The Last Days Of Dadasaheb Phalke, The Father Of Indian Cinema

What would you call a man like Dhundiram Govind Phalke in these days when you have to be very practical and think about your own future..? What would you say about Dhundiram who could have grown into a very great engineer, a great painter, a great lover of music and an all-rounder who could have followed any profession and become one of the richest men of his times..? It is very difficult to answer these questions because Dhundiram was a mad man who was obsessed by films once he saw the Hollywood film “Life Of Christ”. He made up his mind to put all his collective talents together and be the first Indian to make a film hundred years ago. He spent his own money and travelled to England to know more about filmmaking and came back with only one ambition- to make his own film.

It was while he was getting ready to start his film that he realized that more than all the talent, it was lots of money that had to go into the making of a film. He sold of all his precious possessions, gave away his insurance policy, gave away all the property he had in Nashik where he was born and finally even mortgaged all his wife’s jewellery, he left nothing for himself for the present or the future because he was only interested in making his first film called “Raja Harishchandra”, inspired by the “The Life Of Christ”. He found it easy to find a hero, but it was very difficult to find a woman to play Harishchandra’s wife. He finally settled for a male actor called Salunkhe to play the heroine of his film. He worked day and night even putting his health at risk and finally succeeded in making his dream film. The release of “Raja Harishchandra” woke up the entire world of film making which couldn’t believe that an Indian could make an entirely Indian film. Dhundiram Govind Phalke was the most talked about Indian and was soon known as the “Father of Indian Cinema” and later even called Dadasaheb Phalke with all the respect

Soon other men were inspired by his experiment and there were many who took to making films as a profession. Dhundiram created some kind of a world record when he made more than hundred films in less than twenty years. All his films were silent films but they were successful in telling stories in the most interesting way. Dhundiram also embellished all his films with backdrops which the audience found miraculous

Dhundiram was a rich man now. He had an entire area marked out for his own studio. The studio had everything that was essential for the making of films. He also kept importing the latest equipment and all kinds of cameras from abroad. He built a complete studio which had homes for himself and all his artists, technicians and even the most ordinary workers. He had the best of cars, he had a stable of horses and he made sure that he had a number of playgrounds and gyms because he believed in having very healthy bodies and minds to work with him. He believed that it was only a strong body and a sound mind that could come up with the best work. He led his entire team of hundreds of workers by his own example. He was the unquestioned “Raja” of Indian Cinema.

Destiny, however did not favor him for more than the two decades he ruled. The arrival of talkie with Ardeshir Irani’s “Alam Ara” added to his problems as people preferred to watch the wonders of the talkie films which had some of the most flowery and bombastic language spoken by the leading actors and even the characters in them. As bad luck would have it, Dhundiram’s films which were treated with respect once were now being rejected by the same people who called him “The Father Of Indian Cinema”. The times were so cruel to him that he soon lost his entire empire and was forced to land in Bombay to look for any kind of work in all the big studios that had come up after they knew the magic of cinema created by him. He went around from studio to studio and from office to office looking for some kind of work to keep himself alive, but no one was willing to even recognize the man who they called “The Father Of Indian Cinema”. He was once seen outside The Gateway of India where the Industry which was his creation was celebrating its silver jubilee year. The only well known name to recognize “The Father” was Prithviraj Kapoor who was shocked to see him in a disheveled state and rushed to lead him to the stage. “The Father” of Indian cinema who was starving and on the streets did not know how to react and was trembling with both excitement and insecurity. The only sentence he spoke was “Meri Shakuntala (he meant the film industry) ko sambhaal kar rakhna” and then vanished into the crowd and was not seen again among the celebrities.

He continued to struggle to find work which never came. He finally reached a young director who was a very famous name then, Kidar Sharma who couldn’t believe that the man before him was “The Father”. But he too had no work to offer him. He however had a suggestion. Those days there was a studio owner called Chandulal Shah who it is said ran a factory of films and had made so much money that he did not mind losing a crore of rupees in just one visit to the race course. Kidar Sharma asked “The Father” to go and see him. The doyen with silver hair and a matching frame for his spectacles was kind enough to offer him a job to assist the painter who was doing all the hoardings for Ranjit Films (Chandulal Shah’s Studio). It is not known whether he took up the job but he fell seriously sick and was found dead on the road outside Ranjit Studio and was given the kind of farewell which even beggars are spared the indignity of. Not one man or women from the industry was present at the funeral of “The Father Of Indian Cinema”

It took the Government of India twenty years after his death to recognize his contribution to Indian Cinema and it instituted the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for contribution made by an individual to the industry. It also issued a postal stamp much after some others who came to the industry after he was dead. We now have the Phalke Award every year and there are celebrities from different states who try their best to win the award because it is considered the highest award for an Indian film maker. There is the Dadasaheb Chtiranagri in his birth place Nashik, there is another Chitranagri in Mumbai (Film City) named after him and there are organizations and institutions which have created his birth anniversary and death anniversary into events which are packed with all kinds of entertainment and speeches made by people who hardly know anything about him or his importance to the industry, the humble man who founded the industry and was grounded without any respect while he was still around. They now even make films about him like the film, “Harishchandrachi Factory” and there will be many more ways of praising “The Father of Indian Cinema”, especially in this centenary year of the industry which is being celebrated to coincide with the time when he made the first Indian film because of which we have the largest filmmaking country in the world today.

PHALKE AND YASH

Yash Chopra who had won several awards not only in India but from different parts of the world and had books and theses worked on his films considered the Dadasaheb Phalke Award as his most prestigious award. It was the first time that the Government had increased the prize money from Rupees one lakh to two lakh. The money did not mean anything to a movie moghul like Yashji. I met him on the morning after he received his award and he was sitting in his office in his usual style when he used to be lost in some serious thought, with both his hands covering his face. I asked him what was troubling him. He looked up and said, “Arre yaar Ali, mujhe tu hi koi sahi raasta dikhaade. They have given me these two lakhs of rupees and I don’t know what to do with this money. I want to donate it to someone very needy. Can you suggest some name??” A day before I had read a story about Dadasaheb’s daughter Mrs. Vrinda Pusalkar who was living in some shanty in Mahim and was dying of cancer. I recommended her name to Yashji and he was relaxed. He asked me if I could get someone from the family to come to his office the next morning and asked me to be present. I went all over the place where Dadasaheb’s daughter lived and saw her plight. She was being looked after by her daughter and son-in-law. I asked the young man to come to Yashji’s office at eleven the next morning. The very nervous man who said he worked as a clerk could not imagine why a big man like Yash Chopra would be interested in seeing him. He was utterly shocked when Yash had transferred the cheque he had received in the name of Dadasaheb’s daughter. The young man touched Yashji’s feet but Yashji pulled his feet back and said, “Please don’t touch my feet. If you have to, then go and garland the statue of Dadasaheb Phalke at the road in Dadar which is named after him”. Yashji had given meaning to the award in Dadasaheb’s name which no other winner has ever thought of even though they have been playing around with unaccounted money.

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