|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Gunnarsson, who directed a screen adaptation of Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey in the late 1990s, probably had his interest awakened by the Mumbai rains that he would have encountered during the shoot. In the promo of the upcoming film, he says, "The monsoon is a subject of ritual, prayer, science, speculation, art, music and romance. Some call it the soul of India." He is absolutely
right. But how does Indian cinema reflect this "soul" of the
land? Rain songs and dances have been a regular feature of Hindi films
in particular and the history of our national cinema is replete with
wonderful examples of this celebratory musical form designed to
showcase the romance of the rains.
From Sridevi’s wet blue chiffon in Mr India to Kareena Kapoor’s gossamer yellow sari in 3 Idiots to a Priyanka Chopra in a pale drape in a rain machine-induced setting in Agneepath to Paoli Dam’s flaming-red six-yard delight in this year’s Hate Story — the rains have worked magic on the screen with the female form for decades. And the nation has watched transfixed. Who can ever forget the iconic "Pyaar hua iqraar hua" number from Shri 420, the film that gave us the frozen-forever-in-time black and white image of Raj Kapoor serenading Nargis under an umbrella? Similarly, the memorable "Ek ladki bheegi bhaagi si" in the laugh riot Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi, enhanced by Kishore Kumar’s antics and vocals and a rain-drenched Madhubala’s come-hither charm, is an inalienable part of India’s movie folklore? These are just two of the scores of great rain songs that have captured our collective imagination over the years. However, this "most physical of all seasons", as poet-lyricist Gulzar once described the Indian monsoon, has rarely been more than a stray shower in this country’s cinema. It is only in a handful of films that this season of plenty has been the actual spine of the narrative — rather surprising for a land where "people live and die by the monsoon". How many films like Monsoon Wedding, where the rains play a crucial part, have we produced? Not many. Chameli, which was completed by Sudhir Mishra when its original director and writer Anant Balani died in harness, is a rare mainstream Hindi film that used the Mumbai rains as a physical backdrop for what was essentially an offbeat relationship drama. The filmprincipal tagline says it all: "Two strangers, one stormy night". The male protagonist of Chameli is a well-off investment banker, whose car breaks down in the middle of the night in a south Mumbai alleyway. He encounters a streetwalker in the shadows. The two worlds collide. The well-heeled executive will never be the same again. There is something about stormy nights that make them a perfect backdrop for estranged souls trying to reconnect with each other, as they did in Gulzar’s lyrical Ijaazat and Rituparno Ghosh’s delectably understated chamber drama Raincoat. In Ijaazat, a heavy downpour keeps the estranged couple, who have met by accident after a long hiatus, confined to a waiting room of a small nondescript railway station. The rain becomes a metaphor for clarity as the two characters rummage through their memories of each other to figure out why they parted in the first place. The rain-washed dawn marks a fresh beginning. Raincoat, which also unfolds on a particularly rainy Kolkata day, works on pretty much the same premise, the only difference being that the two central figures in the drama now know so little about each other that their little acts of subterfuge and kindness can only be surprises. A raincoat that the man has borrowed from a friend's wife becomes a repository of secrets that the estranged couple barely understands. One of Amol Palekar’s early films as a director, Thodasa Roomani Ho Jaaye, an adaptation of the American stage and screen hit The Rainmaker, was a delightfully poetic modern-day fairy tale of a ‘magician’ who summons the rain clouds and changes the life of a diffident girl. The rains are, however, not always a benign force. Satish Manwar’s critically acclaimed Marathi film Gabhricha Paus (The Damned Rain), set in drought-prone Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, depicts the plight of a farmer who is constantly at the mercy of the erratic monsoon. The rain, both in its absence and its vagaries, is an integral part of the Gabhricha Paus narrative. On one occasion, it arrives too late for the farmer’s seeds to fully germinate and yield the right results. On another, too much rain adversely affects the farmer’s cotton crop. In an agrarian country, it is only natural for films to underscore the connection between human well-being and the sufficiency of rainfall. The Oscar-nominated Lagaan, which is essentially about the game of cricket and the Indian masses’ engagement with the British rulers of yore, emphasises that reality in no uncertain terms in the song "Ghanan ghanan" that the villagers sing in the hope of hastening the advent of the elusive rains in a terrain where life is tough. In Do Bigha Zameen, made nearly 50 years before Lagaan, a similarly parched village celebrates the onset of monsoon with the song "Hariyala saawan dhol bajata aaya", a Salil Choudhury composition with Shailendra’s evocative lyrics brought alive by the voices of Lata Mangeshkar and Manna Dey. While both Lagaan and Do Bigha Zameen are woven around plots that veer away from the monsoon theme, the rain, or rather the absence of rain, remain a constant reminder of the role that nature plays in dictating the destinies of the have-nots. In a more recent film, Tum Mile, a love story set in the times of the 2005 Mumbai floods, the rains represent a destructive force but they also become the reason for the protagonists to sort out their own differences as they unite in the struggle for survival in a city thrown completely out of gear. Blessed or damned, the rains will, hopefully, never go away from our films even if the Indian monsoon, in reality, takes to inconsistent ways.
|
|||||||
|
|
|||||||
Veteran
