Published in Sakal Times, Spice (Sunday edition) on Jul 19 2009, Page 3
Reels of history, now in words
-- CAMIL PARKHE
Before the age of teleefore the age of television, live telecasts and Breaking News, it was the Indian News Reels, shown in Indian theatres before the screening of films, that provided the only moving images of the `news' to the viewers in this country. The news were at least two or three weeks old, but they were a treat savoured by all those who revered some national and international leaders and heroes of those days.Documentary filmmaker Prem Vaidya, who recorded history as it unfolded in those days has now also penned down his experiences of those moments in his book Memorable Assignments on Moving Images.
Vaidya, who retired as director/producer of the Films Division of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, has chronicled some of the memorable assignments in his 31-year-long career. These assignments were completed when mediapersons were not equipped with gazettes like mobiles, OB vans or even the landline phones. Among his notable assignments, Vaidya writes about the last couple of days of the late prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri who died at Tashkent.Before going to bed on that fateful night, Shastri was taking a brisk walk in the drawing room in Tashkent and Vaidya captured his figure moving around in silhouette till he ran out the film in his camera.
A few hours later, he was woken up from his sleep only to be told that the prime minister was dead.
During 1965 war with Pakistan, Vaidya moved with his camera into the battlefield in the eastern sector documenting how the Indian soldiers destroyed Pakistan's so-called invincible Patton tanks. His footage, filmed as he moved into the Pakistan territory along with the camouflaged Indian soldiers, was one of the rare coverages of the real action in war in the 1960s. A few years later when Indian forces entered the then East Pakistan to help the local Mukti Bahini soldiers fight against West Pakistan's tyranny, Vaidya was once again where the action was. He had the privilege of filming for posterity the scene of Pakistan's Commander Lt Gen Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi signing the surrender treaty in the presence of India's military representative, Gen Jagjit Singh Aurora.
Vaidya also takes along the readers to his other equally challenging Ocean to Sky -Ganga Boat Expedition led by the legendary Mount Everest hero Sir Edmund Hillary. Another interesting chapter in the book is Vaidya's documentation of the vanishing primitive tribes of Andman and Nicobar islands.
With his narration of the news events, the filmmakerturned-author succeeds in leading the readers to that bygone era of black and white photos and films, and relive those moments through his own lenses.The author has an impressive style of recreating the past with minute details. The book is indeed a documentary which would be also useful to those interested in study of media.
