A wonderful Kahaani

In 2005, Pradeep Sarkar showcased Calcutta of the 1960s, a city at the peak of its glory, with its night clubs, Durga puja, Rabindra sangeet and bhadralok in Parineeta. In Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani, the city assumes new hues of fear, crime and frustration, while retaining the soul of the city of joy. Sujoy tells the story of Vidya Venkatesan Bagchi (Vidya), a pregnant woman, who arrives in Kolkata from London in search of her husband. After landing at the airport, she heads straight to the Kalighat police station to report the case of her missing husband. She meets Rana (Parambrata Chatterjee), a police officer, who develops a soft corner for her and becomes a partner in her journey. Her quest takes her through myriad situations as she unravels many mysteries, while retains hope in the claustrophobic and confounding lanes of Kolkata.

Sujoy Ghosh started his career on a positive note with Jhankar Beats in 2003 and then lost track with forgettable works like Home Delivery (2005) and Aladin (2009). But he takes everyone by surprise this time and delivers a finely structured work. Right from the first scene, he holds your attention as the story unfolds and the mystery thickens. Just watch out the refreshing moments between Rana and Vidya. Sujoy so wonderfully steers clear of predictable twists to this tale and prevents the story from slipping into the terrain of a melodrama. Advaita Kala has written a strong story, weaving in her own experiences of linguistic barriers and chaos during her stay in the city.

In the past, movies like Pyaasa, Amar Prem, Parineeta and The Namesake have brought out different hues of Kolkata. Kahaani presents the city in a never-before-seen avatar, putting on a rugged façade, sans all dreamy allusions. What lends character to the stunning visuals is the music of Vishal Shekhar. So many songs have celebrated Mumbai and Delhi in the past. Aami Shutti Bolchi, in the sonorous voice of Usha Uthup, is a fitting tribute to modern-day Kolkata. But the finest treat is Rabindranath Tagore’s Ekla chalo re (Walk Alone), sung by Amitabh Bachchan. While purists might frown upon the new rendition, the song is presented in a very contemporary format, which provides a point of relief in the intense plot.

Motherhood is the leitmotif that runs through Kahaani. The movie tells the story of a woman at the threshold of motherhood, fighting a battle to do justice, not just to herself, but also to her unborn child. The entire movie is set in the backdrop of the Durga Puja, with devotees carrying their mother to their homes for the puja and finally resigning her to the waves at the end of the fest.

But the wonderful story is carried ably on the shoulders of Vidya Balan, who again delivers a bravura performance after The Dirty Picture (2011). Hers is the strongest character of this movie. The frustrations, resilience, hope and anger of Vidya Bagchi is so well brought out that you empathise with her in each scene. Right from the scene in which she steps out of the airport to be confronted by the cacophony of the city to the remarkable climax, she looks every inch a woman who seems to be fighting a losing battle with the hope of miraculously winning it one day. In some ways, Kahaani seems to be in continuum with Parineeta, which marked her debut in Hindi cinema. The gentle romance of a married woman in Parineeta seems to be hit by reality in today’s Kahaani. She is, by all means, the hero of this movie. But what enunciates her performance is the laudable support given by Parambrata Chatterjee and Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Parambrita is extremely endearing as the police officer Rana, who silently loves Vidya, goes out of his way in helping her find her man and yet never makes his love very obvious to her. Even minor characters like the boy who brings hot water for Vidya in the guest house or the police inspector who mispronounces Vidya’s name as Bidda everytime he meets her, pull off an effortless performance. At the end, you seem to be so impressed with the work, that you seem to forget and forgive the flaws in this movie. This is a Kahaani you won’t forget.

(This review appeared in Madras Plus, the Friday supplement of The Economic Times)

The men who made Ooh la la...

It was over the last weekend that I happened to interview Shekhar Ravjiani, who along with Vishal Dadlani had come to Chennai to perform at IIT's fest Sarang. Though they shot to fame with Jhankar Beats in 2003, people first noticed them with the song Allah ke bande, sung by Kailash Kher. That was a surprise hit, coming from an unexpected corner. They never had to look back after that. In a career spanning over more than a decade, they have many chartbusters like Salaam Namaste, Dus, Bluffmaster, Tashan, Dostana, Om Shanti Om, Tees Maar Khan and Ra.One to their credit.

The Dirty Picture: Shekhar was evidently glad with the response that their latest offering, The Dirty Picture, had garnered. Besides the blockbuster status and critical acclaim that the film won, its music had the entire nation going Ooh la la. Prior to the film’s release, Bappi Lahiri went into rhapsodies over Vishal Shekhar. He even went on to say that the chartbuster Ooh la la was enough for him to be remembered for the next 25 years.

The duo was apparently over when the script was read out to them by Milan Luthria. “When we had to compose an item song, we could think of no other name than Bappi da for it. He was the unchallenged king of disco in the 1980s, the milieu in which the movie is placed,” he said. “We gave him a call and in within an hour he was there to get the song recorded. It is quite apparent that we recorded the song in typical Bappi style. We had around a hundred musicians playing for us, who had previously worked with Bappi da and Pancham da (R D Burman) in the 1980s and 1990s,” he said.

Reality TV: In the last few years, Vishal and Shekhar have been busy playing the role of judges in reality music shows on television. Though these shows have come in for a lot of criticism, Shekhar prefers to look at the positive side of it. “There is so much talent in India, not just in the metros, but also in the interiors. These TV shows do an amazing job scouting for talent in areas where these singers would have otherwise gone unnoticed. A lot of filmmakers and music directors watch these shows and many top singers today have come up due the support given by television,” he says, explaining as to why more music shows are required to cater to the wide variety of talent in the country. “I am not saying that these shows have to be reality shows. But we definitely need more music shows on television to promote the talent,” he says.

Next Big Release: This March, they will be having their big release with Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani, starring Vidya Balan. The music has started making news for the adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore’s Elka chalo re, sung by none other than Amitabh Bachchan. It is being touted as one of the best works of Vishal and Shekhar till date. “Our association with Sujoy began with Jhankar Beats and now we have come back with Kahaani. Working for this was a divine experience for us and I’m sure the listeners will feel the same. We are really proud of our work in this movie. It made us feel closer to God,” said Shekhar.

Inspiration in Music: Vishal himself brings in a lot of Western influence to the music. Shekhar learnt his lessons under the tutelage of maestros like Ustad Miad Ahmed Khan sahib and Ustad Sultan Khan. But in the industry, the one person who has had maximum impact on the duo has been R D Burman, to whom the movie Jhankar Beats was dedicated. “He has inspired all the music directors of our generation. As a matter of fact, all our compositions are tributes to Pancham da,” said Shekhar. In 2004, they had won the Filmfare R D Burman Award for New Music Talent for their compositions in Jhankar Beats, a film that was dedicated to R D Burman. The journey, which began with the fifth note, continues rocking charts and striking new notes.

On why I like Vidya Balan

There is one name today that is everywhere from movie screens to feminist discussions, from news rooms to newspaper columns and movie posters to magazine covers. Hindi cinema has suddenly discovered a new icon in Vidya Balan. Post The Dirty Picture, Vidya has suddenly become a new sex symbol and has leapfrogged to the number one slot of Hindi movie power list, toppling Kareena Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra.

But there is a reason I like Vidya Balan. It is not just for the way she sashayed away with oomph in Oo la la... My liking for this diva also has something to do with the Indian liking for the underdog. Vidya always had the odds set against her. She comes from a middle-class Tamil Brahmin family, not an ideal place to nurture dreams for the silver screen, where parents would rather have their children pass out of IITs and IIMs and land in a cushy IT job. As a child she would keep acting out scenes of Shabana Azmi’s movies in front of the mirror, jerking out tears while doing the emotionally intense scenes. Little did she know then that actresses could use glycerine to do the same. She was born with emotions on her finger tips, ever ready to dish out one when required.

She started off with Ekta Kapoor’s popular sitcom Hum Paanch, playing the bespectacled nerd Radhika. That itself was a wrong step for a movie career. Except for Shahrukh Khan, no television actor could really wear off the TV label and make it big in cinema. She did many ad films where she sold umpteen bars of soap and washing powder, exclaiming “Woh bhi dekho budget mein!” She signed as many as 12 films in the south and was removed unceremoniously out of all of them. By the time her first film got released in 2005, she was 27, far from an ideal age to begin a Hindi movie career as a heroine.

As she applied that dot of sindoor and turned towards the audience with sharp eyes in the summer of 2005, you knew that Parineeta had arrived. No actress would have chosen such a role to start with if she intended a mainstream career. She was choosing the alternative path from the initial point. The demure, sari-clad, classical look was enough to typecast her as a girl for Indian (read -behenji) roles. But Vidya knew what she wanted. She was not in the rat race from day one. Her next one Lage Raho Munna Bhai had little importance for her role, though she made that “Good Moooorning Mumbai” oh, so refreshing.
Her downward slide began after that. She tried to fit herself into the conventional mould, when she was not meant for that. Films flopped and she chose all wrong roles for herself. When she was torn down by critics for her looks in Hey Baby, she retorted saying she wore what the designers gave her. This was enough for Manish Malhotra to get back at her with the caustic remark “How can she speak about fashion sense with her fantastic figure? Who is she?”

Most of her career moves have been suicidal at first thought. It takes guts to play Amitabh’s mother at the prime of your career. After winning a Filmfare award for Paa, we saw her next playing Krishna, a woman who used her sexuality to get what she wanted from the two men who were set to woo her in Ishqiya. This was a role meant for what we call vamps in Bombay cinema. A heroine never plays with love for some mean end. But Vidya played the heroine and a bitchy one at that and won her next award. She had now started getting the limelight of the movie on herself, rather than on the male leads of the film. In her next venture, she did away with the male lead completely when she played Sabrina Lal and No one killed Jessica added another feather to her cap.

The Dirty Picture was however a make or break film. Had it not worked, she would have become the butt of all jokes in an industry which does not like the rise of a female superstar. How many of them have we had? In the 1950s we had Nargis, who needed no male support to run a world classic like Mother India. There was Meena Kumari in the 1960s. The male leads at the top dithered to star opposite her for her screen presence made it impossible for them to hold on. In most of the movies in the later half of her career, she seldom had the top actors opposite her for she could run the movie on her merit alone, right up to her swansong Pakeezah.

Then we had Hema Malini, our own dream girl, who had an amazing screen presence. She was not great at histrionics like Meena Kumari, yet she was the top favourite for a long time. 1970s was the time when the movies became more male-driven and by 1980s, the heroine was a decorative cherry on a cake, not essential but good to have. It was at this juncture that Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil came in like winds of change and wrote their own story in parallel cinema. Rekha and Sridevi strode a different path in the 1980s, making an alternative to the male story with successes like Umrao Jaan, Ijazat, Lamhe and Chandni. Counting Ek, do, teen, Madhuri, launched a thousand hearts beating with her smile. Madhuri was the last female superstar, the female Amitabh Bachchan, as the media called her.

Too much of glory to the heroine threatens the standing of the male actors, which is seldom allowed to happen. Vidya has entered in that scenario. She has the guts to declare that she will remain Vidya Balan and if the Khans want, they can add Balan to their surname. This declaration comes not from arrogance, but with an attitude hardened with multiple failures. She can wear the fat around her waistline and say “Size zero is so passé”. She can make the sari look sexy all over again. She is one who can wear a red sari and look like a middle-class Bengali housewife and wear the same red sari to shake your seats as the sex-bomb Silk. If our convention-ridden eyes did not recognize her star value before, it’s a shame on our sensibilities which looks only for glitter and not gold. In the loud era we live in, we forgot the nuances she tried to convey and she had to become the loud and garish Silk to make herself heard.
In 3 Idiots, Aamir says “Don’t run after success. Make your work so good that success runs after you”. Perhaps Vidya learnt that lesson too well. This post is for her, for her unconventional wisdom and for proving that odds set against you can be fought. I'm glad the idea of the heroine is still alive.

Dev Anand - the ultimate debonair

The news of Dev Anand’s death caught me unawares. Sure, he was 88 (or as someone said he turned 22 for the fourth time) but I could never imagine Dev Anand to be dead. He was "full of life" as everyone said during the last few days while paying him tributes. Somehow, I feel even his orbituary cannot be mournful; it has to be celebratory in its tone.

I had previously done a write up for The New Indian Express on Navketan Films when it completed 60 years (Forver Young Navketan). But then, there are so many ways of seeing a persona like Dev sahab. To be frank, Dev Anand is not my topmost favourite actor –a slot I’ve always reserved for Dilip Kumar (followed by Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan).

My first glimpses of Dev Anand were rather forgettable for I saw some of his tawdry pictures from the late 1980s. But sense dawned in and once I starting watching the older works of this actor, I was bowled over. The long lasting impression I carried of him was the way he serenaded his heroines or the way they wooed him over the voices of Lata, Asha, Rafi and later Kishore. He had more than one girl vying for his love in his movies, even if it was a cabaret dancer for a short while. She got her two-minute glory by casting those playful glances at him, which he returned with greater fervour, always in the most stylish of attires. He was the first debonair I could think of, modelled along the lines of a Hollywood hero.

His autobiography Romancing with Life is perhaps one of the most candid memoirs I have ever read. The book is as stylish as he is and reveals quite a lot about his relationships with his co-stars and colleagues. Suraiyya, Kalpana Karthik, Madhubala, Waheeda Rehman, Vyjayantimala , Nutan , Sadhna, Nanda, Simi Garewal, Tanuja, Hema Malini, Zeenat Aman and Mumtaz –all were his leading ladies . His romance with Suraiyya is what legendary ballads are made of. He had an eye for talent and it’s no surprise that he launched and guided a number of them in his career.
Baazi, CID, Tere Ghar Ke Saamne – I had seen them all and decided that he was meant for light roles. But then one day I saw his classic Guide and I instantly fell in love with his work and his character. Never before had I seen a character so human – full of the good, the bad, the humorous, the tragic and an eagerness to live life to its fullest. He was like me, a human being, and not a hero. For once I saw a film character which was not filmi in that sense. And to think that he did it when he was at his peak as an urban style icon! Playing a wandering swami was not in sync with his existing image and yet he could pull it off without much ado. This one movie was enough to place him on the high pedestal of cinema. But he did not long to stay there and rest on his laurels. There was Jewel Thief which I undoubtedly feel is one of the greatest suspense dramas ever on the cine screen. He was our answer to James Bond for once. he followed it up with Tere Mere Sapne and Johny Mera Naam.

Perhaps his mistake was his decision to direct his films by himself. Ever since he parted ways with Vijay Anand, the quality of his movies took a beating (Hare Rama Hare Krishna being the sole exception). His another mistake was his insistence to play the lead in every film. He refused to appear in the title track of Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om for a bit of dance, supposedly because he never wanted to appear in any film where he was not the lead!

Dev Anand had amazing songs picturized on him. He himself had a fine taste for music. As I got into the bus after doing a bit of shopping on the day he passed away, the radio played his song Abhi na Jao Chod kar. I closed my eyes and lost myself. I woke up and found that the bus had come to a halt and so had the song. Dev saab was no more or perhaps I was wrong. His romance with death had begun.

Get dirty with this picture

Those among us who have seen the cinema of 1980s would be familiar with the sensation called Silk Smitha. She broke conventions and arrived like a storm in the Tamil film industry and spawned many imitations like Rayon Revathi and Polyester Padmini (yes such names did exist). Though Milan Luthria's The Dirty Picture is not all about Silk Smitha, there is no doubt that she is the force majorly driving this drama, inspired also by many other item girls who scorched the screen with their oomphs and sighs.

The Dirty picture is a tale of one such village belle Reshma (the link to Silk Smitha’s Reshma ki Jawani cannot be missed in the choice of name) who arrives in Madras in the early 1980s with dreams of being an actress. She loses her innocence in this big bad city and soon the simple and dusky Reshma transforms in to the next big bomb of the industry Silk, who sweeps every superstar off his feet. As she rises to the top, she leaves many hearts wounded, is unabashedly flirtatious and unstoppable like a forest fire. Feminists and critics pan her but she remains unfazed. Silk brings her own rule book to the male-dominated film industry. The men in her life - Superstar Suryakant (Nasseruddin Shah), his brother and writer Ramakant (Tushar Kapoor) and director Abraham (Emraan Hashmi) – have a love-hate relationship with her. Suryakant uses her to make his movies run and drops her when he is done with her. Silk uses Ramakant as a tool to avenge her insult with Suryakant. Abraham, who initially hates her, falls for her finally. But her arrogance leads to her downfall and the hypocritical industry is too eager to throw her out after having used her. Silk finds new competitors who are too eager to shed clothes and worse, the new heroines can show skin, do dirty numebers and still play the lead, without being called item girls. She slowly slides into anonymity, draped in her own silk and awaits her end.

The Dirty Picture is a wonderful attempt at cutting across the chauvinistic hypocrisy of the film-industry in India and the society in general. Milan Luthria pulls it off with aplomb and very carefully saves the movie from treading the path of titillation, which it could have easily fallen into. Never does the movie seem vulgar, something which even Raj Kapoor could not achieve in Ram Teri Ganga Maili or Satyam Shivam Sundaram, where the script had to take a bow before skin. The movie would have been toothless without the incisive one-liners of Rajat Arora, whose dialogues hit hard and are cheesy, humorous and thought-provoking all at once.
Nasser, Emraan and Tushar carry their roles as demanded by the script. Nasser’s Suryakant might remind you of some superstars of the Tamil industry who remained the lead heroes even past sixty and were known for their exploits among women.

Can one miss the music of Vishal Shekhar who lend superb support. Just their one Ooh la la is enough to pump energy into this movie. This duet by Bappi Lahiri and Shreya Ghosal keeps re-appearing throughout the film.

But this is a One Woman Show of Vidya Balan. She shreds the screen to pieces with a performance of a lifetime. This will not only be an important point of reference for her in her career but will remain a benchmark for a Hindi film actress. She drops all inhibition and gets into the skin of the character with utmost ease. See her transforming from the simple Reshma to Silk, who carelessly oozes out oomph at every turn, and you know you are beholding a wonder. Vidya has pushed her male and female contemporaries behind in running this show by herself and is the sole female superstar of the industry today.

The movie has its flaws. The love story between Silk and Abraham seems to be done on fast track. Compare this with the beautiful chemistry created in Khoya Khoya Chand (2007) between a director and an actress. The downfall of the star harks back to some images of Fashion (2008). The love-story, though brought in with a purpose seems to lack direction. Her dance-duel with her competitor Shakila was uncalled for and the song is tawdry. The second half stops this film from being great.

In an year of no-brainer blockbusters and empty vessels making deafening noises, The Dirty Picture is more than a welcome relief. The Dirty Picture will definitely be more than a film and is definitely a new age definition of sexuality by Vidya, who carries forward the baton from Ishqiya. This is one picture where you wouldn’t mind your hands getting dirty. As Silk says “Public watches movies only for three things – entertaintment, entertainment and entertainment”. The Dirty Picture is entertainment and much more.

Eternally Dadamoni

In 1935, Himanshu Rai was shooting Jeevan Naiyya. In a quick turn of events, his wife and the movie’s heroine Devika Rani eloped with the lead actor. Devika was traced and the actor fired. Search for a new actor began, the trail of which stopped at the lab assistant of the studio Kumudlal Ganguly. Kumudlal’s father was dead opposed to his son becoming an actor but relented after Himanshu Rai convinced him that Bombay Talkies housed only artists from good families. The lab assistant donned the grease paint and soon after in 1936 came Achut Kanya from the same team. Indian cinema had now discovered a new sensation called Ashok Kumar.

With Devika Rani in Achut Kanya, a landmark of Hindi cinema

Those were the days when prostitutes became actresses and pimps starred alongside. In such a time, the likes of Ashok Kumar, Durga Khote and Shobana Samarth, coming from families of lawyers and doctors, brought a whirlwind change to Hindi filmdom. Ashok Kumar continued to star alongside Devika Rani but won recognition in a series of successes with Leela Chitnis in the late 1930s like Kangan, Jhoola and Bandhan. In 1943, Ashok became a star nonpareil with a break through the roof success of Gyan Mukherjee’s Kismet, which ran for three long years in Roxy Cinemas in Calcutta. Ashok Kumar played the pipe smoking anti-hero with panache and the image got fixed for decades to come.
But after the death of Himanshu Rai, things were not the same in Bombay Talkies. Devika Rani ‘s iron-fisted ways made the artists part ways with the studio and Ashok Kumar too moved on with Shashadhar Mukherjee, who founded Filmistan. He could never forget that Bombay Talkies made him the star he was and he bought over Bombay Talkies. To pay off its debts, he produced a few movies, most notably the blockbuster Mahal (1949), which catapulted Madhubala to instant stardom.

Even in the air of uninhibited romantic affairs that filled the film industry, Ashok Kumar was quite averse to female fan following initially but developed feet of clay for the charm of Nalini Jaywant and strayed for once outside marriage. The affair ended rather soon.
Through the fifties, he held his might against the rising tirade of the trinity Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand. Indeed, age seemed to have no impact on him and he got a variety of roles like no one. He took the cinemagoers on a laughter ride in Chalti ka naam Gaadi (1958), danced along with Madhubala in the night clubs of Howrah Bridge (1958), endured an unfaithful wife in Gumraah (1963), matched the pathos of Nutan in Bandini (1964), learnt spiritual lessons from a courtesan in Chitralekha (1964), portrayed a devious thug with élan in Jewel Thief (1967) and won a National Award for playing a man of principles in Aashirwaad (1968). By the end of sixties, Ashok Kumar had gracefully transformed into a character artist, without a significant gap in his career.
The saga went unabated in the 1970s where he played an affectionate, light-hearted uncle and father to the hilt, the pinnacle of which was Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Khoobsurat (1980). No one had ever exuded such vulnerability and pleasantry playing a hen-pecked husband and being quite glad about it. By now, he had romanced on-screen ladies from Devika Rani to Rati Agnihotri!

The patriarch of Khoobsurat, with Rekha and Dina Pathak

In 1983, when the first weekly soap Hum Log was launched on Doordarshan, this mantle of a patriarch was moved to television and he played the sutradhaar, encapsulating the essence of every episode. In fact, Ashok Kumar so effortlessly made a move to television and won over the younger audience, when most cine stars of the day failed to understand its potential. He played the eponymous Bahadur Shah Zafar in B.R.Chopra’s television offering. The melancholy of the character seemed to emanate from his self, echoing the dying voice of an artist who once ruled the cine screen. Meanwhile, he also successfully dabbled with painting and homeopathy!
He had successfully sung his songs, made blockbusters as a producer, won accolades as an actor, starred in numerous plays and endeared himself to the masses as a television anchor. There was an effortlessness which emanated from his performance, for he easily weaved an unmatched spontaneity into the most rehearsed performances. The Dada Saheb Phalke award in 1988 was perhaps only a token of appreciation for Dadamoni, as he was lovingly referred to. He passed away in 2001, having seen the cine world from the birth of talkies to the new millennium. This year marks his centenary. There is no one single image of Dadamoni in our collective memory. He meant different things to different people born between the 1930s and 1980s, for his repertoire still seems unfailingly kaleidoscopic and human.

(This article was published in The New Sunday Express)

Laughing all the way to death in Anand

“Babumoshai! Zindagi badi honi chahiye, lambi nahi” he snapped playfully in his intro scene and set the tempo for the story. People laughed through the movie and didn’t even realise when their eyes got moistened uncontrollably as they left the theatres. In the late 1960s, Raj Kapoor fell seriously ill and his friend Hrishikesh Mukherjee was overcome by an undue fear that he would die. This sense of loss of a friend and the thought of how he would have welcomed death led to the birth of a character whom we today know as Anand.

It is a challenge to write about Anand, not because it is a complicated movie. In fact, it is very simple in its telling and the climax is obvious. But Anand is not a movie. It is a celebration of life. Rajesh Khanna played Anand Sehgal, a cancer patient who comes to live in Bombay, not to get treated, but simply to be with a few people, spread joy and in the process, forget his own sorrows. He comes under the treatment of Dr. Bhaskar Banerjee (Amitabh Bachchan), a complete no-nonsense cynic, fatigued by the way things work in the world. Anand’s entry makes him see the positive side of life. Anand fixes Sanjay’s alliance with his silent love Renu and sings into the hearts of all those who come in touch with him with poetry, music and roars of laughter, so much so that even during his death all that is left behind is a trail of laughter. He lives even in his death.

Initially, Hrishikesh Mukherjee wanted Raj Kapoor himself to play Anand. Later Shashi Kapoor and Kishore Kumar were also considered for this role, which finally went to Rajesh Khanna. Anand was released in 1970, an year after Rajesh Khanna was declared a superstar with his Aradhana breaking through the roof of box office. Rajesh Khanna easily got into the soul of Anand and brought it alive for us to see, have fun with, fret over and mourn. There is not a momentary lapse in his portrayal of the eternal goner. This was his show all through the way. Incidentally, this was Rajesh Khanna's second 'cancer patient' role in the year. The audience had already shed loads of tears watching him die in Asit Sen's Safar (co-starring Sharmila Tagore) the same year. Amitabh had a big break with Anand, whose roles in Saat Hindustani and Reshma aur Shera went without much success. The initial embers of the Angry young man were very much visible in Anand. Lalita Pawar as Ms. Desa made yet another memorable mark in her career playing the hard-faced but soft-hearted matron. The similarities in her role in Mukherjee’s Anari (1959) could not be missed out, however.

Anand is a Salil Chowdhary gem. Every song is like a beautiful painting, the image of which refuses to fade away. Whether it is the dulcet Main ne tere liye, the melancholic Kahin door jab din dhal jaye, the philosophical Zindagi kaisi hai paheli or the romantic Jiya Lage na Salil da struck the right chord each time. The screenplay was finely paced and the situations were handled with care, without letting the drama go overboard. Which other movie had a hero joking about his own fatal disease with such genuine ease? "Lymphosarcoma of the intestine! Wah! Beemari ho toh aisi ho... nahi toh na ho! "It helped that the dialogues were written by Gulzar, whose lines were simple and yet powerful. He walked away with the Filmfare award that year for Best Dialogue. Some of them stand out for their sheer magic.

Maut ek pal hai Babumoshai! Us ek pal ke darr se main lakhon pal jeena kyun chod doon? (Death is just a moment. Why should I stop living the lakhs of moments in between fearing that one moment)

Babumoshai! Zindagi aur maut toh uparwale ke haath mein hai jahaanpanah. Hum sab rang manch ki kathpuliyan hai jinki dor uparwale ke haath mein bandhi hai. (Death lies in the hands of God, for we are all puppets in this stage called world, where out threads are strung to his hands)

In an age when rock n roll and hippie culture was setting in, Anand made kurta-pyjamas cool and trendy. Rajesh Khanna single-handedly made this attire sexy and its sales grew by leaps and bounds overnight. In another three years, Hrishi da came up with the Rajesh-Amitabh duo in Namak Haram. But by then, Lady fortune had changed her preference. Amitabh had become the reigning star and Rajesh Khanna had become a fading star. Anand formed the pinnacle of Rajesh Khanna’s career. In 1971, he well-deservedly won the Filmfare trophy for Best Actor and Amitabh won the award for the Best Supporting actor. Hrishikesh Mukherjee won the award for Best Editing and Best Story. In a matter of irony, Anand won the award for the Best Film and Raj Kapoor, to whom this film was dedicated to, won the Best Director award for Mera Naam Joker.

Anand was a tribute to the city of Bombay, to its open-heartedness and its cosmopolitan culture, which gives space to everyone. Anand is a tale of human relationships; a story of putting up a strong and joyous face in the wrost of adversities. Anand leaves a trail of bliss in the lives of all he touches and a lump in throat of all those who see him die. It was only a genius like Hrishikesh Mukherjee who could have pulled off this work with such elacrity for he knew to tell simple matters in a simple way, which is not so simple! 33 years later, this character inspired Karan Johar’s Kal Ho Na Ho. As Amitabh said towards the end “Anand mara nahi, Anand marte nahi”