Yamini Koul

JAMMU, Dec. 6: Rekindling the creative hopes of a community forlorn in the annals of civilization is “Bub,” a film in Kashmiri language based on a real-life incident and dealing with a contemporary issue. Bub, which in Kashmiri means father, marks another milestone in that it is the first film after a long gap of thirty-eight years that a Kashmiri film was made in the country.

Apart from being first film in last about four decades, Bub is also a proud winner of the Nargis Dutt award for national integration of government of India.

Produced by National Film Development Corporation, an agency working under ministry of information and broadcasting, Government of India, the film has been directed by established filmmaker Jyoti Saroop, a Kashmiri himself. Saroop is a pass out of National School of Drama, besides he has also been associated with the prestigious project like Buniyaad, the post partition saga that enthralled the Indian TV viewers during the 80s.

The film is based upon the Wandhama killing that took place in Kashmir in the year 1999 in which among other victims, a boy lost his whole family including his parents and was left alone in the world. Taking cue from that incident, the film traces the quest of that boy to find a father figure for him.

It is a story written by Pamposh Bhatt, a president award-winning writer, that caught the fancy of the director and he set his mind on bringing this story alive on the celluloid screen.

The project was an experimental one and Saroop had to face tough time persuading NFDC, which was skeptical about the film being shot in the valley. It was after a long deliberation that NFDC gave the green signal to the project eventually in the year 2001.

Says its director, Jyoti Saroop, “When NFDC approved the story of Bub, I took my first steps towards the land of Kashmir for location-hunting, as I had resolved that I would shoot my film there only.”
But choosing location was just the beginning of the journey for him. After finalising the shooting locations, Saroop had to decide upon the cast for the film.

He had only one thing in his mind, he wanted actors who were Kashmiri speaking. But a more important criteria, he insists, was that they should be familiar with the Kashmiri culture as also the social milieu of the region. And it was easier said than done. For Saroop himself reveals, “The present heroine of the film, Meenakshi Kaul, is the eleventh actress to be chosen for the role as I had to keep changing ten girls for one reason or the other before her.”

And shooting film in the turbulent environs of the valley was another of the hurdles he had to cross, because not all of his crew and cast were ready to shoot there. In fact, the officials at NFDC also advised him against going to Kashmir for shooting Bub.

Nevertheless, he remained adamant on his stand and as a result of his single-minded determination that the film was completed without any major hitches. But it took another year to release the film in the country. And that was due to the reason that no distributor was ready to buy it. As Saroop informs, “Although I got distributors for Delhi, Punjab and other states, but for Jammu and Kashmir, I had to take things in my own hand and become the distributor for Bub.”

It was just one of the challenges that director Jyoti Saroop had to meet in order to accomplish his dream project. Another one was when he left his job as a senior director with Devgan Entertainment Company limited, run by film actors Ajay Devgan and Kajol.

Saroop shot for total of twenty-nine days at eleven different locations including Srinagar, Batote and Ramban with a cast of 56 and a crew of 110 members.

However, the director has been lucky that some of the established names in the industry have come to be associated with Bub. These are music director Bhajan Sopori, singers Vijay Malla, Kailash Mehra and Shamima Dev and Gul Akhtar. The lyric writer of the film is Bashir Aarif.

Besides, Bub also has veteran actors like K.K.Raina, Virendra Razdan and Raju Kher, besides Kuber Saroop, who plays the orphan in the film. For him however the task was most difficult, as he had to learn to speak Kashmiri within a span of two months.

The director, who is also the distributor of the film, has kept his fingers crossed and instead of being concerned about the financial prospects of the film, his only aim seems to be that the film should reach all the sections of the society. Saroop is very much confident that the film would play a very important role in raising the feeling of national integration, besides making the people sit up and take notice of the situation around them.

As for the Kashmiri dialogues, Saroop feels that this would draw more audience, as they would raise their curiosity.

Next in the trilogy of films that Saroop intends to make is “Abaya” that means veil. The film would be made in both Kashmiri and English and will be shot simultaneously.

Saroop, who stands a vindicated man today says, “I want all to come and see the film at least once. I am sure they won’t regret it.”

Bub, which has already made its presence at the Cannes film festival in France, was released here on December 6. And after Jammu, director Jyoti Saroop also plans to release the film in Udhampur, Kathua and later in Srinagar.

(Originally published in the Kashmir Times on December 7, 2002)

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