‘Who can make flowers bloom in a garden that’s destroyed by spring?’ This reflective line written by Anand Bakshi for a song in Shakti Samanta’s Amar Prem (1972) truly makes the song and the film immortal. It has been 50 years since Anand Bakshi and R.D. Burman stoked a spark that continues to light a million hearts. Young women still wait for the elusive Shyam as a dreamy night uncoils. We still quote ‘Kuchh toh log kahenge’ every time we do something unconventional, and we hum ‘Ye kya hua’ when life springs its surprises on us.
Coming of age
Based on a Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay story ‘Heeng Kochuri’ and adapted from Arabinda Mukherjee’s Bengali film Nishi Padma (1970), the innocence that marks the Bangla version remains intact in the Hindi film, as Shakti Samanta asked Arabinda to write the screenplay for it.
We see a forbidden space from the eyes of a child. For me, the abiding image of the film is when Nandu, in search of his football, crouches on his knees and peeks from beneath a curtain into a room where a courtesan is honing her dance moves for the evening. Later, he asks Pushpa, the golded-hearted courtesan, what kind of people come to meet her: “Are they your brothers?”
The bond between Pushpa and Nandu finds expression in ‘Bada natkhat hai re Krishna kanhaiyya’, composed in raag Khamaj, a song that made a mark only after Pancham’s father S.D. Burman asked him to redo the tune to reflect the prostitute’s sorrow that she cannot be a mother. And Lata too sang it with intense emotionality.
Rajesh Khanna and Om Prakash in a scene from the Hindi film Amar Prem. | Photo Credit: THE HINDU ARCHIVES
This chaste approach to the prostitute’s character permeates the love story as well, the pyara rishta (beautiful relationship), as Anand describes the platonic bond between him and Pushpa. It reflects in Sharmila Tagore’s eyes, which unleash a seductive storm in ‘Chingari Koi Bhadke,’ and in Rajesh Khanna’s gaze that is always playful, sometimes rakish.
In ‘Chingari’, the lighting and the silhouette of Howrah Bridge in the background cast an enchanting spell; few people know that the song was shot inside Mumbai’s Natraj Studios like the rest of the film.
Anand is slotted into a side act, but Khanna knows how to leave a lasting impression. A man who is emotionally scarred but hates tears, he expresses the duality with charming precision in a role that was played by Uttam Kumar in the Bangla version.
Khanna’s gentle nod and magical blink were enough to arouse the masses. He used his style memorably in scenes like the one where he shows Madan Puri, the pimp who sold Pushpa into the flesh trade, out of her room. After Dilip Kumar’s turn in Devdas, this is another memorable role of a gentleman alcoholic.
Problematic as cinema
However, the cinematic layering around the Nandu-Pushpa story remains problematic. The way Pushpa is in the film as the epitome of womanhood irks, but that was how Hindi cinema dealt with the so-called ‘fallen women’ in that era.
We have seen variants of Pushpa in Pyaasa, Devdas, and, of course, Pakeezah, which were released in the same year. B.R. Ishara’s very different Chetna (1970) was just a minor blip in the mainstream universe that wanted its heroine to be the mythical Sita, sacrificing herself and her happiness to meet social norms.
In Amar Prem, there is a line in the song ‘Kuchh toh log kahenge’ that goes “Sita bhi yahan badnam hui (even Sita was disgraced by this world)”. Later in the story, an artist is shown collecting soil from outside the brothel to create an idol of Durga, a long-time tradition in Bengal. In another scene, Pushpa and women like her are compared to the Ganga, which cleanses all garbage that flows into it.
Rose-tinted glasses
Interestingly, powerful real-life characters like Gangubai, on whom Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s new film is based, were challenging the status quo even then, but cinema opted instead to romanticise sex work.
A scene from Kati Patang. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives
This attitude comes through in each of the films in Samanta’s trilogy of Aradhana, Kati Patang, and Amar Prem. Even though Pushpa walks out of an abusive marriage, when her offensive husband dies, she breaks her bangles to denote grief and widowhood. Though Anand is in a dysfunctional marriage, Pushpa doesn’t think of a lasting relationship with him because she is completely aware that she is a social outcast. Curiously, Anand accepts this logic and moves out. When he returns at the end, it is to hand her over to her foster son.
A Pushpa who tries to kill herself at first because she sees no other option is seen taking on a dishwasher’s job towards the end. The screenwriter saddles the protagonist with every possible tragedy so that he can squeeze dry the audience’s tear ducts. Anand might have hated tears but he doesn’t seem to have minded making the viewers cry!
Published - March 31, 2022 05:52 pm IST
