“ Tum kya samajhta hai, municipality mere baap ka hai ?”
“ Nahin, Sir, aap ka hai. ”
This lovely dialogue, one among many such gems from Kundan Shah’s Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro ( JBDY ) , hasn’t gone stale since 1983 when his livewire of a film first burst upon the scene. Nothing about JBDY has; it remains as fresh and relevant today, and while this has a lot to do with the unchanged nature of compromised Indian politics, it’s as much about the truly timeless quality of the movie itself.
Reams have been written about JBDY , especially after Shah passed away last week, so I won’t get into its obvious glories: the brilliant acting, the sharp dialogue, the amazing editing, the roller-coaster half-hour climax and the sheer directorial verve with which something so implausible was pulled off. I’ll focus instead on the less conspicuous touches; for instance, the way the director blends not just realism but also real life into his otherwise riotous treatment in order to reiterate the larger point about corruption silencing the common man.
Madness and sobriety
JBDY ’s very first scene is full-on burlesque—as photographers Vinod and Sudhir wait for guests at the inauguration of their studio, a dog pees on the road, Sudhir whacks Vinod while stretching his arms, gets slapped himself by a girl, sabotage happens, and the scene ends in a Chaplinesque free-for-all just before the titles and Vanraj Bhatia’s delightful theme music come on. But alongside, the director seeds in the serious underlying theme—the naïve hopes of two youngsters who earnestly sing ‘ Hum honge kaamyaab’ and believe that hard work and honesty always pay. ‘ Hum honge kaamyaab’ is the leitmotif of the film, always sung with hope till it is finally subverted in the climax.
The braiding of madcap comedy and sobering reality happens throughout. The completely lunatic time-bomb sequence at builder Tarnejas’s house is followed by a scene where the collapse of the brand-new flyover he’s built is reported on TV; here, the news reader announces the real-life Justice Lentin judgment indicting Maharashtra chief minister A R Antulay before going on to report the collapse of the fictional flyover. The words ‘cement scam’ never come up but the link is clear. Again, at the press conference held by Tarneja on a terrace with a stunning view of Oval Maidan and its upscale environs, the whole tone of the movie suddenly changes: a monologue on the hard life of Bombay’s less fortunate millions, accentuated by the top-angle shot symbolically looking down on them, is a sombre tryst with reality. And then it’s laughter time again.
Shadow details
Shah also does a lot of subtle detailing, almost like almost like random clues strewn through the film, to reinforce not only the theme of venality and corruption but his own ideology and beliefs. In the Tarneja press conference scene, there’s a small board in the background with a JRD Tata quote: ‘I think it is wrong for a businessman to join politics, for him to play a political role’. Likewise, in the office of scandal-rag editor Shobha Sen, the camera follows her as she exults about the 10-lakh-rupee bribe she has been promised by Tarneja; as she moves out of the frame, the camera lingers on the soulful Frost stanza, ‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep’, printed on a wall behind her. It’s a brilliantly ironic moment for those who get it.
There’s lots more in the film that leaves you thinking; Shah’s use of the inspirational ‘ Hum honge kaamyaab’ , for instance. At face value, it’s a device to chart Vinod and Sudhir’s journey from hope to heartbreak and their ultimate realisation that the honest common man has a hope in hell of being kaamyaab (successful) against the combined forces of money and power. But there’s more to it. ‘ Hum honge kaamyaab’, adapted from the American civil rights anthem ‘ We shall overcome’ , was appropriated and used as government propaganda by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency when the civil rights of many were trod on with hobnailed boots. In JBDY, tellingly, the song is sung by Vinod and Sudhir in their own voices till the stunning last scene where, framed for Tarneja’s crime, they walk through the streets of Bombay in jail uniform, look straight into the camera and symbolically guillotine themselves; that’s when the official AIR version of ‘ Hum honge kaamyaab’ in multiple voices plays in the background. I’m pretty sure Shah was making a sharp political comment there.
Cinematic hat-tips
The commentary and ideology extend even beyond the theme of the film. When I first saw JBDY , I noticed the conspicuous posters of New Wave films Uski Roti, Maya Darpan, Chakra, Chirutha and Gaman prominently pasted on the Kemps Corner flyover, right beneath which an utterly insane scene takes place between a drunkard and a corpse. The contrast between the seriousness of the films and the hijinks beneath the bridge couldn’t be more ludicrous, and I did wonder what the purpose was. Comic juxtaposition? NFDC product placement? A tribute to mentors? A projection of wishful thinking, given that most movies like this never got a theatre release? I remember asking Shah in a later interview whether he was imagining a Utopian situation for cinema; I think he answered in the affirmative but I can’t exactly remember. On hindsight, I do think he was striking a blow for parallel cinema that was back then treated with open contempt by the moguls of the mainstream.
JBDY is a close kin of some of these films though clad in comedic robes—its heart is socialist, and its script peppered with anti-capitalist sentiment and humorous references to the CIA, American consumerism (the brilliant “ Thoda khao, thoda phenko ” line), Swiss banks (the “Switzerland ka cake” that commissioner D’Mello demands) and more. It is also a quintessentially Bombay film, one that raises every problem this beleaguered city faces on account of the corrupt builder-politician nexus; indeed, so rooted is it in the city that the names of the three principal villains are a very slight alteration of the names of those on whom the characters are based.
Shah never gave up on this belief in socialist ideology even after socialism left the shores of the country. At a screenwriting conference in 2006, I remember him on stage, visibly annoyed at the rah-rah ‘India Shining’ spiel of a newer screenwriter. Looking him straight in the eye, he’d said, “Right. The Maoists are coming for us. Remember that.”
Post-liberalisation India could have provided a piquant setting to the Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro sequel that Shah wanted to write. That will now never be made; but the original remains a treasure that generations will continue to chuckle and mull over. Thank you, Kundan Shah.
