Remembering Suresh Jindal, the film producer who left cinema to pursue a spiritual path

Film producer Suresh Jindal , who passed away at the age of 80 in New Delhi on November 24, will be remembered for his stellar contributions to Indian cinema and world cinema. This Punjabi man, who studied electrical engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and went on to work as an engineer in California’s aerospace and electronics industry for four years, has been associated with some of the most memorable films ever made.

Jindal produced Basu Chatterjee’s film Rajnigandha (1974) starring Amol Palekar , Vidya Sinha, and Dinesh Thakur. This love triangle is adapted from Mannu Bhandari’s short story Yahi Sach Hai. He also produced Satyajit Ray ’s film Shatranj Ke Khilari (1977), based on a short story with the same title written by Premchand. It happens to be Ray’s first Hindi film. Set in Awadh in 1856, it has Amjad Khan, Sanjeev Kumar, Shabana Azmi, and Saeed Jaffrey in the star cast.

Jindal has left behind a rich and insightful documentation of the process that went into making this film. His book My Adventures with Satyajit Ray: The Making of Shatranj Ke Khilari (2017), published by HarperCollins India, is a must-read for cinephiles and film scholars who are curious about Ray’s first non-Bengali film that is best known for Khan’s flamboyant portrayal of Mirza Wajid Ali Shah – a man that Ray despised for his debauchery. Khan was lucky to get this role of a lifetime soon after playing the dreaded dacoit Gabbar Singh in Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay (1975).

The book places on record how Jindal met Ray when the latter was 57 and the former was just about to turn 33. Jindal writes, “I was 5’6” tall and he was 6’2”, a veritable giant by Indian standards I was from a well-to-do, non-intellectual, conservative, vegetarian Jain-Bania family from Punjab…Ray was from a distinguished family of Bengal – half a continent away from my home – that was aristocratic, highly accomplished both academically and artistically and progressive.” While Jindal looked up to Ray, working together also had its share of hurt and disappointment. The book features letters exchanged between the producer and the director.

Tinnu Anand, who worked with Ray as an assistant director on films such as Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (1969), Aranyer Dir Ratri (1970), and Pratidwandi (1970), introduced Jindal to Ray. When Jindal went to meet Ray for the first time, he thought that Ray’s study “looked like a combination of a Renaissance atelier and an alchemist’s lab”. Jindal was mesmerized by this work space. He happened to be at the right place at the right time because Ray was thinking of making a Hindi film. He warned Jindal that it would be “at least four or five times more expensive” than his Bengali films, and said, “You may not want to spend so much on my first Hindi film.”

When Jindal made a request for an English translation of Premchand’s story, Ray told him that he had one published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) but would share it only if Jindal promised to return the copy after reading it. Jindal soon learnt that they had slightly different ways of working. In fact, later when Jindal gave Ray an envelope containing “a signing amount” as per the conventions of the Bombay film industry, Ray said, “No, I don’t work that way. And if we are to work together, you will have to work my way. First, I will write a draft of the screenplay, and if it is satisfactory, we can discuss money.”

As a student in the United States of America, Jindal had watched Ray’s films and hoped to meet him someday. He had no clue that they would work together in the near future. Jindal was in sheer awe of the genius who “wrote his original scripts in traditional clothbound notebooks called khatas…they were more like a research scientist’s lab notes than ordinary scripts…he would draw the frames of the shots on the left-hand side and write the dialogues on the right.”

While Shatranj Ke Khilari did not taste the kind of commercial success that Rajnigandha enjoyed, it played an important role in ensuring that Jindal got associated with director Richard Attenborough’s film Gandhi (1982) as an associate producer. Attenborough acted in Shatranj Ke Khilari before he produced the award-winning Gandhi starring Ben Kingsley. Rohini Hattangadi, Roshan Seth, Alyque Padamsee, Amrish Puri , Supriya Pathak, and many other wonderful actors. While many films have been made about the life of M. K. Gandhi, this one remains unsurpassed.

After this, Jindal produced Sai Paranjpye’s film Katha (1983) depicting life in a Mumbai chawl. Based on S. G. Sathye’s play Sasa Aani Kasav, it has Deepti Naval, Farooq Sheikh and Naseeruddin Shah in the star cast. Jindal’s trajectory of working on films that drew inspiration from literary texts continued with Sturla Gunnarsson’s film Such A Long Journey (1998) based on Rohinton Mistry’s novel with the same title that explores the life of a Parsi family in 1971 under the leadership of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Jindal co-produced this film that managed a casting coup – Roshan Seth, Om Puri, Soni Razdan, Naseeruddin Shah and Irrfan Khan.

Jindal was a supervising producer of the film Dance of the Wind (1997) directed by Rajan Khosa and with Kitu Gidwani and Kapila Vatsyayan playing key roles. It revolves around the travails of a classical singer who loses her voice when her mother, who is also her guru, dies. Shubha Mudgal composed the music for this film. Later, Jindal worked as an executive producer on Naukar Ki Kameez (1999) directed by Mani Kaul. Adapted from Vinod Kumar Shukla’s novel with the same title, it features Pankaj Sudhir Mishra, Anu Joseph and Om Prakash Dwivedi.

It is worth noting that Jindal’s films won National Awards in India and Oscars on the international stage. He served as the Vice President of the Indian Motion Picture Producers Association and a member of the Academic Council of the Film and Television Institute of India. He was honoured as Chevalier des Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Government of France.

Jindal’s work in cinema reduced considerably after spiritual practice became the mainstay of his life. He became a student of Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche aka Khyentse Norbu in 2004, and later an advisor to the board of the Khyentse Foundation. However, he encountered Buddhism much earlier when he spent a year studying at the University of California, Berkeley.

In his book on Ray, Jindal also recalls his own life in the US in the 1960s. He was exposed to “the headiest experiences of the 21st century” which included “the space race to the moon, the computer explosion, freedom rides against segreation in the south, flower power, psychedelic drugs, love-ins, environmental protection, gay liberation, hippies” and the anti-Vietnam War protests by pacifists. Zen Buddhism was becoming popular in the US around this time.

In an interview with Noa Jones for the Buddhist quarterly Tricycle in 2011, Jindal spoke at length about encountering Buddhism in the US thanks to teachers like D. T. Suzuki and Alan Watts. He took refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala soon after he was hired by industrialist B.K. Modi in 1994 to work on a film about the life of Gautama Buddha. In the interview with Jones, Jindal shared, “The first real teaching I went to was ‘Mind Training Like the Rays of the Sun’ in 1998, and I decided from there that this is serious business…For 10 years, I went to every teaching of His Holiness (the Dalai Lama) except four, all over India. I was fed up with the film business; the career was okay, but I was tired of it.”

Jindal made a brief return to films when his guru Dzongsar Khyentse Jamyang Rinpoche aka Khyentse Norbu – who is also a film director – asked him to be the executive producer for Vara: A Blessing (2013). This film about forbidden love – with actors Shahana Goswami, Devesh Ranjan, Swaroopa Ghosh, Mohamed Adamaly and others – is based on Sunil Gangopadhyay’s short story Rakta Aar Kanna. Working on this film was different from his previous experiences because it was not only a creative project but also an act of service towards his beloved teacher.

Chintan Girish Modi is a writer, journalist and educator who tweets @chintanwriting

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