A commemorative book has been brought out to accompany the remastered classic film, Umrao Jaan, released last week. In this extract, Chef Suvir Saran talks about the film’s aching impression in his life
‘Umrao Jaan isn’t just a film — it is an inheritance, a whisper across decades’
I was nine when Umrao Jaan found me — or perhaps, when I found myself in Umrao Jaan.
Yeh kya jagah hai, doston (What place is this, dear friends)
Those haunting words — set to Khayyam’s aching composition, delivered in Asha Bhosle’s eternal voice, and filmed by Muzaffar Ali with shadows and stillness as much as with actors and sets — formed more than a song. They were a message. A whisper through time.
I was a young gay boy with no vocabulary for myself. No label. No path. No mirror. The world around me had no space for someone like me. But Umrao Jaan opened a portal. In Rekha’s eyes, I saw defiance in grace. In the character of Umrao, I saw a woman broken by fate and stitched back together by art, beauty, poetry and dignity. And, in her, I found the first version of myself that felt whole.
From Silence to Song
As a student of Indian classical music, the film didn’t just affect me visually — it rewired how I heard sound.
Asha Bhosle didn’t just sing for Umrao Jaan — she bled into every note. Every breath, every pause, every glance from Rekha was mirrored by the music. It wasn’t playback singing. It was prayer. It was ibadat. She showed me what it meant to become one with your music.
And those words — by Shahryar — cut through the fog I lived in. They gave me language. They gave my confusion a shape, my grief a rhythm, and my hope a melody. Every song in that film is a phase of my life. ‘Dil Cheez Kya Hai’ reminded me of my self-worth. ‘Justuju Jiski Thi’ helped me mourn silent losses. And ‘Yeh Kya Jagah Hai Doston’ — that was my prayer for survival.
I’m grateful that new generations will see what we saw, says Suvir Saran
Rekha: A Mirror Made of Fire
Rekha didn’t act as Umrao Jaan.
She was Umrao Jaan.
Every flicker of her eyes carried generations of silenced women, unseen artists, misunderstood souls. She moved like a poem. Her pain was elegant, her elegance was defiant.
As a broken boy with no compass, Rekha became my true north. She showed me how to survive ruin in style. How to wrap despair in dignity. She made devastation desirable — not because it was romantic, but because it was real. She wore her wounds like jewellery. And I wanted to be like her — whole, even in pieces.
‘What Muzaffar Ali did with Umrao Jaan was revolutionary in the quietest, most refined way possible’. All pics courtesy Mapin Publishing
Muzaffar Ali: The Gaze That Saw Us All
What Muzaffar Ali did with Umrao Jaan was revolutionary in the quietest, most refined way possible. He made a film that dripped in beauty, yes — but also in truth.
He didn’t portray the tawaif as a fallen woman. He gave her wajood — essence. Identity. Dignity. He saw her as an artist, an intellectual, a philosopher of love and longing. He filmed her with the same reverence one reserves for temples. And he gave that reverence to all of us who watched and felt invisible.
He saw me, at age nine, in the shadows of a room somewhere in Delhi. He gave me a story that told me I was not alone. That sadness could be made majestic.
The Film That Grew with Me
Over the years, I watched Umrao Jaan again and again.
I’ve made every partner I’ve ever had — fleeting or lifelong — sit through it with me. Not just because I love it, but because if they wanted to love me, they had to understand Umrao Jaan. It wasn’t a movie — it was my instruction manual. My blueprint. My cathedral. My escape hatch. My elegy.
Each viewing meant something different: As a teenager, it was rebellion. In my twenties, it was healing. In my forties, it is meditation. And not a single year of my life has passed without me watching it. That’s how deep the roots go.
‘In Rekha’s eyes, I saw defiance in grace’
An Emotion, Not Just a Film
Umrao Jaan didn’t just entertain me. It raised me. It held me when I had no one. It lit a candle in a very dark hallway and whispered, “walk — there is something at the end.”
It gave me a feeling of anchor, tutelage, mentorship. A sense of lineage. A belief that I came from a tradition — not by blood, but by spirit.
It pulled me back from the edge — from suicide to survival, from hopelessness to audacity. It made me dream. It made me believe.
The Legacy We Live Inside
Now, with its re-release, I’m grateful that new generations will see what we saw. That the dialogue, the visuals, the ghazals, and the performance of Rekha, the devotion of Asha, and the genius of Muzaffar sahab will live forever — for someone, somewhere, who needs it just as desperately as I did.
Because Umrao Jaan isn’t just a film — it is an inheritance, a whisper across decades. A reminder that the broken can still be beautiful. That longing can be light. That poetry saves lives. And that cinema, when it is truthfully made, can do what nothing else can — it can make us whole.
Excerpted from “What Umrao Jaan Meant to Me” by Suvir Saran in Muzaffar Ali’s Umrao Jaan edited by Meera Ali and Sathya Saran, published by Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad, in association with SK Jain & Sons and Kotwara Studios Pvt Ltd.
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