Songs Of Paradise, now streaming on Amazon, portrays a sweet-tempered, quaint Kashmir where guns are replaced by ganas, and goons with genteel folk who talk in hushed voices over cuppas of kahwa, all captured in a cuddlesome embrace of love and musical harmony.
This is the story of Noor Begum, known, we are told, as the ‘Nightingale Of Kashmir’, which is odd considering India already had its Nightingale by the time Noor showed up. Are we looking at sectarianism in the arts as well as politics?
Writer-director Danish Rinzu’s portrait of an artiste as a young woman is so sanitized, it feels like a Hallmark film shot on Dal Lake, although there is hardly a Dal moment in the film, maybe just a passing glimpse, maybe. The storytelling is harnessed by a picture-postcard visual of what life must have been for a young sheltered girl in the 1950s in Kashmir who wants to be… well, the Nightingale Of Kashmir. Best of luck to her.
Zeba Akhtar/Noor Begum is played by two actresses, Saba Azad and Soni Razdan as the young and older version of the character. The strategy of casting two actresses as the same character was used in Shyam Benegal’s Sardari Begum, quite disastrously, since Smriti Mishra and Kirron Kher looked nothing like one another.
Soni Razdan and Saba Azad do share a nodding resemblance. And I am willing to believe they are playing the same character (the film’s tone is too polite to be questioned). What I am not that willing to believe is that Noor Begum’s path to success was strewn with such angelic characters: a jolly old chuckling supportive father (Bashir Lone), a decorously draped, immaculately behaved Ustad (Shishir Mishra), a woke feminist spouse (Zain Khan Durrani) with a poet’s baritone who gives a very Gulzar-like impetus to Noor’s singing ambitions.
Bhai, problem kya hai? Some neighbouring whispers? A stone or two thrown at windows that seem happy to be disturbed? A radio-station helmer who pretends to be against women singers but is soon swooning over Noor, just like the rest of the cast… is that all?
What the film misses is the stress, trauma, and battle of a woman trying to infiltrate a man’s world. I remember the incomparable Lata Mangeshkar (THE Nightingale Of India) telling me about her days of struggle in the recording studios of the 1950s. There is none of that anxiety and nervousness in Songs Of Paradise. It’s a prettified, cleaned-out version of what must have happened… and none the less for it.
Saba Azad does well as the younger Noor, though her accent seems a tad exaggerated, as does some of her wide-eyedness. Soni Razdan brings a gravitas to the older Noor. Her conversations with the journalist (Taaruk Raina) seem like a touch of Orson Welles in a film that skims the surface rather smoothly. Rosebud rather than the rose.
The ever-dependable Sheeba Chaddha as Noor’s conservative mother kills it when she apologizes to her son-in-law Azad in English. I wish there was more of Lilette Dubey, who plays Azaad’s aunt. There is much that you wish more for in this minimalist, mellow drama.
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