Maana apni jeb se faqeer hain, phir bhi yaaron dil ke hum ameer hain!
Sure, my pockets are empty, but friends, my heart wants not!
So sings Raj (Raj Kapoor) in the film Anari ("The Simpleton", 1959). Like many films from the 1950s, quite a few of them featuring Raj Kapoor, this one too pitches the iconic little guy with the big heart against the greedy and devious world of corporations, corrupt middlemen and bourgeois snobbery. These movies have clearly socialist themes where traditional social and religious hierarchies are subverted in their measure of morality and ethics and age-old stereotypes of class and caste are upturned. Oddly enough, these same cinematic acts of subversion in the 1950s turned into classic Bollywood tropes just a decade later.
The poor here are cast as being uniformly naive and with the purest of intentions. If they are found to be involved in something unsavory, you can be sure that they have fallen to such depths out of desperation and the machinations of the rich and powerful. The rich in these movies are all almost always devious, malicious and greedy, with the exception of one or two characters who redeem their kind by attempting to bridge the yawing social divide between the main protagonists. Predictably, many are rich girl-poor boy romances where the besotted pair's idyllic dreams are thwarted by the realities of a merciless and bigoted world.
As I mentioned before, these films often starred Raj Kapoor as the little guy and many of them were produced and directed by him as well. Films like Awaara ("The Vagabond", 1951) and Shree 420 ("Mr. Thief", 1955) became international cult classics and continue to be watched enthusiastically not only in India but in the former Soviet Union and in much of the Middle East. Aside from the Raj Kapoor blockbusters, there were other big-budget productions like Naya Daur ("The New Era", 1957) which has strong themes of development and the power of the working class (the song Saathi Haath Badhaana--"Lend a helping hand, friend"--frames this theme perfectly). More poignant movies like Do Bigha Zamin ("Two Plots of Land", 1953) and Oscar nominated Mother India (1957) also presented tales of social and economic inequity.
Interestingly enough, most of these movies never portray the state and its tentacles in a negative light. Here, the state and its laws are always there to help the poor man out and are firmly shown to be on the side of the downtrodden. It's the capitalists, industrialists and the bourgeois gliterati who are the worms in the idyllic social apple conjured on the silver screen. The film Shree 420, for instance, features the eternally popular song "Mera joota hai japaani" where the hero, Raju (Raj Kapoor) sings, "My shoes are Japanese, my trousers are English, the red hat on my head is Russian, but still my heart is Indian" all the while trotting around in a fashion after Charlie Chaplin. This movie closes with the hero and the heroine (Nargis) walking into the sunrise and towards a socialist co-operative housing development!
Tadka Dal
Money corrupts, while poverty has a purifying effect on the soul. (Not so subtle subtext: Trust in the socialist state.)
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Made in the wake of Indian independence these movies reflect the socialist values of those who spearheaded the independence movement, thus combing strong strains of both Nehruvian state socialism and the Gandhian emphasis on the power of the unlettered Indian masses. Social and economic egalitarianism were important aspects of the Indian constitution and was clearly what Indian intellectuals hoped would be an essential characteristic of the fledgling nation. The artists who were the creative force behind these movies were of this ilk. This trend of presenting the classes as morally and ethically dichotomous ended around the early 1990s at a time when a change in administration and government policy opened the gates of the Indian marketplace to foreign investment and ushered the Indian citizen into a newly globalizing world. The glammed-up movies of the 1990s brought to focus the glut of products and the sheen of upward-mobility to which a larger segment of India's primarily poor population now aspired. These movies featured the lives of the fabulously wealthy who, in spite of the trials and tribulations that come with such wealth, led ethical and moral lives. The film Maine Pyar Kiya ("I Have Loved",1989) was perhaps one of the last that framed the rich-poor divide in terms of good and evil. In contrast, the 1994 mega-hit Hum Aapke Hain Kaun...! ("Who Am I to You!") has no villains, just a love story between a guy and a gal from two jaw-droppingly rich families. They encounter a few bumps on the way thanks to avoidable misunderstandings, but all in all it's a wild romp through upper-class wardrobes and bourgeois morality.
Yeh bhog bhi ek tapasya hai
Tum tyaag ke maare kya jano?
Apmaan racheta ka hoga
Rachana ko agar thukraaoge
This glut, too is a kind of penance
But you, so wracked by sacrifice, wouldn't know it.
For wouldn't it be an insult to the creator,
To reject all of creation?
These words of unusual wisdom were sung by Chitralekha, a courtesan in the movie of the same name (1964). The setting is dramatic: Chitralekha has been distracting Beejgupt, a minor vassal of the Gupta empire. A great ascetic of the kingdom has arrived at Chitralekha's mansion to goad her away from Beejgupt...to make her see that her life of decadent, languorous sin is worthless in the larger scheme of things. Though she may seem to enjoy all that life has to offer, moksha--or the freedom from the cycle of birth and death--will elude her. To this, Chitralekha sings to the ascetic what is perhaps the most striking of courtesan songs, turning the entire premise of at least three major schools of Hindu philosophy on their heads.
This general theme comes in two primary flavours: ascetics attempting (usually in vain) to reform courtesans, and courtesans attempting (usually successfully) to seduce ascetics. Unfortunately, the latter theme is rarely found in the morally rarefied world of Bollywood. Where virtuous heroes find themselves seduced, the seductresses are always vampish and the men inevitably rue their dalliance. In general, however, courtesans and minxes in the movies have always maintained a healthy irreverence for preachy, pious men. Consider the song "Jao re jogi tum jao re" (Move on, ascetic) from the film "Amrapali" (1966) portrayed by the beautiful Vyjayanti Mala, who plays the title courtesan, Amrapali.
Depending on the period in which the movie is set, the courtesan may be replaced by a generally seductive siren, and the ascetic by a self-righteous and pious man. The song "Main ka karoon Ram, mujhe buddha mil gaya" (Oh god! What do I do! I've got me an old man!) from the film "Sangam" (1964) is a very unusual twist on this theme. Here, the vivacious Radha (again, played by Vyjayanti Mala) seduces her own stuffy husband (played by Raj Kapoor) with a classy cabaret.
Tadka Dal
Hermits and ascetics: Resistance is futile.
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Hindu mythology has a long tradition of celestial maidens seducing ill-tempered ascetics. It is told that these ascetics would sit in penance, threatening to upset the cosmic balance with their quest for Truth and for power over nature's hidden secrets. When the gods themselves failed to break their penance, other-worldly bombshells would be sent down to seduce these mighty, yet wholly unprepared men. They never failed. The most famous instance of such a seduction was that of the sage Vishvamitra by the celestial dancer Menaka.
kankari mohey maari, gagariya phod daari
He cast a pebble at me, and broke my pitcher.
So sang the innocently seductive Anarkali (Madhubala) in the classic Bollywood epic Mughal-e-Azam (1960). This may seem like an awfully odd thing to say, and not remotely sexy. But there are layers of meaning embedded in this line that need some unravelling. To begin with, this song is one with a Radha-Krishna theme. Radha and Krishna are the most popular couple of Hindu lore. Krishna, the eighth incarnation of the god Vishnu, is portrayed as a flute-playing cheeky cowherd who often flirts and torments the cowgirls. Chief among these cow girls is Radha, who is depicted as being jealous of other cowgirls, madly in love with Krishna, and deeply desirous of his attentions. One of the many ways in which Krishna torments the cowgirls is by casting pebbles at the water-filled pitchers they bring up from the river (think wet-shirt contest). So when Radha protests that Krishna has grabbed her hand, and broken her pitcher, the lady doth protest too much, methinks.
But that's just layer one. Beneath this Radha-Krishna motif is the fundamental imagery (common to many cultures) that identifies wombs with pots and pitchers. The shattering of a pot speaks of sexual intercourse, and the loss of virginity in particular. And so, there is hardly anything innocent about the court dancer singing coyly of broken pitchers to prince Salim.
There are other similar metaphors for sex one commonly encounters in the movies--and most of them equally evocative of sex as a battle, a tug of war. Losing items of clothing, jewelry, and especially nose-rings is one such sure-fire clue that there's been a roll in the hay. Women of easy virtue, courtesans and gypsies (no kidding) often happily sing provocative songs about dropping earrings (Mera Saaya, 1966) and letting scarves slip (Pakeezah, 1972). [Watch Pakeezah at http://moovieshoovie.com]
Tadka Dal
Women of virtue, guard your pots (or at least pretend)! The rest, celebrate your lost noserings.
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Pots and wombs go back a long way. The Mahabharata gives us an intriguing character called Gandhari, a woman from Gandhar (you'll know it as Qandahar, capital of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan), who married Dhritarashtra the blind chief of the Kaurava clan. After several years of being unable to bear a child, Gandhari finds she is pregnant, only to finally give birth to a clay pot. She throws the pot to the ground in anger and frustration. The pot shatters and each of the one hundred shards turns into a son and one lone shard a daughter.
As for nose-rings, there is a custom common in some quarters of north India where girls, on reaching puberty, get their nose pierced. They then take this nose-ring off on the night that their marriage is consummated (also presumably losing their virginity at the same time).
Thanks to Laura Wagner for suggesting this topic.
