Manmohan Desai's Enchantment of the Mind

by Connie Haham

  Amitabh Bachchan’s screen image for his Desai films was as fluctuating as the moods from scene to scene—now a daring fighter and able acrobat, now a rowdy good-for-nothing, now a noble friend and devoted son, now a front-bench-appealing drunk, now a sentimental romantic, now an effervescent singer and dancer. Amar Akbar Anthony marked a turning point, not only in Desai’s filmmaking and in Amitabh’s own career, but also in Hindi cinema in general. As Amitabh Bachchan noted, Desai incorporated bits of Anthony into every new role he gave Amitabh, as did many other Bombay film directors from that time forward.

  Amitabh as Anthony or Anthony’s reincarnations most often played a street-wise tough guy. Life has dealt him a hard blow; he has lost his family and has had to make his way against stiff odds. He is a success in that he is often the dada (the don) of his neighborhood. He can establish justice with his fists; hence, others give him at least grudging respect. In Suhaag he is a street-dweller who has earned a degree. In Naseeb he is a poor waiter, but he wins boxing matches after work and pays for his brother’s studies. Gangsters and policemen can turn him from an intrepid hero into a grinning, salaaming sycophant. He is both powerful and powerless. He is a hard-skinned fellow who goes soft in the face of womenfolk. In Desh Premee he is a sophisticated gambler and counterfeit money dealer, but he also plays a clumsy policeman in a Peter-Sellers-Inspector-Clouseau imitation. He can be romantic to the point that violins play in his heart when the woman of his life steps into view for the first time. He can succumb to alcohol, but he also has the force of character to overcome the power of the bottle. He can turn villains into fools, but small, inanimate objects take on a life of their own to make him a bumbling buffoon.

  Manmohan Desai’s relationship with Amitabh Bachchan was one of mutual respect, mutual need, and mutual inspiration to outdo past achievements. Desai addressed Amitabh as ‘Raja,’ the king, and his confidence in him as a drawing card was thorough.

  Before Amar Akbar Anthony my concept of a hero was almost entirely modelled on Raj Kapoor whom I had cast in my very first film Chhalia made in l959 when I was just 22. It’s only in Amar Akbar Anthony that Amitabh got Raj Kapoor out of my system. Now I have got Amitabh in my system and cannot think of anyone other than him. Amitabh is the only complete actor we have. He has star charisma. His presence is magnetic and the man has tremendous histrionic ability. He is like Haley’s Comet. Such an actor comes only once in 76 years. We have seen one this century. We don’t know when we will see another again.

  Desai’s connection to the Amit character is also worth noting:

  My heroes are like me. All the impossible feats I’ve dreamed of, they perform for me on the screen. I’d even say Amit is my alter ego.

  When told that Manmohan Desai banked on him, Amitabh modestly replied, ‘It’s more the contrary that is true.’

  If Desai used Amitabh Bachchan well, it could also be argued that he sometimes overused him. According to Desai, Vinod Khanna had the best role in Parvarish. In Amar Akbar Anthony the situation is reversed. Yet as the older brother, Vinod Khanna maintains a certain authority, and with three male stars and three female stars, Amitabh’s role, though highlighted, does not overshadow all others. When Vinod Khanna arrives at the end of Amar Akbar Anthony disguised for the wedding sequence as a one-man band, hands, arms and legs full of musical instruments, he looks like an appropriate metaphor for the tendency to load individual stars with an inordinate share of work and of responsibility for a film’s success. ‘Hum three in one hain; Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Issai, subhi to hain bhai-bhai,’ (I’m three in one; Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christian, all are brothers), he announces, and his words seem to predict the future. As John Jani Janardhan Amitabh envelops all three characters represented by Amar, Akbar and Anthony.

  The tendency gained momentum with each succeeding film. In Desh Premee Amitabh doubled his impact by playing a dual role. In Coolie, in spite of a large and excellent cast, his dominance was undisputed. In Mard he was a superman without a competent foil, male or female. Significantly, the credits of these last two films do not list him among the stars. Rather, his name is above and separate from theirs—‘M.K.D. Films and Aasia Films present Amitabh Bachchan as’ Coolie and Mard respectively. The Hindi film industry encourages monopolies. The competition among actors to ‘reach the top’ is a well-publicized aspect of the pyramid thinking that flourishes in every area of production, the pinnacle of each pyramid being clearly delineated in rupees.

  Manmohan Desai’s increasing reliance on Amitabh Bachchan was not without drawbacks. Amitabh’s excellence need not have precluded his sharing the screen. In Suhaag, made between the time of Amar Akbar Anthony and Naseeb, his presence was ably balanced by Shashi Kapoor. One of Amitabh Bachchan’s favourite scenes from a Manmohan Desai film, in fact, sees the two in perfect tandem. The tempestuous Amit has just fought Kishan (Shashi) to a draw. Yet upon learning that Kishan is a police officer, his tone changes abruptly; he begs and pleads and pleads some more with the policeman not to make an official report of the fight until, at last, Kishan, theatrically losing his temper, almost blows Amit over in a thunderous ‘Tum jao!!’ (Go away!) Audiences not only enjoyed watching Amitabh act; they also took pleasure in waiting for him to appear, and they appreciated the cumulative punch that came from his facing other strong personalities.

  Just such a marvellous moment comes near the end of Amar Akbar Anthony shortly before the title song. All the main characters are reunited at the gangster’s home. Amitabh Bachchan interacts with each in turn in a series of lively, witty dialogues. He then whisks up a winding flight of stairs, violin in hand, his priest’s habit swaying. In a memorable two-second scene he holds our gaze; with assured concentration, like a conductor leading an orchestra, he solemnly motions for a pair of curtains to close. As if by magic, the curtains oblige. With perfect timing, he whirls; his moment alone has ended; another group scene follows. Our joy is great as we feel our eyes move nimbly across the screen from this marvellous actor to two beautiful and enchanting actresses, Parveen Babi and Shabana Azmi, and back again. The dialogues, the decors, the costumes, the colours, the background music create an ensemble for our pleasure, but, finally, it is the players who are responsible for transporting us in and for making us live the story with and through them.

  the child

  When I was a child, the movies brought the vistas of a desirable adulthood tantalizingly close; as an adult, I find that they help to keep the road to childhood open.

  —Sudhir Kakar1

  One could rightly conclude after a few visits to Bombay movie theatres that the average audience is overwhelmingly composed of adult males. A theatre playing a Manmohan Desai film, however, generally exuded quite a different atmosphere. Babies’ cries, toddlers’ pattering feet, older children’s giggles, and women’s chuckles blended with hearty male laughter. Women and children may not actually have outnumbered the adult males, but their presence assured a more balanced public. Desai liked children and he respected them as spectators. As he said:

  Children form a majority of my audience. I aim my films at them especially, and then for all ages. It is my attempt to provide clean stuff. I try my best to avoid rapes and other scenes where women are badly treated. I avoid blood-curdling scenes because I want those who have come to the theatre to have their eyes up there on the screen, not down. The day children stop coming to my films I will give up and go away.

  Manmohan Desai’s motivations were double. His noble concerns were coupled with solid business sense. Desai looked to women as a barometer to gauge the success of his films, ‘Once the women in purdah (heavily veiled) start coming, I know my film will be a hit.’ His logic was the result of simple arithmetic; by adding a sizable number of women and children to one’s audience, the potential box office returns more than double.

  Children not only appreciate Desai’s films for their magic, their animals, their colourful stories, and their humor; they also identify with the child characters he put on screen. With
stories often stretched over two or three generations, child actors have long been a staple of Hindi cinema. Desai was quite faithful to this cinematic tradition. Children appeared in the majority of his films, most often as future adults to be played by stars (Raampur Ka Lakshman, Roti, Amar Akbar Anthony, Chacha Bhatija, Parvarish, Dharam-Veer, Suhaag, Naseeb, Desh Premee, and Coolie). In other films the children appear as their own characters, either in small roles (Bluff Master, Bhai Ho To Aisa, Desh Premee, and Shararat), or in more important roles (Aa Gale Lag Jaa, Chhalia, and Roti).

  the child artistes

  Desai was a director who systematically got the best from his child actors, avoiding the tendency to have children play stiff, unnatural goody-goodies. The quality he attained was on two levels: convincingly drawn characters and lively performances. In Parvarish, for instance, the boys (Master Tito and Master Ratan) must confess to their father (Shammi Kapoor) that they have played hooky from school to go to the movies. With their attempts to lie and their show of guilt when they are forced to tell the truth, the boys help to turn a preparatory, background scene into a memorable moment in the film.

  Master Tito was only six years old when he first worked with Manmohan Desai. Yet, he had already been acting for over four years. Under his father’s guidance, the child had learned early to tune in to the proper emotions he would play. Desai liked the boy at once. With his twinkling eyes, his ready smile and his natural tears, Master Tito gave one of the great child performances of cinema history in Aa Gale Lag Jaa. He would go on to to do smaller but noteworthy parts in Roti, Parvarish, Suhaag, and Naseeb. Looking back, Master Tito (Tito Khatri) described the enjoyable working atmosphere on the sets where Desai tickled, teased and played with him. His first scene with Manmohan Desai was especially memorable. In Aa Gale Lag Jaa his character is a child who has never known his mother. A bit depressed one night, the child asks to see his mother’s picture. His father (Shashi Kapoor), very preoccupied with his own problems, lashes out at his son in anger. Taken aback and hurt, the boy cries, ‘But I don’t want my mummy. I only want to see a picture of her.’ Suddenly, the father realizes how harsh and unfair he has been and sensitively consoles his suffering son. The weight of this tight and emotional scene rests almost entirely on the actors. Desai was so thrilled with Master Tito’s performance that the next day he called the child in and offered him whatever he wanted as a reward for a job well done. ‘But I have everything I need,’ Master Tito answered.

  Desai insisted, ‘Let me give you something. Tell me anything you’d like to have.’

  After a long hesitation, little Tito said, ‘Well, I don’t have a watch.’ Of course, Manmohan Desai gave him one.

  Grandchildren held a special place in Desai’s heart. Discussing the beautifully filmed scene in Aa Gale Lag Jaa in which a cold, rejecting grandfather warms over a game of marbles with his grandson, Desai said:

  Every grandfather loves his grandchild. Like today, I crave to see my grandchild. Whether I’m shooting or not, I must see my grandchildren every day. In Hindi we say the interest is more valuable than the actual amount given (the capital). So the grandchild is like the interest on the child you have. You love your own child, but you’ll love your grandchild more.

  the inner child

  Desai worked well with children, partly because like many creative people, he never entirely outgrew the child he was. Shashi Kapoor recognized this trait. Manmohan Desai related it thus, ‘Once Shashi Kapoor said something very nice about me, “We have outgrown our childhood; you have not outgrown your childhood.” I am still a child, and I don’t mind being a child.’ And indeed, behind the work that appeared on the screen was a childlike, imaginative spirit. Lurking inside the apparent adult was a naughty boy, ready to poke out his head and, with a devilish gleam in his eye, grin with glee at his own mischief. Imagination supposes a touch of anarchy, a willingness to turn rules inside out, to stand the world on its head in order to see it from a different angle. Like his films, Desai, in one breath, was straight-faced and whole-heartedly earnest in his defense of his valued beliefs, especially the sanctity of religion and family. In the next breath he was mocking society’s rules, institutions and power symbols.

  A certain social irresponsibility appears and reappears in Desai’s films. Chhalia, the pickpocket, is unabashedly unrepentant. It was only at the censors’ insistence that his song was transformed from ‘Chhalia mera naam, chhalna mera kaam;’ (Deception is my name; deceiving is my game;) to ‘Chhalia mera naam; Chhalia mera naam.’ The censors were less fussy at the release of Parvarish. The heroines not only pick pockets but also brazenly sing a song in defence of their livelihood. Crime pays, too. Neither Chhalia nor the girls are ever punished for their deeds (in sharp contrast with some of the characters in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s films who go against one parental order and spend half of the film asking to be forgiven). Desai’s characters are not bad. They are simply a bit naughty, like spirited children who are too rambunctious to be kept firmly under adult control.

  In Coolie this touch of social anarchy is carried into a rich man’s (Om Shivpuri) home. Iqbal (Amitabh Bachchan) leads a group of coolies who use their numbers and their lack of respect for the unspoken rule—that the rich and poor must not mingle—in order to turn the rich man’s luxurious dwelling topsy-turvy. The coolies play lively music, make merry, drink alcohol prepared for the rich man’s guests, use his swimming pool to bathe—with soap—and to wash their clothes. They carry civil disobedience into the homes of the rich oppressors not in anger, but simply having left aside their inborn fear of and respect for the established order.

  Most spectators seem to enjoy this scene, but it is surely the children who laugh the hardest. The coolies, in fact, are acting like misbehaving youngsters who take pleasure in wreaking havoc on the ordered adult world. When questioned about the uneasiness the rich might feel while viewing the scene, Manmohan Desai himself got a devilish look in his eye and rubbed his hands together with relish. Desai not only put his mischief on screen; he also had his larks in daily life. He was, of course, a well-known personality in his Khetwadi neighbourhood. If a fight broke out, the people of the area urged him to use his influence to put an end to the dispute. However, more than once he postponed acting as a mediator in order to enjoy the spectacle for a while. Eventually, he called a halt, separated the fighters and insisted that they shake hands and go away as brothers, but not until after he had had his own ringside thrills.

  Desai gave us a little boy in Chhalia whose reaction is similar. Little Anwar, Shaanti’s (Nutan) son, is at a boarding school. Being one of the youngest boys there, Anwar is too frightened to sleep one night. To bolster his courage, he sits on his knees in bed and begins to pray loudly and fervently. Angry to be awakened, the other boys try to teach Anwar a lesson; the result is a general brawl. The threat is no longer imaginary demons but rather real boys. He scampers under the bed and, from his safe position, forgets all of his worries as he gives bent to his pleasure in encouraging the warring camps.

  Desai’s feisty, misbehaving screen children are not without precedent in Hindi cinema. There is another naughty, but enchanting little boy in a film that Desai greatly appreciated, Mehboob Khan’s Mother India (1957). Birju (Master Sajjid), Radha’s (Nargis) second child, is active, fearless, at times insolent, quick to react to injustice, and ready to work like a man when circumstances demand. Manmohan Desai’s film children follow his lively lead.

  Desai did some striking work with children in a group, thereby multiplying the naughtiness. Roti, an uneven film, weighed down by melodrama and overwrought suspense, is saved by the light-hearted, fast-paced schoolroom sequence in which an entire classroom of boys light up the screen with their verve. Mangal Singh (Rajesh Khanna) inadvertently becomes a schoolmaster in a Kashmiri village. The boys he must face, like mischief-loving children around the world, take a special joy in initiating their new teacher with their devilry. The first two days of class give rise to a battle of wits over who wi
ll reign. Mangal is greeted with firecrackers popping about the room, a traditional welcome, he is told, in that area. The boys, in seeming obsequiousness, invite him to sit while they stand, hardly containing their impatience to see him fall to the floor from the chair from which they have partially sawed off the legs. When Mangal asks their names, they reply the days of the week. When he asks them to tell the truth, they answer that these days milk is false, ghee (clarified butter) is false, everything is false, so why should they tell the truth! The second morning of class they take bets on whether their teacher will dare to show up again. What the boys cannot guess is that, in spite of his adult appearance, Mangal, acting as Desai’s alter ego, is himself simply a big, naughty child. He takes a delight as great as theirs in replaying their practical jokes on them. The pupils are dumbfounded. ‘We’re even,’ he says, ‘no winners, no losers.’

  Manmohan Desai’s feelings about school were aptly portrayed in Roti when Mangal Singh, trapped into taking a teaching job, has to be led protesting to the schoolhouse. A mocking background score emphasizes the irony of his predicament. Bijli (Mumtaz), the village belle, tries to calm him, ‘There’s no reason to be afraid. You’re not going to jail.’

  ‘I can get out of jail,’ he answers, more truthfully than she realizes, ‘but from here, how do I escape?’

  Desai looked back at his own years of ‘imprisonment’ thus:

  I was very bad. In school I was turned out three or four times. My elder brother used to go and apologize to the principal. He would slap me in front of the principal, hit me and say, ‘He won’t do it again.’ I didn’t like to study. Even now, you know, some people say they regret they didn’t study more. I don’t regret a bit. I wish I hadn’t ever gone to school ... I used to go to school only for the sake of playing cricket... . Every Thursday and Sunday at St. Xavier’s I played cricket. Cricket, cricket, cricket. Table tennis and badminton…I never used to study... . But somehow I stayed in—because I was very good in cricket. That’s why they didn’t fail me... . I was taken at college because I was the school captain. From St. Xavier’s School I was sent to St. Xavier’s College with a note, though I had 35% total. That’s a borderline case. But then I was chasing girls, so they realized I wasn’t even playing cricket... . After two years I was thrown out. I failed. I was bound to fail. It was a university exam, and I failed in Hindi, can you believe! So I said, ‘Good riddance!’ And I took up work as an assistant director.