in a big way into Hindi cinema. Some art directors were quite surprised, even miffed, at how much he knew about their job. And better than them too.

The only one who could possibly have improved on his work, possibly, was Ramesh Sippy, the man once picked to take his place in Dus. Ramesh worked on the script of Dus, made a few changes in the film -- Mukul had already changed the cast quite a bit as people like Shah Rukh Khan and Lisa Ray kept dropping out. But, finally, even Ramesh threw in the towel. Dus remained an unfulfilled dream.

"He worked a lot on the film. It was his second dream project, the first being his plan to start a school for talented technical crew and artistes in India," says Anita.

"I was appointed as the head of that wing that would look into it a few months before his death. But then, after him, I was not at all in a position to do anything. I have just managed to come to terms with now," she says, looking like she still hasn't. So now, Anita plans a retrospective of Mukul's films next month, on his birthday.

"I was also considering something else, but this seemed a better idea. We wanted to do something to remember him by last year itself, but then I was too shocked and could not do anything," she says.

Now that Dus is irrevocably shelved, a new film will be launched on Mukul's birthday, with David Dhawan directing the project for Neha-Mad Films. (Neha is owned by Nitin Manmohan, Mukul's good friend).

Yes, Mukul's dreams will go furthered, but, tragic indeed, that the dreamer himself is gone.

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