Javed Siddiqi
JAVED SIDDIQI
Hindi cinema has undergone a sea change in the last twenty-five years with the pressure of market forces playing a decisive role in the choice of subject of an average Hindi film. This pressure from financiers and star system is enough to suffocate the content of a film. The technical advancements has also very often resulted in ignoring the soul of a film. In this scenario of Hindi cinema the writer has been casualty. Javed Siddiqi has been an exception by sailing in these turbulent waters with remarkable success.
After having graduated in Urdu Leiterature from Rampur, Javed Siddiqi migrated to Bombay in 1959, working as professional journalist for various Urdu dailies like ‘Khilafat Daily’, ‘Inquilaab’ etc and soon went on to start his own newspaper ‘Urdu reporter’. Post emergency of 1975, Javed Siddiqi took a plunge into film writing. Starting of with Satyajit ray’s ‘Shatranj ke khiladi’ he has contributed to films that will form an integral part of modern Indian cinema- commercial or alternative.
Javed siddiqi is a writer of all seasons, fitting perfectly into films of differing subjects and temperaments, right from Satyajit ray’s Shatranj ke khiladi to Yash chopra’s Darr or Aditya chopra’s Dilwaale dulhaniya le jaayenge or Subhash ghai’s Taal or Pardes.
From Chakra and Umrao Jaan to Baazigar, Fiza or Zubeida. Javed’s contribution has been varied and remarkable. The facility with which Javed Siddiqi steps out of one form and enters another shows a solidity of understanding of human emotions and a confidence in the idiom of the form of Hindi cinema. His forte lies in his ability to deliver in the widest possible spectrum of Hindi films with success as his filmography would reveal. The language of his writing has a deceptively simple everyday feel, woven around situations and characters of great complexity or a routine mainstream masala theme. Colloquial and crisp, his dialogues has always been noteworthy for being pithy, witty and power packed.
He finds an escape in theatre from this commissioned film writing. His plays reveal a different persona. Tumhari Amrita, Saalgirah, Hamesha, and Begum Jaan are products of his reaction to the kind of films he is made to write for a living.
He has since established himself as a writer of repute and one with a difference. Today he has more than 70 films to his credit.
His major hits are ‘Shatranj ke Khiladi’, ‘Chakra’, ‘Umrao Jaan’, ‘Baaghi’, ‘Baazigar’, ‘Darr’, ‘Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge’, ‘Raja Hindustani’, ‘Pardes’, ‘Soldier’, ‘Jab Pyar Kisi se Hota Hai’, ‘Taal’, ‘Fiza’, ‘Zubeida’ etc. He has also won many awards for his films including Filmfare Award twice for Baazigar and Dilwale Dulhniya Le Jaayenge, the Screen Award for Raja Hindustani and Baazigar, the B.F.J.A. Award for Umrao Jaan and Andhra pradesh journalist association award for Fiza, and the most prestigious Awadh Samman for his contribution towards in Films and Plays.
But it was in theatre that Javed Siddiqi found his real mettle, those were the heady days of Bombay theatre when IPTA was very much at the helm of aesthetic and cultural tastes and Javed Siddiqi, since the 70’s could not but get swayed with the movement. From serving IPTA as the National Vice President he also contributed in the origin and functioning of the Marathi IPTA as well. He is still associated with it as a national member.
It was this background as well as his interaction with the greatest names of Indian theatre that set the stage for Javed Siddiqi’s lasting contribution. ‘Tumhari Amrita’ has set the trend of modernism on stage in India, and was taken note of internationally. It was the first Indian play to be invited to perform at the United Nations.
‘Saalgirha’ a play dealing with the complexity of divorce in modern urban life has run to full houses all over. It is an aesthetic effort of high quality that renounces itself from its immediate topicality and gains certain universality.
Javed Siddiqi has based ‘Andhe Choohe’ on Agatha Christie’s ‘Mousetrap’, one of the world’s longest running play. Perhaps Javed Siddiqi’s resilience is in the fact that he defies easy aesthetic categorization. He has successfully ventured in various domains from Bertolt Brecht to more contemporary themes in his adaptations. He has adapted Bertolt Brecht’s play ‘Puntilla’ and his ‘Man Matti’ as ‘P.K. Seth ne Peeke Bola’, Yevgeny Shwarts ‘Dragon’ as ‘Rakshus’ and Lorcas ‘Blood Wedding’ as ‘Lal Mitti’.
His original works comprise of plays like ‘Dhuaan’, ‘Kate hue Raaste’, ‘Patjhad se Zara Pehle’, ‘Shyam Rang’, ‘Who Ladki’, ‘Begum Jaan’, Mogra, ‘Aap ki Sonia’, ‘Maati Kahe Kumhar Se’, ‘Peele Patton ka Ban’ etc.
He has also written many scripts for serials like Shyam Benegal’s ‘Bharat Ek Khoj’, Ramesh Sippy’s ‘Kismet’, Yash Chopra’s ‘Waqt’, Eagle films ‘Mamaji’, M.S. Sathyu’s ‘Antim Raja’ , Jalal Agha’s ‘Mr Ya Mrs’ etc.
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