And this is the remake by AR Rehman, sung by Lata. You decide which version is better. To me the original wins hands-down. You can say this much for the Rehman-version, he didnt disgrace himself in this remake. I tried to trace a rendition of VM by Lata in the old tune but i cant find it on youtube. Hearing that original version, your hairs crackle with excitement.
This original version and tune (male voice) of the Indian national song from the black-and-white era. This song was the rallying cry in India's fight for independence.
The English translation is
Mother, I salute thee!
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
bright with orchard gleams,
Cool with thy winds of delight,
Green fields waving Mother of might,
Mother free.
Glory of moonlight dreams,
Over thy branches and lordly streams,
Clad in thy blossoming trees,
Mother, giver of ease
Laughing low and sweet!
Mother I kiss thy feet,
Speaker sweet and low!
Mother, to thee I bow.
Who hath said thou art weak in thy lands
When swords flash out in seventy million hands
And seventy million voices roar
Thy dreadful name from shore to shore?
With many strengths who art mighty and stored,
To thee I call Mother and Lord!
Thou who saves, arise and save!
To her I cry who ever her foe drove
Back from plain and sea
And shook herself free.
Thou art wisdom, thou art law,
Thou art heart, our soul, our breath
Though art love divine, the awe
In our hearts that conquers death.
Thine the strength that nerves the arm,
Thine the beauty, thine the charm.
Every image made divine
In our temples is but thine.
Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen,
With her hands that strike and her
swords of sheen,
Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned,
And the Muse a hundred-toned,
Pure and perfect without peer,
Mother lend thine ear,
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
Bright with thy orchard gleems,
In thy soul, with jewelled hair
And thy glorious smile divine,
Loveliest of all earthly lands,
Showering wealth from well-stored hands!
Mother, mother mine!
Mother sweet, I bow to thee,
Mother great and free!
translated by Sri Aurobindo
The Indian National Anthem (Jana Gana Mana) performed by some of India's GREATEST musicians (Vocal and Instrumental). Arranged by AR Rehman, a musical prodigy and pride of the Indian film industry
Three articles on Bollywood (one by an Indian, another on Bollywood in Nigeria and the 3rd on Bollywood vis-a-vis Greece) that make very interesting reading are pasted below. I do believe that Bollywood offers a very viable alternate genre to the
1. The idea of
Also at http://www.indiatogether.org/manushi/issue139/idea.htm
The idea of
Bollywood is much more complex and a far greater agent for positive social change than is acknowledged by those who claim to represent the high culture of
Manushi, Issue 139:
Dil Hai Hindustani
Not just a nation,
Mera Joota hai Japani,
Yeh patloon Englishtani,
Sar par lal topi Russi
Phir bhi dil hai Hindustani.
(My shoes are Japanese, these pants are English; on my head I wear a red Russian cap and yet my heart remains Indian.)
Four decades later, Alisha Chinai echoed the same sentiment in her tantalising popular song Made in
Dekhi hai saari duniya,
Japan se lekar Russia,
Australia se lekar America.
Dekha hai pyar ka sapna,
Dil chahe jo ho apna,
Mil jayega ek sathiya, ek deshiya.
Made in
Dil chahiye bas made in
The message is clear - you may dress and dance like Madonna or Michael Jackson, you may wear jeans or mini-skirts, you may look like a vamp or a call girl - all those are just externals. What really matters is that your heart stays Indian. Any time our NRIs get deeply nostalgic or sentimental, they proclaim their deep attachment to their Indian roots not by showing you their investment portfolios or listing the number of times they visit India every year, but by proclaiming that if they could tear open their chests like Hanuman did for Ram and Sita, people would find the map of India inscribed within.
Despite large doses of low-level vulgarity and mushy melodrama, Bollywood films are perhaps the best contemporary guide to understanding what moves the Indian heart, what values Indians of today endorse as quintessentially their own.
Forced to a reappraisal
Those among MANUSHI's readers who are familiar with the unflatteringly critical film reviews I wrote in the magazine's early issues are likely to be surprised by such a radical change in my evaluation of the role played by Bollywood films. I wish to clarify at the outset that this is a re-evaluation that has been forced on me. Whenever my own views seem contrary to popular opinion, as someone who believes in respecting people's choices, I believe it is my duty to try and understand things from their perspective and to be willing to modify my own views accordingly, especially if popular opinion does not seem to be harmful to others. Treating other people's choices with disdain when they do not conform to one's own values and tastes invariably strengthens authoritarian tendencies. This is why I have revised many of my positions on important social and political issues and it is what has compelled me to review my attitude to Bollywood films.
The new moral custodians
Yet, it is this moral mantle that is key to understanding Bollywood's appeal for its audiences, despite the low-brow melodrama and predictability of its stories. An important reason for this enduring resonance is that the two great epics of
This is the same epoch in which Tulsidas rewrote the Valmiki Ramayana as the Ramcharit Manas in the bhakti idiom, and presented the mythic hero Ram as the Maryada Purushottam (the best of men, the upholder of the moral code) as opposed to the very humanly flawed Ram of Valmiki's Ramayana. This is the period when
The affirmation of a distinct moral code, just as the pauranic kathas once did, was a task that befell Indian cinema, given its birth at a time when
Among Bollywood's most important cultural contributions are the emotional bridges it has built with India for people of diverse races, nationalities and languages and the manner in which it has made them feel deeply connected with the Indian worldview and way of life, albeit often in rather caricatured form. Much of what I am going to say is gathered from informal interviews and chats with people in diverse countries who go to see our films with devotion and enthusiasm. I would like to emphasise that these responses are based mostly on Bollywood hits which became a rage internationally as well. (This is not to overlook the fact that Bollywood also makes many crude, vulgar and violent melodramas. However, it is significant that most of these are commercial flops.)
When one travels to Europe, North America or Australia, India (for those few who are at all interested in its existence) is synonymous with poverty, disease, wife murders, dowry torture, burning of widows, killing of baby girls, communal riots, caste atrocities and pervasive human rights abuses. This is because the basic sources of information about India in these countries are their newspapers, TV channels and select intellectuals from India who act as native informants, "interpreting" to the white world our many social evils and problems.
Western media have made
Connecting across cultures
However, whenever one travels to any of the non-European countries - from the Middle East to the Far East, from the backwaters of Africa to the troubled shores of
Astonishing outreach
The
Bollywood has conquered the hearts and minds of people even in those countries whose governments have long been hostile to
Traditional yet modern
Bollywood frowns upon mindless modernity even as it vigorously endorses an appropriate dose of it if we are not to end up as misfits in today's world. Likewise, respect for tradition is applauded while slavish adherence to it is disapproved of and even ridiculed. This echoes Mahatma Gandhi's advice: "To swim in the waters of tradition is healthy but to sink in them is suicide." Bollywood tries to show how to swim in the waters of both tradition and modernity.
Let me describe how Bollywood performs this role by recounting a small but revealing incident. About two years ago, I was sitting at a neighbour's house with an entire joint family, including an 80 year-old grandmother and a couple of grand- aunts, all watching some film award function. For one of the awards, Karishma Kapoor was invited to act as the ceremonial host. Her job was to announce the winner of a particular award and call upon an ageing Sunil Dutt to do the honours. She appeared on the stage in a sexy skin-tight mini-dress with a revealing neckline. When Sunil Dutt, in visibly poor health, came up on the stage, she not only rushed to assist him, but bent down to touch his feet. The entire family, from grandmother to grandchildren, spontaneously burst into appreciative remarks such as, "See how Indian she remains despite all the westernisation and stardom." Thereafter, the mother in this family gave her own little speech to her children on the importance of respecting elders and remaining humble, no matter how successful one becomes. It was revealing to me that even the old grandmother showed no disapproval of Karishma's seductive and revealing outfit. That one gesture of spontaneous respect for an elder (given that Karishma was not on stage acting the role of a Hindi film bahu, but was being herself) endeared her so much to everyone in the room that it did not matter whether she wore a bikini or a burqa.
Bridging the age divide
While Bollywood has been obsessively propagandising the value of stable and harmonious families as a hallmark of Indian culture, it has been as steadfast in dealing with inter-generational conflicts in values and aspirations. Our filmmakers are obsessed with resolving such conflicts in a way that leads to greater understanding and harmony in the larger family rather than a breakdown or nuclearisation of it. Young people are encouraged to revolt against parental tyranny but not to disown responsibility for the care and respect due their parents and other elders.
Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge provides the most well worked-out role model of a healthy inter-generational equation. The NRI patriarch of the family is outraged at discovering that his daughter has fallen in love with a young and boisterous NRI, played by Shah Rukh Khan. He forcibly takes her to his native village in
Sure enough, these Gandhian methods of winning over the ostensibly hard-hearted and tyrannical man through love and uncomplaining suffering result in a happy and voluntary change of heart. However, he achieves this result only by undergoing a whole series of self-imposed trials to demonstrate that he may have been raised in England and, from the outside, may look and behave like a boisterous London teenager, but in his heart he is far more Indian and far more committed to family values than the Punjab born-and-raised groom selected by Amrish Puri for his daughter. The Punjabi groom is finally rejected because he proves that he is actually a "non-Indian resident" (a term commonly used to refer to some one who lives in India without behaving like an Indian), has adopted a very decadent life style and was merely interested in using his NRI bride as a means to get a British visa and a passport to a licentious life-style.
By contrast, our Indian-hearted hero, though living in
Bollywood has conveyed this message with untiring zeal and consistency: a happy and stable family is the bedrock of our civilisation, a family cannot be stable if it is a site of oppression and injustice. While our films have been obsessive in teaching young people the value of sacrifice, commitment to family well-being and respect for elders, they have been no less steadfast in telling parents and other elders that they have to earn the respect of young people by understanding their aspirations and the demands of changing times. Hum Aapke Hain Kaun projects precisely such a happy balance between parents and children. Film after film reminds audiences that to command slavish obedience from children is to destroy family well-being.
Breaking role restrictions
Bollywood depicts Indian families in all permutations and combinations. There are those in which some women are the domineering matriarchs (for example, Deena Pathak in Khubsurat) and those where women have little or no say and are brutally oppressed (as with Raveena Tandon's character in
Undoing stock perceptions
Bollywood keeps transmitting this message with perseverance: a woman need not be frozen into a stereotype. The ease with which Indian film heroines switch from jeans to miniskirts to traditional saris, ghagra cholis, tennis shorts and on to bikinis, all as part of normal, daily routine, is an indication of the role diversity allowed to them. The same woman who is crooning away in a jhatka thumka number in a nightclub one hour will be shown singing a melodious bhajan with her family in the next, only perhaps to move on to becoming an efficient manager of her family business a few scenes later. It is through Bollywood films that people are told that Indian women are able to assert their rights without leading to a breakdown of families; that every woman desirous of the recognition of her selfhood does not have to walk out of her home in order to win freedom; that a woman can win everyone over to her point of view rather than be despised for her assertiveness. In the few cases where a woman feels that her well-being lies in walking out of her home like Ibsen's Nora, Bollywood invariably puts a firm stamp of approval on her choice, rather than condemn her (for instance, Astitva and Arth).
In most academic tracts and studies, Indian men are projected as cruel patriarchs who are insensitive to the needs of women and subject them to all kinds of oppression and misery. In recent decades Indian men have gained international notoriety for committing atrocities on women and for denying women their basic human rights. Bollywood goes beyond this simplistic stereotype and shows the soft and sentimental side of the Indian male as well. It sends a clear message to the world: in
In the worldview reiterated in our films time and time again, you cannot be a good human being without being a devoted son, a doting brother, a caring husband and a good father who puts the happiness and interests of his children above his own. The Bollywood hero may be a great doctor or a feared dacoit, a gangster or an upright police officer, a Gandhian social reformer or a feudal aristocrat - but he is qualified as a hero by his family values, particularly with regard to his female relatives. Our filmi hero may be a don on the streets, but at home he becomes a gooey-gooey, sentimental son who will defy heaven and earth to fulfill his mother's wishes. The status of a mother is higher than that of God; you may defy God, but you do not act against the wishes of your mother. Even if a mother slaps her grown-up son in righteous rage, a good son never holds a grudge, leave alone retaliates against or abuses his mother.
The hero also has to be a devoted and fond brother who will shed blood and sweat to put together the required money for the marriage of his sister, who will pamper her like a little princess if she is younger and be a Hanuman-like devotee if she is older. The unique emphasis given to the brother-sister bond, as symbolised by raksha bandhan, is celebrated in numerous
An affectionate pluralism
For newspaper-reading intellect-uals across the world,
The positive and often romantic portrayal of non-Hindu religious minorities in Indian films is another major reason for their international popularity. Bollywood has shown the world how people of different faiths join joyfully in each other's festivals, lay down their lives protecting each other and share in each other's joys, griefs and family secrets. The theme song of the film Dhool ka Phool made in the late 1950s: Na tu Hindu banega na Musalman banega, insaan ki aulad hai, insaan banega (You should grow up to be neither Hindu nor Musalman, you are the child of a human being and should remain a human being), echoes the sentiment of bhakt Kabir. This sentiment has been repeated in film after film, strengthening the message that all are sons and daughters of Mother India and are therefore inseparable, no matter how hard the politicians try to break their unity and sense of oneness.
The Sikhs are invariably depicted as generous, large-hearted, jovial, sincere friends, neighbours and colleagues - always ready to help. They are portrayed as men of raw courage and willingness to take great risks for their friends and neighbours. Indian Christians are presented as God-fearing, simple people. If they are Goan, they are also shown as fun loving. Christian priests are invariably depicted as kind-hearted providers of charity, help and shelter to those in need. Churches are always shown as places that provide spiritual and emotional succour to anyone in distress. Hindi films are replete with scenes of Hindus walking into a church at a time of crisis to seek Mother Mary's blessings. Similarly, true believers in Islam, the mazhabi Muslims, are invariably depicted as pious human beings whose faith teaches them to treat all human beings as equals and who are steadfast in their loyalties and commitments, including their loyalty to the land of their birth.
Portraits of patriotism
A repeated popular device for portraying Muslims as no less, if not in fact more, patriotic than Hindus, is to depict them in roles of great responsibility, taking on anti-national elements and defending village, ethnic or national solidarity. For example, a film made to honour the martyrs of the Kargil war - Ma Tujhe Salaam - opens with a young Muslim army officer being put in charge of the most sensitive border post along the Indo-Pak border. In the very first scene, his village-based mother sends him a letter saying, "Always remember you have two mothers - me and Bharat Ma (Mother India). Your duty to Bharat Ma comes before your duty to me." In the same film, a reformed terrorist, hand-in-hand with a Hindu army officer, defends Kashmir from invaders from across the border when he realises that foreign jehadis want to destroy mosques and promote internal strife among the people of
In Mission Kashmir, the man in-charge of anti-insurgency oper-ations in
Driving home a message
Compare those portrayals to the demonised stereotypical ones of Muslims in Hollywood masalas which deal with such themes and one cannot help but be impressed by the instinctive wisdom shown by Bollywood directors, script-writers and producers in not using a powerful medium like cinema to generate feelings of hatred and phobic mistrust. It is also proof that the average citizen of
This gives the average Muslim outside
Not surprisingly, Muslims (even of those societies where religious fundamentalism of a very intolerant variety is pushed down people's throats by very authoritarian regimes) rejoice in the
If an average Indonesian, Malaysian, Saudi or Kuwaiti is asked to list two or three prominent things associated with
Of deities And devotees
Bollywood as the most effective cultural ambassador of
In other words, it is Bollywood, more than any other cultural source, which has resisted the attempts of some of our inferiority-complex ridden netas to make our gods and goddesses above criticism and reinterpretation, outdoing Christian and Muslim fundamentalists in making Hindu gods jealous and intolerant. Bollywood keeps reminding people that even the gods are not to be credited with perfection. They too have flaws and they too make mistakes. It is for devotees to demand and ensure improved behaviour every time gods make errors of judgement or act too whimsically. In film after film, we are shown a devotee who chastises a favoured deity for allowing evil people an upper hand in life or permitting injustice to thrive. And the isht dev or devi is expected to respond to the chastisement and come to the aid of the devotee in times of need. This aid might come through the agency of a human, an animal or even a reptile. Dogs, horses, birds and even snakes are depicted in our films as active players coming to the aid of human beings who, like Draupadi, appeal for divine intervention. Such an interplay should not be dismissed as mere gimmicks. It carries the important message that Indic gods are not distant creatures. They are willing to be at the beck and call of devotees who reach out for their deities as they would for close relatives in times of stress. This happens not only in popular mythologicals like Jai Bhawani or Shiv Puran, but in countless other films with more secular themes, where the personal deity constantly comes to the aid of the supplicant devotee and defeats the evil designs of all those who seek to harass him/her.
This constant interplay of the human and the divine takes many forms. On the one hand it shows gods and goddesses can display very human failings. In Jai Santoshi Ma, for example, Lakshmi and Parvati are shown as being jealous of Santoshi Ma, a new upstart goddess. They harass her devotees till they both realise their mistake and make peace with Santoshi Ma, making space for her in the pantheon of goddesses.
Films also depict ordinary mortals playing and having fun with divinities. Scenes of the raaslila, of Krishna playing Holi with gopis, or those depicting Radha and Krishna in love or the Shiva-Parvati romance (with Parvati enjoying the right to veto and change any number of decisions of the all-powerful Shiva) are a source of immense fascination for people brought up to view God as a distant figure to be feared and obeyed unconditionally. Bollywood has no hesitation in showing people who make fun of gods, crack jokes about them or even treat them as a nuisance, as in the film Swarag Narak. The hero, played by Sanjeev Kumar, is very proud of the fact that he is a self-made man - a typical rags-to-riches story. The film portrays a very charming relationship between him and Lord Krishna, who keeps appearing to mock him for his arrogance in thinking that he alone shapes his destiny and that of his family. Sanjeev Kumar, as the hero, treats Krishna as an unwelcome pest and keeps shooing him off through most of the film until the life choices his children make brings across to him the hard realisation that Krishna's message about the need for humility should have been heeded. (His pampered daughter, for instance, chooses to marry her horse-riding instructor while Sanjeev Kumar nursed the ambition to marry her to a wealthy high-status man.) Even in this film, the purpose is not to show the victory of the divine will over the human, but the need for humility and graceful acceptance of how each person's destiny unfolds for him/her, rather than believe that you can play god with either your own fate or your children's.
To sum up
Bollywood is much more complex and a far greater agent for positive social change than is commonly acknowledged by those who claim to represent the high culture of
The new Brahmins of India are embarrassed by the worldview of Bollywood as well as aggressive in their disapproval of its value system. Is it not a case of a repeat of the hostility of the Brahminical orthodoxy towards the popular upsurge of bhakti in the medieval period - with just this one difference: the new Brahmins of today are not rooted in Sanskrit learning. They are the products of elite English medium schools and colleges. Consequently, their manners and tastes resemble those of their intellectual tutors in the West.
Madhu Kishwar
Manushi, Issue 139 (published June 2004 in India Together)
Madhu Kishwar is editor of Manushi. This is a revised version of a presentation at the Conference on the "Idea of
2. Bollywood Comes To
This piece originally appeared in Samar 8: Winter/Spring, 1997
Also at http://www.samarmagazine.org/archive/article.php?id=21
It's Friday night in
For over forty years, African audiences have been watching Indian movies. In places such as northern
Bollywood culture is a fundamental part of the Indian diasporic experience: American, African, Middle Eastern, and British Indians have kept in touch with the homeland by keeping up with the latest films and songs coming from
Ever since Lebanese distributors began importing Indian movies in the 1950s, though, Hausa viewers have recognized the strong visual, social and even political similarities between the two cultures. By the early 1960s, when television was first introduced, Hausa fans were already demanding (over British objections) that Indian movies be shown on TV. Hausa fans of Indian movies argue that Indian culture is "just like" Hausa culture. Instead of focussing on the differences between the two societies, when they watch Indian movies what they see are similarities, especially when compared with American or English movies. Men in Indian films, for instance, are often dressed in long kaftans, similar to the Hausa dogon
In a strict Muslim culture that still practices a form of purdah, Indian movies are praised because (until recently) they showed "respect" toward women. The problem with
After Maine Pyar Kiya was released one friend told me it was his favorite movie: "I liked the film" he said, "because it taught me about the world." When the star Salman Khan had to choose between an arranged marriage with someone he didn't love and running away from his family to follow the woman of his heart my friend said, "I shed tears, tears. Even though I know the film is fiction I still shed tears, because it was about what is happening in the world."
The themes of Indian movies are often based on the reality of a developing country emerging from years of colonialism. The style of the movies and plots deal with the problem of how to modernize while preserving traditional values - not usually a narrative theme in a Jean-Claude Van Damme or Steven Speilberg movie. Characters choose between wearing Indian or Western-style clothes; following religious or secular values; living with the masses or in rich, western style bungalows. Women often decide whether they should speak shyly to their lover or stand up, look him in the face and declare their love forcefully. Male stars are often presented with the choice between a "traditional" lover, who respects family and dresses modestly, and a modern woman who lives a rich, fast, life hanging around discos and hotels. The use of English by arrogant upper-class characters or by imperious bureaucrats; and even the endemic corruption of police and state officials, all present familiar situations for postcolonial Indian and African viewers.
For years, Indian movies have been an accepted, admired part of Hausa popular culture compared favorably with the negative effects of Western media. Indian movies offered an alternative style of fashion and romance that Hausa youth could follow without the ideological baggage of "becoming western". But as the style of Bollywood has begun to change over the last few years this acceptance is becoming more questioned. Contemporary films are more sexually explicit and violent. Nigerian viewers comment on this when they compare older Indian films of the 1950s and 1960s that "had" culture to newer ones which are more Westernized. One friend complained about this saying that "when I was young, the Indian films we used to see were based on their tradition. But now Indian films are just like American films. They go to discos, make gangs, they'll do anything in a hotel and they play rough in romantic scenes where before you could never see things like that."
The irony is that this shift in the style of Indian films also mirrors the transformations in contemporary Nigerian society. Post-oil boom
The international success of Indian film subverts the constant mantra of the cultural dictatorship of
3. Hindi Films of the 50s in
Have a luk at the articla at http://www.sangeetmahal.com/journal_hindi_films_greece.asp
In continuation of the movie review of 'Arth', a few blogs below, am pasting the youtube links for the 3 songs in this film
lyrics of the song available at http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~navin/india/songs/isongs/11/1114.html
lyrics at http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~navin/india/songs/isongs/11/1152.html
lyrics at http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~navin/india/songs/isongs/1/183.html
I was living a life of unexampled pleasure when, one day, the old desire entered my head to visit far countries and strange people, to voyage among the isles and curiously regard things hitherto unknown to me
- The second voyage of Sindbad the Sailor
Someone who knows the price of
Everything and the value of nothing
- Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it
- Max Planck
There is nothing divine about morality; It is a purely human affair
- Albert Einstein
Coffee is a beverage that puts you to sleep if you fail to drink it
- Alphonse Allais
History is a lie agreed upon
- Napoleon Bonaparte reputed to have said
One of the most haunting romantic Hindi songs that i have heard.
Moving and simple lyrics.
Amazing performance from Lata Mangeshkar. A thousand salaams to you.
By a curious coincidence, within 10-15 days of my having read a book on Swami Kriyananda (and having heard of him for the first time), I had a chance to attend his live lecture.
Though I didn’t particularly leave with very good vibes (nor very bad vibes either!!!) from his lecture, I did get a chance to hone up on my reading about Paramahansa Yogananda through the book ‘Conversations with Yogananda’ by Swami Kriyananda (J.Donald Walters)
Paramahansa is of course very well known worldwide via his bestseller ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’. Some thoughts of his from the book are as per below
Movie Review: Cheeni Kum
A geriatric chef falling-in love with a 30-something belle and countering the challenge of a younger-in-age father-in-law on the way: with the backdrop of
All-in-all: A must-miss film.
Credits:
Lyricist: Sameer, Manoj Tapadia
Editor: Chandan Arora
Cinematographer: CS Sreeram
Music Director: Ilaiyaraja
Writer and Director: R.Balki
Arth (‘The Meaning’) – Mahesh Bhatt movie
For any serious Bollywood fan this is a must-watch movie and the primary reason being the stellar performances from two of the finest Hindi film actresses: Smita Patil (who unfortunately died very young, but not before leaving a sizeable body of critically acclaimed work) and Shabana Azmi who is very well known both in
Once you get past the rather tacky opening credits, the world of marital infidelity and its effects is revealed to the viewer. If I remember correctly, this is also partly based on Mahesh Bhatt’s real-life experiences. The storyline is fairly simple. A married couple (Shabana and Kulbhushan) whose life is ripped apart by the husbands infidelity with a sexy (obsessive, increasingly erratic and psycho) actress, Smita Patil. The story moves on through the lives of the protagonists, the emotional crisis of Shabana and her subsequent adjustment to life as a divorcee, the mania of Smita as she wanders through each day as the ‘other woman’ and how Kulbhushan meanders through the mess of life.
The drawbacks of the film are that that the script is weak and lacks punch and the background score (and not the songs, mind you) is nothing to write home about (which makes me wonder whether it was really Jagjit Singh who has worked on it or whether he has ‘outsourced’ it to someone else?). The script/situations may seem a tad overboard (emotionally) to westerners. You may find fault with the end which is not ‘filmy’ or not likely to leave the viewer with a sense of completion. Made on a low budget, you might tend to find technical faults with this film. Some minor characters such as Siddharth Kak (the husband of Shabana’s friend) may not have delivered very competent performances
But the compelling reasons to drop everything else and watch the film are:
(In the text below, I will refer to Kulbhushan Kharbanda as KK, Smita Patil as SP and Shabana Azmi as SA)
Since I watch many films on my laptop, I would sincerely appreciate it if some reader could point-out how to take good screen snapshots and how to paste the same in my blog. Apologies for my ignorance
Credits:
Screenplay: Mahesh Bhatt, Sujit Sen
Photography: Pravin Bhatt
Music: Chitra/Jagjit Singh
Producer: Kuljit Pal
Written/Directed: Mahesh Bhatt
Resources:
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