“Wait till you see K K’s lights”!
That was my introduction to K K Mahajan, at 27, with two National Awards, already a ‘star’ cinematographer, with his characteristic long hair and aquiline features. As a research student in Sociology at Bombay University, I met K K with much trepidation, at a screen test for Kumar Shahani’s Maya Darpan, way back in 1971.Screen test over, the film was shot the following year.
And life was never the same again.
I was plunged into a blazing world of lights…..with, what appeared to me, intriguing, exciting names like sun-guns, photo-floods, baby lights, mini brutes, 10K.; for a twenty something researcher to be literally sprung out from a hitherto cocoon-like existence, those were heady times, which, looking back, almost in flash-back mode, I still remember so vividly.
The late 1960s and early 1970s saw the emergence of path-breaking feature films like Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome (1969), Basu Chatterji’s Sara Akash (1969), Mani Kaul’s Uski Roti (1970) and Kumar Shahani’s Maya Darpan (1972) . As diverse a body of work that these films were, the one common factor to all these classics was the brilliant cinematography by K K.
K K has truly been considered a forerunner of the many gifted technicians, film makers and actors that were to emerge from the Film & Television Institute of India, Pune. Exposure to the best in Indian and world cinema, and meeting with film-makers of international repute, proved to be a catalyst. To quote K K, “When I first saw Godard’s Breathless, I was struck by the extraordinary talent and unconventional photography of Raoul Coutard, the French cinematographer about whom it was said that he always worked on his own conditions“. The mid-sixties were exciting times for the young student of cinematography, with the New Wave Cinema in France having an impact elsewhere in the world.
And, soon, K K was to play a pivotal and integral role in a new era of Indian cinema, an era far removed from that of today. An era of young film makers, technicians, artists, just embarking on their careers, yet, united by a passion for striking out a new path towards what they perceived as a brave new cinema that came to be called the New Wave in Indian Cinema, in the annals of which, K K’ s name came to be etched for all time to come.
Over the next four decades, K K’s prolific virtuosity resulted in a body of work consisting of over 80 feature films, his four National Awards coming in very early in his career for his work on films by directors, Basu Chatterji (Sara Akash, 1969), Mani Kaul ( Uski Roti, 1970), Kumar Shahani ( Maya Darpan,1972) and Mrinal Sen (Chorus, 1974), as well as over 100 advertising shorts, about 20 significant documentaries, and several television serials, including the eponymous Buniyaad(dir. Ramesh Sippy,1984-’85 ).
More than any other cinematographer, he shot for many directors of acclaimed, off-beat, albeit low-budget films, under severe budgetary constraints and adverse shooting conditions, winning awards and critical acclaim. K K ‘s cinematographic oeuvre is impressive not only quantitatively but also in terms of its qualitative variations. As film maker Chandita Mukherjee put it, “Over three decades ago, he originated the way landscapes and faces are lit by the Indian sun on the screen even in our documentaries today”.
In the words of Kumar Shahani, a close friend from their Institute days, “One would not have dared very far without the exactness and co-operation of technicians like K K Mahajan. We would have remained within the confines of convention, of back-lighting and glamour, of middle tones or of soft tonalities. We have so far been too inhibited; working with technicians like K K and an assured discipline, we will begin to innovate on our own, if our concern is more with truth rather than misconceived ideas about beauty”.
Throughout his long fruitful career, spanning over four decades, he proved that he had no problems in adjusting to the so called gap between art and commercial films, between the rigours demanded in regional cinema and the grandeur of mainstream Hindi cinema,-straddling both worlds with consummate finesse – between his passion for ‘film’ and ’emulsion’ and his understanding and acceptance of the digital medium.
And as he worked with some of the reputed award winning directors of his time, with effortless ease, he made the seemingly smooth transition to the varying styles in the medium of film making. And while doing so, almost creating a kind of informal manual for young students, his credo being: “it’s the film that comes first and not cinematography; the story has to be told first; that’s why the film is being made; good cinematography will follow“.
And, always, the success and accolades that came so early in his career, sat lightly on his shoulders, and he would brush aside all notions of him being a ‘star’ cinematographer.
K K remembered his own beginnings as a young cinematographer in Bombay, as one of the early graduates of the FTII who began his career at a time when the film industry was unwilling to believe that training in cinema could be imparted, years of apprentice-ship being the traditional entry route, with, as he put it: “little or no encouragement from the seniors, and everything had to be learned on our own”. He became a one-man institute for those who worked with him and the great teacher that he was, rejoiced in the fact that over twenty five of those associated with him, went on to become cinematographers in their own independent capacity.
At the same time, this is what he himself had to say, ” the best thing about this profession is that I am learning every day. There is no end to learning … Nobody is the master of his craft. It changes every day and you have to learn…”
In his life and in his work, K K was anything but conventional, always willing to take risks, if the task at hand asked for it. Mrinal Sen who considered K K to be “a Master of Light and Sentinel of Darkness” had this to say of him: “He would never say no to anything. He would be ready with his hand-held camera under any situation. He was never afraid of making mistakes, and that was his confidence”. It was this confidence and willingness to take risks that changed the tide in Indian alternative cinema during the late ’60s and early ’70s.
Says Koushik Sen, who first interacted with the cinematographer as a child actor in Mrinal Sen’s Ek Din Pratidin (1979),”The documentation of Calcutta in the turbulent ’70s that we see in Mrinal-da’s films would not have been possible without Mahajan. The understanding between the two is similar to what we see between Godard and his cinematographer Raoul Coutard. Mahajan is alive in the memories of other Calcuttans. What incredible risks he would take, this man from Punjab, to jump with his camera from one parapet to another, at the platform of a crowded bus, in busy streets” !
“He would set his camera exposure by looking at the light on his forearm — didn’t need a light meter” says an impressed Nemai Ghosh. “He is the one who encouraged me to start colour photography”.
K K was truly a person with vision, with an unerring almost mystical sense of aesthetics. Quiet, intense, perceptive, almost laid-back, he was seldom inclined to hold forth on his cinematic achievements; he let his work speak for him.
One of K K ‘s last projects, fittingly enough, was the visualisation for a book on film editor Renu Saluja, a tribute to the genius of her craft, by GRAFTII, the alumni association of the FTII – ( Invisible: The Art of Renu Saluja, GRAFTII, 2006). I was part of the small motley group responsible for the book, and saw at close hand, his aesthetic sense at work.
And looking back over nearly thirty five years together with K K, I consider myself fortunate to have been part of that life, and to have had the opportunity to understand some of his vision.
I will always remember K K and his lights…..
Praba Mahajan
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The writer featured in Kumar Shahani’s Maya Darpan (1972),
where she met cinematographer K K Mahajan during the making of the film.
