Apr 24, 2007 10:15 AM
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(Updated Apr 24, 2007 10:28 AM)
Until I reached my teens, I had stayed in many small towns of India. Cantonments were our world and at almost all stations an open theatre was our only place for entertainment. When we were posted at Jhansi, we looked forward to Thursday and Fridays when a Shaktiman(it’s a truck also known as “3 ton” in the hierarchy of defense vehicles) would come in with a projector installed. At dusk, everybody would take their seats in the cemented semi-circular stairs in front of a white big wall and wait passionately for the movie to start. Thursdays were the days for Hindi movies and Friday for English. Very rarely we were allowed on Friday’s, only when our parents were sure of the movie contents.
Sometime in 1984-85 on one such Thursday we went to saw Chashme Buddoor for which my parents were excited and elder sisters were keen. Me, my brother and our friends were a little skeptic owing to the star cast of the movie, Farooq, Deepti Naval… who are they. . Of course, at the age of 8 or 9 we were fond of dhishum dhishum from likes of Amitabh and Dharmendra. Since new releases were never part of this offering we used to feast on yester year hits like Samrat(any takers?), Amar Akbar Anthony, Ram Balram and bore like Aandhi(opinion than). Needless to say, except few light scenes this movie did not impress us much. What with some idiots going after girls and a not so cool looking hero doing insane things. Songs. what the crap. how can somebody even write a song like “kali ghodi dwar khadi”. Our parents wasted our evening and as compensation we literally were able to blackmail them to allow us a show of “Return of the dragon” playing in one of the 5 theatres in “city” which was notoriously famous for plying all A rated films.
Years after, during assembly elections when our dear DD used to show us movies in between results or results in between movies. or what ever. I chanced upon chashme Buddoor. I couldn’t believe I did not like this move earlier. The movie went on for about 6 hours, between 10 PM and 4 AM and I fought with both sleep as well as election result bulletins to watch it. That is no mean achievement considering I was in 10th standard and was told by my parents that no way I am going to miss my school next day. Since than I have watched it for good over 10 times, latest being this Saturday when it was aired on Star Gold.
So what is it that makes this movie such a wonderful watch? Amongst various reasons, the one that emerged when I watched it on this Saturday was that it made me nostalgic and gave an instant connect to my childhood. But that can be a very personal reason in favor of movie in a public forum like this, so let me put forward few more thoughts on this one.
The first and foremost is the fact that this movie belongs to a rare genre of “simple story telling”, it is an art which any ways was rare and is fast dying. You have certain “Main meri biwi or woh”(2004 I believe) or Khosla ka Ghosla(2006) but these are too less and too distant to count on. You feel connected with the cast from the word go, no fancy setup no designer dresses and no dreamy jobs/business. They seem someone amongst us and going thru what we experience.
I am sure you must have watched this movie, still, let me touch the plot for records. The story is about 3 bachelors Omi(Rakesh Bedi of yeh jo hai zindagi frame), Jomo(Ravi Vaswani, another great of him is jane bhi do yarron) and Siddarth(Farooq Shiekh, no introduction needed) who are sharing a room in Delhi, studying, let me correct that Siddarth is studying and rest two actually are womanizing slackers. Neha(Deepti Naval) come to their room to promote a washing powder called Chamko(hence Siddarth calling her Ms Chamko till he gets to know her name). Eventually they have an affair which saw a twist when rest two try to separate Siddarth from Neha to hide their humiliation done by Neha when they tried to woo her. As in other movies, finally they get together after light dhishum dhishum and some tear shedding but treated absolutely differently.
How deceptive a perception can be. If somebody were to go through the description of the movie as boring as done by me in the para above the person will so underrate the movie. This movie has amazing combination of wit and simplicity. Unbelievably smooth flow of events and unremarkable identification of characters. Even a Paan wala(Saeed Jaffery) has an integral and indispensable part to play, having nothing to do with the main story line but still never looked uncalled for. Rather, in the end you feel if we could have some more of him and Jomo/Omi poetically/lovingly fighting over the dues.
The movie takes you along with it’s subtle pace where you feel the innocence of Farooq sheikh when he bought an expensive gift for Deepti and takes it back immediately, almost scared on the thought of loosing her after she refused to accept it. Generosity of adorable Saeed Jaffrey when Farooq offered the same gift to settle his dues for cigarettes he has been buying. To which Saeed responds “to aub main begum se kahoonga ki biryani to tab pakegi jub paisa aayega philhal to tum ye gehne se kaam chalo”. Or the stupidity of Omi and Jomo when they are unsuccessfully trying to woo girls(they call it shikaar) any which way possible. So what if it is a domestic help keeping custody of a kid and will elope with her boyfriend while these two are trying to impress her by befriending the child.
I do want to quote another scene from this movie which has a lasting impression on me. Farooqh on his first visit to Neha’s house discuss a book with her dad(who happens to be his boss too) and he says “Oh to tum padhe bhi ho, mujhe to lagtha tha is generation ko pedne main koi interest hi nahin”. . Now the fact that this movie got released in 1981 makes it sure that all who were dudes in 1981 must be dad of 17, 18 years olds by now, or even a grand pa. But look at it, we have them complaining about this generation gap. So for me Generation gap is both infinite and unreal. If you put it into perspective, it is non existent. If you take it on face vale, it has always been there.
The movie does not have many songs, but whatever are there are composed beautifully and screened even more innovatively. The movie even has a lovey dovey romance number shot in a park but you got to see it to believe it how real Sai Paranjpe(who is the director of this mivie) has made it look. Sai Paranjpe, who is also a Padma Bhushan, has directed some very good movies. Other than Chashme Buddoor you may want to watch Saaz and Sparsh to realize how deep her understanding of human emotions is.
If you ask me one reason to watch this movie, I will say the answer is in the theme song of this movie. Which goes something like
Pyar Lagavat, pranay, mohabbat, prem preet ya love lamu
Naam naye per katha wahi hai, her kisse ki baat nayee hai…
Love, affection, intimacy, mohabbat(love in Urdu), prem(love in devnagari), preet(another synonym for love) or love lamu(? This got me stumped)
Names are different but essence is same, each story has a different theme
(okay a very bad attempt, comments section is for all the maro maro)
