Starring Balraj Sahni and Geeta Bali. With music by Salil Choudhary.

How could I—with a well-established reputation for watching films based on a single name I like among the crew and cast—pass up this one? Balraj Sahni is a favourite, as is Geeta Bali. And Salil Choudhary is one of those rare music directors for whom I’ll watch a film (even if I could just as well just listen to a playlist of the songs online).

These three were the reason I watched Sapan Suhaane, and I’ll admit that till more than midway through the film, I was congratulating myself on having stumbled on a hidden gem. Or, if not strictly a ‘gem’, at least a film that was watchable enough. After that…

But to start at the very beginning, when we are introduced to Shankar (Balraj Sahni) and his younger brother Dilip (Chandrashekhar). Shankar and Dilip are stepbrothers, but deeply devoted to each other. Shankar has given up his own comfort, his own prospects, in order to work so that he can finance Dilip’s studies.

Shankar earns a living as a truck driver, his cleaner-cum-pal Bhagwan (Bhagwan) accompanying him wherever they go, singing happily as they drive through the countryside.

It is on one of these trips that Shankar’s truck has a flat tire, and he stops at the garage of a mechanic named Baldev (KN Singh). Baldev isn’t home but his daughter Jamuna (Geeta Bali) is sitting outside, blowing up a bicycle tube with her mouth. She looks cute with her cheeks all puffed up and Shankar is immediately besotted.

Fortunately, it’s not as if this is a one-sided attraction. On subsequent encounters, it emerges that Jamuna reciprocates Shankar’s love. Baldev, however, isn’t eager to marry his daughter off to a truck driver—when Bhagwan suggests a match between Jamuna and Shankar, Baldev is reluctant.

This doesn’t stop Jamuna and Shankar meeting, though; they are too much in love to let her father throw a spanner in the works. This is why, when Shankar needs to travel far on work, Jamuna misses him terribly. She frets, and is so restive, she comes out onto the road in front of her home every time she hears a truck approaching: perhaps Shankar is back?

But no. One of the trucks, instead of rushing past as the others so far have done, slows down and comes to a halt, making Jamuna think this is Shankar. She immediately puts on airs, feigning indifference, to let her beloved know she is miffed at his long absence.

It is not Shankar, though; and the two men—truck driver and cleaner—who get off the truck are predatory. Jamuna manages to shake them off without much difficulty. These two fellows, being in the same occupation, know Shankar well and have realized that Jamuna is sweet on Shankar, but this doesn’t deter them from still lusting after Jamuna. And, worse still, hatching a plan to get their hands on her.

One night, they come over to Baldev’s garage (which is part of his home) and proceed to have a drinking party there, plying a very willing Baldev with lots of strong liquor.

When Baldev has been knocked out, these two worthies pop in next door and from the room where she’s sleeping, they carry off Jamuna. Jamuna screams and fights back, but she is bundled into their truck and they drive off, with her screaming all the way.

Luckily for Jamuna, Shankar has returned; he and Bhagwan are driving along the road when the truck Jamuna is in passes them. Shankar and Bhagwan hear a woman’s screams; Shankar manoeuvres his truck in front of the other one and the two of them set off to rescue Jamuna (though they don’t, of course, realize it’s her until they come up close).

Once the villains have been well and truly thrashed, Shankar takes Jamuna to her home. Baldev is very remorseful—this has happened because of his inability to hold his liquor—and very grateful to Shankar for saving Jamuna. So grateful, in fact, that he agrees there and then to have them married.

So Shankar and Jamuna are married, and Jamuna comes home to stay with her new husband and his younger brother.

Meanwhile, unknown to Shankar (though fairly obvious to everybody else in the neighbourhood), Dilip has been romancing a bhaajiwaali, a vegetable vendor named Bela. They are an item, singing and dancing all over the hillsides, he even bringing her home when Shankar isn’t home. Now that Jamuna has arrived, Dilip tells Bela about her, praising his bhabhi so much that Bela, with her basket of vegetables on her head, comes to their home to have a look for herself.

Jamuna, of course, hasn’t the faintest inkling that this bhaajiwaali is Dilip’s beloved. So, when two neighbours (Leela Misra and Praveen Paul) come calling and suggest a match for Dilip, Jamuna is amenable, and Shankar agrees. After all, Dilip has to get married, and the girl they are told about sounds very eligible.

This match has been brought about thanks to the intervention of Bhagwan, and there’s a story behind this. One day, Bhagwan had noticed Bela sneaking out of Shankar and Dilip’s house while Shankar had been away from home, and so he had gone and collared Dilip. He gave Dilip a talking-to, telling him that he shouldn’t be carrying on with a lowly bhaajiwaali. Shankar gave up everything so that Dilip could get a good education; it is therefore Dilip’s duty to ensure he does everything he can to achieve that goal. Including marrying well.

(Bhagwaan is a worthless, interfering busybody and should get his comeuppance, but doesn’t).

Dilip now reveals himself to be weak-kneed and spineless, easily swayed and incorrigibly greedy. When their neighbour brings a photo of the proposed bride, she also mentions that the girl’s family is wealthy: so well-off, indeed, that they’re willing to finance further studies for Dilip. Perhaps he can go abroad. Dilip succumbs. Yes, he says, when he’s asked for his consent. Yes, he will marry this girl.

He tells Bela this too, and Bela is both heartbroken as well as furious at this betrayal. She had thought they were going to be married. Dilip, however, makes it clear that he only wanted to have some fun, no more.

What next? What of Bela?

Directed by Kedar Kapoor and written by Pandit Mukhram Sharma, Sapan Suhaane is a fairly straightforward, simple film—up to a point. Till the bit I’ve outlined above, it proceeds at a leisurely pace, punctuated by lovely songs; then, suddenly, it goes off the rails. People behave in ways utterly at odds with how they’ve been depicted in the early part of the film; there’s high melodrama; there is a complete reversal of the sweet happiness that is mostly prevalent in the first half of the film.

What I liked about this film:

Balraj Sahni and Geeta Bali as Shankar and Jamuna. Individually, these two (both excellent actors, and very well cast here) are good, but together, they’re even better. There’s a chemistry here, a certain ease and level of comfort which is very real, somehow: you do get the impression that these two are husband and wife. There are arguments between them, suspicion and disagreement—but there is also the sort of deep love that lets them sit together, each engrossed in whatever they’re doing, without talking. Good characterization in this sense, but also very good acting.

And, Salil Choudhary’s superb music (with Shailendra’s lyrics). My favourite songs here are Naam mera Nimmo muqaam Ludhiana (picturized on a vivacious and lovely Helen), Nazar se mil gayi nazar, and Chaand kabhi thha baahon mein; but really, given that this is Salil we’re talking of, there’s really no song that’s bad. What a master this man was.

What I didn’t like:

Spoiler alert:

The way Dilip and Jamuna, both such nice people, both so seemingly level-headed, do about-turns that make no sense. Neither Dilip nor Jamuna struck me (until it all goes south) as being the suspicious or gullible sort; yet, it takes very little by way of gossip from nosey parker neighbours and others to convince both these people that they’re the targets of infidelity from their respective spouses. Dilip’s anger and sense of revenge is so completely off the charts, he ends up attempting murder (well, if not technically, at least ethically). If the character arcs of Dilip and Jamuna had been carefully plotted to show how and why these two became, in such a short length of time, so bitter and suspicious, I might have believed it, but since that doesn’t happen, it just left me feeling terribly unconvinced.

Spoiler ends.

Then, Dilip’s behaviour towards Bela (and her behaviour towards him). What a lout this man is, and what an idiot she is to want to be with him anyway.

Plus, the Bhagwan-Tuntun comic side track. This wasn’t as intrusive as (say) the thoroughly irritating side plot involving Mehmood & Co in Tumse Achha Kaun Hai, but it was needless and didn’t provide any comic relief either. Also, I have begun to feel sorry for Tuntun: in film after film she was made fun of because of her weight, a classic example of sizeist bullying. Poor woman, she went along with it too, though I can imagine how she might have felt when Bhagwan’s character here, after seeing her, tells her “I had heard you looked like a flower, but now that I’ve actually seen you, you look like a cauliflower”. Unfunny, and rude.

Don’t go out of your way to watch this one, or (if you, like me, really like Balraj Sahni and/or Geeta Bali), watch the bit until Naam mera Nimmo ends, then leave off. If nothing else, listen to the songs.