A Valentine love story with Bollywood classics

Aapke paon dekhe, bahut haseen hai,

Inhe zameen par mat utariyega, mailey ho jayenge…

These lines from Kamal Amrohi’s Pakeezah breathe romance even after half a century. Ironically, unknown to the humsafar — forest ranger Salim Ahmed Khan — the feet he is eulogizing are those of a courtesan, Sahibjaan, who is fast asleep and completely unaware of his adoring gaze or even his presence. But such is the power of the lines he leaves behind, that they change the course of both their lives forever, anointing the dancing girl with the purity of love and taking her away from the kotha (brothel) in a long-dreamt doli (wedding palanquin) towards a more respectable tomorrow.

Interestingly, while the above-mentioned scene was filmed on the two main leads, Meena Kumari and Raaj Kumar, the one preceding it, of Salim running to catch the train on a rain-drenched night as it leaves the platform, was not the actor. Raaj Kumar had arrived late that day, but since the station master was badgering Kamal Amrohi to pack up and leave quickly, the producer-director canned the shot on a junior artist dressed in the actor’s clothes and hat. While watching the film, Jaani admitted he couldn’t remember when this shot was taken. Holding his secret close, Amrohi smiled, “It happened, you have forgotten.” Five decades later, the sequence remains unforgettable!

No hurdles on this Sadak

 

Almost two decades after Pakeezah in 1972, a cab driver, Ravi, is determined to rescue an innocent, Pooja, from prostitution and in the process incurs the wrath of the brothel owner, Sadashiv Amrapurkar’s memorable transgender Maharani, in Mahesh Bhatt’s 1991 romantic thriller, Sadak. The film brings to mind a beautiful song, ‘Tumhe apna banana ki kasam thayi hai thayi hai’ filmed on Pooja Bhatt and Sanjay Dutt. It was shot in Mysuru’s Vrindavan Gardens, against the backdrop of its famous multi-coloured fountains, over the course of one night with the director listening to news of the on-going Gulf War between shots. Even though they rushed through the shoot, as dawn broke, Bhatt realized that one shot would be left as the location selected was a little far from where they were. He resigned himself to filming it elsewhere as he did not have permission to return to the Garden the following night. But he had reckoned without his hero who was determined that love would not be left incomplete. Dutt  hoisted up a heavy spotlight, and urged the spotboys to follow him with the other heavy equipment, ensuring a smooth passage for Bhatt’s Sadak.            

Both Pakeezah and Sadak worked on the age-old conviction that someone, somewhere, is waiting for you. It could be an old friend, a colleague at the workplace or a stranger who destiny puts in your path. When the stars align, as they do for Salim and Sahibjaan, and Pooja and Ravi, it is a perfect match. And when minds and hearts are in perfect sync, silence speaks louder than words.

When silence spoke louder than words

This was aptly demonstrated by Ramanand Sagar in his 1965 film Arzoo which was loosely inspired by Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr’s An Affair to Remember. Rajendra Kumar’s Gopal, a skiing champ, meets Sadhana’s Usha in Kashmir and love blossoms. In a scene, the two are walking together along Srinagar’s Dal Lake, when, without speaking out loud, Gopal wonders, ‘Yeh rasta kahan jaati hai?’ (Where does this road go?). Reading his thoughts, Usha answers silently, ‘Yeh to mujhe bhi nahin pata’ (Even I don’t know the answer to this). The scene was the pointer to the fact that both were thinking of the future, but still uncertain if it would be together.

While it was being filmed, crowds of excited locals and star-gazing tourists turned up to see the superstars in action. They were astounded to find that hundreds of unseasonal poppies had, almost overnight, bloomed on the banks of the Dal. Even Gulam Mohammed Sadiq, the first chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, was impressed when he dropped by for a visit, expressing his surprise over this karishma (miracle). Like Kamal Amrohi, Ramanand Sagar only smiled in response to his query of how it had happened. “Papaji did not want to spoil everyone’s delight by revealing that they were artificial flowers which he had specially flown down from Hong Kong,” Sagar’s son, Prem Sagar, recounted with a laugh years later. 

 

How Arzoo prevented a suicide

Usha and Gopal’s wordless exchange takes on a deeper meaning when he leaves for Delhi, intending to tell his family about the beautiful girl in Srinagar, promising to be back soon and take her home as his wife. But en route, he meets with an accident and loses a leg. Remembering Usha’s distaste for the disabled, recalling how she had once stated that it would be better for them to die than live a lesser life, he decides to walk out of her life. And since he was using a fake name, Sanju, she is unable to track him down. But all is not lost because Cupid is determined to bring the much-in-love couple together, even though Usha is now betrothed to another.

Prem Sagar shared that after the film’s release, his father visited theatres across India to gauge the audience’s reaction to this very different love story. In the remote interiors of Bengal, he met a man, who confided that after an accident, he was an amputee too and had been contemplating suicide when he happened to see Arzoo. The film made him realise he may have lost a leg, but he hadn’t lost his love. He went back to his sweetheart and married her.

Wooing a Balika Badhu

Talking of marriage, in 1976, Shakti Samanta convinced director Tarun Majumdar to remake his Bengali film, which had made Moushumi Chatterjee a Balika Badhu for life, in Hindi for his banner. This romance germinates after Rajni — played by a doe-eyed Rajni Sharma — is married off to Sachin Pilgaonkar’s Amal who’s still in school. Initially, she is unhappy in her marital home, but slowly she starts developing feelings for her husband. Just before a trip back to her maika, she accompanies him to the river bank where Amal opens his heart to her, crooning ‘Bade achche lagte hain, yeh dharti, yeh nadiya, yeh raina…’ and in answer to her ‘Aur?’ adds ‘Aur tum’.

Anand Bakshi’s words, sweetly innocent, along with Amit Kumar’s fresh young voice, captures the essence of first love. Samanta, who had written the Hindi dialogue for Kishore Kumar’s first film with Phani Majumdar, had heard Amit and knew the boy had inherited his father’s talent. It was his idea to get him to sing this R D Burman composition. It was Amit Kumar’s breakthrough song and 50 years later, ‘Bade achche lagte hain’ is still liked by all.

 A night to remember

   

Of course, the ultimate Valentine Day is Mughal-e-Azam’s ‘Pyar kiya to darna kya’, filmed on Madhubala’s Anarkali, who stands up to Badshah-e-Hind Akbar — an imperious Prithviraj Kapoor — to proclaim her love for Dilip Kumar’s Shehzada Salim in the Sheesh Mahal which took two years to build. The song emerged after a frustrating day when two sets of lyrics, penned by Shakeel Badayuni and set to tune by Naushad, were rejected. “It was almost midnight when I recalled a folk song from East Uttar Pradesh, ‘Prem kiya kya chori kari hai’. By the time Shakeelsaab was through, it was six in the morning,” the composer recounted.

More than 60 years later, the song remains a clarion call of rebellious lovers, the couplet at the beginning, ‘Insaan kissi se duniya mein ek baar mohabbat karta hai, iss dard ko lekar jeeta hai, iss dard to lekar marta hai’ encapsulating the rollercoaster of emotions that takes love beyond moonshine and roses.

(The author is a senior film journalist based in Mumbai)