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      New Musical ‘Bhangin’ It’ Explores Identity Through Bhangra

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      “Bhangin’ It” explores complex identity issues through an intensely competitive North American dance scene.Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.SAN DIEGO — Rehana Lew Mirza stumbled upon the world of collegiate bhangra dancing. An aspiring screenwriter working as an office manager, she had finally fallen in with a group of South Asian artists. She tagged along with a friend to Bhangra Blowout, an annual competition in Washington, where teams are judged for the skill with which they dance in the exuberant Punjabi folk style.Mirza became a superfan. She attended seven or eight competitions. She wrote a treatment for a bhangra-themed film. She became a playwright, met another playwright, and then, when the two of them married, they performed a bhangra dance at their wedding.So in 2014, when she and her husband, Mike Lew, were exploring a possible collaboration with a musical theater composer, she dug out that unproduced film script. Now the resulting show, called “Bhangin’ It: A Bangin’ New Musical,” is having a first production here at La Jolla Playhouse, a highly regarded regional theater with a long history of birthing Broadway-bound work.“There are such high stakes at the competitions, but then it’s also a very joyous dance form, and I loved that juxtaposition,” Mirza said. “So when we were talking about what to work on, I was like, ‘How about a bhangra dance musical?’”Ari Afsar, center left, and Jaya Joshi, center right, with cast members during rehearsals. Afsar plays a college student who starts her own bhangra group after she’s kicked off the school’s team.Tara Pixley for The New York TimesIn an era when many theater makers are concerned about whose stories are being told, and by whom, “Bhangin’ It” seeks to depict not just an underrepresented demographic group (it does that, too) but also people whose identities are complicated, evolving or uncertain. The protagonist, an undergraduate named Mary Darshini Clarke, is the daughter of an Indian mother and a white father, and is struggling to figure out how she fits in.The show’s story is this: Mary, a student at the fictional East Lansing University in Michigan, is thrown off the school’s bhangra team because her dance vocabulary is not traditional enough. So she starts her own team — a heterodox group with a diverse range of students and movement styles. You can guess what happens next: The two teams face off against each other, and if I told you any more, it would spoil the show.Bhangra, a dance form originally associated with harvest festivals in India, is characterized by energetic kicks and syncopated drumming. If you can’t quite grasp it, no worries — neither can some of the members of Mary’s team; in one of the musical’s big production numbers, a restaurateur puts the students to work making curry, hoping the fluidity of movement associated with mixing ingredients and washing dishes will transfer to the dance floor.Afsar, center, with Vinithra Raj, foreground left, and Bilaal Avaz, foreground right. “This show is so connected to who I am — getting into the specificity of what does it mean to be biracial and mixed race,” Afsar said.Tara Pixley for The New York TimesThe show has echoes of “Bring It On,” but stands out with its focus on Asian Americans.Tara Pixley for The New York TimesIn sync: Afsar and Avaz during one of the many dance routines.Tara Pixley for The New York TimesDuring a rehearsal last month, in a giant mirrored studio with doors kept open as a Covid safety measure, the barefoot cast — wearing not only blue surgical masks but also wristbands to show they had tested negative for the coronavirus — worked through the movement, step by step, aiming for a visual crispness. “You guys are a little soft,” a choreographer said. “Go sharper.” The creative team was still changing the script — a new key here, a new lyric there — and there were occasional traffic jams, as groups of dancers, in yoga pants and T-shirts, tried to master a sea of stage crossings without colliding.The musical has echoes of many that came before it — “Bring It On,” set in the world of high school cheerleading competitions, comes to mind — but stands out with its focus on Asian Americans, and, in particular, those whose families come from South Asia.Avaz, center, with other cast members. The choreography includes not only bhangra, but also Bollywood, hip-hop and ballet.Tara Pixley for The New York TimesAsians and Asian Americans have been underrepresented onstage, and that has been particularly true in musical theater. The number of musicals about South Asians is small: There was “Bombay Dreams,” which opened on Broadway in 2004 and “Monsoon Wedding,” which was staged at Berkeley Repertory Theater in 2017, and there is a forthcoming project, “Come Fall in Love — The DDLJ Musical,” which is an adaptation of a popular Bollywood movie that is to have a production starting in September at the Old Globe Theater, also in San Diego, before transferring to Broadway.“Bhangin’ It” is distinguished by being set entirely in the United States, and by its focus on a biracial protagonist. That distinction is personal for many of those working on the project: Mirza, whose mother is from the Philippines and whose father was born in India and then relocated to Pakistan after partition; the director, Stafford Arima, who is a Canadian of Japanese and Chinese heritage; and the lead actress, Ari Afsar, whose father is from Bangladesh and whose mother is third-generation German American.“This show is so connected to who I am — getting into the specificity of what does it mean to be biracial and mixed race,” Afsar, who previously played Eliza in the Chicago production of “Hamilton,” said one afternoon during a break from rehearsals. She had been working on a dorm room scene in which her character is grappling with her dual identity; at the same time, Afsar was figuring out how not to bang her head getting in and out of a bunk bed. “To have the mix of two very different cultures in a childhood, and how does that impact your psyche and your ethos and how you interact,” she said, “it’s really visceral to the idea of belongingness, or the lack of belongingness.”The show’s director, Stafford Arima, left, with the choreographer Rujuta Vaidya during a rehearsal.Tara Pixley for The New York Times“Bhangin’ It” has been a long-gestating project, delayed, like so many other theater works, by the coronavirus pandemic. In 2013, Mirza and Lew met a songwriter, Sam Willmott, when the three were matched up by the organizers of an event called the 24 Hour Musicals, at which artists write a show in a single day. They hit it off, and as they talked about full-fledged projects they might later work on together, Willmott mentioned his love for Golden Age musicals, prompting Mirza to bring up her shelved bhangra screenplay.They continued collaborating on “Bhangin’ It,” often at La Jolla, where Mirza and Lew were working on a trilogy of plays about the aftermath of colonialism when the theater offered them the use of a rehearsal room to try out their new musical. Four workshops later, they are finally onstage, now with the backing of two commercial producers, Mara Isaacs and Tom Kirdahy, who are among the lead producers of “Hadestown.” The musical will have a second regional theater production starting late this year at the Huntington Theater in Boston before a likely run in New York.The creative team has expanded to reflect the show’s ambitions. Arima, the musical’s director, joined just last fall; he is the artistic director of Theater Calgary, and in 2015 he directed the Broadway production of “Allegiance,” a musical about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The music team includes Deep Singh, a performer of Indian classical music, while the dance team includes Rujuta Vaidya, who specializes in Bollywood-style dance but has also judged bhangra competitions, as well as Lisa Shriver, who brings Broadway to the mix, and Anushka Pushpala, a bhangra specialist who once competed for University of California, San Diego and now teaches at Bhangra Empire in the San Francisco Bay Area.Lew, the author of “Teenage Dick,” a contemporary riff on “Richard III” that is being staged around the country after a successful Off Broadway run, said part of the goal in building a diverse creative team and cast was that no one artist would have to be the “sole avatar” of representation. Mirza, as the member of the writing team with South Asian heritage, often bore that burden.“The show is beyond the idea that representation matters — it’s to the point of: You belong,’” said Afsar, above left, with Contreras.Tara Pixley for The New York Times“What’s happened before is that writers of color were expected to have two jobs — you’re the writer of the show, but then you’re also the cultural ambassador,” Mirza said. “This show is meant to show the large breadth of experience within South Asian American culture, and the large breadth of experience within college lifestyle. So how do you include as many different voices as possible in the room, so you can actually show where the dissonance and where the friction comes in, because that’s what’s of interest to me.”The friction in the musical is over how much traditional practice should bend in a diverse society. “The question is, ‘Is it all tradition, or is fusion OK?’” Arima said. “This piece is not just about collegiate bhangra — that is the vessel for this story of understanding tradition versus modernity.”The diversity gives the show richly complex music and dance — the instrumentation includes a rhythm section, strings and keys, as well as harmonium, bansuri flute, sitar, tanpura, tumbi, tabla, dhol, daf and ankle bells.“Some of the initial numbers were thinking about tropes of Western musical theater and how to make that through a lens of a South Asian American college student,” Lew said. “It was taking two strong reference points, from South Asian culture and American musical theater, and intersecting them. The palette is wide.”The choreography includes not only bhangra, but also kathak, a classical Indian dance form, as well as Bollywood, hip-hop, jazz and ballet.“It’s a great story to tell right this minute, with the intersectionality: I am not one thing, I am multiple things,” said Christopher Ashley, the La Jolla Playhouse’s artistic director, who frequently works on Broadway. “And that intersectionality makes for a really interesting dance musical.”Ashley said the production had benefited from pandemic restrictions by opening the doors to online auditions, which in turn made it easier for the show to look beyond New York and Los Angeles as it searched for young performers, many of South Asian ancestry, who, Ashley said, “were not going to be all the people you always see on Broadway.” Among those in the cast is a member of the U.C. San Diego bhangra team (Da Real Punjabiz).“The show is beyond the idea that representation matters — it’s to the point of: You belong,” Afsar said. “Growing up, we always feel like others need to validate us in order to belong. I hope that this show helps young people realize that belongingness is actually within ourselves, and that this mixed-race college student bhangra kid is able to teach everyone that message.”Audio produced by More

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      Bappi Lahiri, India’s ‘Disco King,’ Dies at 69

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      He helped popularize the genre with some of the country’s biggest hits of all time, including “I Am a Disco Dancer.”Bappi Lahiri, an Indian film composer who combined the melodrama of Bollywood film plots with the flamboyance of disco’s electronic orchestra sound, setting off a pop craze in India that earned him the nickname “Disco King,” died on Feb. 15 in Mumbai. He was 69.The cause was obstructive sleep apnea, said his son, Bappa, who was his arranger, manager and bandmate.Mr. Lahiri was an up-and-coming pop musician in 1979 when he traveled to the United States to play a series of gigs for Indian American audiences. While there, he toured nightclubs in San Francisco, Chicago and New York and caught the final months of American disco fever. In New York, he bought a Moog synthesizer, multiple drum machines and so much other music equipment that it filled two taxis.On returning home, his experiments with those instruments culminated with a career-making soundtrack to a hit movie, “Disco Dancer” (1982). It was a musical in a disco style — insistent bass lines under soaring horns and strings — and a declaration of love to the genre. In one scene, a frenzied crowd and the protagonist, a superstar disco musician, spell out the word “disco” and chant it.“Disco Dancer,” which traces the rise to stardom of a young street urchin named Jimmy and his fights with a family of thuggish plutocrats, became the first Indian movie to earn 1 billion rupees (about $230 million in today’s dollars), and its soundtrack helped fuel disco mania in India.It also supercharged the career of its sad-eyed, bouffant-wearing star, Mithun Chakraborty, and produced two of the catchiest dance tunes in the history of Indian pop, each sung by Mr. Chakraborty onscreen: “I Am a Disco Dancer” and “Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja.”Long after the movie was shown in theaters, those songs endure across India. At weddings they’re known to inspire everyone from aging aunties to pals of the groom to boogie onto the dance floor.Mr. Lahiri would undergird many of his disco songs with a recognizably Indian melody, and he soon realized that he had hit on a winning formula, leading to 1980s hits like “I Am a Street Dancer,” “Super Dancer” and “Disco Station Disco.” He earned a place in the Limca Book of Records, which notes worldwide achievements by Indians, by recording the soundtracks to 37 movies in 1987 alone.He also developed a mega-celebrity’s fashion sense inspired by his boyhood reverence for Elvis. The look included tinted sunglasses worn indoors and out, velvet track suits and shiny jackets swaddling his pillowy bulk, and a mound of gold jewelry hanging from his neck.“I remember once a man refused to accept that I am Bappi Lahiri,” he once told The Times of India, “because I was wearing a coat to protect myself from cold and he couldn’t see my gold chain.”Bappi Lahiri was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) on Nov. 27, 1952. His parents, Aparesh Lahiri and Bansur (Chakravarty) Lahiri, were singers who met while performing for the public broadcaster All India Radio. As a child Bappi showed talent playing the tabla, a traditional Indian drum, and, at the recommendation of the popular singer Lata Mangeshkar, he studied with the tabla master Samta Prasad.His family moved to Bombay (now Mumbai) when he was a teenager to further Bappi’s career. There he found a powerful ally in the family’s spiritual guru, Amiya Roy Chowdhury, who gave him a letter of introduction to the Bollywood star Dev Anand.Mr. Lahiri’s decades-long composing career ranged beyond disco to encompass Indian classical forms like ghazal as well. In all, he is believed to have composed about 9,000 songs that appeared in 600 or so movies. In his most productive periods he would book four studios in a single day and use as many as 100 musicians for one song.The funeral parade for Mr. Lahiri in Mumbai earlier this month. By the end of his life, he is believed to have composed around 9,000 songs for 600 or so movies.Vijay Bate/Hindustan Times via Getty ImagesIn addition to his son, Mr. Lahiri is survived by his wife, Chitrani (Mukherjee) Lahiri, whom he married in 1977; his mother; a daughter, Rema Bansal; and two grandsons.Though interest in disco had faded in the United States by the time Mr. Lahiri gained fame, he became a central part of the disco phenomenon elsewhere, particularly the Soviet Union. “Disco Dancer” was among the most popular films in the U.S.S.R., and Mr. Lahiri’s songs still serve as standards in musical shows on Russian television.During the 2018 soccer World Cup in Russia, a journalist with India’s Express News Service found the country full of “Jimmy” fans.“Everyone knows him where I come from,” one local fan, identified only as Yuri, was quoted as saying as he took out his phone. “Let me show you which of his songs is my favorite.” More

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      Badal Roy, Who Fused Indian Rhythms With Jazz, Is Dead at 82

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      He collaborated across cultures, playing tabla with Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, John McLaughlin and others in the jazz world and beyond, including Yoko Ono.Badal Roy, an Indian tabla player whose drumming propelled East-West fusions for some of the most prominent musicians in and out of jazz, died on Tuesday in Wilmington, Del. He was 82.His son, Amitav Roy Chowdhury, said the cause was Covid-19.Mr. Roy was largely self-taught. He was not trained in the Indian classical apprentice tradition of gurus and disciples. Where classical tabla players use a pair of differently tuned drums, Mr. Roy sometimes used three or four. His improvisational flexibility and his skill at sharing a groove made him a prized collaborator for jazz, funk, rock and global musicians.He first became widely known for his work in the early 1970s with the English guitarist John McLaughlin and Miles Davis, appearing on Davis’s pivotal jazz-funk album “On the Corner” and its successors. He went on to many other collaborations,— recording with Pharoah Sanders, Herbie Mann, Yoko Ono, Bill Laswell and Richie Havens — and spent more than a decade as a member of Ornette Coleman’s electric band, Prime Time.Amarendra Roy Chowdhury was born on Oct. 16, 1939, in the Comilla District of what was then British India. (The area was later part of East Pakistan and is now in Bangladesh.) His father, Satyenda Nath Roy Chowdhury, was a government official in Pakistan; his mother, Sova Rani Roy Chowdhury, was a homemaker. “Badal,” which means “rain” in Bengali, was a childhood nickname.An uncle introduced him to the tabla and taught him its rudiments: the vocal syllables that denote specific drum sounds. Later, in New York, he took some lessons from Alla Rakha, Ravi Shankar’s longtime tabla player. While growing up, he was also a fan of Elvis Presley and Pat Boone. His introduction to jazz was hearing Duke Ellington perform in Pakistan in 1963.Mr. Roy wasn’t planning a career in music when he came to New York in 1968. He intended to earn a Ph.D. in statistics.To support himself, he worked as a waiter at the Pak India Curry House and found a weekend gig playing tabla with a sitarist at A Taste of India, a restaurant in Greenwich Village. Mr. McLaughlin was a regular there, and he sometimes sat in with the duo. After a few months of jamming, he asked Mr. Roy to join a recording session. The resulting album, “My Goals Beyond,” released in 1971, was an early landmark in Indian-influenced jazz.Mr. McLaughlin was also working with Miles Davis at the time, and he brought Mr. Roy to Davis’s attention; when Davis was appearing at the Village Gate in 1971, Mr. Roy’s duo auditioned for him during a break between sets at A Taste of India, carrying their instruments a few blocks down Bleecker Street. Davis called on Mr. Roy for a 1972 session that also included Mr. McLaughlin, Herbie Hancock on keyboards and Jack DeJohnette on drums.In an interview with an Indian newspaper, The Telegraph, Mr. Roy recalled: “All of a sudden, Miles tells me: ‘You start’ — no music, no nothing, just like that. Realizing I have to set the groove, I just start playing a ta-ka-na-ta-n-ka-tin rhythm. Herbie nods his head to the beat and, with a ‘Yeah!,’ starts playing. For a while, it’s just the two of us, and then John and Jack join in. Then all the others start and, to me at least, it’s pure chaos. I’m completely drowned out by the sound. I continue playing, but for the next half-hour, I can’t hear a single beat I play.”Those sessions yielded Davis’s “On the Corner.” Mr. Roy joined Davis for other 1972 sessions that contributed material for Davis’s “Big Fun” and “Get Up With It,” both released in 1974, and performed with him at Philharmonic Hall (now David Geffen Hall) at Lincoln Center for what became Davis’s 1973 album “In Concert.”Mr. Roy received a copy of “On the Corner” when it was released in 1972. But after his frustration at the sessions, he didn’t listen to it until the 1990s, when his son, then a graduate student, told him, “All the hip-hop guys are sampling it.”In 1974, Mr. Roy married Geeta Vashi. She survives him, along with their son and Mr. Roy’s sisters, Kalpana Chakraborty and Shibani Ray Chaudhury, and his brother, Samarendra Roy Chowdhury. He lived in Wilmington.Mr. Roy backed the saxophonist Pharoah Sanders on the albums “Wisdom Through Music” (1972), “Village of the Pharoahs” (1973) and “Love in Us All” (1974), and in later years performed with Mr. Sanders onstage. With the saxophonist Dave Liebman, who had been in Davis’s group, Mr. Roy appeared on “Lookout Farm” (1974), “Drum Ode” (1975) and “Sweet Hands” (1975). (“Sweet hands” is the translation of a Bengali term praising a virtuoso tabla player.)He released two albums as a leader in the mid-1970s, both featuring Mr. Liebman: “Ashirbad” (1975) and “Passing Dreams” (1976), which also included the Indian classical musician Sultan Khan on sarangi, a bowed string instrument.Mr. Roy performed and recorded widely, often as part of cross-cultural fusions. He had a longtime duo with the bansuri (wooden flute) player Steve Gorn, which appeared regularly at the Manhattan restaurant Raga. He shared the 1978 album “Kundalini” with the American jazz clarinetist Perry Robinson and the Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos. In the early 1980s, he was a member of the flutist Herbie Mann’s group and appeared on the 1981 Mann album “All Blues/Forest Rain.” He also recorded with the composer and trumpeter Jon Hassell; with the trombonist and conch-shell player Steve Turre; with Yoko Ono on her 1982 album, “It’s Alright (I See Rainbows)”; and with the Brazilian guitar duo Duofel, the Japanese bassist Stomu Takeishi, the bassist and producer Bill Laswell and the Swiss harpist Andreas Vollenweider.In 1988, he joined Ornette Coleman’s band Prime Time, and though the group rarely released studio albums, he appeared on its final one, “Tone Dialing,” in 1995. In the early 2000s he was a member of Impure Thoughts, a group led by the keyboardist Michael Wolff. Mr. Roy also recorded often as a leader, collaborating across idioms and styles.In an interview for All About Jazz, Mr. Roy emphasized that his solos were about “telling a story.” “I go with the groove,” he said, “and then go free.” More

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      Stream Three Great Performances by the Bollywood Star Dilip Kumar

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      As a leading man, Kumar, who died on Wednesday at 98, helped to craft the cinematic image of post-independence India.They called him the Tragedy King.Dilip Kumar was known for throwing himself into serious roles, but the result was always gentler and more complex than his moniker suggested. Born Mohammed Yusuf Khan, he died on Wednesday at 98. The last of a golden Bollywood triumvirate that included Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor, Kumar was among the leading men who helped craft the cinematic image of post-independence India. During a career that spanned six decades, he starred in some of the most beloved and successful Indian films ever made, including the largely black-and-white historical epic “Mughal-e-Azam” (1960), best remembered for its Technicolor dance sequence “Jab Pyar Kiya To Darna Kya” (“Why Fear When You’re in Love?”).In the 1950s and ’60s, his work struck such a lasting chord that it set the template for entire genres that came to define Hindi cinema. The “double role,” for instance, is a commonly employed device in which an actor plays multiple parts, either in stories of lost twins or of reincarnation; Kumar’s films were so definitive that he had a hand in popularizing both versions of the concept. He even played twin brothers in his final film, “Qila” (1998).Three of Kumar’s most famous works are available to stream in the United States. The advantage of watching them is that they feature not three, or even four, but five of his greatest performances, each one more moving and nuanced than the last.‘Madhumati’ (1958)Stream it on The Criterion Channel.Though it was not the first Hindi film to feature a theme of reincarnation, “Madhumati” cemented the now-famous “reincarnation revenge” saga eventually aped by Bollywood hits like “Karz” (1980), “Karan Arjun” (1995) and “Om Shanti Om” (2007). Directed by Bimal Roy and written by Ritwik Ghatak, “Madhumati” follows Devinder (Kumar), a world-weary engineer who takes refuge in an old mansion during a storm. The mansion’s walls and paintings feel inexplicably familiar to him. Before long, he begins to recall memories from a life that was not his own, in which a young artist and estate manager, Anand (also Kumar), had fallen in love with a local tribal woman, Madhumati (Vyjayanthimala), before both were murdered by Anand’s envious employer, Raja Ugra Narain (Pran).Devinder’s attempts to draw a confession out of the still-living Narain would inspire the overarching plots of many imitators, but in “Madhumati,” this revenge scheme is relegated to the final act. The majority of the film luxuriates in Anand and Madhumati’s star-crossed romance, set against the serene hills of Nainital. As Anand, Kumar has an unburdened grace and simplicity; he’s subtly mischievous in Madhumati’s presence, and visibly distracted by an unspoken romantic high whenever they’re apart. As Devinder, however, Kumar pulls off the herculean feat of turning déjà vu — a fleeting sensation — into an ever-present emotional fabric, as he begins to recall and reckon with an impossible kind of grief, though he cannot yet fathom its origin.‘Ram Aur Shyam’ (1967)Stream it on Amazon Prime and Eros Now; buy or rent it on Apple TV, Google Play and YouTube.Like “Madhumati,” Tapi Chanakya’s prince-and-pauper twin comedy would go on to spawn a litany of imitators that also cast major stars to play opposite themselves. The blockbuster success of “Ram Aur Shyam” is largely owed to it playing like a one-man variety act. Kumar portrays twins separated at birth in a story that plays hopscotch across the boxes of tone and genre (a “masala film”). Kumar plays both Ram, a timid, soft-spoken man raised in a wealthy family, and his long-lost twin brother, Shyam, a cocksure villager whose magnetic aura lends itself to action heroics.As Ram, Kumar cowers in the corner of every frame, especially in the presence of his violent brother-in-law Gajendra (Pran). He elicits pity through posture, often lowering himself to the height of his 8-year-old niece, while his hands fidget nervously and hover on-guard near his chest. In contrast, Kumar practically envelops the screen as the roguish Shyam, standing tall even as he leans against walls and pillars. Kumar was known for his immersive Method approach, but “Ram Aur Shyam” proves that no matter how far inward he dove, he was always aware of the camera’s gaze and his relationship to it.‘Devdas’ (1955)Stream it on Hoopla and The Criterion Channel; buy or rent it on Amazon Prime.Kumar plays only one role in “Devdas,” but the title character’s spiritual struggle makes it feel as if there are two entities at war. The film is based on Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s 1917 novel of the same name, of which there have been 20 screen adaptations. The title role is a calling card akin to Hamlet, and a chance for actors to spiral into an abyss of drunken sorrow. Many great performers have hammed it up along the way (see Shah Rukh Khan in the exotic 2002 version), but Kumar’s take in Bimal Roy’s adaptation is a painfully realistic portrait of a man wrestling with the ugliest parts of his nature.When Devdas reunites with his childhood sweetheart, Paro (Suchitra Sen), all we hear is Kumar’s gentle voice whispering from offscreen. When he finally steps out of the shadows, his eyes are enraptured and enamored, delivering one of the most impactful entrances in Indian cinema. It’s hard not to fall in love with Devdas — which makes it all the more agonizing when his demons and insecurities turn him violently abrasive. Caught between his love for Paro, the courtesan Chandramukhi (Vyjayanthimala) and the bottom of his glass, he becomes consumed by his mistakes. The more he drinks, the more ill he becomes, and Kumar’s masterstroke is the way he turns a physical ailment into an emotional one, blending together his agony and self-loathing until all that’s left is an inescapable haze of regret. Few performances feel as if they run the entire gamut of human emotion. The first time Devdas takes a drink, Kumar runs that gamut in a single scene. More

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      Dilip Kumar, Film Star Who Brought Realism to Bollywood, Dies at 98

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      One of India’s earliest Method actors, he was the last survivor of a triumvirate of actors who ruled Hindi cinema in the 1950s and ’60s.Dilip Kumar, the last of a triumvirate of actors who ruled Hindi cinema in the 1950s and ’60s, died on Wednesday in Mumbai, India. He was 98. His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by Faisal Farooqui, a family friend, who posted a brief statement on Mr. Kumar’s official Twitter account. In post-independence India, Mr. Kumar and two other stars set about defining the Hindi film hero. Raj Kapoor reflected the newly minted Indian’s confusion: his signature role was that of the Chaplinesque naïf negotiating a world that was losing its innocence. Dev Anand, known as the Gregory Peck of India, embodied a Western insouciance that still lingered; he became a stylish matinee idol.Mr. Kumar, though, delved deeply into his characters, breaking free from the semaphoric silent-movie style of acting popularized by megastars like Sohrab Modi and Prithviraj Kapoor.As one of the country’s earliest Method actors, he was often compared to Marlon Brando, another early adopter of the technique, even though Mr. Kumar claimed he had used it first.“I learned the importance of studying the script and characters deeply and building upon my own gut observations and sensations about my own and other characters,” Mr. Kumar said in his autobiography, “The Substance and the Shadow” (2014). “The truth is that I am an actor who evolved a method.”His preparation for roles became the stuff of legend. For his death scene in the 1961 megahit “Gunga Jumna,” he ran around the studio so that he could enter the set at the point of exhaustion.For a song sequence in the 1960 film “Kohinoor” (“Mountain of Light”), he learned to play the sitar. For emotional sequences in the 1982 movie “Shakti” (“Power”) and the 1984 movie “Mashaal” (“Torch”), he drew from memories of when his brother died, recalling the pain that registered on his father’s face.Mr. Kumar, right, with Raj Kapoor and Nargis in the 1949 film  “Andaz” (“Style”).via AlamyMr. Kumar was born Yousuf Khan in Peshawar (then part of British India, now in Pakistan) on Dec. 11, 1922, the fourth of Ayesha and Mohammad Sarwar Khan’s 12 children. His father, a fruit merchant, moved the family to Bombay, now known as Mumbai, and then to Deolali, in west India, where Dilip attended the Barnes School before enrolling in Khalsa College in Bombay.He wanted to play soccer or cricket professionally, but the family’s economic situation forced him to look for work elsewhere. For a time he was an assistant at an army canteen in Poona (now Pune).A chance encounter with a former teacher changed his life. When he said he was looking for a job, the teacher introduced him to the pioneering Indian actress Devika Rani, who, along with Himanshu Rai, had established the Bombay Talkies studio. The idea was to get a job, any job, but Ms. Rani asked if he would consider becoming an actor.Mr. Kumar, who had seen only one film in his life — a war documentary — was flummoxed, but the money persuaded him. Ms. Rani said that taking on a Hindu screen name to obscure his Muslim background would help his career. He became Dilip Kumar.His first film, “Jwar Bhata” (“Ebb and Flow”), released in 1944, was a flop; Baburao Patel, the acerbic critic of Film India, called him “anemic.” But three years later his performance in “Jugnu” (“Firefly”), alongside Noor Jehan, received more favorable attention. By the time “Shaheed” (“Martyr”) was released in 1948, Mr. Patel was singing his praises: “Dilip Kumar steals the picture with his deeply felt and yet natural delineation of the main role.”The hits kept coming, including “Nadiya Ke Paar” (“Across the River”), “Shabnam” (“Dewdrops”) and Mehboob Khan’s “Andaz” (“Style”), in which Mr. Kumar was cast with Mr. Kapoor and the actress Nargis. In 1954, Mr. Kumar won the newly instituted Filmfare Award for best actor for his performance as an alcoholic in the tragic love story “Daag” (“The Stain”). He won seven more Filmfare statuettes for best actor in addition to a lifetime achievement award. Guinness World Records honored him on his 97th birthday for his “matchless contribution” to Indian cinema.Many of his early films had him chasing unattainable women. The 1950 melodrama “Jogan” (“Nun”) ends with him weeping at his lover’s grave. That same year, he played a Heathcliff-like character in “Arzoo” (“Desire”), one of three variations on “Wuthering Heights” in which he acted.He earned the nickname Tragedy King after appearing in a series of dramas that a psychiatrist later said took a toll on his health. In the 1951 movie “Deedar” (“Sight”), he played a blind man whose eyesight is restored through surgery but who blinds himself again when he realizes that he and the surgeon are in love with the same woman. (To prepare for the role, Mr. Kumar observed a blind beggar at the Bombay Central railway station.)One of Mr. Kumar’s best-known tragedies is Bimal Roy’s “Devdas” (1955), about a man who becomes an alcoholic when his childhood sweetheart deserts him.Mr. Kumar with Madhubala in “Mughal-e-Azam” (1960), made long after their well-publicized relationship had ended. via Everett CollectionMr. Kumar’s love life made news; he had relationships with the actresses Kamini Kaushal, Madhubala (they co-starred in the 1960 blockbuster “Mughal-e-Azam,” about thwarted lovers, long after they broke up) and Saira Banu, whom he married in 1966 when he was 44 and she was 22. In the 1980s, while still married to Ms. Banu, Mr. Kumar married the socialite Asma Rehman in secret. The news quickly came out, and the marriage became a scandal, but Ms. Banu stuck with Mr. Kumar, who ended the second marriage.He is survived by Ms. Banu.Professionally, Mr. Kumar’s record was spotless, with films that have not only been successful but have left a lasting impact. Films like “Naya Daur” (“New Era”) in 1957, “Yahudi” (“The Jews”) in 1958, “Madhumati,” also in 1958, and “Ram Aur Shyam” (“Ram and Shyam”) in 1967 are still remembered.Mr. Kumar found fewer roles in the 1970s, with younger, more agile actors being cast as heroes, and he took a break.He returned in 1981 with a blockbuster, “Kranti” (“Revolution”), which reshaped his screen persona as an older moral center. He had similar roles in star-heavy mega-productions like “Vidhaata” (“The Creator”) in 1982, “Karma” in 1986, Saudagar (“The Merchant”) in 1991 and especially “Shakti,” in which he was cast for the first time opposite the reigning Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan.Mr. Kumar’s last film was “Qila” (“Fort”), released in 1998. By then, a reviewer wrote in India Today, his style felt “more than just outdated, it’s prehistoric,” adding, “Dilip Kumar’s long-drawn-out dialogue delivery is out of sync with the times.”Mr. Kumar received the Padma Bhushan, one of India’s highest civilian awards, in 1991; the Dadasaheb Phalke, India’s highest award for cinematic excellence, in 1994; and the Padma Vibhushan in 2015. From 2000 to 2006, he served as a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament.But these honors from the Indian government consumed far less newsprint than the decision by the Pakistani government, in 1998, to confer on him its highest civilian honor, the Nishan-e-Imtiaz. Amid heightened religious tensions, Mr. Kumar was branded an anti-national by Hindu politicians who asked him to return the award to Pakistan. He did not. He said in his autobiography that returning it “could have only soured relations further and produced bad vibes between India and Pakistan.”Those words proved that Mr. Kumar was a tactful diplomat off screen.On the screen, his characters would launch into more rebellious rhetoric. In the 1974 period drama “Sagina,” when labeled a traitor, his character responded, “If you’ve drunk your mother’s milk” — meaning, if you’re man enough — “then come get me.”Even in this larger-than-life context, there was a dash of the realism that defined him. Mujib Mashal More

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      in Theater

      Rahul Vohra, Indian Actor and Video Blogger, Dies at 35

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      His YouTube posts dissected issues of Indian life, especially gender inequality. He died of complications of Covid-19 after lamenting his hospital treatment.Rahul Vohra began his acting career in the theater and later worked in low-budget films and television ads. But he was fascinated by the role technology played in shaping conversations about society, so he turned to video blogging.After he and Jyoti Tiwari married in December, she joined him in producing short, scripted videos in Hindi about issues like gender disparity, rising gas prices and the difficulties of working from home during the pandemic. Several have received more than 1 million views, and Mr. Vohra swiftly became one of India’s most popular YouTube stars.In one video, titled “Story of a Woman,” he asks for a cup of tea from his wife, who is played by an actress and is seen lost in thought after a long day of housework.“I am not a robot,” she says.“You only stay at home; what else do you do?” Mr. Vohra asks. She challenges him to do household chores for a day, telling him that then he would understand what she had meant. After accepting the challenge, he’s soon seen struggling and tiring within hours.“Even if I am sick, I had to do this work every day,” the wife says. “In reverse I ask for nothing, just a bit of respect and love.”Mr. Vohra died of complications of Covid-19 on May 9 at a hospital in New Delhi, Ms. Tiwari said. He was 35.He had fallen ill in New Delhi’s second wave of the pandemic, when much of the country’s health care system was overwhelmed. He found himself making desperate calls to his wife from his hospital bed, telling her that he feared he would die. She called the hospital for help but received little attention, she said. He was eventually moved to another hospital and died there.His videos struck a chord with young and middle-class Indians. “There was something about him which touched the lives of people,” a friend, Ankur Seth, said. “He spread positivity around even in dark times.”Rahul Vohra was born into a middle-class family in New Delhi on Jan. 27, 1986. His father, Suresh Vohra, works in a manufacturing firm, and his mother, Bimla Vohra, is a homemaker. Along with his wife and parents, he is survived by a sister, Neeru Vohra.Mr. Vohra received a degree in commerce from Delhi University. A talented performer from a young age, he was then offered a place at the prestigious Asmita Theater Group school in New Delhi.Two days after he died, Ms. Tiwari, 29, a writer for YouTube videos, found on her husband’s phone a video of him struggling to breathe and complaining about the poor quality of medical care at the hospital where he had initially been admitted. She posted it on Instagram with the hashtag #justiceforirahulvohra.“This is extremely valuable right now,” he said in the video, referring to his oxygen mask. “Without it patients get giddy and suffer.”In another post the day before he died, on his Facebook page, he wrote, “I would have lived had I received better treatment.” He tagged Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been severely criticized for his handling of the pandemic.“My Rahul has left us, everyone knows that but, no one knows how he left us,” Ms. Tiwari wrote on Instagram. “I hope my husband will get justice.” More

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      in Movies

      Vira Sathidar, Cultural Figure Who Fought India’s Caste System, Dies at 62

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      After a career of activism on behalf of the lower castes, Mr. Sathidar was cast in a movie that reflected his life. He died of complications of Covid-19.This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.NEW DELHI — Vira Sathidar played the role of a protest singer enmeshed in India’s frustrating legal system in “Court,” a 2014 movie that won accolades in India and around the world. Yet Mr. Sathidar, a lifelong activist against injustice with little screen experience, remained uncomfortable describing himself as an actor.Acting, he said, was just another tool in the toolbox of protest — along with organizing, pamphleteering, editing, writing poetry and singing.“Song and dance was a weapon of our fight,” he once said. “It still is.”Mr. Sathidar died of complications of Covid-19 on April 13 at a hospital in Nagpur, in the state of Maharashtra, his son, Ravan, said. He was 62.Mr. Sathidar agitated against the deeply rooted caste system in India, under which those at the bottom — his fellow Dalits, or untouchables — are systematically abused. A high school dropout, he wrote books and articles, edited magazines and organized street performances. For a brief time, he ran a bookstall. He was the head of the Maharashtra chapter of the Confederation of Human Rights Organizations.“He was a living library,” his friend Nihal Singh Rathod said, “on political science, on social science.”Vira Sathidar was born on June 7, 1958, in the village of Parsodi, near Nagpur, to Rauf and Gangubai Sathidar. His father, a farmer, was a staunch supporter of B.R. Ambedkar, one of India’s most influential thinkers and political figures. Mr. Ambedkar, himself a Dalit, was part of the Indian independence movement and played a central role in drafting the constitution for the future republic. He was also a tireless opponent of the caste system, and Mr. Sathidar often cited his influence in setting him on the road to activism.Mr. Sathidar said his father wanted him to be a scholar. But he was a distracted student, and he left school after 10th grade to work at a cotton thread mill.Mr. Sathidar’s activism began when he was a union organizer at the mill. He found himself working with the radical Maoist movement called the Naxalites in the 1990s.He went underground for a time but became disillusioned, his friend Pradeep Maitra, the Nagpur correspondent for The Hindustan Times, said in an interview: “He got disappointed with the Naxal movement because of their emphasis on classless society and ignoring the Ambedkar notion of casteless society.”Along with his son, Mr. Sathidar, who lived in Nagpur, is survived by his wife, Pushpa Viplav Sathidar, as well as three brothers and a sister.Mr. Sathidar came to broader attention after “Court,” an examination of the injustices India’s labyrinthine legal system perpetuates against the marginalized. The director, Chaitanya Tamhane, was looking for a cast of largely unprofessional actors.Mr. Sathidar in a scene from “Court,” which was directed by Chaitanya Tamhane.Zeitgeist FilmsFor months, his team held casting calls across several states, trying to recruit from theater groups and street performers. He was having trouble casting the lead role, Narayan Kamble, a Dalit protest singer and poet who is accused of performing songs that induce a Mumbai sewer worker to commit suicide..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Then Mr. Tamhane discovered Mr. Sathidar through an activist group. He cast him just before shooting started.“I thought they were taking me in the film because they couldn’t find a good actor, or they didn’t have enough budget,” Mr. Sathidar said in a video interview. He said he was struck by how much his character, Narayan, resembled him.“He has worked at a factory, I have worked at a factory,” Mr. Sathidar said. “He writes articles, I also write articles. He is an editor, I am also an editor. He works at a union, I also work at a union. He sings songs, I also sing songs. He goes to jail; I have also been to jail many times. His house is raided, my house is also raided.”“What he is showing is my life,” Mr. Sathidar said. “What surprised me was that he wrote all this without having met me.” More

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      in Music

      Rajan Mishra, Classical Indian Vocalist, Dies at 69

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      Part of a famous duet with his brother, he brought traditional ragas to generations of young musicians. He died of Covid 19-related complications.This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.NEW DELHI — On a floating stage draped with garlands of marigold and rose petals, the brothers Rajan and Sajan Mishra, both wearing white kurtas and pajamas, sang verses of a meditative, melodious ancient raga as the Ganges River lapped around them.Their performance, for a short documentary film about their musical family, was seamless after decades of singing together, each brother picking up where the other left off with perfect intuition.“In Benares, the tradition was not just to listen to music but to consume it,” Rajan Mishra said in the film, using an alternative name for their hometown, Varanasi.Despite settling in New Delhi in a joint household of 14 relatives, the Mishra brothers always longed to return to Varanasi, and, in a manner of speaking, they will when India’s catastrophic second wave of the coronavirus recedes: Sajan Mishra, 64, plans to take his brother’s ashes back to the Ganges there and, as is Hindu custom, let the river consume them.Rajan Mishra died on April 25 at St. Stephen’s Hospital in New Delhi. He was 69. The cause was complications of Covid-19, his daughter-in-law, Sonia Mishra, said. She said the hospital’s lack of ventilators had led to his death. No one immediately answered calls to the hospital on Wednesday seeking comment.In recent weeks, amid the surge in Covid-19 cases, health care in much of India has all but collapsed, with hospitals in New Delhi, the capital, out of beds, medical equipment and even oxygen. Officials blame an even more infectious variant of the virus.“He was a national treasure,” Sonia Mishra said. “If we cannot arrange the basic facilities for such people, a common man will never be able to get those facilities, and we will keep losing lives like this.”Rajan Mishra was born in Varanasi, considered by Hindus to be the spiritual center of the world, on Oct. 28, 1951, a member of his family’s fifth generation of Indian classical musicians. (His grandson is in the seventh.)His father, Hanuman Prasad Mishra, was considered one of India’s greatest players of the sarangi, a bowled, short-necked string instrument that is often featured in Indian classical music. His mother, Gagan Kishori, was a member of Nepal’s royal family and sometimes accompanied her husband and sons as a vocalist and tabla player.Rajan Mishra studied arts and sociology at Benares Hindu University. He and his wife, Bina, a homemaker, had a daughter, Rithu, and two sons, Ritesh and Rajnish. The sons also are musicians. In addition to them, Mr. Mishra is survived by his wife and daughter as well as a sister, Indumati, and three grandchildren.Trained to accompany their father’s sarangi, Rajan and Sajan agreed as children always to sing together.When, in 2007, India’s prestigious Padma Bhushan prize was awarded to Rajan Mishra, he refused to accept it, saying it would have to be given to both him and his younger brother or not at all.The brothers, who achieved global renown, established a school in Uttarakhand State, in the foothills of the Himalayas, where they welcomed students from around the world to immerse themselves in Indian classical music. The more extroverted of the two, Rajan was the school’s public face.The brothers also traveled across India to promote the art among young people.Rupinder Mahindroo, a friend who teaches Indian classical music outside New Delhi, recalled hearing the brothers sing for the first time in 1979 in Lucknow, India. She had traveled to the city as a member of the national women’s cricket team. No sooner had her match finished than, still in her cricket uniform, she took an auto rickshaw to attend their recital.“I was so transported by their divine music that life was never the same after that,” Ms. Mahindroo said.Rajan likened music to an ocean, she said: “The more deep you delve into it, the more beautiful it is, and the closer it brings you to your spiritual being.” More