Memories are like films. Some fade away and some are revisited again and again. Like my interview with Shama Zaidi. Years later, I can still remember her voice pulsing across a long-distance telephone line. As full of character as her writing. Zaidi’s  body of work speaks for itself and she is one of the few authentic writing talents and creative visionaries Indian film industry has ever seen.

Her scripts smell of tactile sensuality, of searing loss, heart-break that you cannot bear,  a culture of refined self-expression,  of havelis and mansions and lanes and neighbourhoods stripped of their future. Her work is difficult to sum up in stock phrases. It all began with  MS Sathyu’s cult classic Garam Hawa which to this date remains the most devastating critique of Partition. Yet, said Zaidi about the near-perfect screenplay she penned, “I sort of moved into writing unintentionally.’’

When we spoke a few years ago, she still had vivid memories of Garam Hawa and the furor it created. “It was all so pointless,’’ recalled she, talking of the  bans and the mindless protests against the film’s pathos-filled description of Indian muslims in post Partition India. Poetic justice then, today the film is considered as an  unequalled milestone not just for Balraj Sahni’s heart-breaking performance but for Zaidi’s unsentimental and yet profoundly moving screenplay. Then began her association with Shyam Benegal. Not only did Zaidi did the art direction of  Benegal’s Nishant and  Bhumika, she wrote the dialogues of the moving Mammo, again about a displaced, partitioned soul and  Sardari Begum which delineated thumri singers, Trikal which was about a tumultuous phase in Goan history and Susman which depicted the struggles of traditional weavers. From Hari Bhari to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, she has been involved with almost all of Benegal’s projects in one capacity or another.  She also did the rollicking screenplay of Benegal’s hugely successful Mandi where prostitutes were for the first time portrayed as beings with humanity.

She also assisted Benegal in  direction during the making of Zubeida. She wrote the screenplay of Benegal’s Arohan as well and when I told her that it is rare for a woman writer to be so prolific in cinema, she retorted, tongue firmly in cheek, “Good writers of any gender  are rare!” I reminded her also that she has created an unparalleled genre in cinema and she said, “We never thought of it like that. We were just working then. Now ofcourse you realize that it really was a different time.’’ Possibly one of her memorable  works has been Muzaffar Ali’s seminal courtesan drama  Umrao Jaan for which she penned some really moving dialogues.
She said, “Yes I agree that you have to have a certain sensibility to be able to do justice to classic themes.’’ Satyajit Ray whose friend and admirer she was also approached her to do the dialogue of Shatranj Ke Khilari. She also designed the costumes for the film and says, “Ray, Adoor, Girish Karnad remain the really good story tellers in cinema. Recently, I liked Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara but  I don’t know if he will be able to sustain the work he is doing.’’ Considering her own work has always been socially conscious, does she feel, cinema should have something to say always? She reacted, “It is stupid to say that it should. If it happens naturally, good. How can you force (an ideology) on a story?’’ Decades of incandescent work later, Zaidi like her name is still  aflame with fresh ideas.
The winds may have changed along with the times but Shama Zaidi refuses to become a populist. She and her pen may grow occasionally silent but they still have a lot to say.

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