TALES OF TRAVESTY
DR. JITENDRA SINGH
Dev Anand, in the final moments of Nirvana as “Guide”, waking up after an internal transformation to realise that all that he desperately longed for all his life and virtually ruined himself for, had come back to him when he no longer needed it nor any longer had utility for it. Guru Dutt running from one publisher to the other with the manuscripts of poetry written by him till he comes across the dustbin where an editor had dumped all his manuscripts leaving him unrequitted and ‘‘Pyaasa’’. Dilip Kumar backoning young India to break the shackles of defeatist mind-set and usher in a ‘‘Naya Daur’’. Raj Kapoor lighting up a candle of hope for the have – not as the dawn of independent India, liberated after long many years of foreign subjugation, heralds the wish that never again a native youth would have to live with the stigma of being called an “”Awaara’’.
Indeed, this scribe and the contemporaries belong to a generation that grew up shaping our destiny under the influence of cinema with a struggle to realise a failed dream, with a vision to cherish at a time when the India of mid 20th century seemed to offer little to look forward to. As India celebrates 100 years of cinema this month, we, truly, happen to be the children of a generation that grew up with Indian cinema…. in very much the same way as today’s generation is growing up on a diet of social network fed by Twitter, Facebook et al.
Even though technically the first Indian film “Raja Harishchandra” was released in May 1913, in the real sense the Indian cinema came to be on its own only after 1940s… the most eventful decade in the history of modern India when on the one hand India woke up to freedom after a long nightmare of British rule, on the other hand the theatrical cinema of yore yielded place to a new genre of unorthodox creativity providentially marked by almost simultaneous arrival of all the stalwarts…. Bimal Roy, Raj Kapoor and Mehboob Khan as Directors, Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand as actors, Mohammad Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar as playback singers, Sahir Ludhianvi and Kaifi Azmi as lyricists, S D Burman and Shanker-Jaikishen as music directors… to name only a few…. all making their debut at the dawn of independence.
No wonder, therefore, in the immediate post-independence India, cinema and polity blended with each other and reflected in each other to create a social milieu in which the next two generations of India were to receive their grooming. If Jawaharlal Nehru’s left-of-centre socialism found its expression in Raj Kapoor’s “Shree 420”, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee’s right-of-centre nationalism inspired Manoj Kumar’s “Purab Aur Paschim”. If Jai Prakash Narain’s democratic socialism reflected in Dilip Kumar-Raj Kumar starrer ‘‘Paigham”, Namboodripad’s campaign for classless communism asserted itself through Bimal Roy’s ‘‘Do Bheega Zameen”. And, to echo the common yearning of all these differing streams was the urge for liberation from a feudalist past albeit without delinking from the past heritage of self-effacement, which stood out in Mehboob Khan’s ‘‘Mother India’’.
The first few decades after independence were decades filled with romanticism. And, we, as adolescents stepping into youth, breathed romance from all directions in full measure. The romance of a dream conjured up by Prime Minister Nehru’s midnight recall of a ‘‘tryst with destiny” which promised to offer every youth an equal opportunity to realise his potential. And, simultaneously, the romance of a dream of individual emancipation which a young officer of Indian Air Force saw through the twinkle in Rajesh Khanna’s eyes and exclaimed ‘‘Mere Sapnon Ki Rani Kab Aayegi Tu!’’
We grew up with the Indian cinema but did the Indian cinema also grow up with us ? That is a question for introspection deserving another write-up some other time.
How far does an average common Indian youth of today identify himself with what he, on an average, sees in the Indian cinema of today. Or, shall Umapathy contend to believe that since cinema is a reflection of the times in which it is produced, the Indian cinema today is bound to be only as ‘‘real’’ or ‘‘unreal” as is the Indian society today. It has been a symbolic journey though from ‘‘Devdas’’ Dilip Kumar’s self-consuming ‘‘Tere Dil Ko Jo Lubha Le Woh Adaa Kahan Se Laon’’ to ‘‘Khalnayak’’ Sanjay Dutt’s self-imposing ‘‘Choli Ke Peechhe Kya Hai ’’.
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