Adventures of a Writer

    By Jaideep Sen Last evening as I  was watching Indian Idol, I realised it was  a Mothers ’  Special episode which was obviously a tearjerker . Considering how emotional it was I was  instinctively reminded that perhaps after Mother India,  the most memorable Mother written in contemporary Hindi cinema is Sumitra Devi of Deewar . The character of Sumitra Devi was created with   immense   e motional depth by Salim Saab and   his erstwhile partner, Javed Saab . Indian Idol's Mothers' Special Episode Another slightly lesser remembered but equally impactful character is Janki   in Naam.   P enned independently and  individually by Salim Saab with h is back to the wall when h e wrote his first solo script  after a forced four year break following his parting with Javed Saab . But you need to be made of a different mettle of resilience to hit the ball out of the park against all odds and that’s what Salim Saab did ...

By Jaideep Sen The minute I was reminded by my wife Anjali yesterday morning that today is GURU POORNIMA the thought to do an ode to my Ultimate Guru, Salim Khan Saab, popped in my head. I have been wanting to do this piece on the Doomed Characters, Vijay from Deewar perhaps Salim Saab-Javed Saab’s greatest script ever - I say perhaps because Sholay is my personal favorite even in terms of writing - and Vicky from Naam which is unarguably Salim Saab’s greatest script as a solo writer . Today, it found a fresh burst of oxygen. Through the lockdown I have watched both Deewar and Naam a few times and that lurking sense of losing both Vijay and Vicky forever looms large on the films especially through the second half like a predator shark which is on the fringe waiting to attack. It is this feeling which makes both films emotionally so palpable. Both the characters are scarred by life: Vijay by the extreme humiliation his father has gone through, the abject p...

By Jaideep Sen For a while I wasn’t being able to identify what to base my next piece of SALAAM SALIM SAAB on till the Legend himself cleared my dilemma.   During a recent conversation he mentioned that when they had narrated the biggest game changer film in contemporary Indian Cinema, Zanjeer , to a renowned film director of that era, he had told Salim Saab that they had wasted two and a half hours of his precious time.  Now that was a statement that grabbed my immediate attention for two reasons. One, the audience has proved time and again that it is far sharper and smarter than filmmakers while it is difficult for good content to get made into films due to the lack of understanding of filmmakers. Two, don’t get affected and shaken by   ‘rejection’.  When I brought this up with Salim Saab, the humble cinematic giant took the onus on himself for the initial rejections by saying that it was the nature of the story and not the lack of understanding ...