Mom Mania

Mum’s the word

The mom mania on the small screen can be traced to the surefire success of mother-fixated films like Mother India and Deewar, writes Nirupama Dutt

Nargis in Mother India upholds dharma by killing the son she loves the most (Sunil Dutt)Amitabh Bachchan is left speechless when Shashi Kapoor tells him “Mere paas ma hai”
The Mother India myth has been one of sure success in Hindi films. Popular Indian cinema is indeed mother-centric with a host of graceful matriarchs having done honours to the Indian screen from Durga Khote, Leela Chitnis, Nirupa Roy, Sulochana to Nutan, Waheeda Rehman and Rakhi. The famous dialogue from the Amitabh Bachchan blockbuster Deewar is still repeated. Amitabh, the baddie, tells Shashi Kapoor, the goodi-good younger brother, "Mere paas bangla hai, gadhi hai, paisa hai. Tere paas kya hai?" Pat comes the reply, "Mere paas maa hai."
Mama-mania is a way of life in the Indian cinema and it succeeds many a time. But the man who gave the archetypal Mother figure to the Indian screen was the great filmmaker Mehboob Khan in Mother India in 1957. Mother India was a remake in technicolour with a brand new star case of Mehboob’s earlier Aurat (1940). Iqbal Massod once writing on this archetypal mother said, "The mother upholds the dharma which the good son follows. When the bad son transgresses it, he is killed." The ever-lasting myth of the big screen has been providing a catharsis to audiences as they sit every night at half past ten to watch Kyunki Saas bhi Kabhie Bahu Thhi. Smriti Irani, playing Tulsi Virani in the serial has done the Mother India act with aplomb by killing Ansh and winning the approval of the viewers.
The mother figure in the Indian psyche is different from that in the West. Julia Glancy, a Britisher and wife of a pre-Partition Punjab Governor once during her stay in India remarked in surprise, "The strongest relationship in India is between mother and son and not husband and wife." To the Indian mind, deeply entrenched in the concepts of Mother Earth and Mother Goddess, there is nothing strange or surprising about this.
They do not have the Freudean theory of the Oedipal complex to bother about.This concept has been liberally splashed in popular art, including calendars, posters and advertisements.
When Mehboob made Aurat in 1940, it was the time of the national struggle against the colonial rule. Mehboob combined in his creation of the mother figure the two concepts of Mother Earth and Mother Goddess. The film thus gave a vigour to the national movement as this was the time when posters were being printed of Bharat Mata in chains and suffering. Or martyrs like Bhagat Singh offering their heads to Bharat Mata. Post-Independence India saw the image of Bharat Mata with her chains broken, the tricolour on the border of her sari and a smile on her face to encourage her favourite son Jawaharlal Nehru.
It was in the renewed scenario that Nargis was reborn as Mother India, striking a famous pose with the plough on her body. To save the honour of the village, she even kills her son, played by Sunil Dutt, who turns a dacoit and is making way with the wicked money-lender’s daughter. She kills the son she loves the most for she upholds dharma.
People just loved it and the film has the reputation of running till date in one cinema hall or the other in the country and still attracting audiences.
Every decade has seen one or more films which played with the myth in one way or other. It was Ganga Jamuna in the 60s, Deewar in the 70s, Ram Lakhan in the 80s, Vaastav in the 90s and Koi Mere Dil Se Poochhe in the new century.
And now the small screen has appropriated this myth giving Tulsi Virani the greatest status that the Indian imagination can envisage. Women in the neighbourhoods are talking of little else and when the story was leaked out a couple of weeks before the trigger was actually pulled, it made front page news in national dailies.
So the moral of the story is when all other formulae fail, it is best to have a good mother and an erring son. Mama mia! A killer mother never fails for the Mother India myth is forever.

Films on Prem Chand's fiction

Munshi and the movies

Nirupama Dutt

THE buzz in movie circles is that Vidhu Vinod Chopra after caressing the hearts of moviegoers ever so tenderly with Parineeta, a love story penned by Bangla writer Sarat Chandra, in 1914 is now looking for a classic from Hindi. And his heart seems to be set on doing Munshi Prem Chand’s classical pastoral novel, Godan, all over again. Well, if Bimal Roy could retell Sarat Chandra’s Devdas after Barua and Sanjay Leela Bhansali could re-re-tell it, then why not a retake on Godan.
In fact, Premchand’s writings have inspired many memorable films, including two unforgettable ones by Satyajit Ray, Shatranj ke Khiladi (1977) and Sadgati (1981).
The first film inspired by a Premchand story was Mazdoor. It was made way back in 1945. The second film was Heera Moti (1959), based on a short story called Do Bailon ki Kahani. It had the famous pair of Bimal Roy’s pastoral classic Do Bigha Zameen(1953) in the lead, Balraj Sahni and Nirupa Roy. However, Chopra was no Roy and film is all but forgotten but for a pleasant duet so beautifully depicting the Ganga-Jamuni culture, Kauni rang mungva/ Kauni rang motia/ Kauni rang ri nanadi tore birana, that can sometimes be heard in a programme of Bhoole Bisre Geet.
Sanjeev Kumar and Saeed Jaffrey in Shatranj ke Khiladi
Trilok Jeltley directed Godan (1963) is still etched in the mind for its realistic narration on celluloid of the struggle of the Indian farmer with Raj Kumar and Kamini Kaushal in the lead. The musical score was by the sitar maestro Ravi Shankar and one of the best Purvia songs of Hindi cinema was from this film, Pipra ke patva sarikhe dole manva, Ke hiyara me uthat hilor.
Godan, the last complete novel by Premchand, is considered one of the greats and has been translated into many languages. Krishna Chopra along with Hrishikesh Mukherjee made yet another film on a Premchand story. This was Gaban (1966), the story of a clerk who embezzles funds to buy a coveted necklace for his wife. Sunil Dutt played the clerk and a deglamourised Sadhana danced to the music of Shankar Jaikishen singing, Maine dekha thha sapne mein ik Chandrahar. Mere balam ne pehana diya.
With the Chandrahaar saga not clicking too well with the masses, it seemed the days of social realism a la Premchand were over. But in 1977, Satyajit Ray made his first Hindi film on a story by Premchand set in the large backdrop of colonial India and the annexation of Oudh. In spite of criticism that by changing the end of the story in which the two nawabs kill each other for honour’s sake Ray had done injustice to the spirit of the conquered, Shatranj ke Khiladi is considered one of Ray’s most important films. Ray’s telefilm, Sadgati (1981), with Om Puri and Smita Patil in the lead, was soul-stirring as it raised the question of caste that is as alive in society today as it was when Premchand wrote the film.
Last year, Gulzar turned his attention on the Munshi with a 26-episode serial for Doordarshan called Tehreer as part of the 125 th centenary celebrations. For Gulzar it was a project after his heart as he wished to leave his stamp on the works of a genius as he had done with a difference by a serial on none other than the great Urdu poet, Mirza Ghalib. But the response of the audiences was not all that admirable.
If Bhansali can send Devdas to Oxford or make Paro and Chandramukhi shake a leg and much else, or if Vinod Chopra can reset the 1914 love stories in the Calcutta can of the Sixties, Godan’s Hori, the protagonist too, is bound to undergo change. Change is after all the spice of life and more so the movies. Putting Munshi’s heroes in movies of these times may well mean changing the landscape of Godan from Uttar Pradesh to the BT cotton fields around Bathinda.
The battle between lovers of literature and makers of movies will thus carry on. Story tellers in celluloid will continue to look the way of classics.

The doomed hero never fails

The Devdas Syndrome

Nirupama Dutt

Few fictional heroes have dominated the India male psyche in the 20th century more than Devdas. Indeed, among the many sins’ novelist Sarat Chandra Chatterjee may have committed, the greatest is that of authoring Devdas. For, the eponymous hero of Chatterjee’novel has come to symbolize the weakling, indecisive male who can do little but drink himself to death. And this even when he had the choice of living in companionship with two women-- his childhood sweetheart Paro or the repentant prostitute Chandramukhi.

Considered the ultimate in romance of the unrequited, Devdas came alive on the silver screen as early as 1935, courtesy Paramtesh Chandra Barua. This prince from Assam identified so closely with Devdas that he made two versions of the film. In the Bengali version, he played the doomed hero. For the Hindi version, Saigal did the role with those haunting songs like Dukh ke din ab beetat naahi. As far as alcoholism went, saigal anyway embodied shades of Devdas -- and the portrayal was easy for the singing star.
Barua had staked his all in the production of these films. It is said that he went to the premiere with a loaded revolver, determined to kill himself were the people not to respond to the film. Devdas, however, was an all-time hit. New Theatres in Tamil remade the film next year, and it became a rage down south too.

Such was the power of this hero of fiction that he almost replaced Majnu of the Laila fame. The colloquial question to any unshaved man looking a bit lost would be: ``Kyon bhai, Devdas ban gaya kya?’’

Twenty years later when people had not quite forgotten Saigal’s portrayal, Bimal Roy who had worked as a cameraman for Barua remade Devdas with Dilip Kumar as hero, Suchitra Sen as paro and Vyjanthimala as Chandramukhi. The film, released in 1956, didn’t make just cinematic history but social too. One generation wept for Devdas played by Saigal; it was the second generation that was now deeping for Devdas again.
Recalls Hindi writer Shailendra Sail, who was a student in the days when Roy’s film was released, ``We lived and breathed like Devdas, growing our hair, sitting for long hours in the coffee house smoking and, those who had the dare, drank too. We all saw ourselves as clones of Devdas.’’ And now when we were moving through the very upbeat, upmarket, high-tech 21st century, the danger of Devdas returned courtesy Sanjay Leela bhainsali of Ham Dil De Chuke Sanam Devdas with Madhuri Dixit as Chandramukhi, Aishwarya Rai as Paro and Shahrukh Khan as Devdas. The choice of Shahrukh was interesting considering that he achieved stardom as psychopath lover.

What is the USP (unique selling point), as the modern marketing jargon goes, of this fiction-made monster? Fiml writer Firoze Rangoonwalla in A pictorial History of Indian Cinema writes, ``The essence of Devdas is love denied by class differences, so that the man drifts to ruin with wine and woman while the beloved becomes the housewife of a rich widower with children of the same age as their step-mother. In a much adored ending Devdas makes a long cart journey in the last stage of his life to die at Paro’s doorstep.’’ But this intention of focusing on social inequity was muffled by the sheer passion and intensity of the tragic romance.

Devdas and the eternal triangle became a recurring theme in Indian cinema. This was most evocative in Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa, in which social concerns were portrayed more potently. But it was in Kagaz ke Phool (1959) that Guru Dutt rehearsed his own death by suicide. Playing the role of producer-director who’s remarking Devdasa, and caught between two women, Guru Dutt’s own story became a doomed-hero saga with poet Kaifi Azmi crying out: `Ik baar to khud maut bhi ghabra gayi hogi; Yoon maut ho seene se lagaya nahi karte.’’

What irks one is that even in these days of instant love we have no yet finished with Devdas. The next generation too should take out the `kerchiefs and get ready to weep for him.