The train ride as a technological fantasy

My TOI Plus/ Mumbai Mirror column:

In popular 1970s Hindi cinema, the train became central to an imagined world of infrastructural achievement and finesse. Sadly, we're still content to live in the dream.

Amitabh Bachchan prepares to get off a train in a screenshot from Parwana (1971)

In the 1960s and 1970s, the train in Indian cinema starts to appear as a space of sophistication and luxury. Whether in 'art films' like Satyajit Ray's Nayak (which I mentioned last week), or a full-on commercial Hindi film like the racy Rajesh Khanna starrer The Train, the upper class railway compartment represents high standards of comfort and hospitality. This is true despite the fact that Ray, ever the realist, has a senior Calcutta executive in Nayak express annoyance that he can't even get a beer on the AC Deluxe Express (precursor of the Poorva Express, the train between Calcutta and Delhi before the Rajdhani Express came along three years later in 1969). (The fellow isn't entirely to blame for hoping, given how much the train pantry car echoes the atmosphere at one of Calcutta's Anglophone clubs, where no evening would flow without alcohol.) He gets a Coke instead, though the waiter only comprehends when told “Coca Cola”. Still, the service on these filmi trains is polite, English-comprehending and very classy -- restaurant-like, in an era when few people ate out often. There is also a degree of fascination with waiting rooms and railway restaurants: places you could only access as a passenger on the long-distance train network. The murders on the Calcutta Mail in The Train hinge on one passenger being seduced away from the coupe by the prospect of a meal at the railway restaurant with a sashaying Nanda.

MK Raghavendra and others have marked that the train in the 1950s and 60s often mapped onto the idea of India – such films as Bimal Roy's 1955 Devdas, whose nationwide journeying hero I have mentioned in another context, but also nationalist films with train songs depicting children: 'Aao bacchon tumhe dikhayein jhaanki Hindustan ki' from Jagriti (1954) and 'Nanha-munna rahi hoon, desh ka sipahi hoon' from Mehboob Khan's Son of India (1962).

It is true that even in those decades, trains were occasionally linked to crime: murder in Shart and smuggling in Aar Paar (both 1954), not to mention the goofy Half Ticket (1962) with Kishore Kumar as the comic hero who becomes an unsuspecting mule for stolen diamonds on a train to Bombay.

But as Akshay Manwani suggested in a 2015 article, it was really in the 1970s, with films like The Train, Shor (1972) and Do Anjaane (1976) that the thriller element begins to dominate Hindi cinema's portrayal of trains. Speed, danger and the accident ally with the sense of danger that comes with being isolated in a train compartment, often miles away from the nearest outpost of the law. You can easily kill a man on a train – or, as in Do Anjaane, push him off it – with no witness, and the police will only arrive much later, in another place. The moving train is a world unto itself.

For me, though, the film that exemplifies this marvellous sense of excitement about trains comes right at the start of decade: the 1971 Parwana, directed by Jyoti Swaroop (who also made Padosan and ought to be much better known). It is perhaps best remembered for Amitabh Bachchan's performance as one of Hindi cinema's earliest jealous lovers: his tall, serious Kumar is scarily believable as the brooding artist whose romantic obsession crosses over into violent vengefulness. But it also displays some unusual detailing for a commercial Hindi film of its time, not just in its liberal characters, but with regard to things like characters' surnames, dates and place-names. The camera often zooms into print on screen, from a wedding cards to a 'No Photography Allowed' sign at Nagpur Airport (yes, cheeky!).

The train-related plot on which the film hinges involves a court case in which the wrong man and the heroine's true love (Navin Nischol) is charged for a murder that Amitabh Bachchan -- the jilted lover and real murderer – apparently could not have committed. Why? Because he was on a train at the time. The film's revelatory flashback sequence – with a stylish Bachchan striding through streets and stations and staircases in his coat, dark glasses and muffler (here the detailing goes for a toss, since this is meant to be Bombay in August) – shows just how he did it (spoiler alert). He used the train – but he also used a plane.

Watching Parwana in the midst of India's horrifyingly mishandled Covid-19 second wave, when the breakdown of our sorely limited health, transport and digital infrastructure is on full display, I was struck by the film's deep belief in functioning infrastructure. Parwana's murder plot is planned and executed flawlessly because -- in the film – trains run exactly on time, flights land and take off smoothly, taxis and public telephones can be found exactly when and where they are needed. The reference to television in a light early scene is as much a part of this vision – remember this is 1971, and TV transmission had not even reached Bombay till 1972.

Parwana, like many Hindi train films of the 1970s, is really a fantasy about technology and infrastructure. Tragically, our tendency to believe in the fantasy of our technological achievements remains alive and well in 2021, at the great human cost of reality.

Published in TOI Plus/ Mumbai Mirror, 16 May 2021

Nanda: Not So Simple

Today's Mumbai Mirror column:

The late actress Nanda is usually remembered for her girlish innocence. But that wasn't all there was to her.

Nanda's death in March this year was mourned by the industry. But as in life, so in death: she didn't really get the critical attention she deserved. 

Nanda was that rare actress whom the usually inflexible Hindi film industry allowed to graduate from one slot to another, embracing her first as a child artiste (in films like Mandir [1948], Angaarey, Jaggu [1952] and Jagriti, then as the younger sister (in V. Shantaram's Toofan Aur Diya [1956], Bhabhi [1957], Dulhan [1958], Chhoti Behen [1959] and Kala Bazaar [1960]) and finally as a romantic heroine (after Dev Anand kept a promise made during Kala Bazaar and cast her as his heroine in Hum Dono [1961]).

Despite this, there is a Nanda stereotype. We think of her as the achchhi ladki, the simple girl who could be coyly romantic but not sensual. The childlike innocence that had worked for Baby Nanda segued seamlessly into chhoti behen roles (younger sisters have always been infantilised by Hindi cinema) and seemingly clung to her even as she transitioned into playing romantic leads. Her good girl image was also a result of the sharply moral heroine-vamp divide that characterised the era. The heroine had to exemplify 'Indianness'; the vamp was 'Western', if not racially then culturally. The heroine's non-threatening sexuality meant being virginal, and putting her charms on display only for the hero. This was in stark contrast to the vamp's open display of desire (invariably unfulfilled), which in conjunction with her other sins -- smoking, drinking and alcohol – had, of course, to be punished.

One of my favourite Nanda appearances is in an unusually sophisticated version of the good girl-bad girl narrative: Teen Devian [1965]. Nanda plays the wholesome middle class girl, literally the girl next door, but her rivals are not cabaret dancers – a category the audience knows can never succeed with a hero -- but liberated memsahibs. Both Simi the well-connected socialite and Kalpana the famous actress flirt outrageously with our music-shop-salesman-turned-poet. Whereas with Nanda, it is Dev who flirts and Nanda who coyly accepts his overtures. Though perhaps this is not quite true either. In an adorable and surprising early scene, on their first coffee date, Dev asks to see Nanda's hardworking secretarial fingers. “Is this just an excuse to hold my hand?” asks Nanda. “Aur agar kahoon haan?” says the unflappable Dev. “Then I will oblige you,” says Nanda in English.

In the more mainstream Gumnaam (1965) and The Train (1970), Nanda's good girl Indianness is produced at least partially by being pitted against our most memorable vamp: Helen. Usually the heroine and the vamp never share the same space, it being a given that the vamp's netherworld of lowlit restaurants and hotel bars is not one in which a respectable Indian woman would ever find herself.

But both Gumnaam and The Train are slightly unusual in this respect. In Gumnaam (a pretty awful cannibalising of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None), Nanda and Helen, bearing the religiously-marked names Miss Asha and Miss Kitty, appear in the same frame quite early on. They are both on the fateful plane ride that will seal the fate of its ten passengers. Of course, Nanda wears white, and Helen red. Then, though both swiftly acquire boyfriends among the men they're marooned with, they keep their distance from each other. The bad girl spends most of her time with a drunken Pran, the good girl with a constipated-looking Manoj Kumar. But having put this effort into keeping them apart, the filmmakers decided some frisson would arise from having them bond. So we get Helen, who has spent many scenes before this refusing to drink with Pran, deciding to get drunk -- with Nanda! And they have a blast, until Nanda is violently shaken back to reality by Manoj Kumar, who being Mr. Bharat cannot be expected to enjoy himself. What I thought was fascinating was MK's sarcastic heroine-shaming dialogue, uttered in full hearing range of the vamp: “Ab bhi tum mein aur Kitty mein thoda sa fark baaki hai”.

In The Train [1970], which like Gumnaam was a murder mystery, cabaret dancer Helen (Lily) is the rotten apple, and Nanda (Nita) the misjudged goody-goody one. So Helen gets to throatily proposition Rajesh Khanna, while Nanda only gets to lie with his head in her lap. But then Nita gets a job as a hotel receptionist, letting her into the same space as Lily. And then the film does something truly unexpected: it gives us a glimpse of the 'bad' Nanda. Instead of the saree-clad version with a long choti, we suddenly see a 'Westernised' Nanda with a stylish haircut, the hushed voice and swaying derriere now those of a seductress in a murderous plot.

It seems to me that Nanda's overt innocence was precisely what enabled directors to use her to play on this “fark” between the heroine and vamp -- clearly thrilling male audiences but being careful to eventually re-establish moral order so as not to alarm them.

But remarkably, Nanda didn't stop there. In order to see where this fascinating trajectory took her, watch Yash Chopra's Ittefaq. The vamp-virgin divide is hopefully gone forever, but Nanda needs to be given some posthumous credit for having crossed the line when she did.

Published in the Mumbai Mirror.