Poonam Saxena’s English translation of Scene: 75 brings English-reading audiences to a darkly comic novel about the 1970s Bombay film industry, while making it easier to see Rahi Masoom Raza as more than the celebrated dialogue writer of Mahabharat. The novel follows struggling screenwriter Ali Amjad through a world of ambition, manipulation and social pressure; Raza’s fiction also explores Indian life and Hindu–Muslim relations.
What is Scene: 75 about?
Set in the Bombay film world of the 1970s, the novel centers on Ali Amjad, a struggling scriptwriter. Its portrayal of the industry is satirical rather than glamorous: Raza’s characters are cynical and manipulative, and the story moves through dark comedy and surrealism. Translator Poonam Saxena describes the book as an unsparing look at the Hindi film industry that also addresses Hindu–Muslim relations in India (Saxena’s excerpt on Scroll.in).
One episode follows Ali Amjad as he searches for a home and faces pressure to hide that he is Muslim. That predicament links the novel’s film-industry setting to questions of belonging and everyday social life. Readers may find those questions resonant now, but that is an interpretation of the novel, not a claim that its setting or characters represent every present-day experience.
Who translated Scene: 75 into English?
Poonam Saxena translated the novel. Google Books lists a HarperCollins edition published in 2017, ISBN 9789352770434 (Google Books edition record). A review in The Tribune described the translation as bringing the book to a wider readership around four decades after its Hindi publication (The Tribune review). Accounts differ on the Hindi publication year, so a precise year is not established here.
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For English-language readers, the translation is a direct way into Raza’s fiction and into a particular moment in Hindi cinema. Saxena’s account of the book’s satire and social concerns also explains why its importance is not limited to its setting in the film business.
Who was Rahi Masoom Raza?
Raza was a poet and novelist as well as a screenwriter. Saxena points to novels including Aadha Gaon, Topi Shukla and Os Ki Boond, and describes Muslims’ lives in India and their relationships with Hindus as recurring concerns in his fiction. Her account places Scene: 75 within a wider literary body of work, rather than treating it as an offshoot of his television career (Saxena’s excerpt on Scroll.in).
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That distinction matters: popularity as a screenwriter does not make the novels lesser work. Raza’s fiction examines social life and religious identity through characters and settings of its own; his dialogue writing is another part of a career that reached a different, much larger medium.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How did Raza contribute to Mahabharat?
Raza wrote dialogue for the television series Mahabharat. Saxena credits the dialogue and the choice to make Samay (Time) the narrator with giving the series a distinctive effect. She also recalls Raza adapting familiar Urdu forms of address into the widely recognized “Pitashri” and “Matashri.” These are Saxena’s assessments of his contribution, not evidence that one writer alone determined the series’ success (Saxena’s account).
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His work on a landmark television epic and his novels belong in the same picture of Raza: a writer whose language reached mass audiences, and whose literary work took on difficult questions of community and belonging. Saxena’s translation gives English readers a way to encounter both the wit of Scene: 75 and the writer behind that broader legacy.
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