Sometime in the year 1996, Nasir Shaikh, a video parlour proprietor and movie buff in Malegaon, a small city near Nashik in Maharashtra, embarked on a grand mission. Marshalling a ragtag team of friends, he began directing a series of delirious spoofs of classic films, rigging a camcorder on the rear of a bicycle to use as a dolly mount. The films — doubly entertaining for being made on the cheap — spawned a local cottage industry, colloquially known as Mollywood. A ₹50,000 investment (typically loaned by family and friends) would fetch Shaikh a return of ₹2 lakh: a 300% profit.
Shaikh’s ingenuity, initiative and disarming sincerity was beautifully captured in an acclaimed documentary, Supermen of Malegaon (2012), directed by Faiza Ahmad Khan. Thirteen years later, a feature film on his life, lightly fictionalised and titled Superboys of Malegaon, is releasing in theatres. The film is directed by Reema Kagti and written by Varun Grover.
“Faiza’s film is one of the best documentaries made in this country in the past two decades,” says Grover, who met Shaikh in 2012. His own research opened up a world, and a history, that simply could not be contained in a 90-minute format. Apparently, Malegaon’s filmmaking traditions predate Shaikh. “There is a 10-minute chunk we have edited out of this film which is about a movie made in Malegaon in 1970s,” reveals Grover. “So there are countless stories about people who came even before Nasir.”
Grover says his interpretation is more expansive and symbolic: the motley characters represent filmic archetypes: one’s a writer, one’s an aspiring actor, one’s a diva. Malegaon, thus, is Mumbai or LA or Hyderabad in miniature, a microcosm of dreams, ambitions and clashing egos (the city’s communal past, meanwhile, is papered over in the narrative).
“I saw a space to say things about art, about cinema, and also the judgement we carry about B-grade and C-grade cinema,” expands Grover, “Who decides what is highbrow and lowbrow? Is it linked to the social class of the audience and our gaze towards them? I intended to break that gaze.”
In a funny scene, one of the principals, a self-serious screenwriter played by Vineet Kumar Singh, declares defiantly that he is adeeb (Urdu for ‘scholar’). “You are ajeeb (weirdo),” retorts his father. “I just love that word,” chuckles Grover.
Adarsh Gourav, who plays Nasir in the movie (with a Kumar Gaurav hairdo), shadowed the local hero and savant through the streets of Malegaon. “He showed me around the city. I would eat at his home and the homes of his relatives. They would tell stories about Nasir and how he affected their lives.”
The film, indeed, is less a biopic than a group portrait. Our needle of sympathy drifts from Nasir to his friends, especially Shafique Shaikh, the lead actor of the parody film Malegaon Ka Superman who died of cancer in 2008. He is played in Kagti’s film by an affecting Shashank Arora.
“I resonate with Shafique’s journey a lot,” says Arora, known for films like Titli and Lipstick Under My Burkha. “He was a mill worker who wanted to run away to Bombay and become an actor. He couldn’t do it while I, coming from privilege and money, could. Our dreams were the same.”
The real Nasir Shaikh continues to live in Malegaon. Over the years, he says, he’s had offers from Bollywood, but he wouldn’t forego his independence. “If it’s not my vision, it’s not my film,” he asserts. Zoya Akhtar, the producer of Superboys, has assured him support for a ‘big film’ set in Malegaon. The revelation echoes a line Nasir says in the movie, with doughty bravado: “We have to bring Mumbai to Malegaon…”
“Both Reema and Zoya ji told me, ‘Nasir, we will not get unduly involved. You write the film in your own flavour and style’. I have 2-3 ideas for the project. I will begin writing soon.” Will it be in the parodic zone, I ask Shaikh, who counts among his inspirations Charlie Chaplin, Jackie Chan, and James Cameron.
“Today, because of piracy and copyrights laws, parodies are extremely tricky to make. So it can be in a realistic space too.”
Superboys of Malegaon releases in cinemas on February 28.
Published – February 25, 2025 12:59 pm IST
