OF CABBAGES AND KINGS | All About Film Festivals… And My ‘Lifetime Achievements’ | Farrukh Dhondy

“She doesn’t care if they’re apart

There’s so much else in life to do

Some new prospect of ‘me and you’ --

And yet the tugging at the heart?

These birds that in the twilight chirp

In tunes my mind can’t interpret

Yet they revive acute regret

Which nature’s beauties can’t usurp “

From Aur Ro Raha Bhori Ali, by Bachchoo

Last Sunday I attended the final gala day of the annual UK Asian Film Festival (UKAFF), known for twenty-two years as “Tongues on Fire”. I attended to watch a couple of films, the first one an imaginative tourist’s guide to Varanasi and its festivals, history, attractions and traditions and the second the Bengali film Shadowbox, starring Tilottama Shome.

Both films were followed by a question-and-answer session, with the presenter f the Varanasi film and its young first-time director and then with Ms Shome being on stage.

I wasn’t at the closing session of the festival just to see the films. I had been, very generously and totally unexpectedly, invited to attend the final night of the ten-day festival to collect an ”award”. A fortnight or so before the date, I’d received a communication from Pushpinder Chowdhry, the originator and spirit of the festival, to say that they were presenting me with a “Lifetime Achievement Award” for “contributions to literature, stage, films, TV, etc, of the British Asian community”.

What??? Wow??? Even Why??? A free award? Maybe a free drink? What’s not to like?

I offered my profound thanks, scribbled a note on the (must) calendar and had a quick shot of brandy to steady my nerves (That last is fiction, I didn’t!).

But as the days passed, I began to think of the award having a possibly blunt double-edge. Lifetime? Birth to…?

The first time, in my short and happy life, the idea that I was getting on was when, on alighting at Mumbai airport the taxi-drivers who mobbed me, all shouted “uncle, uncle, uncle!”

Decades before that, when I first returned to Bombay during my four-month holiday from British university, I had long black hair, a beard and was somewhat hippy-ishly dressed. I had carried two bottles of whisky from the duty-free and the officer at Customs asked if I was British. I said I was very much Indian, and he said something to the effect that I didn’t look it. He let both the bottles pass.

I stepped out and was assailed by the taxi-drivers all accosting me as “bavaji, bavaji, bavaji!” You can take the Parsi out of Bombay and dress him as a hippy, but the Bombay cabbies know one when they see one?

And then, gentle reader, the next time I paused to wonder whether I was really on the runway was when my literary agent called me to say that Westland -- Amazon’s publishers -- wanted me to write my autobiography.

Autobiography? Already?

Of course I did. It’s published in India and in the UK and it’s called… (I’ve told you before, no advertising!! --Ed. Thought I’d just slip it in yaar -- Peyt ki Pooja --fd).

That was then. And now a “lifetime” award?

What was reassuring was that just before I was on stage to receive the award, the festival had nominated Muzaffar Ali, the famous film-maker, for his lifetime award, and when he took the stage with his brushed-back thick black hair, he looked sparklingly young -- very different from my receding white hair-line, and so sort of reassuring, as it might mean that the award is not necessarily for those estimated to have done all they are capable of.

OK, so it’s not the Baftas, or an award at Cannes film festival or the Oscars, but I might point out that Salaam Bombay, a film by Mira Nair, written by Sooni Taraporevala, which I had commissioned when I worked for UK’s Channel 4 TV, did win a prestigious prize in Cannes and was nominated for an International Oscar, to which ceremony I accompanied Mira and Sooni.

And then there was the film Bandit Queen, directed by Shekhar Kapoor -- whose screenplay I wrote -- which also won a prize at Cannes and was nominated to go to the Oscars, but was, through the machinations of a gang of busy-body “activists” led by Arundhati Roy and Indira Jaising, withdrawn from the Oscar nomination when they induced a Delhi judge to order the nomination to be cancelled. A sordid story and certainly a disappointment for Shekhar -- but the film was ultimately supported wholeheartedly by Phoolan Devi, became a worldwide success and I suppose contributed to the calculation of “lifetime achievements”.

Now I notice my contemporaries taking regular medicines from plastic boxes with compartments marked with the days of the week. By the grace of Ahura Mazda – or of Darwin? -- I don’t yet need these, but will confess to deteriorated hearing, compelling me to use “hidden” hearing aids.

Even so, I’m more comfortable with films, Hindi or English, which have subtitles, though I can hear and follow most of the dialogue.

Enough of that! Let me, gentle reader, conclude by asserting that the implication, and/or anxiety, of nearing an end when presented with this generous award has been firmly pushed to the background.

Here I stand (!) with the prospect of three completed and to-be-published books, at least two finished screenplays to be put into production soon and…

Watch this space!