Capote vis-à-vis Rang De Basanti

There seems to be a striking similarity between the reel life story of Capote, the Academy Award winner movie, and the real life story behind Rang De Basanti, a movie which hardly needs introduction to Indians. Let me tell you what.

In case you haven’t seen Capote, you’d need a brief introduction to the story. It’s about a writer, Truman Capote, who goes on writing a novel “In Cold Blood” based on a pointless murder of a family in a tiny nowhere town in Kansas. To gather material for his seminal book, he pretends to establish a deep relationship with the young criminal and befriends him. Slowly he sheds all personal ethics, and manipulates his subject to squeeze the story out of him. As soon as he gets the story, he dumps the murderer and leaves him helpless till the day he is hanged. Well, then we see Capote celebrating the success of his novel in the lofty circles of New York, committing a parallel crime in the eyes of many.

Well, let’s come to Rang De Basanti now, a film which has added new hues of patriotism in the hoi-polloi of India. As everybody knows, its story is about a few young hedonist people who take revenge of the accidental murder of their pilot friend. They kill the defence minister who is accused of purchasing substandard parts of fighter planes, which later on lead to the death of the promising pilot. The plot of this movie is partly inspired from the life of Abhijit Gadgil, an Indian Air Force (IAF) pilot who died in a MiG aircraft on September 17, 2001.

That’s the point when Capote happens to Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra,the director of RDB. He approached Kavita Gadgil, the mother of the pilot, for the story and promised many things before he squeezed the story out of her. Many people had met Kavita to make films on the story, but she agreed only to Mehra because of some of his ‘genuine’ intentions. She was hoping that she could probably organise a charity show for her trust "Abhijit Safety Foundation Trust", and Mehra promised the free screening of the movie for this purpose. But as soon as the movie was out, not only her name was conveniently erased from the credits, Mehra also failed to mention her contribution and help. She was not only kept totally unaware of the making of the movie, but tickets for the preview also were not sent to her. (Please go through a story titled “Brave Heart”, based on her interview, published in Society, March 2006.)

Just look around piercingly, and you’d find Capotes and Mehras are not that small in number. Sometimes you’d feel these ivory tower intellectuals, known for finer sensibilities and greater thinking, just behave like hardcore businessmen when it comes to their profession. Worse part is that they also get the title of social engineers-cum-revolutionaries after raking in millions.

Shouldn’t we be more careful about choosing whom we applause? Maybe people with genuine intentions are more deserving than those with artistic expressions. In this case, I’m sure Kavita Gadgil should deserve the credit first.