I am kinda on a roll in watching these ye olde B-grade Bollywood films, and this being of a particular niche which I am sure those are into sports would appreciate.
Synopsis:
The Maharaja hears of a prophecy, which tells about a low-caste man marrying his daughter and dethroning him as king in 18 years. In order to prevent this he has all the newborn low-caste boys in the land killed, but the mother of one saves her baby by putting it in a basket and sending it down the river. A palace maid picks up the baby in the basket and raises him in the royal court. 18 years later the baby is named Amar and he has fallen in love with Rajkumari Padma, the Maharaja’s daughter.
Spoilers for the film below!
I will have to say straight away that I liked this better than the epic and just too long The Ten Commandments (1956) which gave this film its plot to a certain extent. While the camera work and staging of the scenes in that Hollywood film are epic and colorful, here, in mere black and white for most of the time, the action moves on much quicker. Instead of the prophecy being one where the savior belongs to the Hebrews, here they are replaced by lower-caste people, which works better in an Indian context.
And this whole film has the trappings of something of a myth mixed with fairy tale. There is the Damsel in Distress in Rajkumari Padma who is nicely headstrong, but still gets into trouble, and falls in love with our hero Amar when he rescues her from a mud pool. The clothing is a distinct combination of both Indian and historical Western dress, making it a fantastical mix where one cannot place this anywhere and nowhere. The place is called Hindustan, but is of another kind of “Hindustan” and yet it still reflects the reality. The royals are fantastically westernized, while the people are dressed in Indian attire. Amar is a sort of superman mix of both, with westernized tights––he only needs a logo across his chest . The palace guards are akin to Roman times, and Rajkumari Padma is also a mix; with a western cut in her clothes, but with an Indian fantasy aspect added to it with an addition of a veil in her crown. The engineer of the palace is most distinctly westernized, wearing a black penguin suit and white billowing shirt that seemed to be from the 17th century. It is something familiar yet new, fantastical yet real. The clothes are beautiful, at least to my eye, and honestly some pieces on the women could work also today with some modern adjustments.
As one watches, one can feel the influences of the film. Amar lifts a pillar the same way Jean Valjean lifted the cart in Les Misérables. He comes from the low-castes (instead of aliens) and becomes a strongman just like Superman. We do not see his training or if he had the desire to become a strong man, such concepts are not important to this film. What is important is that he fights the bad guys with his strong, but not toxic masculinity. He is supposed to be an inspiration for boys; the hero who wins the heroine with his kindness, and goodness, as well as his muscle. In today’s environment of hyper masculine Hindutva superheroes in historical disguises on screen he is something whose kindness comes first, his powers of strength come later. And the fights are fun to watch! Simple, fast moving, and aching to the old Hollywood of the 1930s like The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). They even play music from the Barber of Seville opera in one fight scene later in the film. Amar is the “Faulad” of the title, which means steel. He is the Man of Steel before the unofficial Hindi adaptation came in Superman (1987). Now, this film came when the Indian comic industry was in its infancy, yet it seems to be inspired by them, a precursor to what was to come. I have no confirmation whether the producers or director knew of Superman, but the coincidences in the story seem more than enough to confirm that they were at least aware of it enough to make their own Superman in this film.
In all of its fantastical trappings the film is rooted in reality, as Amar is meant to fight opponents in the ring. If he wins, he becomes free. If he loses, he dies. A good enough motivation. The scenes in the ring are built like real wrestling matches, and Dara Singh who played Amar was a professional wrestler in his time. He was famous in his time in the ring, even competing internationally. This film is one of his B-grade Hindi films which he starred in. He had the previous year debuted in King Kong (1962) as the lead actor. He brings enough star power and charisma to the whole thing, and I am sure he inspired many boys in India to get into wrestling because of his films like this. Because wrestling is put centre stage, the different forms of it (which I cannot name, not my area of expertise) and I am sure wrestling fans would get a kick out of it in this film. Singh would gain popularity later in the 1970s and 1980s, but here in this film he is still a rising star both in wrestling and in film, even though he never got a superstar status or seems to be more playing himself than a character, there is still merit in preserving a B-movie such as this one for the niche it is.
And the film’s plot is simple, Amar knows he is of a lower-caste by the 30 minute mark of the film. He is put into many scenarios where he has to fight different people, and the film is built around these fights, just giving him an excuse to use his real life muses and wrestling techniques. There is a plot by the prime minister which is to kill him or at least have him out of the way as she usurps the throne. Usually I would not like this in a film, but this film has such charm that it is hard not to resist just going along for the ride.
Also, the acting in this film is wonderful! Perfectly fitting the world it has built. Kamal Mehra as Maharaja chews the scenery and acts pompous like a child with the power gone to their head. Mumtaz as Rajkumari Padma is the perfect fairy tale princess, with a spirit and spunk even in her role as the Damsel in Distress. To contrast her innocence, we have the femme fatale Veena played by Minu Mumtaz who devours each line with silken venom and good comic timing.
Then we come to the progressiveness and inclusion within the film. Not only is our hero lower-caste, he fights for what is right, never waving in being good. When he is sent on a slave ship and he and the other slaves take over command of it, there are Muslims there amongst them, with lines of dialogue and characters of their own. Honestly, the only religious scene is when Amar’s foster mother is praying in the river when Amar in a basket comes her way and she adopts him. And even that scene is an Abrahamic religious scene made Hindu one, though I guess it shows the universality of such acts no matter where they come from. Then when Amar is on the ship and ventures into an island he meets the Spanish or Portuguese Alberto and they fight with swords. Alberto loses and they are friends! Even Veena is not fully a bad girl, she gives him a note about the things going on in the kingdom and on the adventure continues. It is so joyfully inclusive; not bothering with preaches of tolerance, but acting out its inclusivity instead within its narrative and fantasy world which reflects the real one. Here, everyone is a friend, and the only true enemy are the rich, which is rightfully punching up instead of down. Even Amar disguises himself as an Arab magician, aching to One Thousand and One Nights with the costuming, but it is played positively, and even though there is a hint of Orientalism, it is not done with malice or offensive stereotypes.
Then 30 minutes before the film ends, the Black and White film turns colorful, and we see the bright costumes, the sets, and landscape in the full spectrum. They clearly only had enough money to make the last third colorful, and it goes on for enough time for you to appreciate the costumes, the texture and shades. For money reasons they obviously couldn’t make it all in color, but the parts we have show enough of a spectrum to make the whole film worth it just to see what it could have looked like if it had all been so from the beginning.
As I watched this film I became nostalgic for a time I did not live. Things seemed more simple, more tolerant, at least in the Hindi film landscape. The turn towards Hypermasculine Hindutva Hindu heroes in recent times just makes me sad. The binary of good versus evil, of Hindu versus Muslim, is what is tainting the landscape of these films. Ordinary men are made glorious fighters for their ideals, and not seen as human. While I know this film is more aimed at boys, giving their wrestling star on screen, it still is more progressive than movies today. There are no offensive stereotypes as far as I can see and it combines mythologies and stories to be its own entity. Yes, the women are either vamps or Damsels in Distress, but there is only so much one can ask from a film like this. Amar, while a son and stepson of a Hindu, is not seen praying to any god at all. He is strong because he is, he is a good person because he is, and he is inclusive because that is what he is. He is a role model for young boys, and he is the form in which these lessons are told. He is a man belonging to no religion yet every religion. He is not purely Hindu or purely Sikh, nor are his enemies Muslims, but a fantastical westernized royalty. The film is pure fantasy, aching to the classic Hollywood films of old. Good fights bad, the true enemy, the rich. Even though one still has to accept the finale where Amar becomes royalty by marrying the princess and inheriting the throne. But this is a fairy tale, of simple morality without the speeches, and where actions speak louder than words. It is utterly charming, utterly captivating, and it might not be the highest of art in filmmaking, but I found myself completely at its sway. I found myself being a kid again.
This is it! I watched by first B-grade Bollywood film! It was fun, sexy and bewildering and somehow I got more words to write about it then: It’s so bad it’s good.
Synopsis:
Ruby Shetty and her widowed dad live a wealthy lifestyle. Ruby’s father often travels to the deep jungles of India in search of a fabled tribe of Shakabhoomi. The people who have tried to trace the tribe have never returned. This time Ruby also decides to accompany her father on an expedition to the jungle since her mother is no longer alive. Ruby’s father introduces her to D.K. the man she is supposed to marry. In the jungle, Ruby gets into trouble, and is rescued by an ape man called Tarzan. D.K.and her father wants to capture Tarzan for the Apollo Circus.
Spoilers for the film below!
Now this film is just hilarious in so many ways! First off, Ruby tries to climb a rock with rope and HIGH HEELS on! She goes specifically to her father’s expedition to tell him that she hates him and her mother is dead and that he is a deadbeat father. Now, why does she join in? Because the plot wants her to be there to be rescued by Tarzan. The editing is VERY concentrated on the zooms when a character is told something. Somehow, Tarzan has been known for a while, even news media is on it, and so are some travellers in the jungle. He is known, but has never been captured and now DK wants him for the circus. One would think the government would do something about it? But no, a ragtag team needing an act for the circus is the one to go.
The producer-director Babbar Subhash is very concentrated on entertainment in his films, especially in the cult classic Disco Dancer (1982). The phenomenon of that film was great and the songs were an all around hit. Now, with this new property of Tarzan in his hands, he tries to capture the same magic with good, bouncy songs, and a silly plot. However, this time the result was not the gold he had hoped for if one looks at the Wikipedia page for this film compared to Disco Dancer. Hemant Birje’s role in this film is to be sexy, shirtless, do the Tarzan yell, swing on vines, and look intensely at Ruby. He wrestles plastic animals in a river, and sucks the venom out of a blood on Ruby’s thigh to get it out when he randomly comes in her path. Birje speaks a lot in gestures and without saying a word. Is Ruby the first woman he has seen in the jungle or is there something special about her? Movie logic says that we should not care, since he is attractive and so is she, so they must be together. He is ultimately the silent eye for the men in the audience who want to be as handsome as him, have the girl as easily as him, but have neither the physics or the law of the romance novel by their side. This was his debut film, and I am sure he worked hard for the body, but his acting talents are not as much utilized in the almost silent role of the main character of whom we learn very little about.
Now, Ruby as played by Kimi Katkar has only one job: be sexy. She has plenty of shots of her cleavage, her wet dress hanging against her body, and on her bare legs. With her color coded outfits she soon turns from the prim and proper city girl to a woman of the jungle, thirsting for Tarzan like the most delicious of meals. If she is in water, the film makes sure that she is braless beneath it, showing a glimpse of her nipples for those with sharp eyes. Yeah, she is not meant to have much of a character other than the Damsel in Distress, but she at least looks good doing it. There is not one scene where she looks out of place or dishevelled or not sexy. Indeed, Ruby must have packed her most scandalous clothes for the jungle just to get a good tan from the sun. I have to say that for me she was the best part of the film, mainly because she was just so fun to watch on screen, even though what happens to her and the rapey scenes she is put into are not fun to watch at all. You truly hope that she gets away from the horrible men who abuse her and slap her (twice) and just be with Tarzan who might not say much, but he is what she desires.
Also, these two have simmering chemistry when they meet. At first, Tarzan is there just to gaze at Ruby until he rescues her, but they are interrupted when the hunting party comes. And when they meet again and he rescues her, again, he just brings her to his hideout in the trees and she just goes along with it. There is a kind of sexiness beneath the innocence of these two characters, along with the kind of plot points one expects from an 80s romance novel from Harlequin or Mills & Boon. You know you are not supposed to take it seriously, and there are certain things like Tarzan fondling Ruby’s breasts while she tries to sleep which are there to titillate the (presumably mostly male) audience that you just kind of have to take the film as it comes. Ruby also falls in love with Taran for…some reason…I suspect it is just plain horniness for his good body and looks. Which, looking at Birje, is fair.
Then we come to the representation of the Shakabhoomi tribe, which, let’s face it, is not great. For the first hour we are just shown the men as they snatch up women, and there is the implication of group rape with its stageing of them taking these women and even discarding their clothes. What one can say but: Yikes! Then we are shown that they dressed Ruby in another outfit of white and shell headdress for some reason, one which is clearly a human sacrifice of some kind. There seems to be only men in this tribe, no women. She is taken by a dark and large tribal man with bone decorations, and is threatened with rape by him. Tarzan, of course, rescues her and we are back to fun times!
She wants him to learn how to love and she goes by this…being as sexy as possible, because love is all about the physical act of love, not the emotional part of it. But I guess Ruby is fine with a man who does not speak, who does everything she wishes, and rescues her when she is in trouble. I do have to applaud Katkar doing all of this with confidence, making it clear that Tarzan is her fantasy, while her outfits and movements are the fantasies of the male audience. Tarzan does her favors, she likes it, and they have sexy times ahead of them because of this. They even kiss!
And then we get to the songs, while catchy, seem to be meant for children. Heck, they even copy a Sound of Music (1965) for their ABC song, not even bothering to change the lyrics! I am sure the producers of the film did not even bother to pay for it. I presume these were to fool the people into thinking this was a kids film, and not an adult film that is barely held by the sexy times it has in favor of an actual plot.
Like how did Ruby know that Tarzan’s elephant’s name ws Bijli? There is no scene showing it at all. How does D.K. and her father find her so often? When did Tarzan come into the jungle and acquire the name and live far from his family? Where is his family? Where does he work out? How does D.K. come to learn that Ruby killed two sailors? Why did Ruby kill those sailors? What happened to the other women who were taken by the tribe?
One wonders these questions as the film goes on, but it is best not to do that for a film like this. Just take it for what it is, adult entertainment mixed with children’s songs, which make an odd combination and I do not know what to make about it. I presume this tried to cover the whole family spectrum; sexy Tarzan for mother, sexy Ruby for father, simple plot and children songs for the kids! The whole family spectrum is there to enjoy, but the execution is a bewildering one.
The film ends rather abruptly and there is even a showdown with real and soft toy animals which look as cheap as they are. At least for me the climax went on for too long and the end could have used a little more wrapping up. Ultimately, it was a fun, bewildering time. The film does indeed give thrills, though they are a mixed bag, depending what age you are.
I watched this a long while back on Mubi, and found it once again! I did not make a review of it when I first watched it, but now, it seemed like the perfect time to revisit this film.
Synopsis:
Bombay, 1986. Vicky and Sonu are brothers and partners in crime. They produce C-grade, sleazy sex-horror films in the lower depths of Bollywood. As Sonu returns from a sales trip peddling erotic reels in the countryside, he encounters Pinky, a mysterious actress who turns their lives upside down.
Spoilers for the film below!
Every industry has its bellies, and the world of Miss Lovely is in the depths of it. Filled with cheap effects, sex, sleaze, and horror, these films try to capture and satisfy the base emotions in us all, but mostly the front benchers (always men) who buy the ticket to watch them. Sex sells, after all, always has and always will.
Now this film did not originally begin as a film, but a documentary on the lives of those who worked in the C-grade sex cinema in the 1970s to the 2000s until porn sites took over because of the internet. Because many of those whose life experience this was did not want to go on camera and tell their stories, the writer-director Ashim Ahluwalia reworked the idea into a film script which told those stories, but without any sentiments being hurt or shown.
Moody and atmospheric, this film captures your attention from the first. We are immediately brought into the cheap shocks and sleazy highlights of the C-grade films which are an industry in themselves. There are worries about money and distribution, there is the casting couch, catfights between rival actresses, and tension between the brothers. The Bombay it captures is raw and real, made of people trying to make their fortunes by any means possible. Now the film is not very plot-driven, it is much more in the realm of scenes scurrying between each other with little words being said. The mood speaks for itself, its atmosphere is more dominating as it shows the behind the scenes which it takes to even make a C-grade film which does not have the prestige of an A-grade blockbuster. If the films this film is putting its kaleidoscope on are sleazy and cheap, then Miss Lovely is itself a high class venture into the belly of the beast which is the Hindi film industry back in the day.
Now in the 1980s Hindi cinema or Bollywood was not in its best health, with so many violent gangster films dominating and the allusion of sex also being a selling point. By many it is considered a low point in the history of Hindi cinema until the 1990s ushered in the age of romanticism and high quality entertainment. So, even though these two industries, the C-grade and A-grade, are so metrically opposites of each other in both style and quality, they were both hitting the same beats but on a different budget and star level.
And these B-, C- and D-grade films do have their pride of place, they give hopeful actors, actresses, industry people, designers, art directors, costume people and others work which is needed. To all these people desperate to work, one film is as good as another, they are experienced, and the only bad side is the casting couch for actresses and the exploitation that goes on from the higher ups. The film takes a documentary eye towards the proceedings, making us feel like we are with these characters in the moment, immersing ourselves in the underbelly of entertainment. It is the world of police raids and public outcries about the moral depravity of these people trying to make a living.
Amongst these dark depths is the sweet love story unfolding between Sonu and Pinky as he meets him, finds out how she wants to be an actress, and wants him to star in the film Miss Lovely. She says that she does not understand why Sonu pursues her for his film when she does not have acting skills for it, but he mellows this complaint by saying that with looks such as hers there is no need for acting skills. They go to the cinema, they go on a ferry ride, it is just very sweet. Sonu tries to get her the role, but the higher up is rude and asks for sex, which Pinky is insulted by, and leaves, but not before making it clear that she still cares about Sonu.
As Sonu we have Nawazuddin Siddiqui who narrates the film. He is a man of romance stuck in a world of sleaze and shocks and cheap thrills. He wants to make his own film, Miss Lovely, which would be romance instead of the sex-horror he and his brother usually produce. He tries to break out of the world he is in, mature, and achieve his dream. Quiet and uneasy in the world, his only salvation seems to be Pinky.
Meanwhile his brother Vicky played by Anil George is the brother who dominates the narrative, buying off cops, doing everything he can to get the money together to produce the C-grade shlock films. He is the brother in control, who takes the fall, who tries to protect Sonu from the worst of it.
Then the lovely wannabe actress of Pinky is Niharika Singh. She is the ideal which Sonu holds her in, she has desires of her own, but he cannot give them to her. She wants to break into film as an actress, but does not feel like she has the acting chops for it. Sonu gives her hope.
The whole film is framed as in a Wong Kar-wai film, especially something like Chungking Express (1994). The shifting moods, the documentary like style, but instead of wishful love stories we are given to the seedy world of C-grade films. It makes something grotesque into something worth watching, an art onto itself, for even trash is art to somebody. Sonu, the protagonist, is our narrator and thus we see this world from his point of view, and the film he makes of his life, his frustrations, his fixations, is one of art mixed with sleaze. A first class hamburger with caramelized onions; but still a hamburger, the cheap fast food which we all eat when there is nothing else to watch, which fulfills the base urges of hunger quickly. He is there to make entertainment for others, but he is not entertained by the world himself and when the film hits its bloody climax you feel that a tension is released which had been building up the whole movie.
Now, I myself have not yet ventured into the world of the B-, C- or D-grade films in Hindi cinema or any other of the Indian film industries, but this might just make me do so. It might be more out of morbid curiosity, to see what kinds of movies these are. If there is something movies like Miss Lovely do, is that it gives a voice and a perspective on an industry which many want to keep hidden from the public eye because it is not good PR. I am sure every movie industry has its underbelly, this film shows the Hindi film industry’s one. It is captivating, classy, and worth watching!
This was an interesting film, and one which I found quite on accident.
Synopsis:
Based on the short story of the same name by the late Odia writer Manoj Das: In rural Odisha the local ruler Raja Saheb invites people over for a hunt, Mr. and Mrs. Mitty along with the Ango-Indian Elina. They go into the forest to hunt, until something goes terribly wrong.
Spoilers for the film below!
From Wikipedia: “Aranyaka” (āraṇyaka) literally means “produced, born, relating to a forest” or rather, “belonging to the wilderness”. It is derived from the word Araṇya (अरण्य), which means “wilderness”. Yet the title of the short story when translated to English is said to be “A Trip to the Jungle” which does tell the story which is from, but does not hold the same poetic meaning as it does in Sanskrit. Yet another meaning from Odia the name translates to “Forest People”.
And in this wilderness, the world of the Adivasi is constantly put in contrast to the rich rulers. The Raja Saheb even has a companion named Elina, they play the piano and violin to entertain themselves; meanwhile the Adivasi community work, they sing folk songs and cut the meat for the food. They are the servants, in the lowest position, and do not have a voice for much of the film. Indeed, they speak very little, are in the margins, just like these rich people see them.
As these rich people go into the jungle to hunt for game with guns, Mrs. Mitty is the most empathetic of them towards the animals hunted, but she still does not see the Adivasi as people. Mrs. Mitty is sad about a butterfly being under the car and calls the Adivasi driver Shyamal a “savage beast”. Raja Saheb had already talked about how the tribals were seen as cannibals by the Spanish and the British for their ways. In this way, they do not see the Adivasi as anything human, but animals, uncivilized, only there to serve their needs. Raja Saheb and Mr. Mitty hunts with guns, while Shyamal has a bow and arrow.
When they arrive in the forest bungalow a change occurs. Shyamal does not go with the men and Elina to aid with their hunt; and Mrs. Mitty, who also stayed behind, feels her inhibitions loosen as she takes her hair away from the bun and twirls around free just like Elina had done. Something wild has already awakened in her, as she feels more connected to the nature around her.
Mrs. Mitty goes on exploring the nature of the forest around the bungalow, seeing a waterfall, and being alone, but she does not know that Shyamal is there, watching her from the trees. Mrs. Mitty notices him, screams, and leaves back to the bungalow, scared. Later she dreams about running in the forest as an arrow flies past her and hits the tree, then she awakes. She has now become scared of the Adivasi who do nothing but exist, and she is scared of them without them doing anything to her. Even when a mad beggar comes to the bungalow he does nothing, but she pulls out a gun on him as he cries, doing nothing to her.
But this fear also has another side, erotic desires, especially towards Shyamal. Mrs. Mitty sees him as something other, strange, and desirable. She even falls from a log and cries, just so that he can come to her aid, which he does. He carries her inside the bungalow to rest. The desire is seen as mutual on both sides.
Yet the story takes a dark turn when Mrs. Mitty pulls a APassage to India and claims that Shyamal forced himself upon her. The men beat Shyamal while Mrs. Mitty cries. There is now a mystery; was the act rape or was it consentual? Did one think they wanted it, while the other was subservient to their needs, because they saw no way out except by obeying. Does this describe Shyamal, the Adivasi male servant, or Mrs. Mitty, the unsatisfied high-class wife? Who holds the most power here?
Mrs. Mitty had already been seen desiring and looking at pictures of the Adivasi men in a coffee table book, she dreams about them, consumed by thoughts of these Adivasi men and their bodies. Her dreams are hazy, flashes of consciousness. We hear screams which she might have made during the attack, then again they could also have been cries of pleasure. Shyamal has been beaten and taken away, he only appears now in her dreams, dancing by a fire.
We do not see it, but the film implies by Mrs. Mitty’s reaction is that Shyamal killed himself or died in the nearby shed. She becomes hysterical, wailing and crying. Shyamal has become just another animal to be hunted, and used. Raja Saheb, Mr. and Mrs. Mitty, and Elina leave the forest bungalow. He tells them that no one will know what happened in the bungalow, as his trusted servant will no doubt hide the body.
The film essentially highlights the abuse and marginalization of the Adivasi community, yet it does not give them a voice of their own. They are treated just as those in power see them; strange, wild, uncivilized, and desirable bodies. They are not seen as people, humans, with feelings and emotions. The rich can get away with murder, and Adivasi is of no consequence to them. I just wished they had more of a voice, more of a presence in the film, or at least more strongly implied, because the film does highlight the injustices against them, but they are still not seen as characters or people by themselves except in relation to the jungle and the rich who they serve. Perhaps that is the point, that these rich people are like the British who viewed themselves as better than the Indians, and the Indians themselves are doing the same oppression to the Adivasi as the British did to them.
Now as a film this was a good one, though for me it felt like it could have been a little more clearer with some aspects. Perhaps the original Odia story is full of ambiguities, which is why the film is the way it is. The acting was good all around. The film has such art house heavy hitters as Sanjana Kapoor as Elina, Sarat Pujari as Raja Saheb, and Mohan Gokhale as Mr. Mitty. Navni Parihar as Mrs. Mitty is one of her first major roles in film, having otherwise worked in television, and she does a splendid job of being this woman driven to wild fantasies and hysteria by her own desires and paranoia.
The film ultimately left me with an ambiguous feeling. The message is clear, that is not a question, but it still felt like the film took the POV of the rich who abuse, not the indigenous people who have to live the reality. It really just reminded me of A Passage to India in a lot of ways, with the colonial type of Raj still ruling, the indigenous serving, and them not seeing them as human. Yet the film does not see them as fully human either, at least not to a good extent which I found to be characters on their own, and not these bodies which to be scared of.
I guess I am just dipping my toe into these non-mainstream films of the different industry, not just for a change in watching habits, but to see the films others may not talk about so much, at least online.
Synopsis:
In Bombay, Najma lives in a flat unmarried, yet her lover Akhtar Hussain visits her every night, but the flat is provided by Akhtar’s boss Shakir Ali Khan, a businessman working in the Gulf. Six years ago in Hyderabad, Najma fled her house when her mother suggested that she prostitute herself to earn some money for the family and has been living with Akhtar ever since. In her life is also the poet Salim who tells her that Akhtar will never marry her. Shakir Ali Khan comes to the flat and asks Najma to find him a bride in Hyderabad. Najma agrees reluctantly. Meanwhile in Hyderabad, Sarju and Shabnam are in love.
Spoilers for the film below!
Women, sitting in a row, waiting for their turn. One of them is already up on the podium. One is having her veil placed on her head, another looks at herself from a hand mirror. A redhead is whispering to the girl next to her. One girl has a haunting look on her face, she is looking out to us, pleading for us to take her from this place. A girl is crying into her hands in the corner, in the shadows, she will be the last on the podium.
They hear the sound of the men coming from all over the lands to claim them. Discussions with other men. They try not to listen, but it is impossible to not hear their discussions. “This is a pretty one.” “Is this necklace as real as its worth?” “Look! Here you see the beauty of the city,” the conductor of this most prestigious of selling says from his box. The men are in awe of the beauty which is unveiled before their eyes as a slave takes away the shawl which kept her modesty. She is shown to the world, to the men, who shall be bidding for her worth.
For this is the marriage market, specifically the fantastical imagining of British Edwing Long of The Babylonian Marriage Market, painted in 1875. It is a painting which interconnects with many meanings within its frame. In terms of racism it shows the women as being shown to the men from lightest to darkest. The dark skinned slave serving the white skinned women on the podium, making sure her supposed ugliness contrasts with the beauty of the women present. She is as faceless as the woman in the podium, another servant of the patriarchy, a victim of it, just as the women behind them. It is also an Orientalist idea, constructed from the archaeology of the time, showing Babylonia as an international destination for finding a bride, even for Vikings without their horned helmets. Taken from a scene in Herodotus’Histories it changed the auction from being in the middle of a village to a very Victorian-like auction house. It conflates Babylonia and Assyria into one single imagined “Babylonia” where the auction takes place. It has an eye for historical detail, yet its message at the time was seen as contemporary. The auctioning of women reflected the new law, the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870; which made it possible for British women to own property and have inheritance rights. Women were once property, cattle to be sold, look here what was before! Therefore let us no longer go back to those times, the painting says. A White man’s imagining of a marriage market, based on another White man’s writings in the ancient world, speaking about White women’s plight of the time.
Najma, as played by the superb Smita Patil, comes from a good family of Nawabs who have fallen on hard times. Her mother tried to convince her to sell herself for them to earn some money, since having a job was seen as beneath their status. She would have literally been forced to be in the market of the flesh for her body in order to earn a living, but she escapes this fate, even though she does not escape the leering looks of the men like Shakir Ali Khan who want her, but cannot possess her. The insult for her to sell herself was so great that she merely uses the unopened letters from home like a card stack, piling them atop of each other. I liked how in the film when Najma returns to Hyderabad her mother cries and hugs her. Her brother, Sarju oe “Sajju”, is a little angry, but then is just happy to see her there. No matter what she did, she is forgiven for this transgression, she is seen as a person, even with her mistakes.
The most straightforward message about the marriage market is the one with Shabnam as played by Supriya Pathak. She is the innocent in all this, already in love with Sarju, but forced to marry a man she does not want. As a young girl in love she has such wonderful chemistry with Farooq Shaik as Sajnu who is also wonderful. Their love story is tragic and sad, and you believe them being lovers every time they are on screen. Just beautiful chemistry all around. They tore at my heart throughout the film. Their emotions are just so real, so heart touching.
Salim as played by a young Naseeruddin Shah is great as the lovelorn poet who knows his hope of ever marrying Najma is fruitless, so he pines for her in silence, though their friendship is still ongoing. She knows of his feelings, but does not reciprocate them.
The film is sharp in pointing out the abuses of power men use on women. Shakir Ali Khan owns the flat where Akhtar and Najma live, so she has to do what he says and find a bride for him. When Najma and her friend go buy some jewelry for Khan’s bride in Bombay before they leave for Hyderabad, Najma points out that no matter what the jewelry costs “women are the cheapest price in the bazaar”. When they arrive in Hyderabad they even see a real marriage market where women are, which shocks Najma. The film shows how these things happen because of poverty, which is why parents descend into these practices, in order to have their daughters married off. Shakir Ali Khan is already married with children, but abusive towards them, even though he has acted well in other’s presence. He does not live with his wife and children anymore, so there is presumably a divorce which happened some time back, and so this is why he wants another wife.
And the whole misunderstanding of whom Sarju is in love with comes with his friend Nasreen coming to meet him just as Najma is there. She thinks Nasreen and Sarju are a pair, though Nasreen is in love with him, and he is not with her. This misunderstanding leads to the marriage offer by Shakir Ali Khan to Shabnam.
Then there is the reveal that Akhtar holds Najma under his sway with the promise of marriage in the future, or Nikah mut’ah in Islamic Law which dictates must be fulfilled. It is also called a trial marriage. With this law Akhtar can keep talking of marriage towards Najma, but not fulfill it, instead of using it for his own advantage. He was even offered a marriage to a woman in the first scene, but he refused.
The film announces its message in a speech which Salim makes drunk, saying that Shabnam is not yet 16 and that her family is poor. They have the short end of the stick, and the bidding needs to start for the bride. They are marrying their daughter to this rich businessman out of desperation; for prestige, for money. The girls are treated as cattle, and Salim sees this and is angry on their behalf.
Throughout the film one gets a sense that Salim and Najma would have been a better pair for each other. They have such splendid chemistry, such wonderful interactions, that it is as if the film is saying she would have been more happy with Salim than with Akhtar. She certainly talks to Salim more than she does Akhtar, and Akhtar can seem a bit of a control freak, not wanting Najma to do certain things. At least Salim is aware that as long as Najma is in the control of a man she will not be free. The film gives Salim this sentence, though I feel it would have been more fitting to give it to Najma, because it really veers into Mansplaining oppression of women through a man so that the men in the audience will listen, because if a woman did so they would not.
In the end, Najma finds her voice and gives Akhtar a good speech about keeping her for himself without marriage, and calls him a pimp of his boss. She is strong enough, she can live without him.
Meanwhile, Shabnam killed herself by poison, before she could be raped by Shakir Ali Khan. She is the innocent who does not survive the trials put on women. She is the message that women who are forced to marry may not have happy marriages, and that death may be their only escape from a bad marriage.
The ultimate message is to not force women to be in positions where they are lower than men, like the marriage market. Najma was forced to be the marriage broker and caused unhappiness with the misunderstanding of where her brother’s affections lay (a predictable plot point) and thus the killing of an innocent woman. Salim and Najma both look at the camera, breaking the fourth wall, so that the audience gets the message.
I liked the film fine, it was a bit slow at points, and I did have to look up certain things while watching it in order to understand the context. The performances were what kept me engaged, as well as the character relationships, which were well handled and directed. It did not go the obvious route, and seeing it from a Muslim perspective instead of a Hindu one was a nice change. The message of the film was obvious, these kinds of films usually are, but the way it went on presenting its message was interesting, complex, and even with the occasional Mansplaining, feminist. Though I wish the flashbacks were better presented in the film, as they do come on a little sudden in the narrative, and you are not sure where we are in the plot for those parts to intrude on.
There is something appealing about true crime, always has been, especially now as it has become a hot topic in social media. Perhaps it is the human in us wanting to know the warnings for us so that it does not happen to us, or we have that morbid fascination about the darkness we humans bring to the world. This post is going to be a little different. I am returning to my Zubeidaa (2001) review/analysis format which you can read HERE about first talking about the real life things we know from publicly available sources and then doing a review of the film after it.
Trigger warning for graphic details about the real life case!
In Nithari in Noida, New Delhi, children are going missing from the streets in the mid-2000s. In December 2004, Sheikh, a nine year old, went missing. The mother goes to report it to the police, but they dismissed it, saying that she should try to find him at the orphanages. She tries to report it, but they abuse her, asking her to go and leave. She stops going to the police. The first case is reported to the local police in January 2005. On 6 October 2006 the first FIR was issued by the judicial magistrate (CJM). Their parents do not know what happened to them, it is as if they have just disappeared into thin air. The local police say they probably ran away. In the local mosque the names of the children going missing are read out in the hopes that someone knew about where these children had gone. Children are disappearing at a rapid rate, one every six weeks. Local families search for the children in vain yet there is no trace of them to be found. By 2006, nine children had disappeared in the span of eighteen months. 40 people are officially missing.
These are the children of peddlers, rickshaw drivers, washermen, tailors, wage labourers; the poor workers in a busy city trying to make a living. Nithari is called a semi-rural-urban-village. Many children and women have always gone missing in the area where the poor live and there are no leads to be found. Money is tight, children rarely go to school because the parents can’t afford it, it is an area of migrant workers, belonging to the lowest of castes.
The local police map out an area of 100 feet where the children are disappearing. They believe it is a gang kidnapping the girls to work for prostitution and begging. They go to the red light districts in search of these missing girls. Many girls are rescued from the flesh trade, yet there is no sign of the missing girls of Nithari. The area is called a Black Hole where children disappear. Security is raised in the area and there are no disappearances for a while.
22-year old Payal Lal goes missing and her father, Nand Lal, is unable to contact her. The cops harass him and say that they believe she ran away with a man. Her mobile is switched off. He tells the police that she went to work in Moninder Singh Pandher’s house in the bungalow D-5 in the neighbouring Sector 31. It is the better part of town; middle-class right next to a place one can kindly call a slum.
Nand Lal goes there and meets Pandher, but gets no answers to where his daughter has gone. Pandher says he does not know any Payal. Koli lies and tells him that Payal had not come there. Pandher’s mobile is tracked and it shows that he was in Chandigarh since his father had passed away. The police question Pandher more aggressively, and he tells them that Payal was a call girl. He told the police that her father used to pimp her for 40,000 rupees a month.
To the police Payal’s father admits to pimping his daughter, but he still wants her to be found, she is still his daughter, after all. 21 December Payal’s phone was tracked and it is tracked to someone who said he got the phone from a rickshaw puller. It had passed through the hands of six different people. The SIM number was tracked to Surinder Koli who lives in Sector 31, Nithari, Noida. The posh part of the village where fancy bungalows loomed over the stretch of road where children had gone missing, the Black Hole.
Koli tells them that the neighbour’s driver gave the phone to him. The neighbour’s driver says that Koli told him to say that he found the phone and gave it to him. Koli had asked him to lie.
Koli was taken into police custody, after being aggressively questioned he confessed.
Surinder Koli is a Dalit, born in Amura, a village near the Himalayas in 1970. He was an introverted child and studied after 5th standard and left school at the 8th. Koli’s father was a butcher and he followed his father’s profession, helping to skin the animals, even though the family itself was a vegetarian. He is respectful to his elders and is not considered a threat by any means.
He moved to New Delhi with his brother-in-law and got a job at a run down hotel, as well as a cook because of his talents as a butcher. He gets married to Shanti, sending money home from Delhi and later she says that he was never cruel to her. Koli would sometimes return home to her for a few days before returning back to Nithari. He works at houses as a servant where there are no reports of any misbehavior. He was one of the many migrant workers in the big city, working to survive.
By 2005 he was a servant in the middle-class household of Moninder Singh Pandher in bungalow D-5, who lived in a house in the middle of Nithari, which was in front of a lane and near open drains. Pandher is a businessman from Chandigarh and owns a big company. His house on D-5 is a two-story bungalow, large, with a garden and servant quarters with their own ways to go in and out of the house. There are rumours of wild parties happening inside the bungalow, about Panthers alcoholism, and Koli would later say that it was his duty to find prostitutes for his master, a thing which he disliked. His wife and son live elsewhere, back in Chandigarh while he lives alone in Delhi, free to do as he pleased. He read about nightmares in his spare time. Pandher leaves for holidays and business trips, leaving Koli there alone in the house most of the time. By this time Koli has a daughter named Simran.
There was an open drain near the bungalow, there was a filthy smell, and there were bags with bones in them. Local police were called, and it was discovered they belonged to children. Hands. Legs. Skulls. Payal’s bag is also found in the drain. The digging began for the remains on 29 December 2006. 15 skulls and bones are found. The news is all over the case, the feeding frenzy to the public starts. Four more skulls would eventually be found, adding the number to 19; sixteen complete and three broken.
Bungalow D-5 is investigated with children’s belongings being found inside the house. Childrens remains are also found in the house. Parents of reported missing children are called to identify the artefacts from the drain and house. Many families who once had hope of finding their children, lose it all.
The case goes from the local police to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) fifteen days after the case was opened so that the case could be investigated more thoroughly. There are thirteen cases. All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) came to D-5 to investigate on 12 January 2007. From the area behind the bungalow they find and recover 58 pieces of bone, 47 pieces of clothes, 17 sandals of varying sizes, hair clips, pieces of rope, and bangles of different sizes.
There is also the question of Pandher’s involvement in the case, since the body parts were found in his house.
Both Koli and Pandher sign their confessions.
The news media is all over the case as there is an appetite for news of anything about the gruesome case. People storm bungalow D-5 in fury, breaking furniture and windows. These are the relatives of the missing children satisfying their justified anger at their intended target which has now found a face of brick and white paint. The outside of the house is a mess, but the inside is safe from destruction.
The case of Pandher makes the case interesting, since he is a rich man caught up in an investigation about the poorest of the city being murdered. He is swamped by news anchors wanting to know what his role was in all of this. His wife and son meet him and he cries, telling them that he does not understand and telling them that he did not do it. His family only came to know about the killings by the media. Pandher cannot believe what had happened in his house.
Koli was psychoanalyzed, saying that he was lonely and had fantasies of a woman in a white saree appearing to him, along with other morbid confessions. He was injected with a “truth serum” in a narco-analysis test in order for him to tell more information, there were also lie detector tests. Shanti Koli gave birth to a son. The drugged interview was released to the press before the trial had even begun. Pandhori’s drugged interview was also released, but it was heavily edited.
Koli is interviewed and he confessed to the crimes, even naming the victims, and saying that he raped, murdered, as well as ate some of the victims in an act of cannibalism. In confessing to the police Koli told them how he wanted to have sex with Payal, which she refused, and how he strangled her to death. He told them how he chopped her body up in the upper bathroom of the house, and ate some pieces of the body. He also confessed to having necrophilia with the corpses.
The first court case begins with the murder of Rimpa Haldar, a teenage girl and the daughter of a rickshaw driver, who went missing on February 8 in 2005. One of the missing girls. The police had not helped in finding her at all when she first went missing.
Pandher’s charges by the CBI are: immoral trafficking, corruption, and harboring a criminal. These are minute in scale. The people riot when hearing the charges. There are rumours that Pandher allegedly bribed the police in order to get lesser charges and not one of murder or anything close to it.
The newspapers get a hold of Pandher’s and Koli’s case diaries and publish them. They find that the police omitted Pandher’s crimes of him asking Koli to find him girls, there he tells them that he would hand them to Koli to kill after he was done with them. Pandher then tells his son that he had signed two papers which were blank which were his confessions. The police say that Pandher had not confessed, questions are asked about the investigation and Pandher’s involvement which seems very little if nothing at all. There is also the question of the police themselves writing the confession in the case diaries in order to have a suspect. He was in Australia for the first case, Chandrigath in the second, and he has an alibi for all the dates. His mobile, passport, and schedule for the dates are verified in almost all the cases. But there was the question of him placing his phone in one place and physically being in another. The police also did not check the dates following the kidnappings where he was.
Koli was charged with capital murder by the CBI. The trial is held in Lower Court and Pandher is summoned there by the charges: murder, conspiracy to rape, and abduction. The CBI stood with the defence instead of the prosecution during the trial.
Both Pandher and Koli were found guilty on 12 February 2009.
Under Act 302, Koli gets the sentence of death. Pandher also gets the same death sentence, as well as a fine of 50,000 rupees.
Yet there is still the question of Pandher’s involvement.
In the case of Jyoti Lal, the young daughter of a washerman Jabbu Lal, there is the fact that Pandher was at bungalow D-5 that day as confessed by Koli. Her case was the last to be heard. There was only one hearing. In all, there are six strong cases against Pandher and Koli; the families of those other victims have allegedly been paid off or have withdrawn their cases against the pair.
The Allahabad High Court granted Pandher bail on 10 September 2009 and he moved back to Chandigarh. In response his bungalow D-5 house was set afire.
22 July 2017, CBI court convicted both Koli and Pandher for kidnapping, raping, and killing twenty-one-year-old Pinki Sarkar, sentencing them to death.
9 December 2017, CBI special judge, called the killings the “rarest of the rare” and convicted both Pandhal and Koli to be hanged for the rape and murder of a maid named Anjali.
Koli still sat in jail, receiving his latest (10th or 11th) conviction of murder in 2019 where he was given a death sentence once more.
Both Koli and Pandher were acquitted by the Allahabad High Court in 2023 with an emphasis put on a “botched up probe” of an investigation since the confessions were truly all they had and a lack of convincing evidence.
Now I am going to talk about the film! Spoilers!
Synopsis:
In mid-2000s Delhi, Prem Singh is a servant in the house of Balbur Bassi, a wealthy businessman, and has the whole house to himself while his master is away. Sub Inspector (SI) Ram Charan Pandey is a corrupt police officer who is sick of filing FIR cases, and his boss says it is best not to register anymore from the nearby slum. Body parts are found in a drain, but they are dismissed as belonging to an animal. Ram Charan’s daughter is almost kidnapped by Prem, but she survives, and this gives Ram Charan motivation to find the killer.
As Prem Singh Vikrant Massey’s innocent looks bring a stark contrast to the bitter, dark truths, and morbidity of the murders. The first scene of him we see is watching television, eating sweets, and answering the question right on a TV quiz show. We see pictures of him and his wife, how he owns the house he is in, and then he just casually goes to the upstairs bathroom to chop off the limbs of a dead girl. The film gives him a backstory, telling that what made him the disturbing man he is today is that he was sexually abused by his uncle who was a butcher, and he chopped him in response to all the abuse. Though Masseye does have some good monologues where he can show his acting talents when Prem is brought to confess.
Ram Charan Pandey as played by Deepak Dobriyal is not a perfect character. He is corrupt, he bullies the parents who complain, he cares about his own daughter, but not all the missing children of his local slum. Only when the case impacts him does he care about the missing children cases. His turn is just too plot convenient since it comes so fast. He talks about Newton’s Third Law. What is it? Newton’s third law simply states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So, if object A acts a force upon object B, then object B will exert an opposite yet equal force upon object A.
And like all crime thrillers in India there is the obvious parallel drawn between Lord Ram and Ravana, of true good (though, personally, Lord Ram for me is more of a gray character because of the whole “Go into fire Sita to see if you are pure, nevermind you being my wife and I should trust you”) and true evil. Heck, even in the scene where Prem tries to kidnap Ram Pandey’s daughter he dons a Ravana mask. Also, Ram Charan Pandey himself is playing Ravana in a Ramayana play. Both of these men are not initially good people; one is gray, while the other is pitch black. He does not care about the case until his own daughter is almost kidnapped during Dussehra; drawing a parallel to Sita being kidnapped by Ravana, but here his daughter is saved, and he becomes Lord Ram trying to find the children at last. “Demons reign in the kingdom of the gods presently, sir,” says Prem to IS Prem Charan after he has gone to Bassi’s house to see if he knows anything about a missing rich family’s child.
Then there is the talk of caste, or the lack of it. Changing the name, so as not to get a court case on their back, they made sure that the killer in this film is casteless, since Singh is such a generic North Indian surname. There is also no police beat up or anything like it. Prem confesses because he wants to, because he wants to be famous, it is an urge to kill, and more of an urge to be risky before confessing it all to show his true colors to the world. Indeed, he sings like a bird, showing where all the bodies are hidden in the bungalow premises.
The film’s theme is that actions have the same, but opposite reaction. Prem was abused as a child so he became a killer; Ram’s child was almost taken so he now has more motivation to the case; a child of a wealthy household is taken and the police respond to it more thoroughly than that of the poor families missing children; Ram tries to have Bassi investigated but his higher ups in the police force suspend him; the society does not care about the poor so Prem finds easy pray in their midst; and Ram searches for truth in the CD and disappears.
Now as a film this story is gruesome, stark, not for the fainthearted, and deeply disturbing. We see the brutal murders, the kidnappings, there is pedophilia, organ harvesting (as taken from one of the theories for the murder), and there is even the case of a disturbing CD of the content we do not know of, but which contains disturbing implications on Balbur Bassi. It is the reason Ram Charan Pandey is killed, disappearing at the end. There is also the side-tanged of a child of rich parents (the mother wears a Juicy Couture pants and hoodie), how the police are finally called to action in this case, while the poor slum dwellers are set aside, showing the hypocrisy of the system when it comes to the victims.
The script has some good ideas, but some things happen a little too suddenly, as if trying to tick off a box of a thing we know about the real life case. Such as the father of one of the missing girls storming into Bassi’s house where Prem Charan is having chai, and saying there that he is the man who killed his daughter, because of this there comes the revelation that the father is also a pimp and his daughter is a call girl. It is forcing the point of the real life case through the door in such an obvious manner one does not know whether to laugh or cry at the forcefulness of it all.
Directed by Aditya Nimbalkar, the film is directed OK (not bad, not too grand either, but competent), there are good themes there where it explores the hypocrisy of the system in place, and how Prem does not care about the victims (though he does ask their names before he kills them) since society does not care about them either. The film is a loose retelling of the case to put it mildly, one thinks it will follow the same path, and for a while it does, before it does its own thing when it comes to the famous CD. It is interested in the disturbing “house of horrors”, the shock value of that to an audience, the mind of the killer, and the vomit-inducing bones revealed in the garden. One thing I do feel was a missed opportunity was the following of a life of one of the parents, how they feel about all this, and their thoughts about the killer. We do see some of the public rage, the search to find the killer, but overall the script does not delve into the reasons why for the outrage, or the lives of the poor. They are in the background, they are merely the victims, not people themselves with lives cut short. No, they are only concerned about Lord Ram and Ravana fighting each other, finding each other. Never mind Sita who is in the middle of all this. It is all background noise to the horror of the spectacle, not the humanity of the victims.
The ending also confused me for a while and I had to Google it (not perfect here, even I don’t know everything) to find the message it was meant to tell. It leaves a lot of questions open as to the whole mechanics of the thing. Evidence is lost, Bassi is set free, Prem takes the fall. It is almost the same as in the real life case. Then Pandey’s colleague gets a package with a CD on it, with almost the same inscription as the first one. Yes, justice might be served at last, but the execution of its writing could have been a little better.
Final thoughts!
One thing becomes increasingly clear when it comes to the real life case: that if the poor parents had been listened to by the police, been seen as people, then things could have changed and the investigation could have begun early. They knew something was wrong, yet they were not listened to until a grown woman went missing and the police were willing to trace where she had gone. Never mind all the children that were gone long before then, they did not matter. Their worth is questioned, they are just part of the lowest of castes and professions just trying to survive, and the society, the police, do not see their worth. Even Payal’s worth was questioned, since she was a young woman, and she was dismissed as just running away with a man, something scandalous and tainting the family’s status if true. Heck, the police did not even report a missing person’s case until much later when children were already disappearing!
Then there is the botched police investigation which of course throws all the confessions into question. Pandher said he signed a blank piece of paper, and Koli was aggressively questioned before he confessed. Then he was put under duress under the narco analysis, where a human in a suggestible state. Was he telling the truth or was it under duress to stop the aggressive questioning?
The victims’ families are not mad at Koli, he is one of them, one of the poor Dalits working and doing what they are told by those above them in the caste/class “food chain”. No, their anger is mostly targeted at Pandhor; he is wealthy, influential, and has more power from the two of them. There even was a case of him bribing CBI investigators so that his prostitution ring would not be looked into. He walked free earlier while Koli was charged with more crimes and more death sentences. Even Koli would later say that the confession he made was made under duress.
One for this whole case I would use is––messy. It is just a mess, of both the way the police dismissed the victims by their status in society, their grieving parents, the way the confessions were taken, it is just incompetent in the way it was handled.
This is why for me, personally, it is hard to wrap my head around the truth of it all. The line between all the stories and the facts. The horror is so great, the injustice even more so, it shakes one to the soul to learn that such a horrible thing was done to such innocent victims. Because they were innocent, most were children, and even the adult women who went missing, no matter their profession, were still people with lives and dreams and hopes. Just because they are in the lowest rung in society does not make them any less human than you or I.
And the film sees them only as bodies, of names, victims, but not people. It glorifies the murderer, makes him a fascinating psychological case that will make your skin crawl, but it does not make a statement on the lives of the victims. At least it did not feel like that for me in the film. It felt sensational; indulging in the cruelty, the orgy of violence hidden behind the walls of a nice house, that it just loses sight of the ones who are important. It is a loose retelling of the case and it does not want to get sued by using real names, only real citations dramatized for dramatic effect. I felt no close connection to Ram Charan Pandey; if I were to rewrite this film then I would concentrate on the parents, their lives, not the imperfect Lord Ram who does not care until it affects him. Even the character of Prem loses its steam after he starts to confess. The higher ups do not care, but Ram does, and he will be the red apple in a soiled lot doing his best. The film shows some scenes of the lives of the eventual victims, but it does not feel like it is enough. It is only one scene for two victims, then they are killed, bodies disposed of, trophies for this fascinating killer who hogs all the screen time.
I guess in this case I fall in the middle. I do feel like Koli did the work, and Pandher knew about it. There is no way he could not have been involved. I do feel like they are both guilty, yet I do feel there is some kind of a middle ground in it all. Perhaps Pandher forced Koli to do the killings, perhaps there was some financial motive for it all. There are so many lies, so many loose threads, and so many victims it gets overwhelming to sort it all out even while researching the case for this post.
Yet I will give the film a compliment in at least giving a kind of fictional closure for the characters. Bassi will no doubt go to jail now that the evidence is in the hands of Ram’s colleague, and Prem is serving his sentence. As the parents of the real victims lose their hope of the culprits ever being dead or sentenced, especially with the latest acquittal, this fictional justice is all we have.
2006 Noida Serial Murders Victims: Deepika “Payal” Lal, Arti Prasad, Rachna Lal, Deepali Sarkar, Chhoti Kavita, Anjali, Pinki Sarkar, Jyoti Lal, Sheikh, Rimpa Haldar…and so many more which I could not find the names for in any of the sources.
Sometimes while discovering the films one has not seen before, there gems discovered such as this film. It released to some fanfare over a decade ago, but since that there has been little spoken about it, and I am just glad to be able to watch this film!
Synopsis:
A middle-class Indian housewife, Chhaya becomes obsessed with an expensive sculpture of the goddess Lakshmi and is determined to possess it despite the fact that she and her husband Arvind have little money.
Spoilers for the film below!
The name of the film, translated from Hindi, means “Corrode”. The theme permeates throughout the film as Arvind works on construction where payments are not met and the building cannot be completed, a marriage corrodes, and a mind becomes concentrated on only one thing without any care for the rest of the world.
Rasika Dugal as Chhaya makes a spectacular performance, with her eyes burning with passion for a single thing and she will do anything to have it. She is a woman with not much to do, with not even a job it seems, except the hobby of drawing which makes for some beautiful scenes in the film. Alekh Sangal as Arvind balances out her passion with reason. He is a good man, a worker in construction, but who is not able to fulfil the task of completing the building he is assigned to overlook, but also getting the goddess statue his wife so desires.
Why does Chhaya want to possess the beautiful, but expensive statue of goddess Lakshmi? Is it a goddess she identifies with somewhere deep inside or is it to make her own Hindu faith stronger as she lives in a neighbourhood where the Muslim call to prayer permeates? It could be both or neither. There is a suggestion that she wants a child, and she believes that goddess Lakshmi can be the one to give it to her if she has the statue. The bigger the faith, the more fancy the set up, and more greater the reward.
There is also an emphasis on creativity in the film, as Chhaya draws on the wall of her house the buildings in the city rise little by little. But then there is no more wall left. We are shown that she has drawn the goddess Lakshmi statue equal in size to the statue, but she cannot complete it, since the head meets the ceiling. Indeed the images of the goddess haunt Lakshmi wherever she goes; in stickers, on bags, on top of buildings, and on the necklace her neighbour wears.
The film is shot beautifully in black and white, and the soundscape makes it seem as if we are Chhaya’s corroding mind as her mental health deteriorates. At one point the camera swirls around her after it has followed her, possessing her on the screen. She laughs but we do not know why. She has finally found a way to possess the statue. The soundscape of the film is haunting along with most of the imagery. It is as if showing that Chhaya is drowning in the depths of her obsession, selling all the possessions in the house in order to get what she wants.
The soundscape of the film is haunting along with most of the imagery. It is as if showing that Chhaya is drowning in the depths of her obsession, selling all the possessions in the house in order to get what she wants. Even Arvind goes to drastic lengths to get the money for his wife, which lets him be free to say what he wants to Bapu, the corrupt contractor, who has swindled him and his men out of money.
In a cruel twist of fate Chhaya loses her husband in an attempted robbery, but gains enough money to get her idol of Lakshmi after he dies from deposits. Now she has the idol of the goddess in her possession, but she has lost everything else in the world to get it. Was it all worth it?
I have been wanting to see this film a while. If about morbid curiosity if nothing else. You know, that desire to see the film just to see it, to know why it failed for yourself, so that you too can be part of the conversation. That is why.
Synopsis:
Based on the 16th century Braj language epic poem Prithviraj Raso by Chand Barai about the medieval Rajput/Gurjar King Samrat Prithviraj Chauhan. It tells the story of the King from his childhood to his marriage, to his battles, and final defeat at the hands of Muhammad Gori, the ruler of the Ghori dynasty from modern day Afghanistan.
Spoilers for the film below!
When it comes to film, historical fact is often left to the side; and because the stories they have are made from poems glorifying and deifying the subject, then the humanity and flaws of these humans is left to the wayside. Bards have long embellished and belittled the kings which were seen as beneficial at the time, and films continue to do that with their prose in celluloid. Now, the film itself written and directed by Chandraprakash Dwivedi has a problem, pacing. We start at the end of the story, of Prithviraj being captured, him having a song sung for him as well as a battle with lions. It is already a lot, and then we flash back to his childhood, with us being told that he has impeccable hearing, and seeing a scene of him telling his father that it will rain, and it does. Then we cut back to him being imprisoned, and only then are we permitted to see the story unfold naturally. It all feels rushed, there needs to be more of a deft hand, more patience, more money, and more craft to make this movie more than it is––Aggressively Mid.
We are just thrust into this world, even the statements that the filmmakers do not support Sati goes by fast you will miss them. It is from one act to another, no character action needed, and no character journeys taken. We do not even see the first moment when Sanjogita, Prithviraj’s future wife, heard about his actions, only that she has already heard them a lot, so the man must be as great as it is said. They even have a song, ‘Hadd Kar De’ (full disclosure, my favorite song from the film) where they are shown as performing the same actions far away from each other at Holi, but because the editing is so swift, the settings not as well established, it makes the magic of her imagining him and him performing a dance in his own palace, seem like it is happening at the same place even though they have never even met. There is no establishment that she is imagining, while he is in another place far away, they all blend together. Good in theory, badly executed in practice.
Also, the only reason Sanjogita falls in love with him is because of his valor in the battlefield as she hears songs about him, and so believes the man is as good as it is said. It would have been subversive and hilarious if she had heard these praises about him on the battlefield, speaking about his character, but when they eventually marry he is just a boring, ordinary man and falls in love because of his humanity not his glory. There are no emotional journeys or character growth taken in this film, it is all action and reaction, statements made before said statements are then either refused or accepted. The love story between Sanjogita and Prithviraj is conveyed through letters to each other, in such a romantic manner as courtly love; him in the world, while she stays in the women’s quarters. It should be romantic, yet it all feels boring.
There should have been a little more of this romantic love exchanging before they got to the ‘Hadd Kae De’ song in my mind. Have them built up to it, instead they just splash it over as the first song of the film just because they are obligated to have the first song at the ten minute mark as per Indian cinema rules. Also, she is a young woman with an idealized picture of the man she has in her head, their courtly love is seen as forbidden since he is her father’s enemy, and she needs to be abducted from her home in order for them to marry. There is an epic love story here, but the film rushed through it, stamping it of anything interesting or subversive. The only true statement the film makes is that she marries a man she chooses, but who we see is filmed as a great man, but not an interesting one in any way. Do they have the same hobbies? Do they like the same poets? No matter, they are in love because they have to be. Manushi Chhillar is beautiful, has a strong voice, but not a strong presence on screen. Also, we are shown that she defies tradition by choosing her own husband, Prithviraj, yet she still upholds the regressive practice of Jauhar/Sati by the end. We are meant to see her as much of a warrior as Prithviraj, as someone who fights for love as he does his enemies; even her death is seen as something a warrior would do, even though it is an act where a woman’s worth is seen in her virtue, not her soul. They could have not gone the Padmaavat (2018) route, and have her be scared of going into the flames, or feeling trapped, having some commentary on the practice, but no. Damn a condemning take on an ancient “tradition”, instead let’s go down the regressive flow where this is seen as a victory, instead of the murder by society it is.
There is also the flaw that we never see a kind of growth or anything personal in Prithviraj himself. We see him as an adult, a child, then an adult again in all of his glory. In the real historical Prithviraj’s reign his mother ruled beside him by taking care of some of his duties, while here his mother is non-existent. It would have been an interesting statement to say that behind this great ruler was a strong, smart woman from whom he learned how to be a good king. But also because this is an Akshay Kumar film he does not fill the character with any kind of depth of feeling. He barks statements at court, he is always “on”, and we rarely get a glimpse of the human underneath. Not even when he is speaking to his lady love does he show any depth, it is just the same smile, with no chemistry between the leads that I saw. He seems to have more chemistry with the men than he does with his leading lady, at least in this film.
The one thing I will say in favor of this film is that it does not fall into too much Islamophobia. Prithviraj is given the opportunity to shelter Mir Hossain, the brother of Muhammad Ghori, the man who will eventually capture him, and he does so. The two men are shown to exchange greetings both with their own religion, then exchanging hand gestures to do the others, and then finally hugging. Though I have to say this film still uses the egregious Hindu saffron and Muslim green color coding for the audience, with no thought to historical accuracy or how it would be seen by modern audiences. History is boring, but bringing forth the simplistic version of Hindu = Good, Muslim = Bad with its color coding it is still making a statement.
And the film tries to be progressive, they even show Prithviraj defying tradition and showing Sanjogita as being able to be shown at court beside him, defying the tradition of her being confined to the woman’s quarters. I do wish they would have shown her being stifled by this earlier, of her wanting to be out there in the world from the beginning, so that when she makes her great feminist speech at court there is a build up to it and this is the satisfying payoff. But, as I have said before, the film ends with her doing Jauahr/Sati, which renegades the message the film is trying to show. Sanjogita is a character which shows great promise, but never shows her full potential to the kind it could have been. Even Prithviraj has to force her to sit at the throne of Delhi, with his court crying women’s empowerment, while she initially refuses, but then is forced to accept it according to Dharma. Because if a woman wants something a man knows better, and if she is shown desiring something then a man must give it to her, for a woman does not have a power of her own. Because a woman can be ambitious only up to a point, nothing too much, and it is up to the man to see her full potential and rise her to that position, not earn it with her own merits. Again, missed opportunity, and it could easily be established by showing Prithviraj’s morals have been inherited from his mother and him trying to live up to it. Again, a character journey that could have been interesting but no. Speeches, thumping music, people meeting instead.
The only who had a journey and who seemed interesting to me was Ashutosh Rana as Jayachandra, Sanyogita’s father and the one who betrays Prithviraj to Mohammad Ghori, but loses his daughter in the act of having Prithviraj captured and her committing Jauhar/Sati. He is an interesting man, upholding tradition and feeling slighted at being passed over as the ruler of Delhi. He ultimately causes his own destruction. There are specks of an interesting character there, but Rana’s acting does most of the work for having him be memorable. All the other actors in Prithviraj’s court are just not memorable, they seem more like filler if anything, and I just did not care a lot about them. Sonu Sood’s character Chand Bardai is planted into the story to be the one to tell Prithviraj’s story, never mind history, and is just there to sing his praises as his real life counterpart did centuries after the real Prithviraj’s reign. It should be meta, it should have some commentary, but instead it is just lavishing praise on a man glorified in his poem in the form of propaganda, which these kinds of epic poems were originally meant to be when venerating kings.
As said before, the film is Aggressively Mid in both presentation, story, and execution. It is just another historical epic which does not live up to its promise, where there are chances for it to be something greater. Not even the battles are exciting to look at, and the tasks which Muhammad Ghori makes Prithviraj do are silly and look silly in execution. It is like a cat playing with its food. One is beginning for the film to end, yet it goes on slogging, even though it is just over two hours long. This film so aggressively wants to be Padmaavat (2018) it copies some of Bhansali’s scenes from that film, but it does not carry the same emotional or artistic merit as that film, and it also has its glaring flaws. Do I now know what Prithviraj did? Yes. Do I know what kind of a man he was? No. Do I care about seeing this film again? No I do not want to see it again. The film tries hard to tie this all to a statement on Indian independence, how this was the end of a glorious Hindu age, put down by colonization by the Muslims and British, but it just does not carry any weight whatsoever. The film is as flimsy as a balloon, carrying no other statement which other films have not made before, with only a worse of an execution.
This was the first Satyajit Ray film I ever saw, and I captured my attention from the first. Now, reviewing/analysing it, it is wonderful to return to this small, but impactful film.
Synopsis:
In rural Bengal in the 19th century, Doyamoyee is a wife to Umaprasad, the son of the zamindar Kalikinkar Roy who worships the Goddess Kali, and they both are happy. Umaprasad is called to Calcutta, leaving his wife alone with his family, but promising to write. One night, Kalikinkar Roy has a dream about the Goddess Kali’s and Doyamoyee’s face merging, and so he begins to see his daughter-in-law as an incarnation of the goddess.
Spoilers for the film below!
Women are goddesses meant to be worshipped, so goes the mantra of the ideal Indian household. Indeed, there are many Hindu goddesses whose faces are carved on temples for worship; Durga, Saraswati, Sita, Mariamman, and Radha just to name a few. Yet this worship is a stifling force, it makes women into the carriers of divine femininity; which is good in theory, but stifling in practice. For as Simone de Beauvoir said: “One is not born, but becomes a woman.” There are expectations placed on women which they must carry from birth; to live up to the unattainable perfection of goddesses, while still being a flawed human being. To see a woman as a goddess is to stifle her into a role, saying you do not see her humanity which is raw, ugly, and common. She is higher than you, therefore she must be perfect, and not equal to the flaws which men have and are free to possess within themselves. Her duty is to serve others, and if she is good at those tasks, then she is a goddess. This is at least the statement I see in Devi. One of one woman’s expectations being raised to such heights that she can do nothing but disappoint in her mortality.
This is a short film, only an hour and a half long, yet it packs a punch. We see the love between Umaprasad and Doyamoyee as they sit in a bed, discussing how he will write to her when he is away, and that one does not need to learn English to be educated. We see how well Doyamoyee gets along with her in-laws as she gives her nephew Khoka a bedtime story. She is a good girl (she is only seventeen), a good wife, but she also has her own opinions as we see in the beginning with her opinion of English. Yet she also goes along with the worship her father-in-law bestows on her, soon coming to believe it herself. Sharmila Tagore’s arresting face, with those eyes that indeed resemble those of Goddess Kali’s idols, makes for a compelling journey to see. A lively woman becomes stifled, sitting on a mattress as people worship before her. She is isolated from everyone in the house, even her marriage bed, for she is now a goddess, something beyond those worldly needs. She may be venerated, but she is not happy. No woman would be in her position.
A kind of madness grips the father-in-law; is it the latent sorrow of his own loneliness or merely superstition brought to its hilt or the beginnings of a psychosis? The film never says anything on the reason, other than he dreamt it, so it must be true. Chhabi Biswas as Kalikinkar Roy is great as he is overcome with emotion at the sight of his daughter-in-law. A reverent worship of Goddess Kali, even before he venerates Doyamoyee, she is massaging his feet, saying little, but expressing a lot. One moment she was just another woman in the house worshipping at his feet, but now he is the one who is turning the tables, and prostrates before her.
Into the chaos of the household comes Umaprasad, played expertly by Soumitra Chatterjee as the only sane man in an insane world. He is educated, he is a knowledgeable man, the one with head on his shoulders. Umaprasad is a man caught between madness and sanity, between love and veneration. A man of great warmth and love, who tries to free his wife from the burden of being a goddess, but does not anticipate her believing it herself. The madness has gripped her too or has she been told of her new role for so long that she sees herself as a goddess, not a mortal? He does what she wishes, always thinking of her needs, but he does not venerate before his wife, because he sees her as the mortal woman he fell in love with. In a way, his love is more true than the one belonging to his father-in-law.
The word spread about the reincarnation of Goddess Kali, pilgrims come to see Doyamoyee from all over. She has wreaths of flowers around her neck, the painted art in worship of Goddess Parvati on her forehead, yet her eyes are hollow, haunted. One morning when she sleeps in her bed Khoka comes to see her, but is no longer the warm child he once was, and he does not say a word to her. The madness has gripped him too; she is no longer his friend. The only solace Doyamoyee has are the memories of the true emotion, true love which her husband had for her, and now he has gone back to Calcutta to be free from the chaos in his home. Tagore’s raw human emotions shine in this scene as a woman so lonely all she can do is dream. She takes the letters from the drawer and sadly sobs, letting her head bent to the cage where the parrot sits, for she too is like a bird in a cage, though hers is gilded with prayer. Ray expertly shows the claustrophobia of her position, only showing her leaving the house only once, and then refusing to go. Her husband may roam wherever he wishes, while she is stuck at home, deified. The same way a goddesses’ idol is stuck at the temple.
Once it was believed that she cured a sick boy with a “miracle”, and yet when Khoka, the boy she cares about, is sick and dies she knows she is a condemned woman. Her divinity has limits, human limits, ones which the superstitious townspeople would not understand. That is why she dresses in her wedding attire, donning her dowry which brought her to this home, fleeing into the wilderness. For only in nature is she to be a human being, while society would still see her as something she is not. She refuses to play the role of a wife anymore, of a daughter-in-law, of a goddess. No, she is not any of those roles which society puts upon her, but a flawed human being. She frees herself from the expectations of society, disappearing into the wilderness, into the mist. Is she to return to her husband or is she gone forever? The film never answers this question, yet one is left with the feeling that wherever she goes, in escaping from the society which has trapped her since her birth, she is much happier.
There are a few movies which I absolutely love, and this film is one of them. Also, it is definitely one of those films with food in it that will make you hungry no matter what.
Synopsis:
In Hyderbad, Gulrez “Gullu” Qadir is a young Muslim woman looking for love when she meets Amjad, a promising young man who wants to go to America. When the parents are met there is an expectation of dowry, which Gullu takes offence at and decides to call off the engagement. Deciding to use the dowry system to her advantage, with the help of her father, she plans to entrap a man in marriage and divorce with the dowry act of IPC 498A; which means she is free of the marriage and have him essentially give her money in recompense so that she can go to America and start her own business. This plan takes Gullu and her father Abdul to Lucknow where they meet Tariq “Taru” Haidar, a son of a prominent restaurant owner, who instantly falls in love with Gullu. Soon Gullu also starts to have feelings towards Taru, but the plan and the question of dowry hangs over them as they try to sort out their feelings.
Spoilers for the film below!
There is something comforting about this film. Maybe it is the realistic setting of the film, but it does not fall into too much glamour. It hits that perfect balance, showing the lives of the characters as happening in the real world, with real problems, but still giving a romantic love story which has its own flavour of fantasy. The cinematography of Himman Dhamija balances this good middle ground of the middle-class people it surrounds. These are not rich people, but they have money, yet they aspire for something more in life. Habib Faisal, the director, also makes these characters realistic and just people one wants to spend the next two and a half hours with.
Dowry is something which is prevalent in Indian society, no matter what religion, caste or class one comes from; though those who are poor do not have the luxury of asking for too high prices for a prospective groom to marry the bride.
The film points out how even the most regressive ideas can still be upheld in supposedly “progressive” and “liberal” households. Amjad is planning to go to America and speaks English with the accent, has an MBA, and his parents still ask for a dowry in the disguise of “help” for the new couple. Gullu and her father are lower-middle-class, they do not have that amount of money. Gullu works at a shoe shop and he is a clerk at a law firm, and even then he is close to retirement. The family is essentially saying that in order for Gullu to marry up in social class her father has to pay for her to get there, instead of getting there by her own merits, or by simply falling in love with a nice guy who happens to be from a higher social class then her. Amjad’s family is already rich, so why do they need more money? They don’t, but since it is the expected tradition, the price to rise to their social class through marriage, they do not see the wrong in it. They call it “help” but it is simply dowry. Even during the talk between Amjad’s parents, Gullu’s father, Amjad and Gullu a poster for things being on sale at the mall is shown between them, showing how even something as simple as a love marriage is a market and Gullu’s father is bad, since he is haggling the price to go low. The groom is after all the price, the rise in social class, going to America; all are for sale at the lunch table where love should be most important. Amjad tries to stand up to his parents about the dowry, but is too weak willed, and this causes Gullu to end the relationship. However, in the end, when he sees her happiness in achieving her dream he changes his mind, showing how ideals can be changed for the better.
Food is also shown throughout the film as a symbol of love. Gullu and her father always want to eat good food, as long as it is reasonably priced. Indeed, we already know the meeting between Amjad and his parents won’t go well, because he is a vegetarian, and his parents have plates full of salad, nothing hearty as meat. Side note! There is a real life rivalry of biryani and which one is the best; the one from Hyderabad or the one from Lucknow. Taru is also the son of a restaurateur and hotelier, so he knows his food, and the shots of food are mouthwatering to watch. Gullu even bribes her father with food at a restaurant in order to have the plan of them doing a fraud essentially landing softer, which it almost does. Taru also knows how to bribe with food, bringing food from the family restaurant to the interview in order to give food for the others in line for the interview with Gullu. Taru even charms Gullu as Sania with kebab and local Lucknow street food. Food, no matter what class you belong to, is shown as a connecting factor to other people. In a world of commerce, business, and money it is the most authentic way to connect to others, as a way of falling in love.
Parineeti Chopra as Gullu is just fantastic! I love how feisty she is, and how she is looking out for herself and her father most of all. She is practical, not a romantic, though she does want romance in her life, but not at the price of her dignity. She also has a tendency to make the guy in which she is in a relationship with her whole personality, and love what he likes and make his dreams hers. With Amjad we are shown it in the song ‘Shayarana’ as she decorates her room with posters of the USA. Then, when the engagement does not go through, she takes his dream as hers, to prove that she is just as good as him and as high class. And in her transformation to Sania Habibullah she changes herself on the outside, but not on the inside. She has extensions, curls her hair, and wears longer dresses to look like someone rich enough in her mind to catch a rich groom. In Gullu’s mind the rich live somewhere in Dubai, and thus she and her father perform richness by pretending to be people who have just returned from the Middle East, and are now looking for a prospective groom in Lucknow.
Anupam Kher as Abdul Qadir is his usual lovely self. He is a concerned parent, worried for the future of his child when his health problems arise. He goes along with the scheme because it guarantees his daughter’s happiness, and that is all he ever wants. He is not the patriarch, but most importantly a father. Gullu is smart and deserves someone equal to her or if not that then at least her wish to go to America to start her own shoe shop. It is one of my favorite roles of his, and he has played this character type so many times that they all seem the same, but here there is some variety and performing that loving father is why we love him so well (politics not counting).
As the love interest, we have Aditya Roy Kapur as Tariq “Taru” Haidar, a man who comes from wealth, but does not look like it. He is a bit silly looking, with a moustache, loud colored clothes, and extroverted character. He is a fun guy, and a safe guy. He could have easily been made into the boring, business type or even a playboy, but no, the filmmakers chose to make him a man that Gullu would not so easily fall in love with, or see herself falling in love with. He does not speak good English, loves living in India, and has no higher education. He just wants to spend his time running the restaurants his family owns by being there with the customers. We also know that his family’s restaurants are successful because white people (tourists from Germany and England) are wanting to eat there. He takes full advantage of this fact by letting the white women go pass the line to his restaurant just so he can have them eat fast, leave, and write a good review. This shows that no matter the front of silliness he puts on, he is a smart man, catering to those he knows will benefit his family. He also knows people in high places, like the owner of the hotel where Gullu and her father are staying, but he does not make it a big deal. He is essentially the down-to-earth love interest for the supposedly rich Gullu. He is authentic, even though his family is rich, he still wants to marry a woman he knows and who knows him, which is why he asks for three days before the marriage ceremony to get to know Gullu as Sania. He is the romantic, but slowly wears Gullu as Sania down with his charm and food. He might not be what Gullu imagened for herself, but ultimately he is the person she falls in love with, because they are both stubborn, love food, and love each other.
The film also goes into class, and how it is not as strict and is a performance in itself. The rich are shown as money hungry even though they have a lot, and having regressive ideals. Taru being the exception. Essentially three types of class are shown: the NRI high-class; with English-language skills, international jobs, and regressive ideals even though they say they are progressive. Then there is the Indian rich; who are in high-ranking jobs, know other rich people, demand a dowry, but who can still change their ideals. Taru being of this class is seen as an oddity for wanting love above all else and for working and being so down-to-earth. Then when Gullu performs as Sania Habibullah she takes on the cool persona of someone with money to burn, but who is not too low enough to eat at a local restaurant or demand what she is owed in respect. Class is shown as something with realistic monetary benefits if one is higher, yet it does not dictate the kind of person one is inside. The one we might at first see as progressive can just hide their regressive ideals behind a facade of different words, but the implication is the same. Then there are those who we do not see as someone who do not share our class, but share the same ideals.
Gullu wants to rise higher in social class, she wants to be an entrepreneur and start her own shoe shop. She has aspirations which the current money situation in her family does not make a real dream she can just make happen. So, she takes the money that would have been for her dowry, and builds a new identity with it as Sania, someone who lives in a nice hotel and dresses elegantly, but her heart never changes. Using the patriarchal aspect of dowry to her advantage she makes sure to give the appearance of a higher class woman to prospective grooms, meanwhile she and her father still eat at a reasonably priced restaurant. With her we see that class is a performance and she does it right, since she has interacted with high class customers in her job as a saleswoman, but her father struggles and it gets him a while to adjust to his new status as a “rich man”. The film does not make either of them villains for wanting money and fast in order to achieve their dreams.
In contrast, we have Taru who does not look or behave as someone rich. He is eccentric and a little odd, but one who still thinks about financial aspects when it comes to his life. He puts the reputation of his restaurant first for the white customers, but uses their naivety to make sure money still flows in by giving them good service and making the other Indian customers wait. We also see and hear about other prospective grooms who talk a big talk, but are not actually as authentic on paper as they say they are. They either do not have the qualifications needed or are not as rich as they say, and Gullu with her father checking out their houses at night is one way in which she can truly see the authentic wealth of those men presented. Taru is authentically rich, comes from a good family, and that is why he is chosen. What throws a wrench into the plan of Gullu is both his niceness, his authenticity, the sharing of the same truly progressive ideals, and that he is willing to scam his parents with the dowry in order to marry Gullu. He will provide the money that she will then hand to his parents, no money lost on her side. He is authentic, living his ideals, while others of his class and station would just rather enjoy the laurels of their wealth.
Since this film is also written and directed by a Muslim, none of the usual stereotypes one sees in Hindi films appear. There are terrorists, no bad guys, the societal problem of dowry is the main point, and the characters are all lovely, lively, and feel real. In a Modi-presidency world these kinds of Muslim social dramas are few and far between, since that is not the appetite or the image of Muslims majority of Indians want to see on screen, which makes this film all the more relevant. I love the film for that, because after seeing so many Indian films, “Muslims are the Bad Guys” is a tired trope and nothing more. Here, in this film, they are shown as normal people with normal problems, and that is a victory in a moral sense over many propaganda/jingoistic films that populate the box office now-a-days. It almost seems like this film is from a different time, someone which hopefully will someday return.
I love this movie so much. It has just the right amount of smart and heart combined to make a compelling love story while saying something important. The chemistry between the leads is compelling and what is said about class is put into an entertaining vehicle through a lens we do not usually see. It is otherwise a solid film, though the ending could have gone a bit smoother. However, it is still an entertaining film with delicious shots of food and a sweet love story. Today is Valentine’s Day, and what better treat there could be then a film about food and love which unites at the table. No matter what class, love conquers all, at least in film if not in real life.
The Little Corner 