Lost & Found- How India’s First Gay Film Badnam Basti Was Traced After 49 Years Of Mysterious Disappearance
Dumped in an archive in Berlin, resurrected in the name of filmmaker Raj Kapoor
I had first read about Badnam Basti in 2008, in the book Same-Sex Love in India.
Published in 2000, the exacting editors of the book Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai combed through poems, books, letters, and biographies in fifteen languages to compile a definitive compendium of the history of same-sex love and desire across the Indian subcontinent.
About the film, they wrote through its main source: Kamleshwar’s Hindi novel Ek Sadak Sattavan Galiyan.
“Badnam Basti created a furore merely because it depicts a truck driver and part-time bandit keeping a young man. The relationship is wholly subsidiary to the heterosexual involvements of both men in the underworld they inhabit, and is visible in the novel mainly in the young man derided by others as effeminate and a hijra.”
The furore was short lived.
At that time I wondered why the furore died down so soon. How come I had never heard of this film? I had so far prided myself in knowing a fair bit about Hindi films. Even the obscure arty ones coming out of the purple haze and blue smoke of FTII playgrounds.
In 2016, working at Scroll.in, the film editor Nandini Ramnath said to think of unusual films to write about. I suggested Badnam Basti (1971). She had not heard of it. I mentioned the source and she got cracking, providing me with names and numbers of the film’s crew to meet and interview.
I emailed Ruth Vanita for more information, but she said that was all she knew too. She had not seen the film.
Furore.
I then read Kamleshwar’s novel in English translation A Street With 57 Lanes (rapidly) and in Hindi (slowly).
Over two weeks, I was able to meet Hari Om Kapoor, the son of Prem Kapoor who directed Badnam Basti. Hari Om was employed in an office in Andheri West. He had a file of paper clippings about the film but little information about its making.
Where can I see the film, I asked. He had no clue where it was. He had no negatives. He said the disappearance of the film from his house remains an unsolved mystery. He also had a penchant for wearing over-sized hats.
I thought meeting him would make him unearth some forgotten rusty iron trunk under a bed and pull out a dusty round box of film. Classic film cliché.
If that had happened, then it would have been a rather short article. The film’s producer NFDC and the archive vault NFAI had said they had not heard of the film. Hari Om was my only hope to extend furore.
Next I met a director’s assistant whose name I am forgetting. The man was sprawled on an old-style gaddi in a house in the suburbs, yelling at his wife to fetch tea. I asked him to connect me to Nandita Thakur, who plays the role of Bansari, a nautanki dancer in the film. He told me she was hospitalised with an ailment. It was not a good time.
The film’s cinematographer R Manindra Rao, an FTII alumnus, met me in a coffee shop and described the shooting process in great detail. He had high regard for Prem Kapoor’s intellect but the same respect could not be granted to his filmmaking skills. Rao said they fought a lot because Kapoor did not have a background in film. Rao decided to go rogue and shoot as it pleased him. Rao’s cheery disposition was an advantage I could misuse for random interruptions as I filled his cup of coffee with excess sugar.
Lokendra Sharma (brother of television anchor Rajat Sharma) said he was a production assistant on the film set. I met Sharma in his Lokhandwala apartment. He said he was a young lad who had joined the crew in Mainpuri, UP, to gain film experience. He ratified Rao’s claim about Kapoor’s inexperience. He also drank his tea as if in spiritual limber.
The film’s lead Nitin Sethi had died in 1985. Second lead Amar Kakkad met me in his apartment and was happy to discuss his role in the film. He acted in only two films, the second being the 1982 film Lubna (not about Lubna Adams) in which he is the hero’s (Kanwaljit Singh) friend. Furore (for sidekicks getting sidelined). Tea arrived on a tray with biscuits. Yum.
So far so good, but meeting them had made me curious to see the film (and stave off tea).
I wrote the article and submitted it to the editor for corrections. She said all the information needed was there but the framing was off. So she swiped her magic wand and it came out all the more better.
The article was published in Scroll in February 2016.
Hari Om Kapoor was not pleased with the article. He said it belittled his father. I had not included the not-so-polite words of some of the crew members. Only one that called Prem Kapoor a vegetarian — meaning a prude who later went on to make his only other non-veg film called Kaam Shastra, perhaps to shed the tag.
I had written extensively without seeing a single frame of the film! This was going to be the end of the story of the resurrection of Badnam Basti.
Furore! Furore! Furore! (Sounds like something Nazis would say, hailing a despot)
Who knew that the furore was hibernating in Germany? Uh oh!
Three more years of gumnaami passed.
In November 2019, Simran Bhalla, a PhD student in film studies at Northwestern University, US, and a graduate fellow at the Block Museum, emailed me saying that she had found the film.
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?
Followed by a calm furore or a shoulder massage.
A 35mm negative print that was nowhere to be found was in an archive in Berlin.
She said she had read the Scroll article and that’s when the museum started checking with archives world over and located it. They stumbled on Badnam Basti in a listing of Raj Kapoor’s films in the Arsenal archive website.
I immediately wrote to the director of the National Film Archive of India and said please get it from the Arse…nal. Kind of funny that a film about queer love is stuck in an arse.
Führer…I mean furore!
Suspense shadowed for a few months when Simran did not write back to update about the 35mm print. Was it damaged?
On May 5, 2020, she wrote back saying the film was in poor condition but the kind people at the Arsenal archive digitised it for online streaming.
The Block Museum had wanted to show the film in their venue but the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown made all lives, and free shows impossible.
So they decided to stream it on Vimeo on May 8.
I had to register on an event site and was awarded a password.
Simran told me to check IST for the screening.
I wound up my body clock to the alarm of Oscar morning. I was up at 5am to watch it, to sync with American CDT.
With groggy eyes and full enthusiasm, Badnam Basti was finally seen.
Lockdown had trained my senses to keep celebration low key. I did not jump on Twitter. The film was ho-hum. Don’t read me wrong. It was as expected. Now I had the task of making sense of it. Like fellow citizens getting brain-freeze tasks.
Little furies.
I wrote furiously, not with anger, at speed. The first draft was ready in the evening. I emailed it to a newspaper editor to consider running it in the daily. The editor asked for time and replied in two days that the team did not approve it. Another editor from the same team said they will get back. Two weeks passed. I texted and emailed. No replies.
I consulted a few friends in the media and sent it to other editors. Lockdown also meant uncommissioned work was no longer welcome. After a few rejections, Firstpost picked it and the furore continues.
What do I think about the film?
It has an excellent soundtrack. Listen to this track Sajna Kaahe Nahi Aaye. Singer Ghulam Mustafa Khan sang it, written by Virendra Mishra, and composed by Vijay Raghava Rao.
It sounds a bit like Ajhun Na Aaye Baalma Saawan Beeta Jaaye and Aaja Sanwariya Tohe Garwa Laga Doon
Exquisite!
Another haunting melody Taaron Ka Mela Bhara Hai Gagan Mein was sung by Satish Bhutani.
Incidentally, Rao also did the music for artist MF Husain’s 1967 short film Through The Eyes of a Painter. It has an striking influence on Badnam Basti ‘s intro sequence bursting with similar drums beats and frenetic camerawork.
Of course I am digressing a little, but if you have come this far, please persevere with a tiny bit of furore…
But what about the film, right? Is it any good? For those of you who are dying to see it.
It may not be perfect but it is pioneering for trying. The biggest crisis facing the crew even while making the movie must have been how to present the subject without offending anyone, In that, it triumphs, with some gorgeous visuals.
But more importantly, Prem Kapoor was trying to circumvent around the minefield of the censor board and get past it with the film’s queer content. There was no point-of-reference for such a theme. Previously, gay characters were either shown as desexualised eunuchs guarding a king’s harem, clapping in festive ceremonies, or as leading men who crossdressed and behaved effeminately to mimic the affectations of a woman vying for a man’s attention. Queerness was played up for laughs.
What Kapoor was trying to do was to portray queer men without them wearing their sexuality on their sleeves. Laundebaazi, or the practise of an older man taking a young lad under his wings is a common social register in North India without recrimination from society. This form of pederasty, so clearly expressed in the novel, dimmed in film translation because of his indecisiveness on how much to show and how much to hold.
Cinematographer Rao said the debutant director was so shy on the film set that he could not instruct Nandita to wink at Nitin in a nautanki dance sequence. Explicit romantic scenes between the men were a danger zone they could not trespass.
Why is Badnam Basti an important addition in the annals?
I didn’t say anus, but The Times of India review was a pain in the arse. It called Sarnam’s character a “sexual deviant,” thus implying that homosexuality was considered an abnormality and mirrored the mood of the country. This is debatable.
Laundebaazi was treated with utmost sensitivity in the book and in the film. It did not invite such an extreme reaction. What the newspaper did was indulge in yellow journalism to stir a furore that may have never taken place at all.
The queer characters were not tormented by their sexuality, they did not seek validation from parents and society, they were not tortured, they did not die for it and far from a happy ending, the film left it open to multiple interpretations. Homosexuality was not shown as a criminal activity or a disease. It was tender, passionate, romantic. Had it been seen more, it would have been praised for the positive representation of queer people.
In 1971, the year of its release, the incumbent (or incompetent) Congress government was too busy furoring with Pakistan over the liberation of East Pakistan. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was more invested in saving her throne after a rift in the party threatened to topple her prime-ministerial dictatorship. Haathi Mere Saathi, a film about an elephant (maybe a metaphor) was the top-grossing film.
There were far too many pressing issues than a small film with rank newcomers that could have caused a furore. I wish it had though.
The film deserves to be seen and ranked as a forerunner (albeit with a re-cut), because at least a bunch of newcomers were showing signs of progressiveness in their work.
How did Badnam Basti nestle in a lair for so long?
Badnam Basti was sent to the Mannheim Film Festival in West Germany in 1972, where it found a safe repository to hibernate.
A negative of the film was recently deposited at the National Film Archive of India, but the content is yet to be ascertained.
This is good news and bad news. You will have to wait for a film festival to pick it from the archive and screen it or you will have to work at NFAI or Arsenal and steal it like a blue-blooded cinephile.
The furore must dance now, till eternity.
