Scary movies and what lies beneath them (or: Do Gaz Genre ke Neeche)

[This is the intro I wrote for my friend Shamya Dasgupta’s book Don't Disturb the Dead, about the Ramsay Brothers. Excerpts from the book are here and here]
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Cinema has been a running theme in my relationship with Shamya Dasgupta, ever since we found ourselves doing a post-grad communication course together in 1998. The first time I really paid attention to him was when he mentioned that my poker-face reminded him of Buster Keaton; I had long given up on ever meeting anyone who knew such esoteric names, or shared my interest in old, non-Indian films.

In a class of thirty-five students, Shamya and I were the only ones already on first-name terms with Citizen Kane and Aguirre and A Short Film about Killing, and we sneered superiorly when the others – most of whom were priming for a career in marketing or advertising – looked foxed by the “classics” shown in our (much-too-infrequent) Cinema Studies classes. Back then, if a time traveler had told me that nearly two decades later I would be writing an introduction for a cinema book authored by Shamya, I would have been elated.

I’m not sure, though, how either of us would have felt if told the book would be about the Ramsay Brothers.

While I loved horror films even back then, at age 21 I still mainly thought of them as a guilty pleasure, not as something that was part of the Good Cinema canon. (Caveat: Hitchcock’s Psycho was, then as now, one of the key films in my life, but I didn’t classify it as “horror film”; I thought of it as equal parts a brilliant black comedy and a Greek tragedy-level story about loneliness and private traps.) As a child, my horror-love had begun with B-movies, including the slasher franchises of the 1980s (House, Demons, The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th). Later, the jaal spread to many subgenres, from Dario Argento’s stylized gore-fests (Suspiria) to David Cronenberg’s gruesome excursions into the human body (Shivers, The Brood) to psychological horror like Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and Ingmar Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf, and films that somehow combined the above modes, like Georges Franju’s magnificent Eyes Without a Face.

However, for one reason or another, this net never extended to the Ramsay brand. So I won’t pretend to be any sort of expert on their films (feel free to disregard anything I say about their work that sounds informed or educative – you have the rest of this book for that). But I’d like to touch on a point about the genre they worked so passionately in: horror, even B- and C-grade horror, has always had subtexts that, if handled with even basic competence, can tell us very interesting things about a society, its people, the prejudices and paranoias acting upon them.

David Skal’s book The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror is an excellent start if you want food for thought on how horror movies (as well as TV shows, short stories, and comic books in the genre) have reflected, or distorted, a zeitgeist. Writing mainly in an American context, Skal examines how burning real-world topics insinuated their way into the genre: how, for instance, the birth deformities that resulted from the prescription of the drug Thalidomide to pregnant women in the 1960s also birthed a spate of literature and films about monstrous babies and children; or the effect that the savaging of human bodies during the two world wars had on films about misshapen “freaks” – as Skal observes, horror’s major subtext during this period was unintentionally revealed in a scene in Abel Gance’s anti-war film J’Accuse, where the ghoulish war dead (played by actual soldiers who had been disfigured) return to haunt the living.

It’s been a while since I read Skal’s book and I don’t remember if he explicitly touched on this (probably not), but one theme that I have personally always been stimulated by in horror and fantasy is that of the past and the present – or tradition and progress – in uneasy conflict, circling each other warily. How an archaic or fading world casts its shadow over a modernizing one; and how the modernizing world hits back, compromises, or capitulates.

This is a theme that stretches well beyond these genres, of course – it has driven many “respectable” classics of world cinema, from John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance to Satyajit Ray’s Jalsaghar to Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard. And there are tantalizing intersections: Abrar Alvi and Guru Dutt’s’s 1964 Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam is among the most esteemed Hindi films of its time, an elegant, mournful story about zamindari decadence and doomed love, but its last scene – where the skeletal arm of the film’s beloved but long-forgotten Chhoti Bahu is unearthed years after her death, in an unmarked grave – could have been in a B-horror film.

Within official horror, though, the theme has special resonance, and this long predates cinema. Look at the great 19th-century novels – Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Bram Stoker’s Dracula – that would so influence filmic horror in the century to follow. All of them, to some degree, deal with this apparent paradox: modern, scientific methods, for all the good they do, may also open a portal to our most primitive impulses; can we deal with the results, find a way to balance the good with the bad? And these thoughts are hardly surprising when you look at what history tells us about the links between advancement and barbarism: how the development of medicine, for instance, has involved using unprivileged and voiceless people (not to mention animals) as guinea pigs for centuries.

Variants on the tradition-vs-progress theme occur frequently in horror films, and it isn’t always clear which side the film is on. That family of cannibalistic monsters in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre … they are the scary predators and we shudder for their teenage quarries; yet the monsters are also a close-knit family who dine and squabble together and have clearly defined roles within the household, while their victims are scattered trophies of an alienated new world, ripe for being picked off one by one because they rarely work together as a group.

Or take the broad plot summaries of two of cinema’s most iconic ventures into horror/fantasy. In one film, a species not long evolved from simians uses its complex brain to develop technology that can make images move; they call it “cinema”. Travelling to a remote island for a shoot, a movie crew disturbs the peace of a giant ape, captures him and brings him as a showpiece to the most modern of their cities, where he will end his life climbing atop the world’s tallest building and fending off fighter planes (and he will do it all in the service of that most primitive and lethal of emotions, love). There’s King Kong. In the other film, the same species uses its amazing brain to build an atom bomb – a weapon that can do something as “sophisticated” as kill millions of people at a go – but in the process awakens (or creates) a prehistoric monster that then stomps its scaly feet all over a sleek city, so that formal-suited office-goers accustomed to heading about their lives with brisk, mechanical efficiency are turned into screeching victims, uncertain of the very ground they stand on. There’s Godzilla.

Perhaps this theme gets a special urgency in ancient societies that are undergoing change, and need to express their discomfort with the results. In the Pakistani gore film Zibahkhana, a Dracula-like tea-stall owner hollers “Jahannum mein jaa rahe ho, mere bachchon!” (“You’re on the path to hell, children!”) at fun-seeking youngsters; not long after this, a psychopath in a burqa comes after these jeans-clad deviants, whirling a ball-and-chain. See any undercurrents there? And Japanese literature and cinema is chockfull of stories that draw on the nation’s tumultuous relationship with its militant past. In Haruki Murakami’s novel Dance Dance Dance, the narrator discovers that history is alive in a hidden corner of a gleaming, 26-storey, glass-and-steel hotel. A weary creature called the Sheep Man – a gatekeeper to a lost age? – tells him, "Everything's getting more complicated. Everything's speeding up.”

(Does that sound anything like the Ramsay Brothers’ 1981 film Hotel? You decide.)

In the Indian context, one of my all-time favourite Hindi films is Raj Kumar Kohli’s 1979 multi-starrer Jaani Dushman, a film the Ramsays may well have made if they had had large budgets and big-name actors queuing up at their door. On one level, this story about a monster that abducts and kills a village’s brides while they are in the doli en route to their husband’s house can be seen as a parable about a conservative society’s fear that its young women may become bold enough to choose their own grooms. (All of the major women characters – played by Reena Roy, Neetu Singh and Rekha –transgress thus.) But it also works as commentary in a more generalised sense, when you consider that the monster turns out to be the benevolent Thakur played by Sanjeev Kumar (who should have done much more of this sort of hirsute, snarling role, but that’s another subject). In one telling exchange, when Lakhan (Sunil Dutt) asks why the Thakur’s daughter was spared while other brides were not, the old man placidly replies “Hum toh isse kismet ka khel samajhtay hain. Bhaagya ka devta hum pe meherbaan thay, doosron par nahin” – it’s a glib way of sidestepping centuries of exploitation and injustice, and it makes us think again about the fiendish bedrocks of the feudal system. (Do gaz zamindari ke neeche?) In another scene, the Thakur berates his wayward son Shera (Shatrughan Sinha) for “dishonouring” the “izzat” of their family; but ultimately, the city-educated Shera teams up with the other heroes to vanquish this ancient evil.

Today’s Hindi cinema – and Hindi horror cinema – is much sleeker and more self-consciously sophisticated, but since we remain a backward-looking society in so many ways, proud of the best and worst of our cultural heritage (and in many cases the good and the bad are joined at the hip), certain motifs can’t be escaped. See how many major horror films of recent years centre on the idea that a strong, independent woman with a mind of her own can unleash destructive forces in a world that isn’t ready for her. The main plot of Pavan Kripalani’s excellent Phobia begins when Mehak (Radhika Apte) says a gentle “no” to a man, Shaan, who has just propositioned her (they have slept together before, he is hoping it might happen again) – this act of exercising choice sets in motion a series of events that make her agoraphobic and dependent on Shaan, who moves her to a new flat (he is not a chauvinist in an overt sense, but the upshot is that she is now safely in a cage, the way many people prefer a woman to be). Then there is Navdeep Singh’s taut NH-10, in which city-bred yuppies Meera (Anushka Sharma) and her husband are adrift in the Haryana hinterland, witnesses to an “honour killing” and stalked by a gang of rough-spoken, homicidal men. NH-10 wasn’t quite labelled “horror film” when it came out, but is structurally very much tied to the genre, and it implicitly deals with the contradictions in a society heaving between old and new ways of life: a society where a woman may have a high-paying job in a posh, gated office complex, but may still be encouraged to carry a weapon for her safety, and to anticipate and be “responsible” for other people’s criminal impulses.

Or take Suparn Verma’s Aatma, which is a lesser film – inert, indifferently performed – than the two mentioned above, but gets a certain frisson from the contrast between the personalities of the urbane Maya and her rough-hewn ex-husband Abhay (as well as the non-diegetic contrast between the actors playing these roles, the tall and glamorous Bipasha Basu and the short-statured, rustic Nawazuddin Siddiqui) – it is possible to read the story as a conflict between a confident upper-class woman and an intimidated man who exercises a new (supernatural) form of masculine power because he can’t control her in the usual ways.

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The Ramsay idiom is, of course, a universe removed from that of these technically polished, sharply shot and tightly edited films, but does anything in their oeuvre fit the old world-new world thesis? Like I said, I’m no expert, but even the four or five films of theirs that I recently watched (or rewatched) have familiar echoes in them.

Early in their first film Do Gaz Zameen ke Neeche, for example, the upright hero rescues a young woman from goons and lets her stay in his house for a night. Dressed in a western outfit at this point, she changes into a saree (but whose?) after they get home and she has to join him for dinner. Meal done, she promptly slinks into a short nightie (but whose?) for bed, and for the seduction scene that follows. The five-minute sequence plays like a condensed version of Manoj Kumar’s Purab aur Paschim or dozens of other films where the woman in a patriarchal society must shift roles, from whore to devi and back in a jiffy, depending on context and time of day. But soon the lines get blurred, and this is where the film’s biggest horrors reveal themselves. In most Hindi films of the time, a woman becomes “good” when she yields to sari and sindoor; in this one, the woman looks nicely domesticated on the surface but continues to be the predatory vamp, taking away her husband’s money, making out with her boyfriend (who is, of all things, pretending to be a family doctor – a desecration of another of the most sacred cows of the time) and plotting murder.

Or watch Pradeep Kumar as a rich man cruising a city’s roads in a fancy, chauffeur-driven car in Purana Mandir, but still haunted by an ancient family curse. See Navin Nischal in Dahshat, a doctor just returned from Russia, very much a confident, professional man of the world, finding that graves are being robbed in the creaky old cemetery in his home town Chandan Nagar. Atavistic impulses, and cries from the distant past, move alongside the monuments we have built to assert our standing as a civilized species. But what does “civilization” mean anyway? A bunch of kids heading off in a red convertible – this in a scene in Purana Mandir in 1984, when even the basic Maruti-800 had just about hit our roads – to live like modern nawabs in a bungalow, while condescending on the “junglee” tribals living nearby? At such times you almost sympathise a little with the demonic Samri as he rolls his eyes and shakes his head ruefully at this strange new world.

Speaking as an amateur viewer, with less than comprehensive knowledge, what else can one say about the Ramsay films? They are derivative, of course, and you’d think the main inspirations would be C-movies, or schlock-gore movies, from other cinematic cultures; or at best, the Hammer Films. But one of the fascinating things about watching them is to see how cinematically well-educated the filmmakers are, and how some very disparate sources seem to be in conversation. This is true of the goofy “filler” moments (e.g. Puneet Issar and Jagdeep playing a version of Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach in a throwaway subplot in Purana Mandir) as well as the paisa-vasool scary scenes. Watching Dahshat, I got a sense of what the impressionist silent-film classic The Cabinet of Dr Caligari might look like if transposed to 1980s rural India and filmed in gaudy colour. Om Shivpuri’s mad scientist Dr Vishal, incongruously dressed in Western evening-wear, bears a physical resemblance – in terms of his portly, slightly hunched physique – to the mountebank Caligari, while Vishal’s mute, grave-digging servant (known only as “goonga”) is strikingly similar to Caligari’s sallow-faced sleepwalker-assistant. Yet this film also has a bit of Island of Dr Moreau in it, as well as Rajendranath’s broad comic style, which could only possibly belong to the Hindi cinema of the period. Talk about versatility.

That the films are creaky, often laughably tacky, is almost a given. But it is also true that horror movies in this register – made on very low budgets, with crude effects, poor lighting and no option of multiple takes – can have a special, visceral impact that is very different from that of more polished, more cerebrally crafted films. The very desperation of the crew, the quick-time solutions found to deal with time and location constraints, become a part of the film’s DNA, making it urgent and otherworldly in ways that may not have been consciously intended. And there are the occasional pleasing moments where execution does match intent. I would venture, for instance, that the opening-credits scene of Dahshat – with the nighttime close-ups of a serpent and an owl, a view of a skeletal arm stretched out on a cart, the slightly canted camera angle – is unsettling even when you watch it on a laptop screen, on YouTube (this should be late at night, though, with the lights in the room turned off: in an age where movie-watching has become such a distracted, casual affair, we must make some concessions!).

In short, these are uneven films, but in their better moments they show a dedication, a purity of purpose, that one sees in “disreputable” cinemas all over the world, the ones where passion and motivation exceed resources or even skill. And in those moments, they certainly can get under your skin. In this book Shamya gives the clan a taste of their own bubbling red medicine, by attempting to get under theirs.

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[Related posts: Phobia, NH-10, Aatma. Here is another long essay about my horror-film love, for the anthology The Popcorn Essayists. And a few other posts about horror films and literature are here]

 

Tough love: in which good guy Dharmendra serenades bad guy Amjad Khan

[the first entry in my Lounge mini-series about Hindi-film song sequences]
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If you know the mainstream Hindi film of the early eighties, this scene should be familiar. A villain’s ornate lair, stocked with henchmen, dancing girls, Vat 69 bottles and gaudy wall art. The good guys – including the second hero, the heroine and a long-suffering mother – trussed up together like chickens in a coop. Everyone dutifully waits for the arrival of the rescuer, the main hero – and here he comes, right on cue, and he’s played by Dharmendra, which leads one to expect much dhishoom-dhishoom preceded by blistering dialogue-baazi.

However, the climactic sequence of the 1982 film Teesri Aankh has a surprise in store. Forgoing his usual “kuttay-kameenay” tirade, Dharmendra launches into song – and continues singing for the next six minutes as he takes the minions down one by one.

“Salaam, Salaam, Salaam, Salaam, Main Aa Gaya” he begins, and the rest of the number is as polite and good-natured, even affectionate, as those lyrics would suggest – though it is punctuated by the sound of fists meeting noses and elbows pounding abdomens. Directed at the lair-meister – played by a very surprised-looking Amjad Khan – it includes respectful lines like “Mere laayak koi khidmat ho toh phir farmayeeay (Please let me know if I can be of service to you)”. And it is all in Mohammed Rafi’s gentle voice. Imagine Pete Seeger smacking the Ku Klux Klan about with his guitar while crooning “If I Had a Hammer” and you might start to get a sense of how otherworldly this scenario is.

But that still wouldn’t be enough. It wouldn’t prepare you for the game-show quality of this scene – how the hero must negotiate his way through antechambers in a multi-level art-deco nightmare, menaced by dangers: chubby men in their underwear, wielding spiky weapons; giant incendiary golden owl statues with red eyes; and most memorably, a bevy of lethal dancing girls led by Helen, their nails long and sharp as knives, sparks flying as they caress the walls. (If Un Chien Andalou, the 1929 classic of the Surrealist movement, was the result of Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel throwing their dreams together to construct a film, this Helen vignette might easily have come from a collective dream by Russ Meyer and Quentin Tarantino.)

For this series about Hindi-film song sequences, I had in mind the elegantly crafted work of auteurs like Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt and Vijay Anand. In deference to my baser instincts, though, I begin with this scene from a not-very-good movie.

Calling Teesri Aankh formulaic would be kind: it pivots around such tropes as lost-and-found siblings and revenge as a dish served twenty years late, and it is usually content with being derivative. A scene where Amjad Khan, being led to jail in handcuffs, threatens the cop who caught him, is a straight reprise of the Gabbar-Thakur confrontation in Sholay, with none of the intensity of the original. This film’s “prose” sections are barely worth sitting through.

The glorious exception is the “Salaam Salaam” song, which represents everything that is brassy and unrestrained about the masala movie of the era, yet goes further than you’d expect. Even with hyper-dramatic movies that mix emotional registers, there are (narrow) concessions to structure: it is understood that a song-and-dance sequence occupies a separate space from a fight scene. But here, both things come together, and the conception is so bold that you’re willing to overlook the tackier moments (such as the many insert shots of Khan in a neon-lit chamber looking worried and gloating in turn).

Watching it, I get the impression that everyone, from set decorators to actors, was having fun during the shoot. Many old-time Dharmendra fans rue the generic action films he made in the 1980s, but his energy here is infectious, and the scene provides a good showcase for his ability to mix goofy comedy with the demands of being an action hero. The song itself is catchy and robust, without being anything close to a classic. And if you’re offended at the thought of the great Rafi’s voice having to share space with fight sounds, you might console yourself with the reminder that the singer was a fan of boxing and Muhammad Ali; he probably enjoyed this too.

Musical numbers in these tense climactic scenes are usually the preserve of the heroine, who tries to buy time by performing for the leering villain (while also catering to the audience’s predominantly male gaze). On the rare occasions where the heroes do this (think “Yamma Yamma” in Shaan), they are undercover. But in Teesri Aankh, we have a male lead openly singing a sort of love song to the villain, even as he coaxes him out of his hiding place. “Mere saahib, chhup gaye kyun, saamne aajayeeye,” he sings, and the “mere saahib” here feels like a close cousin to the “mere mehboob” of other songs.

And this makes an odd kind of sense. In popular literature, good guys and their nemeses share a mutual dependence – a Batman needs a Joker to define or complete him – and this has also been the case in the archetypes used by mainstream Hindi films. So why can’t a lavish song sequence – one of our cinema’s distinguishing features – be used to underline the bond between hero and villain? Why not let them waltz together for a while, until the ticking time-bomb – or in this case, the golden owl – explodes?
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P.S. One might note that Amjad Khan in this scene seems just as reluctant to be “wooed” as most of the heroines in those "thrill of the chase" songs of the time were.

P.P.S. Here is the sequence, minus an important bit at the end where the owl explodes:

Gaata Rahe Mera Dil... an interview with the authors of a book about Hindi film songs

[Did a version of this Q&A for Scroll]

Introduction: Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Balaji Vittal won the National Award for best film book in 2012, for RD Burman: The Man, The Music. Their new collaboration Gaata Rahe Mera Dil: 50 Classic Hindi Film Songs expands the canvas to look at some of the most iconic songs from the long and varied history of Hindi-film music. The book combines deep-seated knowledge of musical traditions, anecdotes and back-stories, and analysis of what these songs contributed to the form and language of Hindi cinema.

Your RD Burman book was one of our most detailed cinema books and clearly a labour of love, but this must have been an even more daunting project. Such a huge treasure trove to choose from, thousands of songs representing many musical forms. What criteria did you use to keep the list down to fifty?

Anirudha Bhattacharjee: The song had to be well known. It had to be very melodious. Should have struck a chord with the listeners when released and also thereafter. Nostalgia value was a must.

Balaji Vittal: We wanted to pay tribute to the composers, lyricists, filmmakers and singers who comprise the hall of fame – anyone who reads Gaata Rahe… should get a panoramic view of the who's who of Bollywood playback. But yes, it’s true that even 500 songs wouldn’t have been enough!

Did you consciously go for as much variety as possible? What are the extremes represented here – between, say, Hindustani classical and western-influenced music?

AB: Not really. We went mostly by gut feeling. We did think of genres – like the rain song, the qawwali, semi-classical, disco, songs set on modes of transport like the train, the boat and the car, ghost songs, the ghazal, medley, soliloquy, cabaret, Arabic, etc – but in the end it was the heart ruling the head. We found that we had missed the lullaby, but some of the songs chosen are soft and tranquil enough to act as lullabies too.

We tried not to include too many of our personal favourites – else the list might have been very different. Having said that, we were both born in the 1960s, and most of the songs are from the period 1951 to 1977. We prefer arrangements without clutter, hence we avoided very fast and frivolous songs as well as songs with an overdose of leather.

BV: Variety in genre, instrumentation and mood were key. One can also see from the selection the gradual changes in the landscape in the choice of instruments, recording techniques and arrangement styles – as well as the different sound flavours identified with different singers and composers, and the personal styles of different poets.

You begin with a prologue about “Babul Mora” (from the 1938 film Street Singer) and then “Chale Pawan ki Chaal” (from the 1941 Doctor). How did these early songs pave the direction of Hindi-film music?

BV: How could we think of writing a book on Bollywood music history and not pay homage to KL Saigal? "Babul Mora" was not a playback; the song was recorded live whilst the sequence was being shot. It is a landmark that represents a period before playback singing. This chapter is followed by a rare translated extract about how the idea of playback singing came into being.

"Chale Pawan ki Chaal" can be technically called the first road-song, set in a fast-paced rhythm that OP Nayyar would patent later. It is very significant for other reasons too, as you will read in the book – not the least being that it features another granddaddy of Indian films, Pankaj Mallick.



AB: I think the best-remembered songs are those that we can hum along to. “Babul Mora” is such a song, which, despite being from the 1930s, gives the average listener a comfort level. This was a light song with a classical base (Bhairavi / Sindhu Bhairavi), and subsequently defined the types of songs that would flood Hindi films. Most of the other songs before or around that time were rather complicated and mandated a generous level of classical knowledge. Their reach too was relatively low.

When in your view did the defining era for Hindi-film music begin? Who and what were the major catalysts?

AB: Each era came with its own flavour. The 1930s and the 1940s were more in the mould of sombre songs. Raichand Boral, Pankaj Kumar Mallick, Khemchand Prakash, Anil Biswas, brought in lots of folk and classical music. Husnlal Bhagatram were the masters of Punjabi melodies – as was Naushad, who fused UP folk with Indian classical music. C Ramachandra was an instinctive composer, and his melodies were very fresh even when he blended Indian music and western genres. SD Burman came with his repository of Bengali folk and Rabindra Sangeet. He was perhaps the greatest singer among the old masters.

However, the first defining era I think is the 1950s. Shankar Jaikishan changed the landscape. Their melody was light, and their arrangement trendy. They could also handle large orchestras and could create the big sound without being noisy. They influenced an entire generation of composers. OP Nayyar had a style which was very different from any other composer of his time or any other time. Madan Mohan tasted little commercial success, but is one of the most revered composers even today, forty years after he left us. His tunes were very intense, and could create a deep feeling of tearful craving. Salil Chowdhury was the composer’s composer, I don’t think there will ever be another like him. His knowledge of Indian melody and Western Classical-based arrangement is still unparalleled in Indian film music. Roshan fiddled with lots of classical music, but came out with soft, simple, and hummable tunes. Jaidev and Khayyam had a distinctive style, which they could maintain through three decades. Film music evolved during the 1950s.

The next defining time was the coming home of RD Burman. He redefined sound. And AR Rahman with his electronic sound could be the catalyst of our times.

BV: And then there have been the unsung heroes, like Sajjad Hussain. It is impossible to pick one, two or even three catalysts. The inconclusiveness is what makes for interesting debates. One more pitcher of beer please!

Was Hindi-film music in the 1930s and 40s limited by primitive technology? (You mention that there weren’t proper reverb systems and that mikes needed to be heated and prepared, which complicated the song-recording process.) And were there any upsides to this – in the sense that it forced composers and musicians to innovate?

AB: Primitive, yes. Recording facilities were limited. Studios were not equipped in the manner one would have liked them to be. Regarding innovation, I would not be able to comment as I was not there then. One needs to be there to understand what went on. Armchair journalism in film and music is the reason why nobody takes the critic seriously!

BV: Fifty years from now, when someone writes another Gaata Rahe Mera Dil, they will state that the early 2000s were limited by primitive technology! The industry will keep innovating, of course. But it would be sad if technology were to completely replace melody – music should always be about melody first. Everything else later. Our book has emphasised this.

You mostly focus on the songs themselves – the music, instrumentation and lyrics – but there are a few instances (e.g. the grand Awaara dream sequence) where you dwell on the picturisation too. When you think of your favourite Hindi-film songs, are the visuals an essential part of your fondness for them?

BV: Absolutely! In motion pictures, visual appeal is important. It demonstrates the film-maker's imagination. The split-screen sequence of "Ek pyaar ka nagma hai" (Shor) shows a happy family, as well as the calamity that hits them, and the submission to destiny. Each mood captured so poignantly on the lens by Manoj Kumar. Also check out Raj Kapoor's passion for the grandiosity in the medley in Awaara. Or how Yash Chopra brings adultery into the flower gardens of the Netherlands. But we also love songs that have been left out of the film altogether.

AB: I love all forms of music. Visuals are secondary. Some songs are BHNS (Better Heard and Not Seen, a jargon in use on social media since the days of Yahoo Groups). For the regular viewer, however, visuals do play a very important role.

You mention that there have been times when a beautiful song had already been composed and the director had to create a situation for it in the film’s narrative – even something as iconic as “Waqt ne kiya, kya haseen sitam” (Kaagaz ke Phool). Any instances of key films that moved away from a director’s or writer’s initial vision because of the demands of the music?

AB: Many. SD Burman was someone who could create or alter song situations. “Mora gora ang lai le” (Bandini) is one, where he demanded that Kalyani (Nutan) would sing this song outside her house. Another would be “Jaltein hain jiske liye” (Sujata), where the phone was brought in as a prop at the insistence of Burman.




BV: The star system sometimes played a role in this too. “Zindagi kaisi hai paheli” (Anand) was supposed to be a background song, but Rajesh Khanna found the song so enchanting that he wanted to be part of it. Raza Murad also had reportedly stated that “Main shaayar badnaam” (Namak Haraam) was supposed to be pictured on him. Priya Rajvansh too wanted a piece of “Tum jo mil gaye ho” (Hanste Zakhm) and so the Lata Mangeshkar one-liner was added later.

Picking a single representative song from a soundtrack as brilliant and varied as Guide (SD Burman) must have been very difficult. Why did you go for “Mose Chhal Kiye Jaaye / Kya se Kya Ho Gaya”?

AB: To be very frank, it gave us the opportunity to showcase two songs instead of one within the same story. It also sums up the dilemma of the lead pair, of having loved and lost.

BV: This twin song – "Mose chhal kiye jaaye" and "Kya se kya ho gaye" – was the climax of the saga, when Raju and Rosie, the estranged lovers, confront each other. Their estrangement had to go through that one final public catharsis where each accuses the other. The twin song sums up their ornate tragedy. SD Burman had composed two very different-sounding songs with the same tune, which was incredible. And Fali Mistry's cinematography painted the tears of Raju and Rosie in a motley of colours.






The use of the song in Hindi cinema has undergone a change. In the earlier sort of sequence, actors lip-synched and the narrative entered a new, “non-realistic” space when a song began. Now songs tend to be used more as background, running through a film in snatches rather than occupying a separate 5-6-minute space. Has this in your view affected their charm or durability?

BV: You think so? I observe nowadays a number of song sequences force-fitted just to capture the music-channel space and for DJs to add to their playlists. In fact, many of them feature in the closing credit rolls. So technically they are not part of the storyline at all! Film producers are trying to cover some of their investments beforehand – all you need to do is throw in a Bhangra mix or a tapori number. That is why many of the songs today are quickly forgotten and replaced by new ones. Many of them sound similar anyway – synthetic voices, same rhythm.

AB: How many songs, say from the last ten years, can you sing in full? I bet you would not be able to name ten. Previously, people used to remember songs with the full set of music – preludes, interludes and coda. Hemant Kumar said even snake charmers would use his been music. The connect then was both aural and visual; the common man become the character while crooning the songs. That art is almost extinct.

Actors like Dev Anand, Shammi Kapoor and Nutan gave so many outstanding performances within song sequences. Do you get the impression that the young actors of today are more self-conscious about doing old-style musical scenes?

AB: The running-around-trees business was invented as an escape mechanism; it never happens in real life. Singing while running around trees or in rocking boats is an exercise best avoided! And singing while biking or driving could be life-threatening as well. The new-age filmmakers and actors are perhaps more conscious about this, as is the metro audience. Obviously, the language of Hindi cinema has been affected.

What we really lost in this transition is the sad song. I went to a corporate fest in Gurgaon as a judge and found that there were at least five entries where the song was “Abhi mujh mein kaheen” (Agneepath, 2012), one of the best songs of recent times. This shows that people still love melody and are sold on sad songs too. But today we hardly create nice, lovable sad melodies, something like “Main shayar badnaam” (Namak Haraam) or “Sada khush rahe tuh” (Pyar ka Saagar).

Also, the new heroes do not have innately romantic voices. Imagine Hemant Kumar or Talat Mahmood singing for say, a Shahrukh Khan or a Sanjay Dutt. It is almost nightmarish! How many leading stars would be able to pull off a “Kuch toh log kahenge” I wonder? Or a “Saranga teri yaad mein”?

Related to this: most of the major directors from the 50s and 60s had a degree of training in music, and they took the shooting of song sequences seriously. V Shantaram, Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, later Vijay Anand, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Nasir Hussain. Have we in some ways moved away from that culture to one where directors are not as entrenched in music?

AB: Technology often comes with a price tag. I do not know how much the present-day directors know music. However, the directors you named were all musically very creative. Shantaram is supposed to have helped his composers with the creation of tunes. Raj Kapoor could play more than one instrument (he in fact played the tabla with Kishore Kumar during the latter’s audition at a radio station) and at times used to play secondary percussion during the recording of background scores of his films. Guru Dutt brought with him the teachings of Uday Shankar’s school. Vijay Anand supposedly learnt music, and the Anands as a family were known for their musical sense. Hrishikesh Mukherjee was a sitarist himself. Nasir Husain understood what goes and what does not, and, as per Pancham, could inspire composers to give their best.

Add the fact that their stories were socials and mostly around the theme of romance. Today there is lot of aggression in the stories. It certainly does not lead to musical outputs.

BV: Even today's filmmakers, we are sure, understand music. But when a producer has invested Rs 200 crores, the director is left with very little room. Forget music, the director would not even have much of a say in the screenplay of the film. For example I can't believe that a third-rate film like Chennai Express was directed by the same Rohit Shetty who had made very different films like Zameen. The music often has to match the hero's persona and the lowest denominator of public tastes.

I noticed that post-1982, you only have one other song from the 1980s (from Qayamat se Qayamat Tak). Was that a particularly dry decade for Hindi-film music? And if so, why?

AB: Well, you’ll agree that the 1980s were not what you call very musical. The best singers were past their prime. Some were no more. Creative composers got less work. I feel that the mass-scale migration from villages and small towns to cities created a culture which was not conducive for cerebral consumption. Also, a film named Deedar-e-Yaar failed in 1982. The producer, who was also the hero, went south to recover losses and played the leading role there in a few films….. Whatever happened next is history, and better not discussed here!

BV: The Bappi Lahiri brand of music in the period between 1982 and 1988 was all nonsense. Even today when I hear “Oo La la” from Dirty Picture, it brings back bad memories of “Ui Amma” from Mawaali. Kudos to Jagjit Singh for having creating global space for the non-film ghazal. And 30-year industry veteran Khayyam came up with a stunning album in Bazaar. And RD Burman too delivered the oceanic Saagar. But by and large, 1983-1988 was musically very bad. The music matched the quality of the films. We have had badly made films earlier too, but in these, the intent itself was shallow – those vulgar pelvic grinding by Sridevi, or the imitation disco stories, were made solely to cater to the front-bench audience. These could not be viewed with the family.

And then came the revival in QSQT.

The last song included in the list is Roja’s “Dil Hai Chhota sa, Chhoti si Asha”. Why end in 1993?

AB: We kept a shelf life of twenty years for a song to be in public memory. And we finished writing the book in 2013.

BV: A song has to stand the test of time for at least (we guess) two decades for it to be considered a classic. We have included "Dil Se" in the "new age" tributes. Albums like Dil Chahta Hai, Don, Rab ne Bana di Jodi and select tracks from Omkara, Tashn, 3 Idiots, Badmaash Company, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, Chak de India, Ye Jawani Hai Diwani will make for enjoyable listening years later too.



This is the sort of project that can easily move beyond the confines of a one-time printed book. Have you considered expanding it into a website with essays on other songs, as well as multimedia and space for discussion? Or a regularly updated e-book?

AB: Never thought of it, but now, as you have mentioned it, we are thinking! Movin Miranda, a friend who works out of Kuala Lumpur, had actually suggested this.

BV: In the countdown to the launch, we have already published posts on the songs that could not be included in the 50 Classics list. The Facebook page on the book invites discussions and debates. The back cover of the book urges everyone to write their own stories on 50 or 100 songs! We would love to see Gaate Rahe Mera Dil start a trend of more music fans crafting their own list of songs.

Two people writing a book together: how does that work? Does one of you handle research while the other does the actual writing, or is it more integrated than that?

AB: We share the workload. Both of us do the running around and writing, and exchange chapters to review / add / edit material. For this particular book, Balaji did a lot of travelling though. You will find many firsthand interviews which he managed via extensive travel.

BV: We have done college quizzes and Antakshari together and hence always enjoyed a deep understanding. We research independently so that we get more “masala”. While drafting the manuscript, we alternate between one of us writing the first draft and the other adding to it. Sometimes an insightful interview with a luminary itself provides the core of the story script e.g. in the case of “Woh shaam kuch ajeeb thi” (Khamoshi). It starts with composer Hemant Kumar stretching out his long legs and telling Gulzar something.... and, in a snap, Gulzar gets the first two lines of the song.




There are more cinema books in India now than there were a few years ago. But when it comes to something like popular cinema (or in this case, popular film music), do we have enough people willing to read thoughtful literature about it? Or is there still the attitude “Watch the film/listen to the music and that’s enough. No need to analyse”?

AB: Rightly said. Film magazines are seen and not read. Most film books read either like a PhD thesis / seminar paper, or something like a cheap bestseller. Film music books are worse. Serious writers are very few, and what we get is mostly gossip or 30 superlatives spread in many forms over 200-250 pages. Forget research, there is not even basic sincerity.

However, film criticism is now acknowledged as a subject. The awareness level of the audience is now higher. The internet, now a household commodity, has been a major catalyst in the change – hence we do have a serious readership for cinema. Though after a certain point, most readers tend to get restive. Somehow, our DNA is attuned to stories and gossip, and not appreciating the technicalities of cinema. I am told that film-based books, apart from autobiographies by stars, do not sell. Coffee-table books sell because of their novelty value and celeb tags.

Coming to music, there is nothing called music criticism (especially for film music) in our country. Branded critics take pride in naming some ragas, without trying to explain why and how this fits the need of the script. There are some critics who have no clue about music, and are mostly engaged in equating the commercial success of the film with its musical greatness. Some of them have vested interests too. Sadly, critics who review classical music do not tend to touch film music. Maybe they consider it beyond their dignity. Ashok da Ranade is perhaps the only classical music critic who does write about film music.

Given the state of things, we thought that there is a world to be explored in dissecting popular film music. Hence we did get into analyses. It also helps us appreciate music better. I always ask myself – why do I like this? And then try and put my mind into it. I call up my friend Ranjan Biswas too - who is a brilliant western classical musician - to discuss progressions and chords.

BV: Things will change, hopefully. Wanting to read about your favourite music or film is a natural progression. The success of Anupama Chopra's book on Sholay or yours on Jaane bhi do Yaaro bear testimony to this. But writers must make sure that the research is original and that the stories are interestingly told, keeping the general audience in mind. A technical discourse will not sell. Also, e-book versions present easier procurement and storage options. These would help. Also, I get the sense that the publishers have that “3000 copies” number in mind when launching a film book title. The traditional channels will work in a limited way only. Publishers must invest in film and music-based books with newer and more innovative channels of distribution. They must leverage social media to create those affinity groups, forums etc.

You stress in the Intro that there could be dozens more books like this, with completely different lists of classic songs. Could you name just five songs that you seriously regret not being able to include here? (I know that will be another torturous exercise in list-paring!)

Bhattacharjee (centre, in red kurta) and Vittal (in blue shirt) at an
RD Burman tribute show in Dubai

AB: Five is too small a number. I can name a hundred easily. If you notice, we have kept the selection to one song per film. In a film like Amar Prem, any of three Kishore songs or the two Lata solos could have been there. Hence, we used the chapter to talk about all the five. Using this principle, the number of songs actually discussed in the book could be 200. However, to name just five (and this list will be entirely personal, and I am not considering the films which are already there in the book), in no particular order:

‘Mujhe le chalo’ (Sharabi, 1964) – The ultimate sad song in my opinion. There was a time when I used to get up early in the morning and sing this song at a stretch. Sanjeev Ramabhadran, a US-based musician, sings it like a dream. 

‘Lau lagati’ (Bhabhi ki Choodiyan, 1961) – My favourite Yaman from films. There is a Marathi / Konkani touch which makes it sound so honeyed. It reminds me of a similar Yaman-based song, the Ganesh Arati “Sukh karta dukh harta varta vighnachi”, which was taught to me in college by Nagamani, a friend who, in my opinion, was the closest to Lata I’ve ever heard.

‘Na tum bewafa ho’ (Ek Kali Muskayee, 1969) – This is my dearest Lata-Madan Mohan song. Even today I call up my friend Pathasarathi Bhattacharyya Ekalavya any time of the day and ask him to sing this song. He knows my fixation and would never say no. He is easily one of the best singers today in Bengal – only that he is an oncologist by profession.  

‘Aaja piya tohe pyaar doon’ (Baharon ke Sapne,1967) / Baahon mein chale aao (Anamika, 1973)’ – Two songs which made me take note of a composer named Rahul Dev Burman. The reason why I could write the previous book. And this one too. 

‘Aankhon aankhon mein hum tum’ (Mahal, 1969) – My favourite romantic song. There are very few days when I do not sing this. Connects me to my childhood, the rains, and one very cold night in 1989 when this song was playing on someone’s tape, softly cutting through the pin-drop silence of the fog, taking me back in time. Very nostalgic.

BV: 1) O sajna barkha bahaar aayee (Salil Chowdhury – Parakh) 2) Mere sapno ki rani kab aayegi tu (SD Burman - Aradhana) 3) Na tum bewafa ho (Madan Mohan - Ek Kali Muskayee) 4) Aapki yaad aati rahi raat bhar (Jaidev - Gaman) 5) Sajanwa bairi ho gaye hamaar (Shankar-Jaikishen - Teesri Kasam).

The Hrishikesh Mukherjee book (and a photo from the Satyakam shoot)

As some of you know, I have spent much of the past two-and-a-half years working on a book about Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s cinema. More hard work, zeal and paranoia have gone into this than in any other single project I have ever undertaken, and a lot of it coincided with periods when things weren’t good (to put it mildly) on the personal front; when, among other things, I spent a lot of time dealing with illnesses and the surreal madness of hospitals. There was one particularly bad phase that lasted around four months – though it felt much longer at the time – when, having dropped the thread of the book, I was certain I could never pick it up again; paralysed by the very thought of opening a word-file that I knew was full of sentence fragments which needed to be reexamined, made sense of, organised into something readable (or at least something sane).

But enough of the dramatics. (And there are no inspirational lessons to be found here.) The book is done now – or as “done” as such a thing can ever be – and should be out this September. And since this is a time in publishing when writers have to do their own marketing and publicity, I will in the coming months be putting up information and updates, sharing photos, drawings, and general reflections about Hrishi-da’s work and how I tried to engage with it. Hopefully some of this will be of interest to regular readers of this blog – not just those who like Hrishi-da’s films but also those who are interested in the workings of popular cinema more generally. (Rest assured that the other posts with my regular writings will continue – I do have to earn a livelihood, or pretend to.)

For starters, here’s a photo I like very much. This was taken on the set of one of my favourite Hrishikesh Mukherjee films (and his own personal favourite), Satyakam. Hrishi-da is to the right, Dharmendra in the centre, and on the left – only the back of his bald head clearly visible – is the wonderful actor David Abraham, who played such an important role in the Hrishikesh Mukherjee universe.

One of the things I like about this photograph is how it almost gives the impression that David is directing Dharmendra, while the real director passively looks on. In Hrishi-da’s very first film Musafir, David played the landlord who steers different sets of tenants to a house where the many stages of human life play out; over the next two-and-a-half decades, in films such as Anupama, Abhimaan, Chupke Chupke, Kotwaal Saab and Gol Maal, the actor often played someone who wasn’t a full-fledged part of the narrative but commented knowingly from the sidelines, providing avuncular advice to young people, often expressing opinions that Hrishikesh Mukherjee himself expressed in his interviews. In many of those films David can be seen as a director-substitute, which gives this picture an odd resonance. 

(The scene being rehearsed here, I’m almost sure, is the one where David’s character, the crafty Rustom, holds a mirror up to the idealistic hero, showing him his own hypocrisy – it’s one of the film’s many morally discomfiting moments, a depiction of a rogue briefly turning into a sutradhaar and guide.)

My editor Udayan and I both considered using a cropped version of this image on the book’s front cover. (One such design was created and it looked appealing to my eyes.) I was very tempted, especially since some of my favourite cinema books use similar covers to terrific effect. This one, for example:

One problem is that the Satyakam photo may not mean much to someone who is only casually familiar with Hrishikesh Mukherjee's work. It isn’t a great composition – it might have been better if we could see more of David’s distinctive face – nor does it represent an immediately identifiable scene from a popular HM film (like the Psycho pic above does). Imagine a black-and-white image of Hrishi-da on the sets of Gol Maal, overseeing the film-studio scene where Deven Varma tries on a fake moustache in his makeup room while a fretful Amol Palekar watches. What a brilliant cover shot that might have been.

[To be continued]

A tribute to Guide in its 50th year

[Did a shorter version of this piece for The Hindu]

If you call yourself a movie buff and haven’t yet seen Vijay Anand’s Guide, or don’t remember it well, you must make up for that lapse soon – but for now, just go to YouTube and search for “Guide snake dance”. Watch the scene where Rosie (Waheeda Rehman), a former dancer “rescued” from a courtesan’s life and now stifled in a marriage to a self-centered man, breaks her shackles during an outing with Raju the guide (Dev Anand).

See the look on Rehman’s expressive face as she watches a village girl perform the cobra dance; how Rosie, initially seated on a cane chair like a privileged memsahib, gets up and perches on the floor as the performance begins; how she begins to sway while still in that position, continues her graceful movements while rising, and then joins in the dance. (Meanwhile Raju goes from being a “mere” guide to occupying that chair himself and supervising her performance – a foreshadowing of what will happen to their relationship later in the story.) Note the long takes that follow – so characteristic of Anand’s cinema – culminating in the scene where the camera follows Rosie dizzily as she circles the arena, and how the sequence as a whole suggests that she is having something like a religious experience, the bliss of self-expression combined with the joy of having transgressed.

Now here is the equivalent passage from RK Narayan’s novel The Guide, two sentences in Raju’s voice: “She watched [the cobra] swaying with the raptest attention. She stretched out her arm slightly and swayed it in imitation of the movement; she swayed her whole body to the rhythm – for just a second, but that was sufficient to tell me what she was, the greatest dancer of the century.”

Rather terse, isn’t it, compared to that mesmerising scene?

Which is not to imply that the movie is “better”, or that Narayan’s cool, refined prose (more elaborate elsewhere) expresses Rosie’s circumstances less poignantly than the combination of Rehman’s acting, SD Burman’s music and Fali Mistry’s cinematography do – it is just to point out that a good commercial film may achieve its ends in very different ways from the literary work it was based on, and that it can be silly to compare two such disparate forms. Such comparisons are usually more deferential to literature anyway, more sympathetic towards writers whose visions were “ruined” by money-minded filmmakers. In an essay titled “Misguided Guide”, Narayan related, with dry humour, the processes by which his low-key, Malgudi-centered story was transformed into a colourful, pan-India extravaganza. But it is possible to enjoy that essay even while appreciating how Guide uses cinematic form and language.

Those long takes, for instance, add dramatic intensity to many scenes – such as the one where Rosie confronts her husband Marco in the caves, a brilliantly atmospheric setting for the playing out of overwrought emotions – and give the performances the dimensions of good theatre. Music – and the way it plays out on screen – is another of the film’s crowning achievements. (Would it be facetious to point out that the book has no soundtrack?) Look at the “Tere Mere Sapne” scene where Raju plights his troth to Rosie. “Khandaron mein guide khada hai” (“There is a guide waiting for you amidst the ruins”) he first tells her in dialogue, but prose is inadequate to this situation (a woman has just left her husband; a hitherto carefree man is baring his heart to her), so he has to shift to the more exalted meter of song. Though more than four minutes long, the sequence is made up of just three shots – there are only two cuts, each of which occurs after Rosie draws away from Raju; she is still conflicted, and the process of reassuring her must begin anew. This is then done at a dual level, by the song’s lyrics as well as by the camera’s sympathetic, probing movement – leading up to the long, pivotal final shot and a beautiful moment where Raju stands at a distance and holds his hand out, and the camera first tracks from him to Rosie, bridging the large gap between them, and then tracks back, this time “coaxing” her to him by not allowing her the option of “escaping” to another shot (via a third cut).

Music and visuals meld perfectly in other scenes too, such as the shot in “Aaj Phir Jeene ki Tamanna Hai” where Raju emerges from the darkness of a Chittoor Fort ruin as Rosie sings the line “Kal ke andheron se nikal ke”. Or in the heartbreaking contrast between the union of Rosie and Raju in “Tere Mere Sapne”, and the distance that has opened between them in “Din Dhal Jaaye”.

Part of Narayan’s concern was that the film had made something too big-canvas and starry out of his narrative about circumscribed lives. But the expansion of scale and setting doesn’t compromise the story’s essential concerns: how people and their power equations can change over time, how love can fade and be replaced by self-deception or self-interest, and how, despite all this, a form of redemption may still be possible. This is also a rare popular film that comes close to transcending the expectations created by the star system: it is possible to watch Waheeda Rehman and Dev Anand, to be fully aware of who they are, and to still feel how stifled Rosie is, how liberating the very act of walking through the marketplace in her ghungroos is for this girl who loves dancing more than anything else, for whom it is an art (and who has tragically been told that practicing it consigns her to the damned).

Because Rehman’s performance is one of the finest we have ever had, it is easy to overlook Dev Anand. He was at a point in his career where the urbane charm of his early days had begun veering towards the self-conscious, head-bobbing mannerisms that became so common through the 1970s and later. Yet that rarely happens in this film, even with the obvious temptations of the scene where Raju gives Rosie a lecture about self-actualisation. Anand seems to know exactly when to stay in the background: watch his expressions during the snake-dance scene and the ones around it, where he discovers new dimensions to Rosie’s personality and begins to be intrigued. This is a performance made up of finely observed moments, such as the way he doesn’t look directly at Rosie when she comes down the stairs at a party shortly after they have had a bitter argument; or a split-second shot where Raju, reeling after a physical altercation with his friend, tries feebly and fails to shut the door of a car that is about to drive away.

Guide does have minor weaknesses: in its final leg it uses the plot thread about Raju being mistaken for a holy man to indulge the traditional narcissism of the Hindi-movie hero; it seems a pity that a film with such a fascinating, ahead-of-her-time heroine should marginalize her in its final half-hour and end with a close up of its male star looking saintly, his voiceover saying “Sirf main hoon” (words that would define Dev Anand’s later screen work!). Thankfully, that pat ending can’t diminish the power of all that went before it. Now 50 years old and yet timeless, this is one of our cinematic landmarks, and a testament to the possibilities of artistic collaboration within a commercial system.

[A longer post about "Tere Mere Sapne" is here. And more about RK Narayan's "Misguided Guide" here]

Satanic shirts and lasting values: remembering the 80s classic Naseeb Apna Apna

(A history lesson for all you little teenagers and 21-year-olds. You’re welcome)

For people of my generation, it can be unsettling to find that new movies set in the 1980s or even the 1990s are now officially “period films”. Take Sharat Katariya’s charming (and surprisingly low-profile, given its many fine qualities) Dum Lagaa ke Haisha. Set in the mid-90s in Haridwar, with a callow young protagonist who idolises Kumar Sanu(!) and manages an audio-cassette store for his father (the CD era is about to knock forcefully on their door), this film has obvious nostalgia value for anyone above a certain age – and obvious knock-their-eyes-out-of-their-sockets value for anyone below that age. All the usual signifiers are here. Rotary phones, red Ambassadors, rickety grey scooters, a reference to Vinod Khanna as the epitome of male hotness.

The tiny moment that left me nearly moist-eyed though was when Prem (Ayushmann Khurana) struggles to remove a videocassette from its tight cover – he has to yank the thing out – and then does something that people of my generation so unconsciously did hundreds of times in the old days. He flips open the little lid at the rear of the cassette and blows at the visible strip of film to clear away dust particles and other lethal, real-or-imaginary microscopic things. (This keeps the player’s “head” safe, we would tell ourselves.) Then he puts the cassette in. If he is anything like I was, he is holding his breath for the few seconds until the TV screen lights up. (Please, please let it not be covered by “snow”, which could mean the VCR has packed up again and needs to be serviced.)

The scene lasts barely a few seconds but I felt sentimental because I wondered if any of the young people in the hall would even know what it meant. Or would they dismiss Prem’s gesture as a character quirk? (“Hey, there’s a guy who likes to whisper randomly at rectangular plastic objects. It’s probably a religious thing.”)

However, there’s another reason why Dum Lagaa ke Haisha took me disappearing down the foggy ruins of time. Its story about a self-absorbed man who is pushed into an arranged marriage and is then indifferent to his wife because she is an overweight “saand” (at least, that is what the plot seems to be about at first – it takes a right turn in the second half and becomes much more about the insecurities of Prem, intimidated by a woman who is smarter and more poised than him) reminded me of another film that haunted my younger self.

I have spoken, oh gawping teen readers, about the character-building ritual of blowing into a videotape’s rear end. Let me now introduce you to a thing called Chitrahaar that we used to watch on Wednesday and Friday nights. It provided the soundtrack of my childhood, pre-dating the Kumar Sanu-Sadhna Sargam one you hear so much of in Dum Lagaa ke Haisha. In the mid-80s this soundtrack included the yowling number “Teri Meherbaniyan”, sung by a dog to Jackie Shroff (or vice versa), which I wrote about here, as well as Anil Kapoor screeching “Zindagi Har Kadam Ek Nayi Jung Hai” to himself. And it included a hypnotic, droning song called “Bhala Hai Bura Hai”, which was telecast so often that its lyrics nestled into the minds of every little Indian boy and girl and gave us moral conditioning and good value system for decades to come. They began:

“Bhala Hai, Bura Hai, Jaisa bhi Hai
Mera Pati Mera Devtaa Hai
(Good, Bad, Whatever,
My husband is my flying spaghetti monster and I will worship It and feed It samosas and beer)”


Thus spake Naseeb Apna Apna.

It wasn’t just the song, but the power of the accompanying visuals. Displaying acres of wifely stoicism was a dark-complexioned woman who didn’t fit the Hindi-cinema ideal of beauty (not even the one established by south Indian heroines like Rekha and Sridevi). The film did everything it could to make her look ludicrous anyway. She sticks her tongue out (when she isn’t singing) and makes other strange expressions for no clear reason. Most important of all, trailing her head at a distance of several metres is an astonishing upright chhoti that ends in a ribbon; the sort of accessory that would have made Hanuman very envious as he set about using his tail as a wick to set Lanka afire.

Also visible in the scene (though he tries his best to stay out of sight) is Rishi Kapoor, doing his famous double-takes and managing somehow to look mortified, cocky, sheepish, contented, despairing, self-important, despicable and helpless all at the same time, all in the same frame.

In fact, Kapoor tweeted a few days ago that Dum Lagaa ke Haisha was like an updated version of his 1980s film. (You only have my word for it, but I made the connection before he did.) He would have good reason to remember Naseeb Apna Apna – it was possibly the hardest thing he ever had to do, a role that would have any actor yearning for a more lightweight assignment, such as playing Hamlet and Falstaff on the same night. Because apart from anything else, this film is highly confused about its own characters: it feels for them while simultaneously making fun of them (or passing judgement on them). And Kapoor’s Kishen is often on the receiving end of this double-headed treatment. 

Take the early scenes where he is being bullied by his authoritarian father. Kishen should be the sympathetic underdog here, since he is saying nothing more unreasonable than: what, you want me to marry a girl I haven’t even seen? And yet, and yet... look at the shirt they made poor Rishi wear:

(Talk about subliminal messages. Beware, India's sons and daughters, the film is saying here. If you argue with your Mogambo-like dad or wag your finger at your poor long-suffering mother over something as trivial as your choice of life-partner, even your clothes will publicly denounce you.)

Ten years before Amrish Puri played the patriarch whose permission must be sought in DDLJ, here he is as a fiercer, more rustic version of that patriarch, the boy’s father this time, who threatens to break his son’s legs if he tries to leave home. “I’ll staple you to that horse’s back if I have to,” he growls (or words to that effect), so the next scene has Kishen in bridegroom’s garb riding along sulkily on his way to wed the “plain-looking” Chandu (Radhika). At this point you think Naseeb Apna Apna has set itself up so that one of two things will happen: 1) The parents eventually see the error of their ways, recognise that times are changing, or 2) Tradition is upheld and glorified; young man finds love with papa-certified girl, starts wearing placid white shirts with "सुन्दर सुशील बेटा" printed on them. 

But no, the film mixes and mashes both these ideas while sticking to its larger agenda: to gratuitously make fun of Chandu and her Hanuman-ji chotti. At the same time it introduces another, fairer-skinned heroine – Farha – who gets to be not just Kishen’s wife of choice, but the film’s Christ figure too. Summary of what follows: Wife 1 is happy to abase herself by playing maid to Wife 2 if this means she can get to live in the same house as her (their) husband. And Wife 2 is happy to sacrifice her very life if it means that husband and Wife 1 may find happiness with each other. (Meanwhile Kishen continues to look miserable – look at the rough hand fate has dealt him!)

This also means that the similarities between Naseeb Apna Apna and Dum Lagaa ke Haisha are only skin-deep. In the new film everyone is likable, and the big message of the present day – that Indian men need the right sort of education – is in plain sight. Prem’s father meekly accepts his culpability when his daughter-in-law Sandhya gives him a lecture about not having taught his son to respect women. (Her wisdom, and the father’s sensitivity, are tellingly set against the values of the khaki-shorts-wearing brigade Prem is involved with, bent on producing a species of men who have no need for a female presence in their lives.) Back at Sandhya’s home, when her mother tries to feed her the usual line about a woman’s place being with her husband, aurat ki destiny etc, the educated girl coolly shuts the door in the mother’s face and that’s that. Not much room here for real social conflict.

Prem himself – before he makes a serious effort to improve his attitude – comes close to being a worm in some scenes, but never in the way that the forever-entitled Kishen is. Basically: Dum Lagaa ke Haisha is steeped in political correctness and social progressiveness and general feel-goodness; Naseeb Apna Apna wouldn’t know what any of those things were if they were brought to it on a large silver tray carried by a gharelu, pallu-covered bahu with eyes cast downward. 

Well, apart from the very special, tearful sort of feel-goodness that comes from watching a Noble Soul make the Ultimate Sacrifice in the Last Scene – we loved that sort of thing in the 80s. And with that observation, this post comes to...