Ab Naam Mohabbat ke...

Ab naam mohabbat ke

My brother recorded a host of songs for me and presented it to me. My commute to work is really long and I find myself listening to these songs when I am tired of Talk Radio and find myself dozing. So to put me and people driving around me out of danger, I switch on the MP3 player and croon to some very wonderful songs. These songs are in random order and really good. Some I have heard a lot and some I am hearing for the first time. Some songs have long been forgotten but I am amazed at the clarity with which I can recollect them. It must he ages since I heard a particular song, but I sing along with the CD(thank god I drive with windows closed) and can sing all the verses verbatim. The human mind is truly amazing. It keeps so many things in its recesses. Things you do not even realize are there. And suddenly a song ignites them and lo and behold! you are singing the whole song as if you had heard it every single day. Good songs do that you me thinks.
Well anyways, I digress. Coming to the point I wanted to convey. After a few known songs, this one song came up -
Ab naam Mohabbat ke, ilzaam tho aaya hain
tum jo bhi saza dedo, sar humne jhukaaya hain.

I had heard it once before, but I could not quite place it where. I was blown over by the emotion and the helplessness of the hero in the song. Try as I might, I could not think of the movie it was from. I was not even sure that I had heard/seen it before. I loved the song so much, that I play it over and over again. I wanted to ask my brother which film it was from, but kept forgetting about it. Whenever the song would play, any trace of sleep would vanish from my eyes and I would find myself getting into a very romantically sad mood. These kinds of moods kinda refresh you quite a bit. Makes you feel all nostalgic and think of the first love you lost ;-)

Well again I digress. The more I heard this song, the more I wondered which hero it would have been picturized on. I somehow could not think of any other hero doing justice to such depth of emotion other than Aamir Khan. I could imagine his face conveying the utter despair with utmost ease and total conviction. I could clearly see his eyes conveying the hurt as he mouthed the following lyrics -

Tum jo bhi hamein Samjho, par tumko sada saraheenge hum
beguna jo hamein tehraay, lavs aise kahaan paayenge hum
ummeed na thi iski jo saamne aaya hain
tum jo bhi saza dedo, sar humne jhukaaya hain

His eyes welling up with tears as he hung his head low. I sorta picturized the whole song on him. I would have been thoroughly disappointed if it was some other hero. So much so, that I did not even want to find out who the hero was. It was like it had to be him and if it was not him, then ignorance was bliss. Its like this book you read and picture everything happening in it and then suddenly there is this movie made out of it. You go to watch it and are thorougly disillusioned by your imagination and the actual potrayal. Feels like it'd have been better if you had never watched the movie. But I could not take it anymore. I had to know. I had high hopes since my brother is an Aamir Khan nut. But again not all songs were from his movies. So I typed the opening verse on Yahoo and came up with listings. I was proud of myself and heaved a sigh of relief when it said
Ab naam Mohabbat ke - Ghulam.

Whew! That was good and did a lot for my imagination. Thanks Aamir you are a wonderful actor.

Ghulam - here I come to watch you all over again and this time will not pay all my attention to Aati kya Khandaala!

Aastha - A film review

I happened to catch a film called 'Aastha' which was telecast late night on one of the sattelite channels. I was surprised that a film like this one had escaped from my Bollywood radar. On top of that it starred Om Puri (my most fav actor ever!) and Rekha. Such top names and I had not even heard about it. I sat down to watch it because the first scene I caught was pretty explosive. It had a very domestic looking Rekha in the company of Honey Irani coming to see Navin Nischol. He takes her hands in his giving the age-old reading your hands routine and then there is a torrid love-making scene. My eyes almost popped out as I watched Rekha oohing and aahing as Navin Nischol makes some moves (pun definitely not intended). In between we had a serious volunteer patrakar-like Om Puri going to a village of some sort and watching all sorts of things going on.

A few scenes later, it was clear that Rekha was married to Om Puri and just had a session with a stranger. I was confused as to why she seemed to be doing that. She comes home clutching a pair of shoes which her daughter sees and squeals with delight because it is the exact (read expensive) set she wanted. oh! so its about the money, I thought. I thought I was right when Rekha while trying to wash herself furiously in the shower comes upon a few 500 Rs notes. A few slow scenes later, Om Puri comes in and wakes her up as she is sleeping next to the daughter. She tries to confess but ends up saying that she brought an expensive Rs.700/- costing shoes for the daughter. Oh! so the father is stingy, that is why, I thought. Then he makes love to her without any foreplay whatsoever. Oh! so this is the reason I thought. The fact that he does not pay much attention to her needs. Boy! Was I wrong in all my reasonings.

The best part of the film is that there is not a reason at all. Well there are small ones, but nothing major as such. And what's better is that the love-making is not limited to that day or to that man alone. It goes one almost every single day. She becomes a prostitute, no less. She enjoys the money she is making and the fact that she is able to give her daughter things that her middle-class husband is unable to. A ride in the taxi, a big chocolate bar and also buy things for herself. She gets sucked into the vortex and just cannot get out. I loved the scene where she tells Honey, nothing doing, I don't have any desires and when Honey mentions that Navin Nishcol has sent a car with a chauffer to driver her to him, she just keeps quiet and gives in. Also she uses the things she learns in the trade on her husband attributing her new found knowledge to watching a blue film with a friend! She just basically lies through a lot of things. A classic vamp you say? Not so fast. That's where the beauty of this film lies. Even though you know she is doing all these bad things, you feel bad for her throughout. Even though her husband is a perfect gentleman, a great intellectual with enlightening thoughts about women and love, and who loves her a great, great deal and she's cheating and lying to him. The dark circles under her eyes, her pathetic attempts to gift a diamong ring to him without him knowing it is from her...from the money she earned cheating on him...it was just amazing to me.

I have always had a crib about Hindi Films (amongst a lot of other ones) that they always seem to give a reason for the woman to cheat. Like her husband is mean to her. Or she is forced. Or something along those lines. But in this movie, she absolutely has no reason. She just wants more from life and she is willing to do anything to get it. Sure, she does feel guilty but she does not make any serious attempt to stop it. It is almost like she wants to stop only when her secret is out. She comes clean with her husband in a round-about manner using what-if scenarios. What does he do? Well, for that you have to watch the movie. Maybe it might sound far-fetched to some of us, but it is a believable scenario. Some of the dialogues stay with you long after the movie. Like Om Puri explaining that for the society the woman is not much more than a physical being until she gets pregnant. That's when they start to consider her as something more than a body. Also his discourses on love. That Othello did not love Desdemona if he could kill her for his infidelity. That if he really, truly loved her then he should be able to forgive her no matter what she did.

Now to the performances. Great ones there. Though I am a *big* Om Puri fan, and cannot stand Rekha for the most part, I think this was Rekha's film all the way. She does such a wonderful job. Her expressions, the dark circles under her eyes, her thinking that she could use her beauty and body to achieve things she otherwise could not, her loose choti, even her love-making scenes...she was quite something. The best is of course making the viewer believe in the unwavering love for her husband amidst all her romps! Quite a difficult task but she manages to do it. When I watched this movie of hers, I just had one thought. Her talent seems to be vastly untapped. I remember her dancing with Arshad Warsi in some movie and Anil Kapoor in another trying to look younger and failing so miserably. Why does she have to do that if she could do films like these is beyond me!

Coming to Om Puri. His was the upright role. That of an sensitive lecturer who is not an ordinary man and married to an ordinary but beautiful woman. Hats off to the Mr.Bhattacharya for coming up with such an extra-ordinay and bold story!