Omkara

By Vishal Bhardwaj

In what is Shakespeare's Othello transplanted to the badlands of uttar pradesh, Omkara(Ajay Devgan) is a bahubali, a sort of political enforcer for the local politician Tiwari Bhaisaab ( Naseeruddin Shah). Ishwar 'Langda' Tyagi (Saif Ali Khan) and Keshav 'Kesu Firangi' Upadhyay (Vivek Oberoi) are his closest lieutenants, whily Dolly (Kareena Kapoor) is his ladylone.

In this timeless tale of love, betrayal and jealousy, a jealous Langda betrays Omkara and sets off a chain of events that end in savage tragedy. The film has unforgettable performances from the cast and memorable music, including the all-time hit item number'Beedi jalai le', penned by the one and only Gulzar and set to music by Vishal Bhardwaj.

The cult classic now as a book.     

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jul 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9789350298107

Vishal Bhardwaj

Vishal Bhardwaj is an internationally aclaimed film director, writer, screenwriter, producer, music composer, and playback singer. He had directed a trilogy of films based on Shakespeare's plays; Maqbool(based on Macbeth), Omkara (based on Othello) and the forthcoming Haider (based on Hamlet). His other notable films as a director include Makdee, Kaminey and Matru ki Bijli ka Mandola.  

Book preview

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OMKARA

The Original Screenplay

(with English translation)

Vishal Bhardwaj

with Robin Bhatt and Abhishek Chaubey

HarperCollins.psd

preface

I grew up in Meerut, a small town in western Uttar Pradesh, and studied in a government college with students predominantly from the lower middle class. Western UP is the Wild West of India, divided by a deep caste conflict; hence its underworld is also nurtured by the politics of class and caste. Every political outfit must have strong muscle power, whose head is termed as ‘Bahubali’, which literally means the strong-armed. During those years I came across so many local gangsters – dangerous ones, wannabe ones, fake ones... It was a collage of some bizarre characters, which I accidently experienced by just being the student of a government high school. These colorful characters remained with me and I seriously thought their colour had to be shared through mainstream Hindi cinema. Unfortunately, mainstream Hindi cinema has always played safe in terms of its language, dialect or realism. It lives in a kind of

hypocrisy – claiming to reflect the inner being of the masses. Over the years we have made our own filmy language, in which people don’t talk as they do in reality but as they should in the reality of that artificial film world. This always bothered me as India has a variety of beautiful dialects, which change every 100 kilometres.

Abhishek Chaubey, fondly called just Chaubey, joined me in Makdee as an assistant director and slowly became an inseparable part of my creative life. Since we both are from UP, we used to discuss the possibility of a film placed in western UP. After Maqbool we were preparing for a film with a very big superstar of Bollywood but just a couple of months before the shoot, it was shelved due to massive creative differences between the star and me. Suddenly, there was a vacuum. I found myself angry and frustrated. I had been dying to go behind the camera for a year and suddenly there was no scope of that happening for another year. I wanted to write something very soon and start shooting. Chaubey reminded me of the subjects we used to discuss in our free time and over drinks. Subjects such as Othello and the western-UP Wild Western. I decided to combine the two, a cocktail of Othello and the UP Wild Western. I knew this could be a faster process since Shakespeare’s work provided me a clean beginning-middle-end structure. Chaubey and Robin Da (Bhatt) were my cowriters on the shelved film with the ‘big star’. Robin Da, who is very close to Ajay Devgan, brought me the offer to narrate the idea of Othello to Ajay. I did and within days three of us were in UP to research and update my memories of childhood gangsters. To our surprise things had become even more colorful and bizarre. We had such a great insightful meeting with a ganglord inside Meerut prison. He ran the armed wing of the then opposition political party, hence the prison was the safest place to cool down. Much beyond the meeting hours he narrated to us fairytales of his encounters and escapades in an evolved and sometimes spiritual manner. While leaving he offered me, from his private library inside the cell, Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s poetic translation of Othello. Ironically, exactly one year after we met him, he was shot dead inside the court premises in Meerut under full police security. The assailants, like in films, also managed to give the police the slip easily in broad daylight.

After a week of research we landed in Mussoorie to work out the screenplay. We had vowed to go back with the first draft as Ajay had free dates after two months. We were staying in a hotel called JP and I still remember our long days of fights inside the living room of my suite no 333 followed by an evening walk around Chaar Dukaan in Landour and then innumerable whiskies back at the hotel bar. Believe it or not we were ready to go back to Mumbai to narrate the first draft to Ajay in just seventeen days. It was a miracle.

Everyone loved the screenplay and especially the language in which the characters interacted. Ajay made Kumar ji (Kumar Mangat), his business manager, the producer of the film, who in turn with his magic wand assembled the multi-star cast for the film in just a couple of weeks. Everything was happening on its own, as if it was all pre-destined. I made all the songs while travelling endlessly to look for locations in UP, singing them over the phone to Gulzar saab in Mumbai, writing the lyrics in a moving car or at noisy airports, at the back of the boarding pass as he dictated them back on the phone. The film was released within six months from the day we started the shoot and ten months since the idea occurred to us. It was an unbelievable experience; the credit goes to our producer Kumar Mangat, who provided me my best film-making experience so far.

While writing the dialogues I was trying to be absolutely real about the way people talk in reality in that area. Which brought in a lot of colorful language. I was so apprehensive and scared for Gulzar Saab to read the script as it carried a lot of profanities. A few days after I gave him the script, he called back to give me the biggest compliment I can ever get for my dialogues and which I haven’t dared to share with anyone as yet. He said ‘Ab mujhe qalam tod deni chahiye.’ (The time has come for me to retire my pen.)

9 September 2014 Vishal Bhardwaj

Mumbai

1 Ext. Arid countryside – Day

Fade in:

A dusty road stretching till the horizon in an arid landscape. There is a breeze in the late afternoon air and dust floats just above the ground, creating a kind of a blurry mirage. We hear a man’s voice on the soundtrack.

V/O

बेवकूफ़ और चूतिए में धागे भर का फरक होता हैगा भैया... धागे के इंगे बेवकूफ़ और उंगे चूतिया... और जो धागा हींच लो... तो कौने बेवकूफ़ और कौने चूतिया... करोर रूपए का प्रसन है भैया...

There’s a thin line separating a moron from a fucking idiot… on one end of the line lies the moron and on the other, the fucking idiot… snap the line and you don’t know who’s who… therein lies the million dollar question, my pretty polly.

Two men squatting on a small hillock. One of them – LANGDA (so-called because of his gait, owing to a congenital defect) Tyagi – wears a pair of tattered jeans and covers his torso with a shawl, while the other – RAJJU Tiwari – is dressed in a groom’s outfit; right from the golden mojris to the golden prince suit, almost camouflaged in the surroundings. His face is covered with the flowers of the ‘sehra’ he wears on his head and he holds a sword in his hand.

A bus is parked by a tea stall down on the road. A banner hung on the decorated bus reads ‘Rajan weds Dolly’. A group of baraatis strolls around the tea stall having tea and biscuits en-route to the wedding.

Langda removes the flowers covering Rajju’s face.

LANGDA

देखें तो सही कि दूल्हे राज्जा के है... ऐं खैं... तू तो बेवकूफ़ हैगा...Let us to see who the pretty groom is…?

I’ll be damned… is it not Mr Moron himself?

RAJJU

(smiling)

अजी हाँ...

Ya ya…

LANGDA

और के चूतिया तो आदमी साद्दी के बाद होवे है... और तेरी तो साद्दी

होणी नी...

Of course you are!… You ain’t a fucking idiot till you’ve said your vows and by the look of things, you’ll have to wait a bit longer…

RAJJU

अजी हाँ...

Ya ya…

LANGDA

हाँ...! नी होणी... तेरी दुल्हण को वो अध्धा बाम्मण ठा के

ले जा रिया है...

Yup…! There’s been a change in plans… The half-caste’s abducting your bride even as we chat…

RAJJU snubs him.

RAJJU

ओमी भैया...! अजी हाँ...!

Omi brother? Ya ya…!

LANGDA smiles and puts a hand on RAJJU’s shoulder.

LANGDA

याड़ी याड़ी बैलगाड़ी! तू मेरा यार है इसीलिए कह रिया हूँ...

‘Hail Friendship!’ …As a friend, this