Most B-Town celebrities have performed a mujra with elan and directors have depended hugely on the red light area scripts to make an impression on the Box Office. It comes as no surprise that debutant director Viswas Patil, too, wanted to stick to the formula and come out with a film on kothawalis. Rajjo is about what happens to kothawalis after marriage. Sangeeta Yadav tells you more
What is life like in a kothaIJ How do the mujrawalis get into this professionIJ Is there a love story blossoming somewhere in the midstIJ There is a lot of mystery around the kotha culture because of which popular filmmakers like K Asif (Mughal-e-Azam), Kamal Amrohi (Pakeezah), Muzaffar Ali (Umrao Jaan) and Sanjay leela Bhansali (Devdas), have showcased kothawalis. Now, the grapevine has it that Sanjay leela Bhansali is also planning to make his ambitious project on Heera Mandi, the infamous redlight area in lahore famous for its dancers and musicians. Rani Mukherji will be playing the lead role.
Viswas Patil’s debut direction, meanwhile, is also about a love affair in a kotha. “Rajjo is about a 17-year-old Brahmin boy Chandu from the outskirts of Mumbai who visits a kotha with his seniors to celebrate a cricket match victory. There, he meets a danseuse, 24-year-old Rajjo, and they fall in love. She leaves the kotha with him and becomes a housewife. The film revolves around the life of the couple. What happens to them post marriage,” Patil says.
Although kothawalis are dancers but they come with a lot of taint. “Dancing at kothas is embedded in our tradition. Most times, these dancers are sole earning members for a family. But today, they are all moving away. This form of dancing needs to be preserved,” Patil states.
The movie, which is an adaptation of Jayant Pawar’s Marathi play, also has some real life anecdotes from Patil’s personal experience.
“I was an election officer for 10 years and had visited many kothas to enroll the dancers into the poll list. I came across people and incidents which inspired me to write about them. There was a sugarcane seller in front of the kotha who used to send a glass of sugarcane juice to a mujrawali along with a small poem everyday. These poems were fascinating and very well written. I was quite impressed,” he recalls.
Be it Meena Kumari dancing to chalte chalte, inhi logon ne and Thare rahiyo in Pakeezah, Madhubala’s Pyar kiya to darna kya in Mughal-e-Azam, Rekha’s In aankhon ki masti ke and Dil cheez kya hai in Umrao Jaan (1981), Madhuri Dixit’s Maar dala mujra in Devdas, or Rani Mukherji’s Main vari vari in Mangal Pandey to the more contemporary mujra in Rajjo by Kangana Ranaut, B-twon has a long tradition of its top actresses playing kothawalis.
However, Patil faced a lot of difficulties in finalising the lead actress of Rajjo. He feels Kangana Ranaut has done a tremendous job. “Kangana is a great dancer. I went to a lot of top actresses in Bollywood but they all refused due to date issues. Some were not convinced about the script. But Kanagana was immediately excited,” Patil recalls.
Paras Arora (as Chandu), better known for his performance in Veer Shivaji on Colors, says that acting opposite Kangana was a learning experience. “I was very nervous. I had to hold Kangana’s neck and push her back in anger. I told her before the shoot that if I accidentally hurt her in the scene, she should forgive me. She asked me to take it easy. There was another scene where I had to slap her. I had to swing my hand but not touch her face but I hit her,” Arora recalls. He also learnr to play the harmonium for this film.
As a writer, Patil feels that Marathi literature has finally arrived. He is pained by the fact that most writers are shifting base to scriptwriting instead of writing books. “It’s a challenge to get good writers these days as many have moved to the more lucrative TV serials,” Patil concludes.