Ringside View & Scene Stealers
When the world stopped for screen!

All life, elsewhere, appeared to be on hold on the evening of January 23. Mumbai’s showbiz glitterati and the hoi polloi rubbed shoulders, setting aside other mundane preoccupations, even threats of sabotage by the underworld, to witness the SCREEN Videocon Awards nite at the Shahaji Raje Krida Sankul, Andheri. It was a spectacle they wouldn’t have missed for the world. And miss it, they didn’t. SCREEN presents glimpses and keepsakes from the event, as it unfolded...

The Seven Wonders of the World, elaborate replicas all painstakingly crafted by R Verman, formed the backdrop to the stage. As did the visages of the movie greats, smiling benignly on the goings-on. A befitting tribute, perhaps, to the millennium that was, our collective legacy, as we sit on the threshold of the new. Befitting, because, the sixth edition of the SCREEN-Videocon Awards was an effort to look back and ahead — back to a century of cinema, and ahead to the exciting cinematic vistas yet unseen.

And snippets of everything that’s added sugar and spice to our movies and our lives — music, dance, comedy, action and melodrama, livened up the proceedings on stage, between each much-awaited award. It’s what they’d yearned to see, and got. Relentlessly, all evening.

Pop sensation Rageshwari set the stage for the night’s events with her zingy, aptly-titled incantation to the Y2K bug. Pleased as punch, the bug stayed away all night, leaving the evening free of glitches and goof-ups. But not practical pranks, as it turned out. Host Cyrus Broacha had the stadium rise to its feet for a moment’s homage to cinematographer, Jehangir P Candlewallah who died that morning. Then had it in splits a whole minute later, announcing it was only a hoax — there never was a cinematographer by that name. “Only goes to show how easily the entire industry can be taken for a royal ride!,” he quipped, rubbing it in. Adding insult to injury.

Hostesses Lisa Ray, Namrata Baruah and Rajeshwari Sachdev introduced the people who made it all possible, the venerable showbiz veterans who comprised the members of the jury. Thereafter, the Marathi Awards gave way to nearly half an hour of Can Can, courtesy the Paris-based troupe, with its supple men and shapely lasses and their elaborately colourful gig, Birds of Paradise.

The Indo-Swedish Bombay Vikings took the stage, following the awards in the non-film music category. Predictably, they treated the audience to a session of pop-reggae, making rumbunctious love to Mona Lisa, with their explicitly suggestive lyrics and choreography.

The TV awards followed, setting the stage for the ‘happening’ Falguni Phatak, with a live demo of her chartbusting patakha routine.

Giving away some of the ‘technical’ awards was the chairman of the film jury, Manoj Kumar himself, the self-styled Panchayat Ka Sarpanch, with his trademark brand of humility and patriotism. He hailed the organisers on giving the members of his jury complete freedom to decide the winners, and never once interfering with their decisions. “The SCREEN-Videocon Awards are the closest we shall ever get to awards for the industry and by the industry,” he said, to a round of ready applause.

“Lights, Camera, Action!,” ordered Cyrus Broacha. And indeed, action it was that followed, setting the stage literally on fire, courtesy the fire-spouting King of Action, Akshay Kumar.

The sessions paying tribute to music, dance and action over, it was time for comedy. Comedy of the side-splitting, belly-aching kind from “mover and shaker” Suman, who treated the audience to his brand of Mumbai’s bhai bhai humour.

Mast girl Urmila Matondkar had the audience in gasps with her splendidly choreographed dances. As did Manish Malhotra, the man who graduated from designing costumes for Mumbai’s heroines to decking out international celebrities of the likes of Michael Jackson in designs of his creation.

And then, of course, there were the winners. And presenters. But more of them elsewhere.

SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE
The queen of melody, Lata Mangeshkar, accompanied by the Mangeshkar family including sister Meena and brother Hridayanath and his children Radha and Adinath, paid homage to the memory of their illustrious father, Dinanath Mangeshkar.

Offering a pooja, Lata who had turned up in an immaculate black and white silk saree, showered a few rose petals onto the stage.

She was at her soulful best, rendering a shloka that moved the audience to tears. The doyen of singing concluded her tribute, with a message of peace to millions of her fans.

LIFETIME IN A NUTSHELL
They walked on to the stage, hand in hand, titans Dilip Kumar, the Last Emperor and Naushad Ali, the veteran music composer who composed out some of Hindi cinema’s best loved tunes. For the 85-year old Naushad, it was his crowning glory, receiving the SCREEN-Videocon Award for Lifetime Achievement from Dilip Kumar.

The man who joined films as a pianist, and stayed on to work with the likes of General Film City, Ranjit Movietone and Banatwala’s Recording Company, before becoming a music director who bewitched us with his classic tunes in films like Mela, Darshan, Mother India, Mughal-e-Azam and Baiju Bawra deserved no less. But the composer himself was humility personified: “I’m grateful to God for making me what I am. And to the filmmakers who gave me opportunities to work,” he said.

Shaju George Alex