He is a director whose oeuvre speaks for itself. Brimming with creative vitality he loads his films with contemporary relevance without reducing his themes to clichés. For the past three decades he has been making off-beat cinema with tantalising thematic variation. He may not be the darling of either the frontbenchers or the moony younger generation, but the films he makes certainly strike a chord with highbrow critics.

Thirty years ago when he left a cushy job in advertising and entered the world of art cinema many thought he was making a big mistake by opting for an uncertain future in films. In the years to come Shyam Benegal was to prove them wrong with films like Ankur, Bhumika, Manthan and Nishant. That was in the early seventies. Since then, the director has traversed a long way.

The last decade has been the most productive one for Benegal with films like Suraj Ka Saatwan Ghoda, Mammo, The Making of the Mahatma, Sardari Begum and Zubieda. All of them a critic's delight.

Since the early seventies Benegal has been portraying the unglamorous side of life, narrating the real issues shorn of all the razzle-dazzle of Bollywood. Years later when parallel cinema is dying an unsung death he remains its last great champion. It was this zeal that prompted UK-based Sangeeta Datta, film historian and lecturer at the University of London to write a book on the man who is upholding this diminishing art of Indian cinema.

" When the British Film Institute approached me to write about an Indian director I could think of no one else but Shyam Benegal. Besides Satyajit Ray, he is the only man who has put Indian cinema on a world platform," says the author.

Shyam Benegal, published by Roli Books is a documentation of the work done by the master filmmaker. The book traces Benegal’s journey into the film world that boasts of an unparallel record of countless ad films, 20 feature films, television serials and over 60 documentaries in a career spanning over three decades. It brings out skilfully the trademark themes of Benegal’s movies---his concern for the subaltern, the peasants and the condition of women in independent India.

The book is the first presentation by the author who has done her postdoctoral work on Indian cinema at the university of Sussex and runs a film society In Focus in London that promotes the lesser-known Indian films.

" I came to India for a six week research on Shyam Babu. Saw all his 20 films and two documentaries on Pandit Jawharlal Nehru and Satyajit Ray. I then sat with him for a couple of weeks daily and discussed his art, what made him go for a particular theme, the problems and hurdles that he faced during the course of time, " says the author who also met Om Puri, Shabana Azmi, Girish Karnad and the people who worked with Benegal over these years like his cameraman Ranjan Kothari to know about this man whom she calls a peoples person who lets everyone speak out their minds.

Datta studiously avoids one important criticism that has dogged Benegal through his career---that he is a director who revels only in the gloomy side of life and his films are bereft of any lightness that is the hallmark of some of the best directors of the world. Which is what has prevented him from being a Francois Truffaut or Ingmar Bergman or even a Miyazaki Hayao.

But for Datta he is all of them put together and more. "He was more than co-operative with me. I would send him the chapters of the book, so that there weren’t any factual errors. He’d go through them, but he never interfered with the content saying it was my interpretation of his work."

Datta’s book has eight chapters that take the readers through art cinema’s journey with Shyam Benegal at the wheel. The first chapter Parallel Cinema in India is all about the history of realistic cinema in independent India, which familiarizes the reader with the roots of cinema in the country. This is followed by Formative Years that tells the story of a boy growing up in Burnpur, his ideology and his journey in the glam world.

Next comes Rural Triology that traces the making of Ankur, Nishant and Manthan, the films that established Benegal as a filmmaker with a difference. Midway in the book in the fourth chapter the author reveals the first half of the women story with films like Mandi and Bhumika. In the chapter History and Epics Datta describes the way Benegal created on-screen magic with his interpretation of Mahabharata in Kalyug.

In The Subaltern Voices the writer highlights Benegal’s penchant to draw attention to caste and gender inequalities. In the penultimate chapter The Last Triology she describes the maker’s feelings for women in independent India with his three films Mammo, Sardari Begum and Zubeida.

Finally in Experiments With Truth the writer concludes the book with two of Benegal’s most popular documentaries on Pandit Nehru and Satyajit Ray, along with her favourite Benegal film, Sooraj Ka Saatvan Ghoda.

Though dry in parts---perhaps due to the subject it deals with---the book certainly has its moments." My biggest reward is that after reading the book a lot many people have expressed their desire to see Benegal’s films," says the wide-eyed writer.

Datta’s future plans? To be a part of Indian cinema. She has already penned a script for a feature film in which Thumari singer Girija Devi has agreed to play a part. Datta plans to shoot in London, Varanasi, Kolkata and Shantiniketan. And the lead star---who else but Shabana Azmi who along with Om Puri and Smita Patil in the heady seventies helped create the Shyam Benegal mystique.