Kishore Kumar Hit Songs: Rajesh Khanna Hits

Kishore Kumar Hit Songs: Rajesh Khanna Hits

Aradhana - 1969

ARADHANA
(“adoration, worship”)
1969, Hindi, 180 minutes
Produced and Directed by Shakti Samanta

Story and screenplay: Sachin Bhowmick; Dialogue: Ramesh Pant; Lyrics: Anand Bakshi; Music: S. D. Burman; Art Direction: Shanti Das; Cinematography: Aloke Das Gupta


When thinking of the dynamics of gender relations in India, I sometimes recall Garrison Keillor’s description of his fictional hometown of Lake Woebegone, Minnesota: “…Where the women are strong and the men are good-looking.” This could serve as a kind of summary-sutra for ARADHANA, a weepy drama of female self-sacrifice, buoyed by a famous Bakshi-and-Burman score, that casts Sharmila Tagore as the ill-starred heroine Vandana (a name that, like the film’s title, connotes “praise” or “worship”) and Rajesh Khanna in the double role of her lover and then son. Its dramatic success as a “golden jubilee” film (one that played for more than fifty weeks in major urban centers) made Khanna a superstar and led to a string of hits in which he starred (many directed by Samanta or by Hrishikesh Mukherjee) between 1969 and 1973—when the actor’s career went into abrupt decline due to the advent of the Next and Bigger Thing, Amitabh Bachchan.

As the credits roll, we see a radiant, white-clad Vandana being denounced in a courtroom, and (after tearfully refusing to speak in her own defense) being sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. One need not have taken Hindi Cinema 101 to grasp that she is doubtless Innocent, but the film will defer explaining her “crime” for its first half, which unrolls as a flashback from her lonely prison cell. As it opens, Vandana is returning from college to her hill-station home, where she lives with her father, Gopal Tripathi, a medical doctor and widower. As she rides the narrow-gauge train through the mountains, she hears a young airman, Arun Varma (Khanna) on the adjacent motor road singing the amorous song Mere sapnon ki rani (“Oh Queen of my dreams, [when will you come to me?]”) while he eyes her flirtatiously. Their paths soon cross in her hometown, where Arun begins to woo her more ardently; and although she is the very model of maidenly modesty and deferral, her jovial and progressive father proves to have no objection to a “love match.”

Soon, with the further blessing of Arun’s avuncular boss Air Commodore Ganguly (Ashok Kumar), the engagement is sealed (and celebrated with the sun-drenched love songs Kora kagaz tha, “My heart was like a blank page,” and Gunguna rahe hai, “The bees are buzzing,” both performed against a backdrop of forests and snow-covered peaks). But before the planned nuptials can occur, Arun and Vandana pay a visit to a Shiva temple where, at the prompting of a cheerful priest, they impulsively exchange garlands and “marry before God.” A sudden storm then forces the lovers into a nearby bungalow where they doff their wet clothes—she substituting an artfully wrapped blanket for her soaked sari, and he building a fire. The blanket is red, and the firepit resembles a Vedic altar; eyeing each other hungrily, they circle the blaze while (substituting for a mantra-chanting priest) an amorous young man in an adjacent room sings the sultry Roop tera mastana (“Your beauty intoxicates me”).

The film’s most erotic song picturization thus simultaneously manages to encode the key elements of a perfectly dharmic Hindu marriage ritual, although it necessarily remains a scandalous secret, unsanctioned by family and “society.” The obvious ensues (off-camera, of course) and though the virtuous Vandana worries about it the next morning, Arun assures her that they will be formally wed in just a few days, when he returns from a flying trip to Delhi.

But alas, Fate is cruel, and the young airman’s plane crashes. He survives only long enough to remind the weeping Vandana, at his bedside, of his dream of having a son named Suraj (“sun”) who, like him, will become a pilot and range the skies; he extracts from her the promise to make this dream come true. Soon after his death, the distraught Vandana indeed discovers that she is pregnant, and reveals to her shocked father—who could arrange a face-saving abortion—that she intends to keep and raise the child, dedicating her life to the “worship” (aradhana) of her lost love. Despite her father’s blessing, Vandana’s plight now grows grimmer. Arun’s family (eager to inherit his property) mocks her tale of a secret “marriage” and denounces her as a loose woman, and soon after this her father expires. When she gives birth to a beautiful son, a lady doctor advises leaving him at an orphanage door and then coming the next day to “adopt” him—the only means by which she can salvage respectability as a single mother. But this plan too goes awry, as the baby is accidentally given to a prosperous couple, the Saxenas, whose own child was stillborn. When Vandana contacts the husband and attempts to retrieve the boy, admitting the real facts behind his birth, Mr. Saxena convinces her to join the household as a nursemaid, so that her son can grow up with the advantage of the family’s wealth. Thus begins Vandana’s long, worshipful “penance” for her romantic indiscretion, as she nurtures the child, indeed named Suraj, maintaining the illusion that he is someone else’s son, while nevertheless forming a close bond with him, celebrated in the lullaby-like song Chanda hai tu (“You are my moon [and sun]”).

Worse trials lie ahead. When the greasy, foreign-returned brother of Mrs. Saxena, Shyam (Madan Puri) tries to rape Vandana, eight-year-old Suraj comes to her defense. She now gladly accepts a jail sentence for murder rather than endanger her child. When she is released on good behavior after twelve years, she learns that Mr. Saxena has died and his wife and son have moved to an unknown place. Homeless once more, she accepts the invitation of the kindly jailer (himself a widower and about to retire) to come to his house in Delhi as his adopted sister and assist in the raising of his spirited teenage daughter Renu (Farida Jalal). It is not long before Vandana learns that, like her “aunt” before her, Renu too has a weakness for daring young men in flying machines, and in fact is in love with a twenty-year-old pilot named….. Ah well, watch the movie—keeping a hankie or two handy—and everything will (in time) be revealed.

The songs of Aradhana were very popular and several remain well known today. Although most are romantic duets performed by Lata Mangeshkar and Kishore Kumar or Asha Bhosle and Mohamed Rafi, the film's most haunting tune is perhaps the bhajan-like Kahey ko roye (“Why do you weep?”), unusually and soulfully sung by composer Burman himself as a voiceover commentary on Vandana’s many trials.

Despite its suffocating patriarchal morality—which condemns a young woman to a lifetime of solitary adoration of a dead fiancé and self-effacing nurture of the son who is essentially his clone—this is a female-centered film, graced with a memorable performance by Sharmila Tagore. Her character’s two decades of tribulations recall those of two classical heroines celebrated in the Mahabharata, Shakuntala and Draupadi. Like the former, the innocent Vandana, associated with nature and the hills, is ardently pursued and eventually seduced by a more sophisticated urban lover, who then leaves her; their informal marriage is unrecognized by society and she is scorned and humiliated because she bears his child, yet she devotes herself to the boy’s upbringing so that he may one day inherit his patrimony (here, the “kingdom” of the now conquered and militarized sky). And like Draupadi in the epic’s Book of Virata, Vandana, in order to achieve her object, disguises her identity and takes employment as a maidservant in a wealthy household, wherein (in the absence of a male protector) she is sexually harassed by her mistress’ brother, who finally pays for this crime with his life; the blame for his death then falls on her. Yet the outspoken assertiveness of the two epic heroines contrasts sharply with the passive and stoic endurance expected of the modern and respectably middle-class heroine, whose resistance to injustice is here largely expressed through self-imposed suffering.

Anand - 1970

ANAND
(“Joy.” 1970, Hindi, about 122 minutes)
Directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee
Produced by N. C. Sippy and Hrishikesh Mukherjee
Story: Hrishikesh Mukherjee; Screenplay: Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Gulzar, D. N. Mukherjee, and Bimal Dutta; Dialogue: Guzlar; Lyrics: Gulzar and Yogesh; Music: Salil Chowdhury; Cinematography: Jaywant Pathare; Art direction: Ajit Banerjee


This multi-handkerchief film about a dying cancer patient whose infectious joie de vivre transforms the lives of those around him was one of the most successful of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s “middle class” films (see notes on ANARI, 1959), and helped Rajesh Khanna establish the character of the fast-talking-but-lovable interloper that he was to deploy (more endearingly, in my view) in BAWARCHI (1972). Fondly regarded in India as a heartwarming tear-jerker, it buttresses a human interest story (on the order of the old Reader’s Digest “My Most Unforgettable Character” series) with the pathos of a losing battle with cancer, a fascination with new medical technology (Anand receives radiation treatments), often witty dialog, and a parade of cameos by veteran cinema luminairies Durga Khote, Johnny Walker, and Dara Singh. The film is dedicated to “the city of Bombay” (which however is not seen much except in the credit sequence) and to Raj Kapoor—a more plausible connection, since the title character’s brand of manic bonhomie suggests the overbearing screen persona for which Kapoor was famous. Anand, at least, has the excuse that he’s terminally ill and trying to drink life to the dregs, and he occasionally reflects on his own behavior—as when he remarks to his physician early in the film, “Whether you live seventy years or six months, life needs to be big, it doesn’t need to be long.”

The film opens at a literary awards ceremony at which a brooding young cancer specialist, Bhaskar Banerjee, M. D., receives a prize for a “novel” entitled Anand. The doctor’s revelation that the book is, in fact, a true story extracted from his diary leads into the flashback comprising the rest of the film. Bhaskar recalls being initially discouraged in his medical practice because of the omnipresence of poverty in India—a reminiscence that occasions a “cameo appearance” by a real-live Bombay slum, evidently intended to assure viewers that Bhaskar’s compassion and public-service credentials are in order. This grimly familiar place and its denizens quickly disappear, however, behind the façade of bourgeois comfort in which Bhaskar and his friends reside (including car, servant, cushy bungalow, and Japanese tapedeck), and the arrival of the large-hearted and likewise middle-class Anand Sehgal appears to obviate the need to give any further thought to The Poor. Indeed, they are (as Jesus said) always with us, whereas Bhaskar will only have Anand around for a bit more than three months (distilled into two cinematic hours). Anand is preceded by a letter from a Delhi physician describing his terminal illness—a rare form of stomach cancer. Realizing that he has no treatment to offer, Bhaskar is initially repelled and even angered by Anand’s bouncy entrance—and here the film briefly but effectively explores the psychology of the physician, when Anand thoughtfully responds to an outburst by Bhaskar (who is appalled that he isn’t taking his illness “seriously”): “Ah, I understand, you aren’t angry at me, you’re angry at yourself, because you can’t help me.”

Though fully aware of the grim prognosis, Anand is determined to snatch whatever joy he can in the time left to him...and he particularly enjoys putting other people’s lives in order. After a brief stay in a private hospital, where he charms the nursing staff, he invites himself to live with Bhaskar and proceeds to take over the doctor’s waking hours. Far from resenting this, Bhaskar loves it! So does nearly everyone else whom Anand meets, comprising a cavalcade of star-powered stereotypes: the outwardly stern but inwardly maternal Goan headnurse Mrs. D’Sa (Lalita Pawar; cf. her similar and identically-named role in Mukherjee’s early film ANARI), the teary-eyed widow (Durga Khote), the brawny Punjabi wrestler (Dara Singh), and the madcap Muslim actor Isa Bhai (Johnny Walker).

It isn’t long before everyone is pleading with God—under His/Her several names and forms—for a last-minute miracle, but as Bhaskar finally concedes, “God needs good people as much as we do….” And so, with none-too-subtle symbolism (a tape running out, a bunch of balloons floating skyward), our hero makes his exit.

Viewed retrospectively, the film seems almost to be an allegory of the cinematic demise of Rajesh Khanna Superstar and his replacement by the (soon to be Angry) Young Man, Amitabh Bachchan, as his sensitive and soulful doctor-cum-diarist. Bachchan’s subdued character—with lanky physique, deep voice, and big, melancholy eyes—is meant to serve as counterpoint to the pudgier Khanna’s manic ebullience, and does, but it also hints at the “darker” heroic personality that was soon to emerge, and that would rule the Hindi screen for more than a decade. Tellingly, when the film was successfully re-released a few years after its first run, Bachchan’s image dominated the poster, ironically relegating leading man Khanna to “supporting” status.

How you feel about the film may largely depend on how you relate to its main character. Whereas some (like Bhaskar, his friends, and a large number of Indian viewers) may find him instantly endearing and heroically self-sacrificing, others may consider his intrusive and overbearing dosti more problematic and even annoying. After all, this is a guy who not only engineers his best friend’s crucial first “date” with the woman he wants to marry, but then insists on coming along, making it impossible for the lovers to communicate—which doesn’t matter, though, because Anand does all the talking for both of them! There is a cultural point here, concerning a manic, almost pathologically gregarious brand of Hindustani dost—of the sort witheringly satirized by Hindi author Mohan Rakesh in his portrait of a leech-like “Punjabi Bhai” acquaintance in the travelogue Aakhiri chattaan tak (“To Land’s End”) — who expresses his irrepressible “heart” qualities by hurling himself at innocent bystanders and by never permitting a “friend” to experience a moment of solitude or silence. This expansive yet oddly self-centered type, whose principal characteristics are rhetorical wit, frenetic energy, and a deep reservoir of on-tap emotion, may or may not actually exist in large numbers in India, but he is certainly a hardy trope of the Hindi cinema — successively reincarnated by (among others) Raj and Shammi Kapoor, Dev Anand, and more recently by Salman and Shah Rukh Khan. And in cinema-land, at least, he is invariably successful in his frenzied pursuits, whether wooing reluctant women, eliciting unfailing loyalty from men, or (here) dying gracefully and pathetically amid a clutch of sobbing friends whose lives he has forever altered for the better.

The film’s hit songs include two ballads: Kahin dur (“Somewhere far away…when the day fades”), sung by Mukesh, in which Anand reveals something of his own inner sorrow over a lost love, and the rollicking Zindagi kaisi hai paheli (“Oh what a riddle life is!”), sung by Manna De, and picturised on the Arabian Sea-shore under a glorious blue sky.

[The Bollywood Entertainment DVD of ANAND offers a generally excellent print of the film with good sound quality. The English subtitle track is serviceable, but subtitles are particularly helpless with a chatterbox like Anand, hence much of his verbal wit is lost. Songs too are regrettably left unsubtitled.]

http://www.uiowa.edu/~incinema/Anand.html

Bawarchi: Bawarchi .... The Movie !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bawarchi: Bawarchi .... The Movie !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Red Rose - 1980

A rose by any name

The serial killer is the most infrequently used bogeyman in Indian films. It is a far cry from the West which has a fair share of cinematic
tributes to the lunatic fringe of murderers — Psycho, the Hannibal Lecter films, Se7en, and the Saw series.

To say nothing of some of the infamous giallo thrillers from Italy by Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci. Which is probably why Bharathi Rajaa’s Sigappu Rojakkal (Red Roses) was such a sleeper hit in 1978. It had a highly original premise and was taut and unsentimental, both rare qualities in Tamil cinema.

Besides, no one expected a slick urban thriller from Bharathi Rajaa who was known for village-themed films. For the Hindi remake, Red Rose (1980), the director (also credited with screenplay and story), roped in Rajesh Khanna and Poonam Dhillon as replacements for Kamal Hassan and Sridevi.

The plot remains unchanged. Anand (Rajesh Khanna) is a misogynistic playboy, constantly on the lookout for unattached, generally flirtatious women. He murders them after a one night stand and has them buried in a rose garden in his backyard. He unwittingly falls in love with one of his potential victims, Sharda (Poonam Dhillon playing the only ‘chaste’ woman in the film), and marries her.

But it is just a matter of time before she stumbles into his Bluebeard’s room like den, full of grisly accounts of his crimes and flees, with Anand in hot pursuit.

Red Rose/Sigappu Rojakkal was exceptionally daring. It’s suffused with an all too rare quality that only the best horror films possess — an oppressive claustrophobic intensity. It works as a grotesque parody of the mawkish conceit so common in Indian films about servants being part of the family.

A young Anand is first given employment and then adopted by Satyen Kappoo. Both Kappoo and the family gardener Shera (Om Shivpuri) are more than a little south of sanity and participate vicariously in Anand’s crimes, watching home videos taped by a hidden camera in his bedroom.

What made Red Rose better than the original was a stellar performance from Khanna. With his glory days as a romantic lead behind him, he seemed ready for total reinvention. He brought a level of lecherous malice to the role that was unprecedented — something a young and dapper Kamal Hassan could never have hoped to accomplish. The scenes where Anand flirts with Sharda are laden with a predatory creepiness that belies Khanna’s history as a melodramatic lover from films in the early 1970s.

Red Rose is layered with irony and black humour — there’s a ‘blink and you will miss it’ joke about the death of Sheela aka Chocolate (Aruna Irani); Khanna is named Anand, a sly dig at one of the star’s most affable roles — Kamal Hassan was called Dileep.

The sequences where Sharda discovers the true psychotic nature of her husband are interspersed with Anand staking out a witness at a night club with Donna Summer’s disco classic I Feel Love blaring in the background. The last half hour is particularly nightmarish. Bharathi Rajaa pulls out all the stops and throws in bizarre Argento-inspired lighting and a truly unsettling score by Bappi Lahiri.

And yet Red Rose was nowhere near as successful as Sigappu Rojakkal — perhaps Khanna’s transformation into a lady killer of a more literal variety was more than his dwindling fanbase could take. There was no redemptive arc to the story, no happily ever after ending. Yet as a psycho-thriller, Red Rose has few equals. One suspects it would retain its pre-eminence even if serial killers were a more popular subject with Indian directors.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Business_of_Bollywood/A_rose_by_any_name/articleshow/2547342.cms


This is a class review which reflects the true performance capability of Khanna by mentioning the following "What made Red Rose better than the original was a stellar performance from Khanna". I may recall that during its release in 1980 or so, Mr. Basab Sinha, a journalist wrote an article on Rajesh Khanna emphasising his negative characterization in Red Rose and Dhanwaan entitled, "Breaking the shackles of his own image", wherein he wrote that it is doubtful that any other Indian actor would have been able to handle these two negative characterization so effectively and with great variety. So after 27 years this article has given us immense pleasure to go through and lot of readers may be able to get acquaint about the unparallel skill of Khanna's performance capability to the present day scenario.

Blogger Buzz: Blogger in beta

Blogger Buzz: Blogger in beta

AMAR PREM : Juxtaposing legend and contemporary subtext

The fact that this film was one of the most path breaking and successful movies starring India’s greatest romantic icon Rajesh Khanna , is probably why Amar Prem is remembered as a love story only. In retrospect the immortal love (Amar Prem) it speaks about is but a miniscule part of the entire canvas. The filmmaker succeeds in weaving a tale which is classical and at once contemporary in its subtexts. And music and prose blend to create a cinema which is at once magical and disturbing.



The 70’s decade of Amar Prem was still grappling with the erosion of human values as seen in the 1950’s Amit Mitra – Shambhu Mitra film Jaagtey Raho. And the existence of a woman was still a Rule Book in the hands of a man – that whatever he had written and thought about her would be the final word on it.
The notion of love in Amar Prem has its roots in the legends of Krishna & Yashoda , Meera & Krishna. And it finds its way into a society wherein these notions were gradually losing their meaning, their relevance. The songs are the romantic ideal and the concerns of the film break it completely.
Shakti Samanta’s compassionate ode to unfulfilled passion is ably complemented by its timeless music …so as the characters go about living their lives, music steps in as a friendly bystander cum sutradhar …at times spelling out the essence of the scene and at times exploring the hidden depths of the characters.
In that regard Amar Prem is quite a Bold Film as it reflects very realistically this decadence. The decline of the Pastoral Ideal , the disillusionment of post industrialization , the pre cursor to the angry young man….the players in Amar Prem wonder what went wrong and where.
The first sync song in the film ”Raina beeti jaaye…Shyam na aaye”…. is a Bhajan in which Radha sings her woes following Krishna’s absence. Juxtapose it with Pushpa’s situation in the film and you have some beautiful analogies. While the first antara …”kis sauten ne roki dagariya..kis bairan se laagi najariya” sums up her sense of defeat as a Woman , the second antara reflects her unfulfilled desires … “birah ki maari prem diwaani tan man pyaasa ankhiyon me paani”….
And even as she acknowledges this lacuna in her sub conscious using the Radha – Krishna metaphor, Anand Babu enters her life.
Anand Bakshi’s poetry and the pleasant yet melancholic mood of the morning raga Lalit blend to form an amazing union between love and separation. Radha & Krishna ; Pushpa & Anand Babu …the analogies merge to create memorable celluloid relationships.
The song raises the scene to a sublime level as the opening strains hold back Anand Babu’s fumbling steps and lead him in to Pushpa’s Kotha…which, despite its debauch surroundings, is actually the only complete home shown in the film – it offers refuge to a lost man and to a wounded child…. It is also the Brindavan where Pushpa discovers motherhood (though briefly) and that the woman in her can be loved (though not necessarily acknowledged) .
But at the same time it becomes a weak film as you never hear a single voice of protest. In fact there are no icons of resistance in the film.
Pushpa’s husband brings a second wife into the house and she lives with it. He eventually throws her out and she returns to her village without a protest. Back home the entire village talks ill of her and her own mother listens to the loose talk and actually questions her morality and asks her to leave. Here too Pushpa leaves quietly to kill herself in the village pond . Even death betrays her as she is saved by the man who finally brings her to Kolkata , betraying her trust and depositing her in a Kotha.
No protest yet.
Predictably she has enough slander thrown on her here as well and she , as usual, doesn’t rise against it.
The man who had brought her from the village cheats her yet again when he keeps all the money that she had been sending for her mother for himself. She comes to know…she doesn’t react. He doesn’t tell her that her mother has been dead all this while…she has only shock and tears in answer. She lands up cleaning utensils in a boarding home for men where she is mistreated yet again by the old grouchy incharge…and she is still quiet.
Why is Pushpa so quiet? Why doesn’t she raise her voice?
And its not just her. Sujit Kumar doesn’t question his wife for ill treating his son from his first wife who he himself loves so much. Anand Babu, despite being of the stature that he is, doesn’t question the lovelessness of his marriage. In fact he actually is the biggest escapist as he goes to Pushpa to fill in the vacuums in his marriage…if this be love then it is pretty inadequate….and it surely is NOT a protest .


One of the most metaphorically evolved songs in the film , “chingari koi bhadke” . is Anand Babu’s expression of love for Pushpa. It’s a memorable composition by SD Burman set in Raag Bhairavi but in the Bhatiyaar tradition. And it’s picturised on them taking a boat ride across the Hoogly waters under the Howrah Bridge. So do they bridge the social distance between them? Does she acknowledge his expression and accept it? Or does she comply because submission is all that she understands now? …We don’t know. Because it’s not her song really. She merely smiles through it with her soulful eyes.
Yet she is his companion in life. ..As the refrain fades in across the waters …“ saawan jo agan lagaaye use kaun bujhaaye..” the irony of their lives and the times they live in hits you…that a companion who is the elixir of your life is actually the one whose desire will consume you even as you aspire… and then you are doomed to lose. That the ideal that you aspire for is a system which is lost in the drudgery of politics and social propaganda…and might not be visible in a long long while.

They love each other but they do not have the strength to rise against the world , snatch away their rights and LIVE their loves.



Pushpa is deprived all her life of the basic joys…her one love is way beyond her and remains outside her world till the very end. He cries with her as he drowns his own sorrows in drink and empathises with her. But he doesn’t have it in him to come hold her hand. Except in the confines of her home..when he is offering her solace. …
“Kucch to log kahengey… Anand Bakshi pens the most simple yet the most revolutionary lines in this song….when he says for a prostitute and her environs that …” kuchh reet jagte ki aisi hai jar ek subah ki shaam hui..tu kaun hai tera naam hai kya seeta bhi yahan badnaam hui”.. when he is able to bring in the similarities between Pushpa and Seeta – that if they live with subservience , they die despite the Agni Pariksha and if they protest then they will be scarred for life.
It’s a song with attitude but then that’s all that it is.
Anand Babu is unable to voice his dissent and breathe life into his Radha…neither does he succeed in giving a new life to Nandu…he is unable to try and build a home out of this ‘Amar Prem’ .
And that’s the sense of desolation that stays on with us even after the film.
The ‘immortal’ love in Amar Prem between its lead players doesn’t have the strength to rise above all these wrongs, all these atrocities. On the contrary the unfair world around it continues to go on unaffected.
Amar prem”… mein prem to amar hai lekin uske paas shakti nahi….wo samaaj ki ek dahaad par ek kamre me ghut ghut kar marne waala prem hai. (In Amar Prem the ‘Prem’ might be ‘Amar’ but it has no strength – it is the kind of love that lies in one corner of a dark, suffocating room to grovel and die.)
The only resistance comes from Nandu – a little boy. He braves his stepmother’s beatings to go to Pushpa to put medicine on her wounds. In the end the grown up Nandu brings her home …acknowledging her as his mother.
The love that is so beautifully encapsulated in the song Bada Natkhat hai re…again in the Krishna motif…this time with his surrogate mother Yashoda. Juxtapose it with Pushpa’s unfulfilled motherhood in the film and you have the complete canvas of her relationship with Nandu in this one song.
Shakti Samanta’s Amar Prem protests against the decadence of human values and relationships through the voice of a child. All other characters are barely living their lives of compromise. In a larger perspective Nandu is the one hope, the fresh thought that will break away from the narrow confines of smallness in human behavior and bring about constructive social change.



(Translated from hindi and inputs by Anupama Bose)

Reviewed by:
http://passionforcinema.com/amar-prem-juxtaposing-legend-and-contemporary-subtext/

AJANABEE - 1974

Rajesh Khanna hasn’t been one of my favorites, partly because his characters are often chest-beating male chauvinist types. Here too he portrays a struggling young man who is attracted to and marries a strong-willed, high-spirited heiress, only to resent her for missing the comforts of her former life and wishing for some success of her own. This ends in tears and recriminations, of course. But the film is saved by the nuances of the relationship between the two (a Samanta specialty). Khanna’s performance is very good—he is convincing as a man torn between his inborn values and the woman he adores, and Zeenat Aman as his wife Rashmi is no martyred push-over! And the songs by RD Burman are just brilliant; they include two “tribal” dances and several lovely romantic songs.

The film opens with Sonia (Yogita Bali) arriving at a rural train station at night, where she just misses the train to Bombay. She is distraught and confides in the stationmaster Rohit (Rajesh Khanna) that she is running away from her mother’s stepson, who wants to steal her mother’s expensive jewellery from her. He puts the case containing the jewellery into his office safe, and offers his quarters as a place for her to spend the night before the next morning train. She admires a painting on his wall, and he tells her that it was done by his wife Rashmi who has gone away. He says that they married for love:



He makes sure Sonia is comfortable and returns to his office, where he loses himself in memories of meeting Rashmi on his way to his cousin’s wedding. He is on his motorbike, she is driving a Jeep and he prevents her from passing him. She finally manages to pull up next to him and admonishes him sharply for hogging the road.



As they argue (although he is clearly smitten) her jeep runs out of gas and dies. He offers to give her the fuel from his bike if she will give him a ride to the next gas station—she agrees, but drives off without him after he’s filled her tank. He gets a lift with a passing truck driver and they catch up with her; he scolds her for her behavior and then continues on his way in the truck.

They meet again at his cousin’s wedding ceremonies since it turns out that Rashmi is one of his cousin’s closest friends. He sings “Ek Ajanabee Haseena Se”—a very pretty song which has that typical RD Burman sound. At the wedding itself, she then casts him a wink and a smile and the romance begins.



She convinces her father to hire Rohit as the manager of their timber estates. She tells Rohit that she thinks her late sister’s husband Moti Babu (Prem Chopra) is cheating them and sure enough, Rohit discovers discrepancies in the accounts. Moti Babu devises a plot to get rid of Rohit by setting him up as a rapist. The plot works and Rohit is run out of town after being whipped by Moti Babu, but Rashmi discovers that he was framed and goes after him. She tells him that she loves him and will give up everything for him, and they move to Bombay and get married (accompanied by another lovely song, “Hum Dono”).



At this juncture, Rohit’s memories are interrupted by the arrival of two men claiming to be police inspectors. They describe Sonia and ask if Rohit has seen her. He says no and asks why they are looking for her. They tell him she is accused of robbing a jeweller. Rohit puts them off, but after they leave he goes to find Sonia. He asks her who the two policemen are and she says that Sinha is the stepson who wants her mother’s jewellery. She says that Sinha is a goonda, not a police inspector, and that their ids must be fake.

His suspicions allayed, Rohit returns to his office through the rain, thinking of Rashmi. We return to his memories with another lovely romantic song, “Bheegi Bheegi Raaton Mein”:



In Bombay, Rashmi and Rohit settle happily into married life, although Rashmi can’t cook and misses having servants. Rohit has found work with a modeling agent-photographer-advertising exec (it’s never really clear to me, nor do I figure out what it is that Rohit does for him, exactly). Rohit’s boss (Madan Puri) is a bit of a lecher and hilarious to boot, with an amazing wardrobe of truncated neckties and a flowery way of speaking.

At this point the clothing on everyone begins to threaten to distract me from all else.



Let the fashion parade begin! Pink suits! Polka dots! Crocheted hair accessories!

At home, Rashmi has befriended a neighbor, one Chetan Kumar (Asrani), who is a painter. As Rohit’s time is taken up more and more by work, Rashmi feels lonely. Inspired by Chetan, she starts a painting to give Rohit on his birthday. Chetan suggests that she take up modelling as well, since she’s so beautiful, and tells her that it pays very well. She brings up the idea to Rohit, but he’s not keen on it. They have a fight; Rashmi is tired of being poor and struggling, and she’s bored at home all day. He explains that in the world he comes from, it’s not something that “nice” girls do. But he realizes that she has sacrificed a lot for him and relents:



Rashmi is thrilled, and Chetan helps her put a portfolio together. She catches the suspect attention of Rohit’s boss (who seems unaware that she is Rohit’s wife). Rohit struggles with this and her increasingly busy schedule and late hours. Then Chetan suggests that she enter a beauty pageant, where the prize is Rs 50,000 and a trip around the world (this is the “fashion parade” of the credits and it doesn’t disappoint). When she wins, she is thrilled, but her first thoughts are of Rohit:



He is happy for her, but as they celebrate, Rashmi feels ill and they call a doctor. The doctor tells them that Rashmi is expecting a baby. Rohit is over the moon, but Rashmi realizes that a baby will curtail her success and change everything for her. She hesitantly suggests that maybe they “drop” the baby. Rohit is horrified and she lets the idea go, but a few days later falls down the stairs at home. Chetan takes her to the hospital, where she loses the baby. Rohit learns the news from a jealous “friend” of Rashmi’s, who tells him that she’s had an abortion. He rushes home to confront her. She tries in vain to tell him that it was an accident; but he is too angry to listen. He shouts at her that he hates her, and storms out.

When he calms down a bit and goes home to apologize and talk to her, she is gone. She has left a note with the painting she had done for his birthday gift, and gone back to her father. Chetan arrives, and tells Rohit that he is wrong, that she really did lose the baby by accident but didn’t call him to the hospital because she didn’t want to alarm him.

Racked with guilt, he tries to contact her but she refuses to talk to him. He goes to her father’s but is told that the family has gone away. He receives a divorce notice in the mail, and takes a job as stationmaster in the middle of nowhere. When he does finally track her down and pleads with her to forgive him, her father and Moti Babu intervene.



They tell him that he is not worthy of her, and Moti takes his whip to Rohit again. Rohit grabs it and beats up Moti instead. He vows that he will make enough money to be worthy of Rashmi, and then he will return for her. She watches from inside as he leaves.

With this, Rohit returns to the present. He realizes that the money he needs to be reunited with Rashmi is sitting inside his safe, in the form of Sonia’s jewellery. He takes it out of his safe, tempted. As he sits there with it, the local police arrive and question him about Sonia. They spot the case, and take him to his quarters. She is lying there, dead. She has been murdered, and Rohit is arrested and goes to trial.

What will happen? Was Sonia telling the truth? Who has really killed her? You’ll have to watch to find out.

And I’m going to give Rajesh Khanna another try! I really liked the chemistry between him and Zeenat—their love story was sweet, believable and poignant. And last, but not least, here’s MY fashion parade:

AWAM - 1987

B.R. Chopra's 'Awam' is the story of people who are willing to lay down their lives to fight any danger to their country. Captain Amar, the son of a freedom fighter is posted to Delhi. He is employed as the P.A. of Jagrattan, the Minister of Defence Purchases on the recommendation of Mohanlal, his father's friend. Mohanlal opens his home to Amar and its there that he meets Sushma and falls in love with her.


Starring: Ashok Kumar | Rajesh khanna | Raj Babbar | Smita Patil | Poonam Dhillon
Director: B.R. Chopra
Studio: YASH RAJ FILMS
Genres: Drama|Indian Cinema

MARYADA - 1971

Lalita lives with her widowed mother in a small village in India. One day while traveling by road, she is stranded, and a young man named Raja Babu comes to her assistance. Both fall in love with each other. When she informs her mother about her love for Raja, she is met with strong opposition, as her mother knows that Raja Babu is already married and has a son. She also reminds Lalita about her marriage with Diwan. When Lalita meets with Raja, he admits to her that he is not Raja but his real name is Rajan Ram Bahadur, but refuses to divulge any other information to her. She decides that she will have nothing to do with him. The mystery deepens when Pran Bahadur, the step-brother of Raja Babu returns and wants to confront the young man who has taken over Raja's identity, with results that will change the lives of everyone around them forever.

Movie Details
Genre: Romance / Family
Language: Hindi
Release Status and date: Released in 1971

Cast :

Rajesh Khanna - Raja Babu/Rajan Ram Bahadur

Raaj Kumar - Raja Babu

Mala Sinha - Laxmi/Lalita

Pran - Pran Bahadur

Helen - Singer/Dancer (Dil ka lena dena humne..)

Rajendranath

Bipin Gupta

Asit Sen - Dhondumal

Jankidas

Abhi Bhattacharya - Diwan (Lalita's husband)

Director: Aravind Sen
Producer: Aravind Sen
Written by: Satish Bhatnagar,Suhrid Kar