A rare poster of the 1974 film 'Hanuman Vijay' directed by Babubhai Mistry. Many tricks of Babubhai's photography were seen in this.
Recently, in my stories, I had mentioned many big cameramen of our film industry. These included stories related to Ashok Mehta ji, Manmohan Singh ji and Radhu Karmakar ji. But today when I sat down to write an anecdote for this column, it came to my mind that if among these tales of cameramen, there is no mention of Babu Bhai Mistry, known as another great cameraman, director and magician of trick photography, then this All the stories will remain incomplete. Even before the advent of computer graphics and VFX in India, Babu Bhai Mistry had tried many such tricks while shooting, which is no less than any VFX of today. Therefore today in my part of the story I will talk about Babu Bhai Mistry.
Friends, Babubhai Mistry was born in Surat, Gujarat on 5 September 1918 in a Gujarati Muslim family. His real name was Abdus Samad. Babubhai Mistry was known for his special effects and trick photography, but his real break was with the 1937 film 'Khwab Ki Duniya', which was directed by Vijay Bhatt. After this film, Babu Bhai became famous in the entire industry as 'Trickmaster'. After this, he co-directed 'Muqabala' in 1942 and in this film Babubhai showed split screen for the first time in India.
I never got a chance to meet Babu Bhai Mistry personally, but I have heard many stories about him from the old lightman and many of his comrades. Not only was he a great cameraman, he was also a great director. He directed many films like Sampoorna Ramayana, Mahabharata, Har Har Gange and Hatim Tai, in which he enhanced the magic of his trick photography. In my childhood, Ganpati used to sit in front of our house and films were shown there with a curtain – entire Ramayana and Mahabharata. I saw this many times. Hanuman ji used to fly, Kumbhakarna used to sleep with his hand on the mountain, there is a war going on below, Ravana's army is fighting, the mountain is falling. Seeing all this we used to clap. After that, when I came to Mumbai, I came to know that these films were directed by Babubhai Mistry.
Babu Bhai used to invent a new trick in every film. Once upon a time. Babu Bhai was shooting a scene inside the palace. That scene was to be filmed in such a way that as soon as the character climbed the carpet laid in front of the throne and moved towards it, the man sitting on the throne would curse the character and the ground on which the carpet was placed would melt. Babubhai made a pit in the hall of the palace and got it filled with water. Every door and window was closed so that no air could come. After completely tightening the air, he called the best rangoli artist of Maharashtra. Took leaves of marigold, rose and many other types of white and yellow flowers and made a complete rangoli with them on water. It looked as if a carpet had been laid on it. The character was standing a little away from the carpet. As soon as the character was signaled, he climbed on the rangoli and then fell into the water, but looking at the screen it seemed as if the ground had melted.
Due to this amazing thinking of Babu Bhai Mistry, he has taken many amazing shots in his films. On this very matter, I am reminded of a couplet by Jigar Moradabadi for Babu Bhai –
You create your world, Ahl-e-Dil, we are not the ones for whom the world was created.
Many such stories of Babu Bhai are very famous in the film industry. Old people of the film industry told me that once Babu Bhai Mistry was shooting in Khandala or maybe Film City and he had to show the snow on the mountain. Bashir Bhai was the lightman at that time. Babu Bhai placed a transparent glass in front of the camera and fixed the glass in front of the camera. Now he took the brush and white paint. The mountain peak visible on the glass was painted light white. When seen through the camera, it looked as if there was white snow on the top of the mountain.
In all the films made by Babu Bhai, he has done camera tricks and on set tricks by blocking the camera or negative. Babu Bhai Mistry was truly a magician of trick photography. Today in memory of Babu Bhai Mistry, listen to this song from his film Hatim Tai, take care of yourself and be happy.
Oh God, please do something here, we have committed mistakes, please do this by passing by us…
Graphics Source: NavJivanIndia | VaskarAssets
