'There are diamonds in the dust of Mumbai's underbelly'

mumbai: madhur bhandarkar is getting used to the wages of mistaken celebrity. director of the powerful, just-released chandni bar, starring tabu, he says, "people come up to ask tabu for autographs. then, if i'm standing beside her, they ask me for my autograph as well. nobody recognises me, no, so if i'm wearing dark glasses, they think i'm the hero," he grins.there's a down-to-earth, `marathi manus' quality about bhandarkar. no blond streaks in the hair--at least not yet. but already, his attention span works in fidgety bursts between answering calls on his mobile. he banters in a disarming minglish, "arre, tabu has no hang-ups only. we were always joking and talking bhankas on the sets. arre, when i saw this man only, i said `lock kar do isko' (when finalising the casting for the film). haila, you got the wrong mobile number?" for all that, chandni bar packs a mean punch. not in the way ram gopal varma's satya did (bhandarkar once assisted him). but it is a most convincing paean to mumbai's beer bar dancers--and the dignity and fighting spirit of women who are exploited __ that is rare in mainstream hindi cinema. tabu is simply fabulous as the beer bar dancer mumtaz. and its dialogue, by mohan azaad and masud mirza, crackles with the white-hot embers of mumbai's underbelly patois. but what will be the fate of a film that breaks four commandments of the mainstream box-office in one fell swoop? it has no hero. it persistently puts down men as total el creepos. it holds out no hope at the end. it has no new songs. phew! but bhandarkar is cool, "i played it safe with my first film trishakti, with action, comedy and songs. but now i wanted to show reality as it is. ultimately men are like that. people may think it is downmarket, but when they see it, they will choke. it is very emotional, disturbing and will change their perspective." so, does he expect his film to recover its cost from the tapori crowd and hope for an overflow from the feminists and intellectuals? "no, i think the indian audience is mature enough for a woman-oriented film across classes." in fact, he is convinced it will work even without new songs. his horrified friends had warned him, "bewakoof! do-char gaane dal do. audio kya bikega?" fortunately for him, he says, when he told his producer, r. mohan of shlok films, that he did not want songs in his film as they would hamper the tempo, he stood by him. it all started when bhandarkar first visited the dasi `ladies' beer bar' in andheri east. "i was fascinated by the ambience, the smoke, the lighting, the jarring music, the women dancing and whispering into the customers' ears. after visiting two to three bars, i decided to make a film on these women. my friends said, `pagal ho kya? aur kuch nahin mila?' but i'd made up my mind. and i did more research in other bars and libraries." he has a good eye for casting. "tabu was wonderful," he says. "she surrenders completely to the director's vision. as for atul kulkarni, i had not even seen his theatre work. the moment i saw him in hey ram!, i immediately knew i had found my (gangster) potya sawant." for bhandarkar, the biggest revelation about the bar girls was that "they were so different on the dance floor and in the make-up room behind. they are very emotional, religious, great hindi film buffs and they pull each other's legs a lot. they are people like us, with the same ethics and feelings. many of the bar girls were in tears at a special screening i had for them. one of them said, `we know now that we should never be weak, but independent like mumtaz'. some of them objected to the scene where a bar girl is ordered to go to (service) the police, saying it didn't happen in her bar." bhandarkar's film is courageous in showing not only how men lay women low, but also sodomy between teenagers in a juvenile delinquent's home, conveying its brutality without being crass. "the audience is maturing. it is willing to accept films like satya, sarfarosh and lagaan," he reflects. "but we need more producers and stars to make it easier to sell different kinds of films. i'm hopeful, and am already working on my next film, an undertrial drama." lagaan broke all the rules and the box-office. here's hoping chandni bar raises the bar.