Remember an incident in the 1980s when the news on Doordarshan was deferred by a few minutes so that a film that was telecast was over?
Or do you know that the song 'Sham-e-gham ki kasam' from "Footpath" was put together from slices of different recordings by composer Khayyam, when such practices were frowned upon in the early 1950s?
These and several other titbits related to Hindi films find mention in a new book titled "40 Retakes: Bollywood Classics You May Have Missed" by Avijit Ghosh.
According to the author, the book, published by Tranquebar, is an attempt to revisit a "bunch of special films that either did not get their due or have been largely forgotten".
While working on the book, Ghosh stumbled upon some interesting sidelights like "Majboor" has shots inserted from (not inspired by) Charles Bronson's film "Cold Sweat" and Mahesh Bhatt was dead drunk when he first saw Shernaz Patel, the heroine of his film "Janam" in a video.
Recalling the Doordarshan incident involving his film, director Bhatt says, "For the first time in popular memory the news was delayed by 14 minutes till the film was over."
"Janam", a 16-mm telefilm shot on a shoestring budget with Kumar Gaurav and debutante Shernaz Patel in the lead, was just an hour and 45 minutes long, but the "advertisements in between stretched it past the sacrosanct newshour in the pre-satellite era. Then the unthinkable happened: rather than stop the movie, the news was deferred".
But "Janam" didn't just create a furore; it also made an impact. The story of an 'illegitimate' son trying to be acknowledged by his father had something raw and real.
"I was going through it. It was the unfolding of my life. I wrote it as I lived it," says Bhatt.
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