Kalpana Lajmi lived her films

Lalit Mohan Joshi

Her films were as unconventional as was her life. As a filmmaker, Kalpana Lajmi portrayed women who defied social norms. She found a soulmate who was older than her father. For veteran filmmaker Shyam Benegal, she was a feminist filmmaker without claiming to be one.

Hailing from an illustrious family of the iconic Guru Dutt, she developed her filmmaking skills under her maternal uncle, Shyam Benegal. The cinema veteran, who has seen her grow, says, “She was barely four when I arrived in Bombay in 1958 as a struggler. I remember having carried her in my arms while we were in Colaba.”

Benegal asserts that in spite of her being an apprentice in his Charandas Chor (1975), and later an assistant director in seminal feminist films like Bhumika (1977) and Mandi (1983), Kalpana’s work shows no trace of his style. “She found her own niche in Ek Pal and Rudaali,” he says.

Kalpana’s growing up coincided with a period of churn in Indian cinema during the 1970s and 1980s. These years witnessed the rise of new cinema.

Set in the Northeast, her debut film Ek Pal (A Moment, 1986) was inspired by a Bengali story of Maitreyi Devi. Priyam (Shabana Azmi) married to Vaid (Naseeruddin Shah) has an affair with former boyfriend Jeet (Farooq Sheikh). She becomes pregnant but is determined to keep the baby. Ved eventually accepts his unfaithful wife and child. The thematic content was a coup at that point of time when popular cinema was so tabooed.

I met Kalpana, 22 years back in Mumbai, to record an interview for special radio features for BBC Hindi as well as World Service. She was brimming with confidence and positive energy. The success of Rudaali by that time had established her. I was taken by her charisma when she narrated the plot of Darmiyaan (1997), which was in the making.

Her cousin well-known costume designer Pia Benegal explains that even her prolonged illness had not seriously dented her vivacity till the end.

“Kalpana was an amazing raconteur, who brought any incident or story to life in front of your eyes. It was visual, you could sense it and taste it. A passionate person, who had a great sense of humour and enjoyed laughing at herself and her own foibles. She was a people’s person and loved to make friends. She filled the room with laughter and positivity.”

The success of Ek Pal was followed by Rudaali (1993) an adaptation of Mahasweta Devi’s story. Set in Rajasthan, the film unravelled in flashback the story of a slave woman Sanichari that proved a seminal role for Dimple Kapadia, winning her the National Award for Best Actress.

Filmmaker Vinta Nanda, who has been a close family friend, says though we all knew Kalpana was critical but the void left by her is huge and sad.

“We were all very hopeful that she would be able to make it to her book launch. The doctors had said she should be able to attend. However, the very next day they declined to give her permission to leave hospital, because her condition had worsened.”

Released by Shyam Benegal around two weeks before she died, Kalpana’s own love story, Bhupen Hazarika — As I Knew Him, is her last work that will live as long as her films.

“I was only 14 years old when Bhupenda visited our home with my uncle Atmaram, I was the one who opened the door… and it was love at first sight for me. I didn’t want to separate myself from Bhupenda after I met him then. I couldn’t. I started hiding from my mother and meeting Bhupenda on the sly. An affair started and I was unable to deal with life without this man, who I felt, had cast his spell on me. I wanted to drown in his music; I wanted to die in his arms.”

Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, who worked on her memoir, pays rich tributes. “The book is a candid portrait of a feisty, unconventional woman with a mind of her own and her tumultuous relationship with a multifaceted unpredictable genius, one that is as fascinating for the almost 30-year age difference between the two as it is for the fact that it played out in the open in an era where such relationships were frowned upon and hence largely clandestine affairs.”

Kalpana Lajmi lost her directorial spark after Darmiyaan (1997) but nevertheless remains a role model in a star struck Indian film industry where barring a few names like Aparna Sen, Aruna Raje, Tanuja Chandra or Zoya Akhtar, women filmmakers are still a microscopic, almost invisible, minority.

Kalpana Lajmi was more than a feminist filmmaker. She lived her films and was incredibly transparent about life. “Of the 85 years that he (Bhupen Hazarika) lived, he had spent 46 of his years with me. His family couldn’t accept my relationship with him, and wouldn’t forgive me either... I loved him dearly and I feel immersed in the stillness of his love, immoveable.” Despite her prolonged illness, her passing away at an early age of 64, has created a void among those who value her work.

— The writer is a London-based film historian and founder director of South Asian Cinema Foundation