Pandurang Sitaram Talageri — A Tribute to My Pioneering Uncle

 

Pandurang Sitaram Talageri — A Tribute to My Pioneering Uncle

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

A few days ago, I wrote an article "Casteist Brahmin Supporters of the AIT on the Internet" in which I had occasion to refer to a distant uncle, Venkatarao Talageri, who won the National Award for Best Actor for the year 1971 for his character role in the Kannada film "Vamsha Vriksha". This suddenly made me conscious today that I am a writer of blogs which I am assuming can (theoretically at least) remain on the internet for posterity. And that while it is my duty to write on different topics (history, religion, politics, music, etc.) to disseminate information or to set the records straight, it is also my personal duty to my ancestors to see to it that I set the records straight in any case where I feel that an ancestor of mine has not been given his dues, regardless of how many people read it or even want to read about it.

So just for the record, I am writing on my eldest paternal uncle, Pandurang Sitaram Talageri, who was a pioneer in the Indian film industry. I was just going through a monumental work, "Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema" by Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen (British Film Institute, 1994; Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1998), and had noticed that it included entries on a very large number of people who played a role in the Indian Film Industry, when I thought of checking up whether it included the name of my uncle, who was an early pioneer in this industry. I found that it did not. So I decided it was my duty to write a note on his role in the early history of this industry.

 

Pandurang S. Talageri was an engineer by profession (like his father, i.e. my grandfather), but his real interests lay in the world of creative arts. From the very beginning of the full length feature film era inaugurated by Dadasaheb Phalke with his silent film, Raja Harishchandra, in 1913, he became associated with the Film Industry. In fact, his role as one of the early pioneers of the Silent Film Industry is recorded in many individual books written on the history of Indian Cinema such as Firoze Rangoonwala's books (Seventy-five Years of Indian Cinema and/or Indian Cinema Past and Present): unfortunately I could not locate the reference at the moment. However, his role is referred to by none other than the most celebrated star of Marathi literature, who was also a star of the Marathi Film Industry, P.L. Deshpande (popularly known as PuLa). In his book "Ek Śūnya Mī" (Mauj Prakashan, 2001), Deshpande refers on page 178 to the earliest pioneers of the silent film industry and names four of the earliest pioneers together (p.178): Dadasaheb Phalke, Dadasaheb Torane, Nanasaheb Sarpotdar and Pandurangrao Talageri.

While he worked with the other pioneers in the earlier days, his first full length silent feature film with himself as the sole director was Raktāçā Sūḍ in 1929, followed by Raktāçā Rājmukuṭ and Birth of Shivaji (both in 1930). After the era of talkies commenced in 1932, the first talkie solely directed by him was Marāṭhyācī Mulgī (1938) followed by Devayānī  (1940), both in Marathi.

Although he directed only three silent films and two Marathi talkies as the sole director (he was also associated with Hindi films, though I have not found the actual details of this work in Hindi: I am indebted for the above information on the Marathi films to the Compendium Volume Citrasampadā  published by the Government of Maharashtra and the Jāgatik Marāṭhī Pariṣad at the Nehru Center, Worli Mumbai, 14-20 August 1989,to celebrate 75 years of the Indian Film Industry), his close association with the Film Industry continued till his last days (1956, two years before I was born).

While his early pioneering contribution to (or at least role in) the Indian Film Industry is known to few, his reputation within our small community is established by the Konkani drama Citrāpur Vaibhav based on the dramatization of the story (first conceived by Annaji Surkund) of the establishment of the Chitrapur Math at Shirali (on the coast of Karnataka) in 1708 AD. This drama was written in 1949, and is regularly staged in our community on special occasions to this day. His other Konkani dramas which became very popular at the time (though they are not extant today) were Vachanmukta, Sa Varsaa Nantara, Pavitra Paapa, Pravaasaa Akheru,  (and a Marathi drama Naṭīçā Nakhrā).

 

His active association with films continued till the late forties at least. At the time, before Partition, Lahore was an important center of the Indian Film Industry, and, at the time the Partition of the country was announced, he was in Lahore in connection with some film activity. It was not certain till the last minute whether Lahore would be given to Pakistan, but when the possibility became almost a certainty, my father, Gangadhar S. Talageri, the Strong Man (body builder and sportsman) of the family, then only 21 years old, was immediately dispatched to Lahore to get his eldest brother back safely. As my father landed in chaos-struck Lahore and was on his way to the usual location of his brother in the city, he actually came across his brother on the way racing to the railway station along with a few other Hindu colleagues to escape the massacres which were already commencing in Lahore, and he received a sound firing from his elder brother for being so rash as to enter Lahore at a time when everyone was fleeing it. Fortunately, although they apparently witnessed many chilling sights and had a narrow escape or two, they managed to somehow reach back to Bombay in safety.

Unfortunately my uncle, PS Talageri, did not live long after this Great Escape. He contracted cancer a year or two later, and died in 1956 after many years of pain and suffering. Only Citrāpur Vaibhav remains as testimony to his memory as a great pioneering writer and film director.

 

[On this subject, my grandfather, Sitaram Keshav Talageri, was the honorary Architect-Engineer who supervised the entire construction of the Saraswat Cooperative Housing Society, Bombay, in 1915-16, the first CHS in the whole of Asia.

Another achievement of his, which was unknown to us, but was brought to my notice unexpectedly by two friends in our society (Sanjay and Rajesh Upponi) who discovered it on the internet, is that he was the architect who signed the agreement (with the Bombay Parsi Panchayat) on behalf of the Bombay Municipal Corporation in 1919 for the lease and development of the plot on Malabar Hill in South Mumbai  which is today one of the important tourist attractions in Mumbai, known as the "Hanging Gardens", or the Phirozeshah Mehta and the Kamla Nehru Udyans.

My father (1926-2002) was extremely proud of his father and his eldest brother, and I know he would have been happy to read this article].