This is a slice of life – bitter life cinema. Hanslal Mehta gets it to you
with touching sincerity and a tale telling style reminiscent of Govind Nihlani
at his very best. This is clearly a wonderful film to showcase the factor that
India has great talent – albeit the inspiration from elsewhere. Inspired by
Metro Manila it is in a way also contemporary cinema (and society’s) return to
Bimal Da’s Do Bigha Zameen. Only that this time the world of crime and intrigue
is far more pervasive and bitter. In a way poverty is not new, but
juxtapositioned with the contemporary content of societal values, the tragedy
is more complex and pronounced.
The two hour narration is not for the emotionally weak or those with a weak
conscience. It gnaws and shows you that we need to revisit the premise of our
happy and luxurious lives. Even as a nation celebrates the new thumps up at the
political level, we may be do well to ask if we are a socially decadent world.
While people in High Places have spoken about bank loans and public money, is
the modern commercial Kabuliwalla (to borrow the expression from a judicial
pronouncement) the genesis for many a social evil? Here we do not debate with
life much less when sliced from art or cinema. Here the streams run their
unalloyed ways.
Our story is simple Deepak (Raj Kumar Rao) is a business failure who runs into
losses and hounded by the money lenders. He leaves Rajasthan to our own
gold-pot Mumbai in search of better days. He is accompanied by wife Rakhi
(Patralekha) and their little daughter. Jeremy Poolman: The Road of Bones says:
isolation and abandonment have the power when used well in tandem and with
gusto to break a man in spirit and heart just as a pistol when fired with skill
has the power to penetrate the flesh and break a man’s bones. Hanslal
Mehta deals with exactly this. Even as Deepak becomes a spectator of his own
life, he gets drown only deeper into the vortex of helplessness. While wife
Rakhi gets to a format of Lady Warren’s profession, he finally finds a job with
a security agency. Vishnu Sir (Manav Kaul) is his boss and helps him takes the
baby steps in his new job and Mumbai. While Vishnu has a hidden plan for his
seeming care and concern for Deepak the latter echoes the lines from Paulo
Coehlo: In my lust for life, I don’t regret the painful times. I
bear my scars as if they were medals. I know that freedom has a high price as
high as that of slavery, the only difference is that you pay with pleasure and
a smile even when that smile is dimmed by tears,
Surely neither life nor times is out there choosing Deepak as a fav child. The
resultant mess he is in tells a life lost in dreams hijacked and he suddenly
suffers the plight of a dove in the midst of vultures. The aching question that
arises and goes unrequited is as to why is a honest decent happy life now just
a mirage? Impaired dreams, derailed desires, captives of irony shadow chasing
in a globe of dulled conscience is the gnawing and gut wrenching story told in
the backdrop of an apathetic and sometimes actively vindictive society, in the
backdrop of the evening of a lit Mumbai: City lights. In case you are the kind
who is willing to be disturbed by a theme of this kind then unhesitatingly go
for the film. It is another masterpiece. Resultantly tickets are easy to get.
No Khanionics, no heroine jatkas, and yet cinema- or exactly for those reasons
good cinema. Watch good performances from Manav Kaul and debutant Patralekha.
More importantly watch the killer winner performance from Raj Kumar Rao. He is
so strewn of mannerisms and star quality, that you heart goes out for the guy.
This is acting at its arguable best.
If you have dreams for good cinema, then borrow from the lyrics in the film: Soney
do khwaab bune do ; jaagenge phir thamenge; koi wajah jeene ki, Sone do khwaab
bune do.
Rating : 4 stars
+ Hanslal Mehta and Raj Kumar Rao
– Too conscience pricking.
L. Ravichander.