Shyam Benegal — the boy from Alwal who put Hyderabad on national movie map

Shyam Benegal's journey from Alwal to Bombay, his impactful films, and his legacy in Indian cinema.

“Shyam is an Alwal boy. He lived here. He swam in the wells here. His first films were made in Hyderabad and its surrounding villages,” said filmmaker B. Narsing Rao when informed about the passing away of Dadasaheb Phalke Award winner Shyam Benegal. 

“When Shyam went to Bombay, he didn’t have enough money and he travelled on the Railway pass of a friend’s brother and stayed at the home of Geeta Dutt who was related to him and worked in Blaze Advertising,” recalled Mr. Rao who also hails from Alwal and has followed the work of Shyam Benegal.

Not just shooting the films in and around Hyderabad, Shyam Benegal even used the poems of Makhdoom Mohiuddin for his movie including ‘’Phir chidi raat phoolon ki’ sung by another Hyderabad boy Talat Aziz for the movie Bazaar. In 2009 he made the successful film ‘Well Done Abba’ partially based on the story Narsaiyyan Ki Bavdi by Jeelani Bano.

Born in Alwal on December 14, 1934, Shyam Benegal saw India’s Freedom Struggle and later studied at the Nizam College. In one of his anecdotes he shared how he and his friends threw stones inside the propellers of the aircraft of Sydney Cotton that brought weapons to help the Nizam fight the Indian Army.  

“He used to cycle from Alwal to Nizam College. Can you believe that? He was the State cycling champion and State swimming champion. And he also edited the Nizam College magazine Collegian for two years in succession,” informed his long-time associate Shankar Melkote, who essayed the role of a lawyer in Nishant. “He always responded to messages and calls so when there was no response on December 15 for the birthday greetings, I was expecting the worst as he was very conscientious about responding to messages,” said Mr. Melkote who was three years junior to Shyam Benegal in Nizam College. 

The movie Nishant (end of the night) spotlighted Telangana Armed Struggle and was turned into a movie as a collaboration between playwright Vijay Tendulkar after they came across the newspaper cutting about how feudalism impacted the citizens and women in Telangana villages. “It was shot in Gundlapochampally village and had Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, Girish Karnad and others. Mandi was shot in Bhongir village. The first movie Ankur was shot in Kapra municipality. For Susman, a movie that showed the changing pace of a village due to rapid industrialisation, Shyam Benegal chose Pochampally village,” said Mr. Rao. These movies were crafted at a time when India was in the thrall of action-packed movies produced by mainstream makers They turned Shyam Benegal into an auteur for what came to be called ‘parallel movies’. When he directed Bharat Ek Khoj based on Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery of India, Shyam Benegal reached out to V.K. Murthy who did cinematography for Guru Dutt’s movies. The result was a perfect play of light and shade in 1988. And it harked back to the time Shyam Benegal spent in the photo studio of his father in Lal Bazaar area of Secunderabad.

It was here that Shyam Benegal learnt about the films, developing and printing after his father Sridhar Benegal gifted him a camera.