Manmohan Desai's Enchantment of the Mind

by Connie Haham

  Among Desai’s films Dharam-Veer offers the most legendary (and mythical) look at fate. After an astrologer reveals that the villain (Jeevan) is to die at his nephew’s hands, this uncle becomes obsessed with preventing the fulfillment of the prediction. Fate, though, is tricky, as Macbeth and Oedipus Rex learned when they tried to avoid their own predicted destinies. Likewise, the Pharaoh, while attempting to have no Hebrew males in the land of Egypt, came to rear one named Moses in his own palace. There is a comic quality to fate. In Woody Allen’s play God, a modern update of a Greek tragedy, the fates are a couple of mischief-makers, Bob and Wendy, American tourists dressed in jazzy Hawaiian shirts and sporting such practical joker gadgets as hand buzzers and water-spraying lapel flowers. In Raj Kapoor’s Mera Naam Joker (l970) Raju (Raj Kapoor) says, ‘The biggest joker is above.’ The irony of fate comes out, too, in a line from one of the final scenes of Parvarish. Mangal Singh (Amjad Khan) has gone through life thinking Kishan (Vinod Khanna) was his son; Amit (Amitabh Bachchan), his real son, sees the logic in this chance mistake, ‘Insaan ko apne khel ki sazaa is hi duniyaa se mil jaati hai. Aap zindagi bhar duniyaa ko dhokaa dete rahe aur taqdeer aapko dhokaa dete rahe.’ (People get their just desserts in this world. All your life you have been tricking other people and all along fate has been tricking you.) Tales do exist such as ‘The Victory of Jasvant, King of Gujarat, over the Goddess of Destiny’ in which fate has, in fact, been outwitted. Generally speaking, however, destiny wins in the end. In Dharam-Veer the villain must succumb to the inevitable. His nephew is indeed responsible for his death. His fight against his fate merely weaves a richer story. All the plotting and scheming that pitted him against his nephew would not have been necessary had he not been told that his nephew would kill him; had he not been trying to avoid his fate, his fate would not have been his fate. It is a mental game of ‘if ’ that both philosophers and humourists have often played. Manmohan Desai gives us an opportunity both to reflect and to enjoy.

  reality

  For me, the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.

  —Alfred Hitchcock1

  how much reality does the public want or need?

  The normal function of fiction is to put order where there might not be any in real life. Loose ends cannot always be tied up. While life is often messy, fiction provides a clean slate on which to draw a neat picture. Woody Allen expresses it well when, at the end of Annie Hall, as Alvy Singer, he shows us a play he has just written. In the play he draws upon the events we have witnessed during the ‘reality’ of the film. The final break-up of the couple in the film, however, has been transformed in the play into a romantic reunion with a promise of everlasting love. In a monologue with the audience afterwards, Alvy apologizes for his sentimentality, ‘Tsch, whatta you want? It was my first play. You know, you know how you’re always tryin’ t’ get things to come out perfect in art because, uh, it’s real difficult in life.’

  Any work of fiction, then, necessarily diverges from reality. In Hindi cinema, however, as a rule, the gap between the two is especially wide. As Desai said:

  The night that you show in the films may be day; the fights may be the result of brisk cutting; the passage of time may have been created at the laboratory with a technique called dissolve. So you have illusions available to you. Why must you always create something out of them that looks like life? It can be anything, as long as it touches a chord.2

  I don’t give my audiences a chance to think. I never think seriously about a story and the much talked about logic and other such things. My only interest is to see that I present something fantastic there on the screen, something that will make the audience focus all their attention on the screen. My only concern is their everyday problems. My constant efforts are to take people into a world of fantasy where there is no worry, no serious thinking, just fun and entertainment all the way.

  Who wants to see realism? People in the West! There’s always some bright aspect even to a poor man’s life. Take this aspect and make something rosy, like Awaara. See Raj Kapoor’s Awaara. What a tramp! What did Charlie Chaplin do? A small tramp who went into fantasies. That’s why his films are liked. He turned the whole thing into a comic approach. He made fun of Hitler in The Great Dictator. In City Lights he fell in love with the blind girl. But he tried to humour. I’m saying there should be humour in a film. These art filmmakers think humour is a sin: it’s a cardinal sin for a person to laugh in the auditorium, according to them. What’s wrong with a person having a bit of enjoyment in the theatre?

  …My plots are not realistic. My characters are realistic. You see, if I make the stories real, they’re not interested in seeing them. But put those characters on a trip to fantasy! When I was a kid I went to the stadium and saw Dara Singh, the famous wrestler who was in many stunt films. I imagined I was Dara Singh. I would go to the wrestling bouts full of arranged gimmicks… . There were challenges: ‘Next Saturday I’ll fight you!’ I used to think if I were Dara Singh, if I had a body like that, I’d also hit ten people. Now, I like to make these people into what they would like to be, but aren’t. What’s wrong with that? They feel, ‘Re, I could’ve been like that chap! I could’ve been like Anthony!’

  Given its avowed escapist nature, what is surprising about the genre is not the degree of fantasy that the films offer, but rather the extent to which reality creeps in. As every successful filmmaker knows, people must identify. Hence, even though a great part of each film may resemble a fairy tale, a dream, or even a cartoon, in certain respects a film must remain down-to-earth enough so that the spectators can project themselves onto the screen.

  Obviously, identification can work at the level of wish fulfillment. It is also enhanced by realistic detail. Desai added interesting, real-life touches to his films by shooting on the streets of his town Bombay, which he often featured, at times almost personified and clearly loved. In Bluff Master the Govinda song sequence was shot in his own neighbourhood, in the streets of Khetwadi district. The church in Amar Akbar Anthony, like the Victoria School for the Blind in Parvarish or the Haji-Ali tomb in Coolie are all real Bombay institutions. Desai’s street scenes, even when built on film sets, carried evocative touches: graffiti and ever-present film posters cover the walls; people live under bridges and sleep on footpaths; legless beggars hobble about, and packed, red BEST buses lumber along the streets. In film after film, too, Desai made generous use of extras; crowds in movement assured his films a life-like quality that contrasts with the theatrical sparseness typical of many other film sets. Cameo characters like the ‘cigarette-paanwala’ in Parvarish and the tea vendor in Sachaa Jhutha also added a flavour of authenticity. All this richness of detail and frequent identifiable touches from daily life add considerable substance to his reels of dreams and increase the power of his tales over us.

  The balance between reality and fantasy is a key element in audience satisfaction. Spectators may like to dream a bit at the movies but do not necessarily want to enter never-never land. While they may want the theatre lights at the end to signal a return to the real world, they may at the same time want to carry a bit of the film with them in the week to come. And even if they go out saying, ‘It’s just a film,’ they may also wish to believe that, like in the film, good will triumph over evil in the world around them.

  illogic

  A corollary to the portrayal of reality is the question of script logic. Desai and other popular Indian filmmakers have been especially criticized for weakness in this domain. In Desai’s defence Rosie Thomas succinctly explained, ‘Spectacular and emotional excess will invariably be privileged over linear narrative development.’3 Indian film critics have often been unforgiving. An unnamed journalist writing for Filmfare wrote a typical sweeping condemnation:

  It does reflect rather badly on the tastes of our audiences, that a film like Mard could be a hit. But it is one of the top grossers of the year. The contempt it shows for the brains and sensibility of the viewers is to be seen to be believe
d…4

  A troubling case of Desai illogic can be seen precisely in Mard with its disregard for language, costume and the many historic details that should form the backdrop of the film. Even if one accepts that viewer understanding is quite naturally the primary goal of the film, it is, nevertheless, disconcerting to see British rulers speaking Hindi among themselves. Of course, playing with historical fact could be understood, as Philip Lutgendorf suggests, as a subtle way of attacking the present ruling class:

  Yet given the fantasy framework, chronological and locational ambiguity, and the fact that, with the exception of Simon and a bunch of other goras (white folk) cast as extras, the arch villains are all played by Indian actors, one may propose that the ridiculously evil firangis may as easily be read as stand-ins for the ‘brown sahibs’—the Indian elite of the long-running Congress Raj—who succeeded the colonial masters.5

  Should one continue to quibble about the apparent lack of authenticity of Mard, one could seek perspective by considering some of the strange things that happen in Hollywood cinema. To take but one example, much-acclaimed director John Huston, in his highly reviewed The Man Who Would Be King (l975) situates his film in India even though it was obviously shot in North Africa, with no attempt made for veracity in costume. Amazingly, Saeed Jaffrey speaks Hindi only to be answered in Arabic by various villagers.

  The Hollywood/Bollywood comparison/contrast here is made not in the context of some ideal world of cinematic theory, but rather in response to the regular dismissal of Indian cinema by critics both in India and in Europe who in one breath praise popular Hollywood films and in the next rail against Bollywood films, even when disregard for reality in each genre is but a matter of degree. At the same time, it could be argued that to offer examples of illogic in Hollywood cinema does not bolster the case for Bollywood’s lack of logic. Both could be criticized equally. Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951) judges Hollywood with a combination of harshness and ambivalence that might reflect many a Hindi film viewer, ‘I started imitating one of those guys in the films. In one of those musicals. I hate the movies like poison, but I get a bang imitating them.’6 Many NRIs or second-generation South Asians abroad show similar ambivalence: while avidly watching Hindi films, they caustically complain of their lack of realism and logic. Perhaps their objections betray a deeper dissatisfaction with a lack of endeavour on the part of many filmmakers. John Simpson, in News from No Man’s Land, applies to TV journalism the criticism that screenplay writer and novelist William Goldman makes of Hollywood’s tendency to lazily follow conventions:

  …that when someone in a film pulls out their wallet to pay for something, they always have exactly the right amount of money in it; that when they drive to the office or the shops or the bank, there is always a parking space right outside; and that whenever a television set is switched on in the background, it will invariably start broadcasting a news item which is directly related to the subject of the film you are watching.7

  A similar sort of laziness certainly obtains within the Indian film industry.

  The effects of screen illogic are variable. Some juggling with facts or playing with common sense causes wonder only if one bothers to rethink a film in a calm moment after the lights have gone out. Other points can confuse the audience immediately or detract from a story by calling attention to themselves. How, one might ask, can a silk stocking covering an arm or a leg render a tattoo or a bullet wound invisible to inquisitive searchers? (Raampur Ka Lakshman and Parvarish) How, in Naseeb, could John Jani Janardhan forget his father’s face even after years of separation? And why in Suhaag does the blinded Kishan (Shashi Kapoor) continue to wear a wristwatch? The list of such questions could go on and on.

  One answer would be that Desai’s speed, caricature and exaggeration make much of his illogic inconsequential. An additional response lies with the group dynamics in the theatre setting. Acceptance or rejection of any scene is often audience specific. One or two snickers can lead an entire theatre of people to take a mental step back from immersion into critical judgement.

  illusion, corruption and blindness

  Reality makes its entry into Desai’s films in an entirely different domain—philosophically, sociologically and psychologically— when it is contrasted with deceptive appearances. Pretence and outward show confound the screen characters and the viewing public alike. What appears to be, the message reads, is not what is. ‘Andar kuch aur; bahar kuch aur.’ (Literally: inside, one thing; outside, something else.) What would seem to be real is only a mirage, not to be trusted. Desai’s insistence on the nebulous nature of reality and the stranglehold of the world of appearances no doubt reveals a Hindu concern. On a philosophical level, the theme of appearance in opposition to reality might well relate to maya, the belief that the material world is nothing more than illusion. The Ramayana offers the spectacle of an illusory death. Hanuman, the monkey god, is prepared to attack Ravana’s palace to recapture the abducted Sita when, in order to sap the morale of Hanuman’s troops, Ravana’s magician makes Sita appear to die before the onlooking Hanuman. In Roti a policeman shoots down Mangal Singh (Rajesh Khanna), before our eyes; in the next shot we see Mangal awake sweating in his bed; the illusion in this case is caused by a nightmare. In Desh Premee, however, no such explanation is given as we witness one person after another die, murdered, only to see them reappear inexplicably in later scenes. Watching screen characters being fooled and misled by pretence is perhaps comforting to spectators who feel that, in a sense, all of life is a hoax in which each of us is duped from birth until death.

  On a social level, pretence distorts our perception of reality. ‘Log kyaa kahenge?’ (What will people say?) is an oft-heard expression both in real life and on screen. Following basic social mores includes maintaining appearances and can be seen as a necessary social skill, essential to preventing clashes and stopping wagging tongues. Where appearances are paramount, however, hypocrisy, feigning, and dissimulation are inevitable. The apparently upstanding Thakur (Amjad Khan) in Desh Premee, in fact, deals in smuggling and counterfeit money. Foryears he has maintained a good reputation not only before society but more especially in the eyes of his son (Navin Nischol), an honest police officer. When one of Thakur’s collaborators (Kadar Khan) risks disclosing their illegal doings, Thakur prefers to shoot himself in the arm—no pretence here—in order to prolong his imposture as a spotless businessman. The recurrence of this theme within Manmohan Desai’s cinema offers a mordant commentary on corruption parading as honesty in society at large.

  Truth can be observed, but it possesses a quality of interiority that most individuals are incapable of identifying. In Aa Gale Lag Jaa during a skating contest, couples are formed according to their matching costumes. Preeti (Sharmila Tagore) is dressed as Laila. When Prem (Shashi Kapoor) arrives dressed as a Pathan, she protests that she is waiting for a partner dressed as Majnu. Prem stubbornly presents his case: if she looks at his heart, she will see that he is her Majnu. In Sachaa Jhutha Bhola (Rajesh Khanna) sings, ‘Dil sachaa aur chera jhutha.’ (The heart is true; faces are false.)

  Blindness, real or pretended, is found in several of Desai’s films—Budtameez, Roti, Amar Akbar Anthony, Parvarish, and Suhaag Though he denied any personal psychological motivation, one cannot but wonder if Desai’s special insistence on blindness might have been, at least in part, traceable to an anxiety over his own weak eyes. Beyond such conjecture, the presence of blindness is not without philosophical implications, especially if one adds to the physically blind and the fake blind, all those characters who go about as if blind, never seeing the obvious, fooled as they are by exteriors.

  A lie perpetrated by a conniving, villainous character and believed without hesitation has been central to plot development in numerous Hindi films…as well as in the Ramayana. Ram, in spite of his love for Sita, is willing to believe that she might not be pure after her stay in Ravana’s palace. In The Tiger and the Jackal,8 a story from the Maha
bharata, a pious jackal is chosen by the king tiger to become chief minister. When conniving jackals plot to make it appear the minister has stolen the king’s meal, the king immediately accepts their word and punishes the minister. So it is that in Dharam-Veer Raani Ma (Indrani Mukherjee) is quick to believe that Dharam’s adoptive father has been responsible for her carriage driver losing his hands. The possibility of a conspiracy is ignored, as are the long years of faithful service on the part of Dharam’s father. Failure to recognize innocence is paralleled by blindness to evil. Raani Ma never discerns her own brother’s (Jeevan) treachery, until it is too late.

  the art-entertainment dichotomy

  Manmohan Desai’s films did not exist in a vacuum. On the one hand, they connected positively to a tradition of popular Indian cinema whose masters Desai readily saluted. On the other hand, they stood in opposition to the modern movement of Indian art cinema which reached its peak in the eighties. Just as Desai often pointedly criticized art films and those who made them, art filmmakers often boasted of creating a much-needed alternative to the sort of cinema for which Manmohan Desai was generally seen as a prime example. A fortress atmosphere developed with each side ready to defend itself from its position of strength: to a large extent, the commercial directors had the audiences, while the art directors enjoyed critical acclaim. Serious filmmaker Saeed Mirza perceived the split between the two cinemas in these terms, ‘There is a cinema of status quo and a cinema of change. That is the polarity.’9 Manmohan Desai defended popular cinema thus: