The Women Behind the Screen: Anubha Yadav discusses her book SCRIPTING BOLLYWOOD
‘The ground is shifting… It is symptomatic of a tension, a threat.’ Writer, academician, and filmmaker Anubha Yadav spoke about the process behind her book Scripting Bollywood: Candid Conversations with Women Who Write Hindi Cinema, feminism in the Hindi film industry, and much more.
Writer, academician, and filmmaker Anubha Yadav recently authored the book Scripting Bollywood: Candid Conversations with Women Who Write Hindi Cinema (Women Unlimited, January 2021), a series of conversations with fourteen women scriptwriters from Bollywood, ranging from Shama Zaidi, Sai Paranjpye, Kalpana Lajmi to the more contemporary like Shibani Bhatija, Urmi Juvekar and Juhi Chaturvedi. The collection is remarkable in its scope and study; these conversations reveal the challenges faced by scriptwriters, as well as offer a glimpse into their craft through a gendered lens. While doing so, Yadav also scripts an alternate history of Bollywood, one that is seen very much from the margins, and therefore, is simultaneously educative and revealing.
Yadav spoke about the process behind Scripting Bollywood, women scriptwriters in India, feminism in the Hindi film industry, and much more in a conversation with The Chakkar.
The Chakkar: What set you off on this journey to write Scripting Bollywood?
Yadav: Almost a decade back, I was working on a presentation for the University of Copenhagen on scriptwriter-director Honey Irani. Despite her contribution to Hindi cinema, I found that very little attention, scholarly or otherwise, had been paid to her work. So, I decided to go down to Mumbai to interview her. Initially the thought was to perhaps make a documentary film. But as I started interviewing other scriptwriters, I somehow thought putting the work in words would do more justice to it.
The Chakkar: How difficult was it for you to get access to archival material?
“As the industry changes, so does the working and practice. It would be important to trace those changes through women screenwriters working in different moments of the last 50 years or so.”
Yadav: I already knew that archives for screenwriting work are not even a concept, so I was looking for spectres, right from the start. I was hoping to stitch from there, make the whole dress. But what was more disappointing were moments like getting to know that all the files and writings of Ismat Chughtai were handed over to Javed Akhtar (who was working on a project on her), and now, they were not really traceable. When Ismat’s grandson Ashish Sawhney told me this, I had this sudden urge to go and search Akhtar’s study, hoping I will find the files.
At present, we urgently need to start archiving screenplays, screenplay drafts, screenplays draft notes, etc. Also, a method for this is needed. Some of the final produced film screenplays become the property of the production house—and now, we see, they are coming out as books. But were they changed for publishing? How was the sanctity of the written word as submitted as the final screenplay for production preserved? Was it? Sometimes, the screenplay is rewritten after the final film. We need to find ways to demarcate and mark all of this so that the screenwriter’s work can be used for research.
Screenwriters are very dismissive about all of this. Or perhaps they have their own struggles, and so, archiving their work is not something they have the mindspace for. Most artists—I have noticed—are not very mindful of it. I experienced it myself while trying to get drafts of screenplays from the screenwriters I interviewed for this book. It was only Sai Paranjpye who had her bound screenplays with her—and I am really worried about those yellowing and greying sheets I photocopied! They urgently needed preservation.
In most of U.K., U.S.A., and Europe, now, there is a culture, and a heightened awareness about preserving the works of screenwriters. The archives are much better funded too. We still need to get there. It is also a matter of culture and the point at which you are as a collective, as a country. We will get there eventually. But my worry is we will lose a lot of work by then.
The Chakkar: The term “Bollywood” is a much contested, sometimes disparaged term used to describe the Hindi film industry. What was your reason for using the word?
Yadav: Actually, in academic writing on film, ‘Bollywood’ has a definition and meaning as a moment in the production and industry ecology. So, it is not chosen lightly for use here. Most of the screenwriters chosen here are working in an industry and ‘scape’ post-70s, and it is around that time that we had started seeing a change in the kind of films the industry was making, how it was working and within it I wanted to situate the ‘woman screenwriter’. I was aware there are many cinemas in the book, and the reference is also to the industry these writers are situated in.
Shama Zaidi
The Chakkar: What were your reasons for focusing on women scriptwriters from this particular time frame, of the 1970s to present?
Yadav: I think it was a choice made due to the availability of voices, i.e., those still alive or available for interviews. Very practical, I dare say.
The Chakkar: How did you go about interviewing the chosen scriptwriters? Did you have a questionnaire, was it a freewheeling conversation? Did you have a set method, or did the method evolve out of the situation and the person you were speaking to?
Yadav: There was a lot of pre-interviews work that I did. I created detailed profiles for each person from past interviews and studied each of their films. I also studied whatever archive material was available in various languages. It took very long to prepare and thus the book took time. I didn’t only have questions, but a ‘file’ on each person. When Sai Parajpye saw it, she was quite alarmed as to the time all of it would take. And most often, the interviews took a lot of time, many hours, sometimes over two or three sittings. The interviews were planned in terms of preparation; but as my training is in documentary cinema, by instinct I was always ready to let the spontaneous moment of revelation happen. And they happened; it was a mix of both—so, a type of controlled freedom.
The Chakkar: Was there any particular reason for choosing to focus on the scriptwriters that you do? Anybody in particular you would have liked to include and wasn’t able to?
Yadav: I wanted to mark every decade and moment. As the industry changes, so does the working and practice. It would be important to trace those changes through women screenwriters working in different moments of the last 50 years or so. I also wanted to cover the various production practices, set-ups or movements that came—parallel cinema, independent cinema, and commercial mainstream cinema. Apart from that, women who were part of the industry, because they were connected to the industry through family and other networks, as well as the struggle of those who came from other, backgrounds. The “outsiders.” Women who had an education in cinema, or went to a film school, sometimes have different journeys than women screenwriters who don’t, or can’t. I mean, there was no film school teaching screenwriting in India till the early part of this century. Even FTII only had a course in direction, which had screenwriting as a component.
“There is a double invisibilising of women screenwriters: First because they are screenwriters, and of course, because they are women. You know the sexist saying, ‘Screenwriters are the women of the film industry.’ So figure what that makes of those who are women!”
It was only in 2003-2004 that we had the first batch of screenwriters come out. Basically, I wanted to trace the intersections of all of this and more. And I wanted a body of work to be there. I really wanted to talk to a few more names working today, like Farah Khan (as she is also mentioned in contested ways in the book, there is some anxiety around her work in women screenwriters) and to name a few more, Zoya Akhtar, Reema Kagti and also Aparna Sen. But for some reason we kept missing each other, and finally the book had to go to press.
The Chakkar: Do you agree that those like Shama Zaidi, belonging to an older generation, were keener to assert their identity as a professional, as opposed to a gendered identity?
Yadav: I found this tension very fascinating. It is there all through till the early 90s. Something changes after that. I think it is connected to the women’s movement changing, it is connected to the public discourse on who and how a ‘feminist’ is. And as the industry had more numbers of women, women started feeling a comfort with their ‘gendered identity’ also. Men take their gender to the job also, and that does not make them less of a professional.
Often, this positioning is also a silence, because you feel you need to position yourself in a certain ‘professional’ way to be taken as seriously as the men in the industry. It is a complicated contested negotiation which is changing in every decade. Even now, as I do this interview, I see this tension between the professional identity and the gendered identity; but now, it accompanies assertion, it accompanies that both of these can sit together, it accompanies a polyphonic voice. It accompanies a resistance. Or perhaps positioning yourself as a professional was also just that: a strategy, a resistance.
The nature of the resistance is different now but it is surely there. Now, two male screenwriters/interviewers have asked me to work on a book with men. I find that anxiety in them really interesting. It means, something has changed and is changing. The ground is shifting. But it is also symptomatic of a tension, a threat. I find that fascinating. A little ground being given and the hackles are rising. And why not? There is a lot at stake, isn't it?
The Chakkar: Amongst the pioneers, like Begum Para and Protima Dasgupta—one a star and the other a producer-director-writer—you note almost a sense of sisterhood at work. Do you think that spirit continues with women in Bollywood in contemporary times?
Yadav: There are attempts being made. There is surely an awareness as to the need for it. We have informal networks of heteronormative men still far ahead, and it makes complete sense as to why that is so. Women are hardly encouraged to prioritise a ‘together’, which is outside the structure of families. If it is, it is more in the zone of friendships, but even these friendships I see often don't go further than weekends spent together, long deep conversations, and other casual encounters. Not that that is not important, but I think it is time we start questioning the boundaries of this. I often see these friendships too are constantly being tested against the backdrop of family life; and often, even for feminist women, ‘family life’ wins. It is a tricky place. I think it is a matter of years of learning to be outdone.
Almost all marginalised sections, including women, are finding the value of it in arts, and are working towards it. We have a WhatsApp group of women cinematographers and it is a body which is providing a lot of support, care, job opportunities and other conversations to women in cinematography. It is a group started by the first underwater cinematographer of India, Priya Seth, and it is doing some really ground-breaking work as a collective.
We also have the Women in Cinema Collective (abbreviated as WCC), an organisation for women working in the Malayalam cinema industry. It was formed after an actress working in the Malayalam film industry was waylaid and harassed. The organisation aims at the welfare of women in Malayalam cinema. It is a registered society in Kerala.
The Chakkar: Almost all the scriptwriters suggest that filmmaking is essentially collaborative in nature, and yet many convey a sense of being shortchanged. What have you learned in your experiences?
Yadav: Filmmaking is collaborative for everyone present in the process of film production. But when we see the history of film production across various cultures, we see a pattern of invisibilisation of the ‘screenwriter’—something largely connected to the ‘director’ being seen as the ‘auteur.’ The director being eulogised. And within this, then, we had the grand myth of male director.
It is only after the 70s that we have also started interrogating this myth and started tracing the work of female directors. But then, it also needs the tracing of the work of women screenwriters, choreographers, make-up artists, sound recordists, cinematographers … Like I have said before, there is a double invisibilising of women screenwriters: First because they are screenwriters, and of course, because they are women. You know the sexist saying, ‘Screenwriters are the women of the film industry.’ So figure what that makes of those who are women!
“The differences come from their class, education and caste experience. It is surely easier, if you are coming to work in the industry with a solid network of being from the film family. Access is a huge de-leveler.”
The Chakkar: Did you get the sense that women scriptwriters are especially susceptible to plagiarism/credit-theft issues? Or is it that they find redressal more difficult?
Yadav: Yes, power has a lot to do with it, especially if you are starting out. So, if two screenwriters are starting out, and are at the same place in terms of their experience and other contexts, I would say it is less likely that a male screenwriter’s script would be plagiarised than a woman’s, simply because men just have more networks which tend to protect their work in various ways, and the woman practitioner is certainly more vulnerable. They are both operating in a patriarchal ecosystem. Men bring their privilege to the job.
The Chakkar: What kind of similarities, as well as differences, did you find in the journey of all the scriptwriters this book focuses on?
Yadav: There is surely a gendered experience as to the similarities. The differences come from their various backgrounds, personalities and serendipity of life. Art and the artistic world are quite dependent on serendipity also. The right place, right time and right person to collaborate with can change your whole career path.
One can also trace similar patterns as to, pay-parity, genres offered to women, funding networks that see women with uncertainty and doubt as writers/directors of big budget films. The differences come from their class, education and caste experience. It is surely easier, if you are coming to work in the industry with a solid network of being from the film family. Access is a huge de-leveler. But then, no one will put crores on your script if you don’t deliver! On the other hand, no one will read your script till you have that access.
I mean, if you are called by a producer to narrate your script at their house (which doubles as an office—happens very often in the industry), a woman who is not from the industry will certainly think about ‘how to be safe’ as she utilises the opportunity, and a woman who comes from a prominent family of the industry will not have to think about that. But, if the latter is competing with a male screenwriter for an action genre, she does not have a fair chance, even if she is from a ‘film family’. It is a labyrinth of constant flux and systems that seem arbitrary, but work with a very set rigid unsaid and unwritten hierarchical norms and codes.
Juhi Chaturvedi
The Chakkar: There are debates about “feminine writing” in literature. Do you think it is present in scriptwriting as well? Do women script differently?
Yadav: Do women get different films offered in terms of genres and budgets? Yes. Do women have a certain overlaps as to their gendered experience of society, as being a woman since their childhood? Yes. Are all women the same? Absolutely not. Do they experience the world differently due to their various experiences and beings? Yes.
I think there is always an attempt to streamline their writing, but women’s writing is as different or similar in nature to any group/collective. It has overlaps and it certainly is very dependent on each screenwriter’s peculiarities and styles.
The Chakkar: The chosen women scriptwriters in the book seem to come from diverse backgrounds. The older generation, possibly, had direct or indirect ties with the film industry, and the more contemporary ones come from very regular families: like Bhavani Iyer, whose parents are academics; or Sabrina Dhawan who comes from a family of doctors. Yet, access to certain privileges—like an education abroad—seems to be a common to all. Do you feel, then, that Bollywood scriptwriting has been democratised in any way at all?
Yadav: There were always artists/screenwriters from outside the industry. The industry is an ‘ocean’, always assimilating new talent. I am not romanticising it. For everyone who makes it, thousands struggle and don’t. That is true. The struggle is real. But so is the struggle in finding a job outside after an MBA, and then becoming an insider after switching jobs over three decades. Earlier this was done mostly by men. Now, more women are doing that. Over generations the definition of insider and outsider keeps changing and shifting. When does an outsider become an insider? What is that moment? What defines it? Is there a quintessential outsider? Is that something to yearn for? Aren’t women always ‘outsiders’ in so many ways?
One must also add, if two films don't work at the box office, it can make a Bollywood insider somewhat of an outsider. Of course, that is a different ‘otherisation’, but what I mean is these processes have been part of the industry forever. Ageing women actors are othered differently than men. But age also ‘others’ [film] stars. It is equally sexist there, too. These processes take different shapes.
“Keeping a ‘woman’ screenwriter to write women characters is another tokenism that women are trying to deal with. I have yet to see a chick-lit romance hiring a male screenwriter to write men! Ultimately, what should count is that they are able to do their job well.”
Every generation of insiders have an insecurity around the new talent bursting in. It can’t be stopped. I would say, Anurag Kashyap is as much an insider today as anyone else. Sabrina Dhawan too is an insider. So is Juhi Chaturvedi. But the question is, is there an awareness in them to democratise the place in various ways? Are they paving the way for the place to become more gender-friendly, and encouraging new talented voices to get opportunities? I would say that is happening more today—but much more can be done.
I have always gotten a response from the screenwriters I approached for this book. Also, I send my work out as I am also a screenwriter myself. And over the years, all these directors have acknowledged my mails. They might take time. But they respond and engage if the work has something in it, which they are interested in. So, I think various factors are easing this insider/outsider binary—including technology. It also means more diverse stories, which is good for the growth of the industry.
The Chakkar: Does the medium change the writing process? Did you find that OTT shows are scripted differently than films? Has the advent of OTT platforms impacted scriptwriting in general?
Yadav: While a script needs 120 pages of writing, OTT usually needs 600 (one season) for hour-long episodes. It is much more writing, and thus, we see the evolution of a writer’s room. Suddenly, the writer has more assertion, as the writer’s room rarely changes over seasons. The director might change. The authorship has somewhat shifted to the writer here.
So, yes, some things are different. But at the same time, other issues do walk into this ecology too. We still see women-only writer’s room for romance, drama; and men-only writer's room for action, thriller. I mean, genre-based writer’s rooms are still there. Pay-parity is still not there even in the writers’ room. Keeping a ‘woman’ screenwriter to write women characters is another tokenism that women are trying to deal with. I have yet to see a chick-lit romance hiring a male screenwriter to write men! Ultimately, what should count is that they are able to do their job well.
The Chakkar: Finally, most scriptwriters who are part of this book put across their strong aversion towards what are often called “women-centric” films. So, what really makes women scriptwriters and their work different?
Yadav: I think women screenwriters do bring much of their varied experience of the world to the table. I think what they are resisting is how the industry has labelled them and then flattened their differences and choices by the label. If this label would not pigeonhole them and would allow them diverse writing style, I think they would feel differently about it. ‘Women-centric’, even now, often means smaller budgets, which thereby impacts the whole production of a film. It is still a challenge to find a male co-actor for a film which is ‘all women.’ However, this is changing—as it must.
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Shibani Phukan is a bibliophile who also teaches Women’s Writing and Feminist Theory at a Delhi University college. She is keenly interested in literature from the north-east and translation studies. You can find her on Instagram at: @fotonama007.
