The Waiting Dissolve: Abrar Alvi's Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam (1962)

 

LECTURE #3

 

 

Black and white Hindi cinema -- from the time of independence (1947) to the emergence of colour (early 1960s) -- can be studied for a distinct and fully realized aesthetic of shadows, stark contrasts, grey tonalities and spatializations of the frame. Indeed, the camera displays an autonomy from the expressed or stifled desires of characters or plot points. Such a camera has true freedom moving respectfully and attentively into secret spaces that can be playful, intimate, inviting, lingering, transgressive and melancholic by turns and often within the same movement. It innovates in the private, unhurried ardency of light and shade, as this talk demonstrates with reference to Abrar Alvi's Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam (Master, Mistress and Servant, 1962).

 

Gayathri Prabhu is Associate Professor at the Manipal Centre for Humanities and holds a doctoral degree in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is the author of four novels, a memoir and a novella in prose poetry. She is also the co-author (with Nikhil Govind) of Shadow Craft: Visual Aesthetics of Black and White Hindi Cinema (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021). She works with mental health advocacy and is the Coordinator of the Student Support Centre, a psychotherapy service for students in Manipal.

 

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The Manipal Centre for Humanities is one of two Centres of Excellence under the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE)--MAHE itself was one of the six original Institutes of Eminence recognized by the Government of India in 2018. Over the last decade, the Manipal Centre of Humanities has helped pioneer in India a strong multi-disciplinary, research-driven, and India-relevant approach to undergraduate and graduate education. Its faculty are internationally recognized in three key disciplines--literature, sociology and history--and many of its students and alumni are at the forefront of South Asia research in India, Europe and North America.

 

This is the first of a series of encounters, planned for the coming years, in which research and teaching institutions in South Asia represented by their faculty will be invited the Centre for South Asian Studies to present their work, discuss shared interests, and meet and exchange as collectives dealing with the same global challenges. A series of talks by colleagues from the Manipal Centre of Humanities will lead up to a panel discussion in which the MCH and the CSAS communities will be given the opportunity to begin an open-ended conversation.