Documentary on Pancham

An ode to Pancham
Chaitanya Padukone
Tuesday, January 01, 2008 23:59 IST

A documentary tribute to the legendary RD Burman is now ready for release

MUMBAI: Very few know that the legendary Bollywood composer Rahul Dev Burman became the ‘butt of a bet’ involving his fan Rita Patel whom he met in Darjeeling. When they were back in Mumbai, Pancham asked her out to watch a movie. She did turn up, but vanished mid-way through the screening. Apparently Rita had laid a ‘bet’ with her friends that she’d be able to go out with the suave Rahul for a ‘movie-date’. Rita, by the way, went on to become RDB’s first wife.

On Pancham’s death anniversary (January 4) documentary filmmaker Brahmanand Singh is ready with a tribute titled ‘Pancham Unmixed — Mujhe Chalte Jaana Hai’. Over three dozen Bollywood celebrities have revealed their personal memories about RD in this two-hour bio-pic.

“Amusing, startling yet heart-warming anecdotes make it a must watch for every true RD fan,” says Singh. Beginning with Asha Bhosle, the film has nostalgic anecdotes recounted by, among others, Gulzar, Shammi Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor, Pyarelal,Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Vishal Bharadwaj, Usha Uthup, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Louiz Banks, Kavita Krishnamurthy and Shailendra Singh.

“I had shot some 70 hours of footage which had to be trimmed to two hours running time. I hope to screen the movie locally and also showcase it at various foreign film-festivals,” enthuses Singh, who planned to showcase the film at KARA (Karachi film festival) which has been postponed indefinitely following the unrest in Pakistan.

A poignant portion is when Vidhu Vinod Chopra (whose musical milestone ‘1942-A Love Story’ was Panchamda’s swansong of sorts) speaks about the dark phase in Pancham’s career — apparently RDB had almost been written off by the music industry following a lean, luckless spell during the early 90’s.

As Javed Akhtar succinctly puts it, “Pancham is a real champ because he could strike a knock-out punch with his ‘1942..’ score, even after being down and out.”