THE BEST INTERVIEW IN THE WORLD OR "मैं पागल नहीं हूँ, मेरा दिमाग़ खराब है!"

Apart from his many many achievements, Kishore Kumar should also be feted by posterity for having given the most sublime interview ever. His conversation with Pritish Nandy was published in the Illustrated Weekly of India in April 1985 and has a cult fan following of its own. It's a long read, so here are some of the juiciest excerpts:

—————

[Excerpt 1]

Kishore Kumar: Do you know any spooks?

Pritish Nandy: Not very friendly ones.

Kishore Kumar: But nice, frightening ones?

Pritish Nandy: Not really.

Kishore Kumar: But that’s precisely what we're all going to become one day. Like this chap out here (points to a skull, which he uses as part of his decor)... you don't even know whether it’s a man or a woman. Eh? 

But it’s a nice sort. Friendly too. Look, doesn’t it look nice with my specs on its non-existent nose?

Pritish Nandy: Very nice indeed.

Kishore Kumar: You are a good man. You understand the real things of life. You are going to look like this one day.

—————

[Excerpt 2]

Pritish Nandy: What are those files?

Kishore Kumar: My income tax records.

Pritish Nandy: Rat-eaten?

Kishore Kumar: We use them as pesticides. They are very effective. The rats die quite easily after biting into them.

Pritish Nandy: What do you show the tax people when they ask for the papers?

Kishore Kumar: The dead rats.

——————

Kishore as his own late mother in Half Ticket

[Excerpt 3]

Kishore Kumar: Then, there was this interior decorator-a suited, booted fellow who came to see me in a three-piece woollen, Saville Row suit in the thick of summer — and began to lecture me about aesthetics, design... After listening to him for about half an hour, I told him that I wanted something very simple for my living room.

Just water — several feet deep — and little boats floating around, instead of large sofas. I told him that the centrepiece should be anchored down so that the tea service could be placed on it and all of us could row up to it in our boats and take sips from our cups...

He looked a bit alarmed but that alarm gave way to sheer horror when I began to describe the wall decor. I told him that I wanted live crows hanging from the walls instead of paintings-since I liked nature so much....

The last I saw of him was him running out of the front gate, at a pace that would have put an electric train to shame. What's crazy about having a living room like that, you tell me? If he can wear a woollen, three-piece suit in the height of summer, why can't I hang live crows on my walls?

——————

[Excerpt 4]

Pritish Nandy: Why do you have this reputation for doing strange things?

Kishore Kumar: It all began with this girl who came to interview me. In those days I used to live alone. So she said: You must be very lonely. I said: No, let me introduce you to some of my friends.

So I took her to the garden and introduced her to some of the friendlier trees. Janardhan; Raghunandan; Gangadhar; Jagannath; Buddhuram; Jhatpatajhatpatpat. I said they were my closest friends in this cruel world. She went and wrote this bizarre piece, saying that I spent long evenings with my arms entwined around them. What’s wrong with that, you tell me? What's wrong making friends with trees?

ON GULZAR'S BIRTHDAY: THE 'TRIVENI' POEMS

जिस्म और जां टटोल कर देखें
ये पिटारी भी खोल कर देखें
— टूटा फूटा अगर ख़ुदा निकले 

Gulzar, whom so many of us know only through his work in Hindi cinema, has a huge corpus of work outside of films, in the form of short stories, poetry, and much more. This is to introduce a specific form of Hindustani poetry that Gulzar had created for himself many years back. It was a 3-line form and he called it 'Triveni'. 

While the first two lines, he imagined, were like the Ganga and Jamuna, in their meeting they made one aware of the third, secret, subterranean text: the Saraswati. And created a whole new meaning.

The Triveni verses were published in the Hindi magazine Sarika (editor: Kamleshwar) back in 1972-73. They are love poems, existential explorations, grief-soaked internalising of the partition, lines traumatised by the state of the world and lines in love with the moon, the trees, the night, or the beloved's laughter. 

A few Triveni samples in honour of one of the loves of our lives:

ज़ुल्फ़ में यूँ चमक रही हैं बूँद
जैसे बेरी में तनहा इक जुगनू
— क्या बुरा है जो छत टपकती है?

मैं सब सामान ले कर आ गया इस पार सरहद के
मेरी गर्दन किसी ने क़त्ल कर के उस तरफ रख ली
— उसे मुझ से बिछड़ जाना गवारा ना हुआ शायद 

ज़िन्दगी क्या है जानने के लिए
ज़िंदा रहना बहुत ज़रूरी है
— आज तक कोई भी रहा तो नहीं 

पेड़ों के कटने से नाराज़ हुए हैं पंछी
दाना चुगने नहीं आते मकानों पर परिंदे
— कोई बुलबुल भी नहीं बैठती अब शेरों पे 

सब पे आती है सब की बारी से
मौत मुनसिफ़ है कम-ओ-बेश नहीं
— ज़िन्दगी सब पे क्यों नहीं आती?

भीगा भीगा सा क्यों है ये अख़बार
अपने हॉकर को कल से चेंज करो
— "पांच सौ गाँव बह गए इस साल"!

An Anthem & Two Counter-Anthems: Watching Pyaasa on the Big Screen in 2017

A hall, about three quarters full of people, stands solemnly as the National Anthem plays before a film club screening of Pyaasa in a Delhi PVR cinema. Later, halfway into the film, they sit and watch a dirge unfolding — if an anthem is a rousing celebration, Jinhe Naaz Hai Hind Par Wo Kahan Hain (Where are they who take pride in India) is very much an elegiac expression of grief. A stunned hall breaks into applause at the end of the song. A few reels later they hear the most pristine articulation of a politics of having no stakes in the status quo: Ye duniya agar mil bhi jaye to kya hai (So what if such a world becomes mine?). The breathless events towards the end of the song give no one any space to clap, but even after the sequence is over there is a pause in our collective souls: How to imagine the resolution of a story once its protagonist has rejected everything, in particular success, wealth, and social status?

The by-now well established reading of Pyaasa (1957) sees it as a disheartened allegory of young heroes being let down by the nation after nearly 10 years of independence and its failed promises — or at least as a story made possible in the context of such a failure. (Though its worth remembering that Guru Dutt wrote the original story, Kashmakash, on which Pyaasa is based, in 1947/48). Unemployment, hunger, inequality, women forced to sell their bodies, lack of compassion in society, and greed for money and power are some of Pyaasa’s leitmotifs. Today, thanks to the exigencies of legally enforced symptoms of nationalism (the Supreme Court having made it compulsory for the National Anthem to be played before movie screenings last December), we get the remarkable cinema hall experience of moving from a National Anthem written before independence, celebrating the destiny of the land, to the realities of the nation as recorded by sensitive observers in the 1950s, to the fact that none of Pyaasa’s frustrating themes have become dated after 60 years of the film’s release. Jinhe naaz hai Hind par wo kahan hain? 

It does not feel ironical at all. After all, the time for irony is already well past once a nation adopts as its anthem the song of a poet who said that he was “against the general idea of all nations”. And who wished to fight against the “education which teaches (people) that a country is greater than the ideals of humanity.”

As Pyaasa unfolds, we see that the unemployed and unsuccessful poet-hero Vijay gets to speak exceptionally few dialogues in the film, the many silent moments of his character being lovingly drawn out as if in a lyrical cinematic dream. When Vijay does have something to articulate, he does so through poetry and song. In that sense, Sahir Ludhianvi’s verses are as much ‘dialogues’ of the film as screenwriter Abrar Alvi’s lines. Guru Dutt’s erstwhile assistant, the director Raj Khosla recalled in an interview that when Guru Dutt first heard the lyrics of Jinhe naaz hai, he became very moved and excited, saying “This is it! This is Pyaasa". Poet Sahir Ludhianvi had written the lacerating critique in far tougher language in his original poem Chakle (brothels). The line went: “Sana khwane taqdis-e-mashriq kahan hain" (Where are those who eulogised the greatness of the East) which were softened to Jinhe naaz hai… for the film.

If Tagore’s anthem invokes the vast subcontinent’s geography — Punjab, Sind, Gujarat, Maratha… — its rivers and the waves of its seas, Pyaasa’s counter-anthem turns to intimate geographies of exploitative, oppressive bylanes (kooche) in Sonagacchi, Calcutta’s red light area. It describes the auction houses of seduction (neelam ghar dilkashi ke), the fearful lanes (sehmi si galiyan), and the soulless rooms (be-rooh kamre). The National Anthem is rich with Jai (victory), mangal (well being) and ashish (blessings). The counter-anthem speaks of insan ke dushman samaj (a society that is an enemy of humanity) and har ik rooh pyaasi (where every soul is thirsty). “Take it away”, cries the poet pointing to the world (mere saamne se hatha lo ye duniya), his angst climaxing to the most simple, most powerful lines written for Hindi cinema: Ye duniya agar mil bhi jaye to kya hai?

The two critical songs, left without any but the minimal orchestration by SD Burman, came to define Pyaasa well beyond the first run of the film, forever inscribing Guru Dutt as a tortured sensitive soul for whom the world was too corrupt. But Ye duniya agar is much more than a critical song. Read along with what is happens in the film, it is that radical moment when “All that is solid melts into air”: after all how many times have we seen an underdog protagonist in a film who finally finds recognition in a cinematic ‘happy ending’, reject all the adulation, success and wealth coming his way? “I am not the Vijay you are celebrating”, announces Vijay in public and walks away from it all. He rises above the happy ending (just as Gulab rose above the security provided by her life’s savings, in order to get his poems published after she heard the rumour of his death). Vijay’s walking away — his having no stake in the perpetuity of such a world — is a positive and creative act in itself. Writer Abrar Alvi did not agree. It felt escapist to him; he wanted Vijay to stay and fight. And anyway, he argued, where would Vijay and Gulab “go away” from such a world? 

The truth is that Vijay and Gulab’s transcendent incorruptibility and fearlessness in withdrawing from the world-as-is have already rendered an alternative world real. The counter-anthem has opened up radical possibilities. We see what exists with such shining clarity: there is sadness in hearts and thirst in souls and we do thoroughly reject it. It is only with such a clear-eyed understanding that the alternative world becomes possible, whether “far away” or “here”. Vijay and Gulab are creating a world of integrity and humanity in their very existence. It is a world in which a barber can make this radio announcement: “Look up Hannah! The clouds are lifting, the sun is breaking through… we are coming into a new world… The soul of man has been given wings and at last he is beginning to fly” (The Great Dictator). 

In fact, it is a world which can be found in the third stanza of Rabindranath Tagore’s lengthy song Bharot Bhagyo Bidhata which lent its first few lines to the Indian nation-state. As Vijay and Gulab walk into the sunrise, it is Tagore, the poet of nature and worshipper of the formless, who describes what is happening: “The night fades, the light breaks over the peaks of the Eastern hills, the birds begin to sing and the morning breeze carries the breath of new life…”

[An edited version of this piece was first published in Outlook.com, 1 July 2017)

Other Mothers: Defeating the Stereotype in Hindi Cinema

[First published in The Hindu Sunday Magazine, June 4 2017, here ]

The climax of Johny Mera Naam (1970) is near. Sulochana — white sari, dishevelled bun, Bombay cinema’s widowed mother par excellence — has been kidnapped and forcibly brought to villain Prem Nath’s den by junior villain Jeevan. Her son Dev Anand, a police inspector, has infiltrated the gang, pretending to be one of them. The gang does not know of the mother and son’s identity but Jeevan does, and would like to score points with Prem Nath by demonstrating that the trusted ‘Johny’ is not who he says he is. What more conclusive proof than to bring Johny’s mother over and let her rush for succour to her son?

And so Jeevan goes to Sulochana while Prem Nath watches with interest and Dev Anand with anxiety. Henchmen are holding her up as she droops exhausted and barely conscious. “There there, behen,” says Jeevan at his oily best. “No need to fear. Your inspector son has arrested all the villains. Now you can go to him. Go on.” 

Ma looks up with effort. She sees a ring of men looking at her, Dev Anand among them. She turns with as much dramatic subtlety as she can muster to Jeevan and whispers: “Which one do I have to recognise”? 

For my money, this is the finest hour of Hindi cinema motherhood. Much has been attributed to our mothers on screen — love, sacrifice, morality, strength of character, greatness —  but rarely have our films accused them of sheer intelligence. Writer-director Vijay Anand gives Sulochana heaps of it. Having summed up the situation and turned tables on Jeevan, she proceeds to cook his goose by affecting a rustic accent and convincing Prem Nath that she has been paid to come and falsely recognise some young man as her son. 

Sulochana runs rings around villains Prem Nath and Jeevan in Johny Mera Naam

Mothers of the yesteryear Hindi film screen evoke as much exasperation, indulgent affection, love, and that “here we go again” feeling, as mothers do in real life. (Ours may not sit coughing pitifully over sewing machines in a white sari — and mine has never made me kheer either — but they do have their moments.) When raised to a pedestal of heroism (Nargis in Mother India, Nirupa Roy in Deewar) cine-mas become iconic. But did they ever have any other possibilities in what we may now call the Kheer Age? Did Ma ever come alive, go real, have a life, in those days before Reema Lagoo and Kirron Kher charted newer paths? 

The Vijay Anand Touch

It wasn’t just Johny Mera Naam; Vijay Anand fared pretty well with mothers in his other films too. A scene between actress Mumtaz Begum and Om Prakash, both playing Dev Anand’s parents, in Tere Ghar Ke Saamne (1963) is quite delightful. The traditional Om Prakash is unhappy that his son has returned from the US with undesirable habits like smoking and drinking. The mother can’t see what the fuss is about:

“Tharra to nahin peeta na, Angrezi hee peeta hai. Wo bhi, kya kehta hain, peg aadha peg. Uss se nasha thode hi hota hai.” 

(It’s not local stuff that he drinks, he takes English alcohol and that too just a peg or so. That doesn't get you drunk.) 

“How do you know”, asks Om Prakash in panic. “Have you tried it”?

“No, I haven’t”, says the hero’s Ma. “But so what. I watch women drink in the club everyday. Even I felt like it, but then stopped myself.” 

Mumtaz Begum shocks husband Om Prakash by confessing that she wanted to try alcohol, Tere Ghar ke Saamne

Pratima Devi in Jewel Thief (1967) plays Dev Anand’s mother in a small appearance, but does something practically revolutionary even before she says a word. The camera finds her sitting on her bed, actually reading a book. This was not a first — as we shall see below — but the sheer relief of it is tremendous. Dev Anand, who has been turned out of the house by his stern father, comes visiting mum on the sly, gifts her a necklace, and takes off when he hears his father approaching. Ma brooks no nonsense from the Police Commissioner husband Nazir Hussain. “I heard Vinay’s voice”, Hussain complains. “Throw a young son out of the house and this is what happens”, says his wife, going back to her book in which she is oh so utterly engrossed. He insists that their good-for-nothing son must have stolen the necklace. “He’s given it to me, why are you getting jealous”, she practically sticks her tongue out at the lord and master. And goes back to her book.

Pratima Devi, a rare reading mother in Bombay cinema, Jewel Thief

Mother as Argument

The only other memory I have of a mother reading is in Yash Chopra’s second directorial venture Dharmputra (1961). Its a pleasure to see Nirupa Roy, not in widow’s weeds, reading glasses on her nose, fully involved in her book. When her much-loved adopted son Shashi Kapoor enters, she proceeds to have an intellectual argument with him. The young boy has been seduced by the charms of being a ‘pure’ Hindu and wants everyone to follow what he thinks is the Hindu way of life. But tradition is not an unalloyed blessing, reminds his mother, reminding him of how women were burnt with their husband’s dead bodies, or how young eight-year old widows suffered for the rest of their lives.

“But you have to value your religious ties”, says the son. 

“Khaak hote hain dharm bandhan!” (Religious ties, what rubbish!), exclaims the exasperated mother, who today might be roasted for sacrilege. “A person should be a good human being. Life is not a stagnant pool of dirty water that a human being lies in it and rots. He should evolve!” 

You want to stand up and cheer.

The earliest Hindi movie mother I discovered reading: Nirupa Roy, Dharmputra

My Mother, the Pirate

In dramatic contrast to the morality of repudiating or shooting down your child if he turns rogue, Durga Khote, when forcibly separated from her young son in V Shantaram’s Amar Jyoti (1936), becomes a pirate herself. It is the son who grows up to be a moralistic creature, loathing pirate queen Saudamini’s outlaw ways.

This is a feisty, knife-throwing mother who hardens her heart, kills her enemies, and does it all in her fight against the oppression of a patriarchal state. She refuses to be a ‘woman’ and is quite clear that women mustn't cry any more: “Auraton ko rona dhona chorr dena chahiye”. 

Eventually, when she meets her grown up son, she is overcome with love as well as overwhelmed by his critique of a mother he does not know. Hurt that her son did not understand her motivations, she does not reveal her identity and withdraws from his life. Even here, it is the failure of her philosophy that tortures Saudamini: “I used to think that I had banished the woman from within me, but that was just my false pride. That pillar, which supported my life, has fallen.” Remarkably, there is no emotional reunion between mother and son at all. What Saudamini finally takes solace from is the flame of rebellion that she has lit in other women who will now carry the flag.

Durga Khote as Saudamini the Pirate, Amar Jyoti

Other Mothers

Back in 1967, an unmarried expectant mother in a small town went to the chemist’s. The whole town knew of her ‘situation’. A couple of young layabouts whistled when she entered and the shop assistant rushed forward in his greasiest manner.  She asked for some coffee. “Here you go”, he leered, offering her a feeding bottle. “Not today”, she said, with a straight spine. “I will need it for my baby in a few months and will come to your shop to buy it, but right now I just need some coffee.”

Hare Kaanch ki Choodiyan, a film that nobody had ever recommended to me, and understandably so, contained this scene of transcendental dignity. I’ll forever be grateful to writer-director Kishore Sahu for adding such a shining moment in his debut vehicle for daughter Naina Sahu. It deserved a better film. But it has always been my standard bearer for staying open to possibilities of gems in run of the mill fare — cinematic or human.

Naina Sahu standing up to a Chemist who offers her a milk bottle,
Hare Kaanch Ki Choodiyan

This catalogue of mothers would also be incomplete without a mother figure that I am very fond of. Meena Kumari in Mere Apne (1971) played a universal “Nani” to her neighbourhood’s young thugs, and like many Nanis, became a friend. When Vinod Khanna sings “Koi hota jisko apna…” (I wish there was someone I could call my own), a lovelorn song for the girlfriend he has lost, Nani shuffles over to provide naive succour: Why do you sing you wish there was someone; am I not your own? 

The gang of unemployed college dropouts whiles away time playing cards, and she sits with them, telling stories of dacoits from her youth. When they confide that their parents can barely tolerate the sight of them, she genuinely finds them beautiful and innocent. When one of them wishes she would cook meat for them, another hushes him up piously — widows don’t touch meat. But Nani is more easy going: it’s alright, if you do something taboo for the sake of your children, God will understand.

Meena Kumari with her friends (Dinesh Thakur, Paintal, Danny, Vinod Khanna) in Mere Apne

But, here’s the thing, they are not her children, they are no relation to her at all. She had not even met the young wastrels till quite recently. She is, quite literally, a friend: equal parts of spending time together, sharing stories and laughter, helping each other, at times worrying a bit for each other. Like all friends and mothers do…  

My Name is NOT Rahim Chacha & I Have No Religion

There seems to be an international conspiracy afoot. The Wikipedia page on Sholay says that AK Hangal played “Rahim Chacha” in the film. The Youtube video of Hangal's funeral is headlined “AK Hangal (Rahim Chacha of Sholay movie) Funeral”. Both the Hindustan Times and Times of India, on the day after his death, agree that it is Sholay’s Rahim Chacha who has passed away (yet other obituaries elevated him to “Bollywood’s Rahim Chacha”). Director Kabir Khan says so as well, writing on Muslim identity for the Indian Express, as does academic Rachel Dwyer on her blog. And a quick look at three studies on the presentation of Muslims in Bollywood sustains the enigmatic figure of Sholay’s Rahim Chacha.

Who, me?

Or me?

Only, no such person exists. Hangal did not play anything remotely like a Rahim Chacha in Sholay. He was the village Imam — though Ramgarh did not seem to have any other observable Muslim villager — and he was respectfully called “Imam Sahab" by everyone (except, of course, Sachin, who called him Abba). 

Presumably, like “Ramu Kaka”, “Nawab Sahab", or “Lalaji”, Rahim Chacha too was a useful stereotype, both in film​makers’ and viewers’ minds, invoking a benign “good Muslim” character who would provide aid or affection to the lead characters in the film. Or simply add the feel-good factor of idyllic religious harmony to the community of people being shown. As for the facts of Rahim Chacha’s existence, two Bachchan films actually did include a character by this name, but neither of them was Sholay.

One was Khuddar and it was, in fact, Hangal who played Rahim Chacha in this film. But far from being a mild mannered ‘good man’, he entered the scene as an assertive youngish man with black hair (!) saving two young runaway boys (who grew up to become Amitabh Bachchan and Vinod Mehra) from a begging mafia. He challenged the criminals, looked them in the eye, and declared “Main inka chacha hoon”. He then proceeded to adopt the two youngsters as part of his family.

The film in which Hangal actually played Rahim Chacha -- Khuddar

In the other film, Deewar, it was Yunus Parvez who played Rahim Chacha, a senior coolie at the docks where Amitabh worked before he took to a life of crime. Unlike Khuddar’s Rahim, this one had no instinct about standing up to criminals. He worried for Amitabh’s safety, advising him to pay the protection money being demanded by the mafia and fretting over his belligerence.

Another Rahim Chacha, Yunus Parvez, fusses affectionately over Amitabh in Deewar

AK Hangal too played a role in Deewar, a cameo of a retired school master whose son is shot in the leg by Shashi Kapoor, a police inspector, when the boy is caught stealing some food. Hangal’s wife berates Shashi for shooting the impoverished young boy even as rich black-marketeers with godowns full of food flourished. Hangal, however, shuts her up, making a noble statement: Theft is theft, never mind how small; thousands of people go hungry everyday in Hindustan, should they all become thieves?  “I have no complaints against you” he tells Shashi Kapoor. Though he played a Hindu character in the film, Hangal’s ‘religion’ was effectively brought out in the ethical stand he took, in the portrait of Rabindranath Tagore presiding on the wall of his ramshackle house, and in Shashi Kapoor’s tribute: “Such a profound lesson could only have come from a teacher”.  

Masterji, with Rabindranath Tagore in Deewar

It is a mystery where the AK Hangal-Rahim Chacha reference in Sholay arose from, but once it entered cyber space it seems to have kept growing. For someone who has seen the movie more than 40 times (started at the age of 7 and never stopped since), it can be quite exasperating to come across yet another instance on the net every time I research the film!

Hangal’s role in Sholay goes beyond that of a good-hearted, avuncular blind figure. In a crucial scene, Imam Sahab acts as the voice of the village’s conscience; his moral authority is towering. Often congratulated and questioned about this role, the old IPTA veteran — who had joined films at the age of nearly 50 after doing years of leftist theatre — explained that he used psychological techniques of preparation. “He imagined the feeling of blindness by going back millions of years to the beginnings of evolution, when all life that was to come was contained in sightless single-celled organisms swimming in the dark waters. Once there he would grope and search for sight. He kept the searching movement through the scene of Ahmed’s death” (Anupama Chopra, Sholay.)

Rehearsing for Imam Sahab's most crucial scene

The Sholay gang

The crux of AK Hangal’s role in Sholay is that his son Ahmed​ has been tortured to death by the sadistic dacoit Gabbar, and the body sent back to the village as a warning to the locals: they must throw out the fighters Jai and Veeru. The villagers’ anxieties express themselves as hostility towards Jai and Veeru. But Imam Sahab gently intervenes that he, who has lost a son, would prefer that the two men stay and fight for the village’s right to live with dignity. He wishes he had another son to martyr for the sake of the village.  He brings decency, perspective, and rectitude to the proceedings.

These qualities went spectacularly missing in a very troubled episode from the actor’s life, when the Shiv Sena decided that he should be boycotted for attending a Pakistan Day function at the Pakistan High Commission in 1993. (Hangal had been invited for the event because he was in regular touch with the High Commission at that point, since he needed a visa to visit Pakistan for his autobiography). After the boycott call, his scenes had to be cut from screenings of Sholay, then running in a Bombay hall, and he received many threatening phone calls. Hangal attributed this hostility to his credentials as a well-known secular activist. Unofficially, there was even a vague misunderstanding that the actor was a Muslim — a tribute to his famous turn in Sholay, possibly helped along by the fact that he hardly used his full name Avatar Kishan Hangal, and possibly even because ‘Hangal’ was not a surname easily ‘placed’ by the rest of India. The actor had no work for nearly two years. 

As a practising communist, Hangal could not care less about which religion he was supposed to belong to and his idea of patriotism is most movingly narrated in his own words. Put in jail for communist political activities in newly independent Pakistan, Hangal and his mates resisted being deported to India when prisoners were being divided along religious lines. This was something that some other prisoners, who belonged to the RSS, could not understand. “But we had commitments to fulfil — we were involved in the trade union movement, cases were pending in court (for instance, the Karachi Tailoring Workers Union case), we had ties with the common people — and we could not leave them in the lurch. This was our idea of Matrabhoomi — real ties and concern for the people of one’s birthplace.”

Old comrades: At a protest with Shaukat Kaifi, the veteran theatre actress and activist
(who happens to be Shabana Azmi's mother)

AK Hangal did not know his date of birth, and when he gave an interview to a cine magazine early in his film career and was asked for a date, he laughingly suggested 26th January. The interview was being held in March so the editor asked for a date not so far away! “In that case, you may write 15th August, the day India was reborn”. They laughed, the date got published and the actor went on to receive wishes and bouquets from all over the country on his ‘birthday’ ever since. 

However, we do know that the Padma Bhushan awardee, who acted in more than 200 films, was born in 1917 and would have been a hundred years old this year. Perhaps we can begin the celebrations by editing the Wikipedia entry on Sholay before the 15th of August?

The Mystery of the Missing Earring

“Search for my lost earring, my love” (‘Dhoondo dhoondo re sajna’, Ganga Jamuna, 1966), sings Vyjyanthimala as she dances in graceful exhilaration. Why is she so delighted despite having lost her earring? Because it is the morning after her first night of intimacy with a much-loved husband – Dilip Kumar – and the earring is clearly a metaphor for the sexual innocence that has been cheerfully lost. The actual earring is only discovered by the audience at the end of the song, hooked eloquently to the back of sajna's kurta.

Dhoondo dhoondo re saajna

Another cheerfully lost earring became a national rage back in 1966 when Sadhana lost her jhumka – Bareilly ke bazaar mein (Mera Saya). The scenarios she evoked to explain the loss involved her lover being rough with her as well as him being amorous. Yet another lost earring was an enchanting poetic creation of the Shailendra-Salil Chaudhary team. In Mila hai kisi ka jhumka (Parakh, 1960), Sadhna spins a lyric conceit around a flower lying on the ground. The flower is the fallen earring, which has a complaint against its owner: She went off with her lover and left me behind (aap gayi pita sung, mujhe yahoo chhorra). 

Mila hai kisi ka jhumka

Much later, Hema Malini in Jugnu (1973) became worried because, after a tryst with her lover, her earring had fallen: Gir gaya jhumka ( "Girne do" , let it fall, says the insouciant Dharmendra.) But it’s difficult for her, the missing ornaments will cause people to ask: where have you been? And so they would because in this one song she complains of having dropped her earring, misplaced her ring, lost her chunri, smudged her kaajal, and torn her gajra. She is clearly to be congratulated!

Gir gaya jhumka!

When you do not lose the jewellery, there is a whole universe of sound and affect that you can create with it. There is a separate place in heaven for Indian nayikas who tiptoe in the dark hours to meet their lovers, and are afraid that the tinkling of their ornaments would give them away. Meena Kumari in Pakeezah (1972) in the immortal song Tharre rahiyo: “Let no one awake, only a bit of the night remains... but my cursed anklet goes chhama chham, and makes so much noise”. Twelve years later, Rekha in Utsav (1984) describes: Jhanjhar jhamke sun jhamke, aadhi raat ko. This is a tradition repeatedly invoked in thumris: for instance Jhanana Jhanana Baaje Jhankaar has the heroine troubled about her noisy ornaments, trying to explain to her amorous insensitive husband that her saas-nanad will be caustic about this.

Tharre rahiyo, o banke yaar re

Man, woman and jewellery make a complex triangle in the patriarchal set up. The heroine is supposed to innocently demand jewellery from the hero – Mujhe naulakha manga de re, asks Jaya Prada of Amitabh Bachchan in Sharaabi (1984) – and the hero has to feel like a provider. Gifting rings or necklaces is also a way of announcing the seriousness of his intentions. At times, though, songs in the male voice celebrate the heroine’s ‘saadgi’, simplicity, as a signifier of which she does not wear any jewellery or make up. Yet other heroines turn into jewel-eating shrews after marriage. Gaban (1966) based on Premchand’s story, has the hero Sunil Dutt embezzling money to satisfy his wife’s desire for jewellery while Angoor (1982) has Moushami Chatterjee making husband Sanjeev Kumar’s life difficult because he doesn’t get her a necklace.

Moushumi Chatterjee is not convinced... Angoor

In Hindi films, jewels became crucial plot markers: the diamond necklace on a Maharani’s neck, which the hero had to steal (Rajkumar in Waqt); the heirloom bangles with which a mother-in-law would show acceptance of the girl her son married without permission (Rakhee and Smita Patil in Shakti); the waistband which, if misplaced, makes the Othello-hero believe his wife has been unfaithful (Ajay Devgan in Omkara); the wholesale robbery of jewellery shops (Jewel Thief and Special 26); the bracelet on a skeleton’s wrist which, years later, makes the hero realize his much-idolized Chhoti Bahu had been murdered (Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam).

It's the necklace he wants... Waqt

Chhotu Bahu and her bracelet, Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam

Given all the significance attached to the concept, nothing is as significant as a woman not wearing jewellery. The most obvious statement made thus is, of course, about widowhood. But separation from one’s love is just as potent a reason: Sajan mohe tum bin bhaye na zevar, goes the ditty from Bazaar (1982). Bazaar also includes the most heartbreaking and traumatic scene related to jewellery.  A very young and very poor Supriya Pathak is being forcibly married off to a rich, much older Dubai businessman. Her female relatives come to measure her ankle size for anklets, and the girl is like a young wounded fawn, cowering, trapped into a corner of the room and begging "no".      

Supriya Pathak begging to not be measured for anklets, Bazaar

No one gives up jewellery as symbolically as the immortal figure of the golden-hearted prostitute. Rekha the courtesan giving up her jewels, the subject of much chasing, to make a golden toy cart for her lover’s child (Utsav). Meena Kumari, the courtesan, never wearing any jewels in her daily life, underlining her personal truth of being Pakeezah, the pure. Chandramukhi giving up all ornaments and material pleasures once she realizes her unfulfilled love for Devdas. Indeed, in this story, even heroine Paro giving away all her jewellery to her stepdaughter and turning to a kind of asceticism after marriage to an older man (though the Sanjay Bhansali version spectacularly ignored this aspect).

We are not quite done with the traditional tropes yet. Even now, when songs are replete with Goa beaches and four bottles of vodka – and actresses like Sushmita Sen and Priyanka Chopra often point out in interviews that they don’t need a man to buy them a diamond ring if they want one – the 2015 hit Chittiyan kalayian nevertheless began with Jacqueline Fernandes demanding “golden jhumke” from her lover. But the lost earring is now well and truly missing. The films of this century have heroines, as well as the world around them, being far more open about their sexuality – the earring is not needed any more to announce that the protagonists have made love.