Dilip Kumar, Madhubala and Prithviraj Kapoor in the restored and coloured Mughal-e-Azam

Shah Rukh and Preity can keep running in the cane fields. Sameera Reddy may keep shedding her clothes. Abhishek and Antara can stay lip-locked for ages. But come Diwali, Bollywood insiders predict that just like it happened 54 years back, millions of people will queue up to watch Dilip Kumar caressing Madhubala with a feather ? only this time it will be in colour and Bade Ghulam Ali Khan will sing in Dolby 6.1 in the background.

It took all of 60 years but finally legendary film-maker K. Asif?s dream of an all-colour Mughal-e-Azam is set to come true. After two-and-a-half years of hard work (one-and-a-half years of technological development and one year of actual restoration and colouring) the magnum opus will hit theatres all across India on November 12. And just like the times it was made in, this time too, it is sheer passion that is at work.

Says project director Deepesh Salgia: ?When the film was made, it cost the financiers (construction major Shapoorji Pallonji) Rs 1.5 crore. At that time, people used to make films for Rs 8-10 lakh. So even then, commercial returns was never the criterion. Now that we are again spending so much ? we could have made a medium-budget film with this kind of money ? we are doing it because we are so attached to our product. It?s just like repairing your own house.?

OLD IS GOLD

Mughal-e-Azam is the first film in the world to be restored and coloured for a big-screen release. Even the entire soundtrack has been fully re-recorded.

And indications are that the repair work has been jolly good. While black-and-white Hollywood flicks have been restored and coloured, Mughal-e-Azam is the first film in the world to be coloured for a big-screen release. ?In Hollywood, they told us that this entire process would take Rs 60 to 70 crore. Moreover, a theatre release there is very expensive. Their old films were made keeping the black-and-white images in mind and if coloured, they would lose their original flavour. Not so for Mughal-e-Azam, which was always conceived in colour with the striking costumes, sets and jewellery. When the film was almost ready, colour technology came to India. K. Asif shot one reel and re-shot three reels in colour. He wanted to re-shoot the whole film but that would have delayed the film even further ? it was already in the making for nine years,? Salgia tells Metro.

But how do you colour a particular image without knowing which colours K. Asif used for that same scene? ?That?s the speciality of the software we used,? says Salgia. ?It is so designed that it basically accepts only those colours that match the grey shades of the original input. This automatically ensures that the final colours are as close as possible to the original. We also did have an advisory board that suggested which colours were in vogue in those times.?

For the Pyar kiya to darna kya song, which was originally shot in colour, all Salgia and his team did was to colour correct ? convert the technicolour images to Eastman colour.

To go with the fresh images, even the entire sound design was re-done. ?The full soundtrack has been re-recorded except the original voices of the singers. Naushadji has supervised the entire process ? we didn?t want anyone else to touch the music,? says Salgia. ?So now you have the same soundtrack with a much wider bandwidth thanks to the multi-track recording. We will also release the new Mughal-e-Azam album. Trust me, it will sound like Mohammed Rafi sang the song yesterday.?

Thespian Dilip Kumar, who plays Salim in the classic, and his wife Saira Banu have already seen the ?repaired? film. ?They loved it and said that it seems like the film was originally shot in colour,? says Salgia. ?Now, everyone?s confident that Mughal-e-Azam will make money even today. We are treating it as a brand new film. With the promos coming on air one by one, the number of prints are increasing every single day. Within six to eight months of the release, we?ll sell the TV rights and then finally release it on VCDs and DVDs.?

So, this rose-tinted Bollywood Diwali (Yash Chopra, Sanjay Gupta, Ram Gopal Varma among others) comes an age-old thorn named Mughal-e-Azam, which has not withered with the vagaries of time, just as Anarkali told Salim, Kaanton ko murjhane ka khauff nahin...