(Coincidentally enough, I watched Aaye Din Bahaar Ke some weeks back, just after I’d posted my review of Phool aur Patthar. Back then I’d not known that we would be mourning the passing of Dharmendra so soon after. Consider this a tribute).

When I watched Phool aur Patthar some weeks back, I was reminded of the many fairly entertaining films Dharmendra worked in through the mid- and late-1960s. Not all of them were good (some, like Chandan ka Palna, were terrible), but quite a lot of them had at least good songs, a fair deal of entertainment value, and an undeniably handsome male lead to make them worth at least a one-time watch. Some of these (like Aankhen, arguably my favourite Dharmendra film) I’ve reviewed already; there are several others.

Here’s one. I last watched Aaye Din Bahaar Ke perhaps about 20-odd years ago, and actually remembered a fair bit of it. That I didn’t mind watching it again, even though the film is far from perfect, says a lot for it.

The story begins in Darjeeling, where Ravi (Dharmendra) lives with his widowed mother (Sulochana Latkar). Ravi is devoted to his mother: so much so that when Ma is doing her pooja, he tells her, “You may worship your gods, but I will worship only you.” She has devoted her life to looking after Ravi, educating him, etc, which is why this somewhat OTT sentiment.

Ravi is a college student and is looking for ways to earn some money on the side; one of his professors manages to arrange for him to tutor a girl named Kanchan (Asha Parekh). What Ravi doesn’t realize is that he has already met Kanchan—they had a run-in the other day by the riverbank, where Ravi and his friend Anmol Ratan (what a name; Rajendra Nath) were fishing when a fish Ravi had caught landed on Kanchan and there was an uproar: angry shrieking on her part [and Asha Parekh could be seriously shrill when given the chance] and flippant teasing on his.

As it happens, when Ravi goes for his new tutoring assignment, he’s combed his hair down and is wearing a rather sombre outfit quite different from his usual leisurewear . This is why, when Kanchan’s father (Raj Mehra) introduces him to Kanchan and Kanchan subsequently comes close to throwing a fit [and him out of the house with it], Ravi is able to think on his feet and tell her—convincingly enough—that he’s the level-headed, sensible one of two twins: she must have met his frivolous brat of a brother, Prakash. [This sounds like it might have inspired Golmaal, though of course this trope of a man pretending to be two diametrically different men, for the benefit of his ladylove, is an old one: see Paying Guest, for instance].

To cut a long story short, much mayhem ensues, as Ravi tries to pretend to be two men, and Kanchan falls more and more in love with ‘Ravi’ while wanting to make sure ‘Prakash’ gets his just deserts. Of course, the farce doesn’t last long, and when she discovers the truth, Kanchan teaches Ravi a lesson. He ends up traipsing through the chilly Darjeeling air clad only in a wicker basket [in the aftermath of this song]…

… and gets a fever, which brings a worried Kanchan rushing to him. And romance blossoms.

Everything is tickety-boo. They’re singing songs, mooning about the tea gardens, and—with the blessings of Kanchan’s parents and Ravi’s very grateful mother—now preparing to get married. At the engagement party, people have come from far and wide, among them an old auntie of Kanchan’s (Leela Misra). As soon as this old lady is introduced to Ravi’s mother, she looks puzzled, and then shocked. This woman is Jamuna Devi, right? And she belongs to Ambala, right? And she became an unwed mother, and fled town to avoid the shame…!

The horror and humiliation of it all is too much for Ravi.

He barely stops to say goodbye to Kanchan; then, taking his mother home, he raves and rants at her, screaming that he wished he’d never been born. He decides he must go to Ambala to find his father. [This, mind you, from a man who doesn’t know his father’s name and hasn’t seen even one photograph of him, though Jamuna actually keeps a portrait photo of the two of them—Ravi’s father played by Balraj Sahni—in her Ramayana].

Having heaped invective on his mother, Ravi leaves. Ma, distraught, runs out into the street (where a storm has just begun), running through wind and rain after Ravi, calling for him, but he’s gone.

Ravi washes up in Ambala, where he’s busy drowning his sorrows in drink when a fellow tippler takes pity on him and drags him off to a kotha. Here, the tawaif is in the middle of her dance when her baby starts crying from an adjacent room. She ignores it at first, but increasingly upset by her child’s distress, begs to be excused so that she can feed her baby. Ravi is understanding but the other man starts abusing the woman: “a woman who probably doesn’t even know the name of her baby’s father”—

This, of course, infuriates Ravi, who immediately beats the man up, badly enough to get arrested and hauled up in court. And who should the presiding judge be but a man who, in the course of a courtroom conversation with Ravi, discovers that Ravi’s mother is called Jamuna Devi and that she used to live in Ambala.

Being the upright judge he is, he sentences Ravi to jail, but then comes and bails him out too [this is the last we hear of Ravi’s sentence. Bail, as far as I know, is not a substitute for a prison term; just a guarantee that the accused will not vanish. Not in this film]. He tells Ravi that surely Ravi has mistaken his mother; that there must be more to this, etc etc. He will personally accompany Ravi back to Darjeeling to find out the truth from Jamuna. [We, having had a ringside view—a glimpse of that photo in the Ramayana—can guess at the truth, but Ravi doesn’t even suspect].

The two men travel to Darjeeling. There, when he gets to his home, Ravi hears devastating news from a neighbour: Jamuna had run out in his wake that day and had ended up jumping into the river. She is dead. Ravi’s sorrow is mixed with anger; his mother is still to blame, as far as he’s concerned.

The neighbour, however, seems to have been Jamuna’s confidant. She tells Ravi that Jamuna was blameless; her only sin was to trust the man who let her down—after having married her secretly in a temple, because she was poor and his parents opposed the match.He promised to fetch Jamuna to live with him, but he disappeared and a pregnant Jamuna, unable to face his betrayal, came away to Darjeeling. She was absolutely chaste.

This revelation serves to restore Jamuna’s status in Ravi’s eyes, but he now has it in for that unseen, unnamed, unknown father who ditched him and his mother, leaving them to face the consequences of his cowardice. Ravi is determined to track the man down and have his revenge.

Before he goes off again to Ambala, though, Ravi calls on Kanchan. When he gets to her home, he finds that it’s being decorated, and there’s much hustle and bustle. The old servant directing operations outside tells him that Kanchan is getting married soon.

Disillusioned and grumpy, Ravi goes off in a huff [a huffy Ravi leaving someone after a misunderstanding is a common scenario in this film, and more so, without listening to any explanations]. Meanwhile, the servant has told Kanchan what had happened, and Kanchan is very upset: the servant knows she doesn’t want this wedding; she is being forced into it.

She runs after Ravi, but he’s already taken the train to Ambala.

… So Kanchan heads there too. And sets about wandering through the streets of Ambala, in search of Ravi [why do people in Hindi cinema do this? Isn’t it a chancy, time-consuming and foolish way of trying to find someone? Why not go to the police {in this case, given Ravi now has a criminal record, it might actually be a good way of finding him}]. Kanchan doesn’t find him, but in the process—while running in the middle of a road, inviting an accident—she gets hit by a passing car.

The nurse (Nazima), Rachna, who attends to her is a generous sort. When she discovers that Kanchan is running a fever and is all alone in this city, Rachna immediately offers to play host. Kanchan should stay with her; she’s lonely, and she would love to have a ‘sister’ around. Kanchan agrees, and soon these two are thick as thieves. Kanchan tells Rachna all about her quest to find her beloved (whom, of course, she never gets around to naming, even to a dear friend) …

If you’ve seen even a dozen commercially hit Hindi films of the 60s, you will be able to guess how complicated and rife with coincidences this is going to get.

What I liked about this film:

The songs, written by Anand Bakshi and composed by Laxmikant-Pyarelal. There are some melodious ones here, among my favourites being Suno sajna papihe ki (ke aaye din bahaar ke); Khat likh de; Ae kaash kisi deewaane ko; and Mere dushman tu mere dosti ko tarse. This, actually, was the first time I really paid attention to the lyrics of Mere dushman tu meri dosti ko tarse—and was quite impressed with the ingenuity of the curses Anand Bakshi weaves into those lyrics. As a song of bitterness flung at one’s nemesis, this would be breathtakingly nasty; as a song addressed in public to someone one only suspects of underhand work, it is simply very rude and unfair.

Overall, the film is not horrendous—and the initial bit, the romantic comedy revolving around the Ravi-Kanchan-‘Prakash’ angle, is entertaining enough. Both Dharmendra and Asha Parekh are good at this sort of frothy fluff, and there are pretty vistas, hummable songs, and a generally good-looking lead pair.

What I didn’t like:

The melodrama. (I was going to write ‘the predictable script’ and ‘the numerous coincidences’, but I realize that in Hindi films of this type, this was par for the course and one should take it in one’s stride; Sachin Bhowmick—who wrote the story and screenplay for Aaye Din Bahaar Ke—was only keeping up with the trend). Melodrama, too, is to be expected. But the problem here is that both Dharmendra and Asha Parekh play characters who go through much stress, and that none too gracefully. There is much weeping and wide eyes and quivering lips on both sides, and director Raghunath Jhalani isn’t able to rope it in.

And, the irritating presence of Rajendra Nath. (He is tolerable in some films, but this isn’t one of them. Here he is unnecessary, and silly. What’s with that suit, too?!)

Rather like Phool aur Patthar, Aaye Din Bahaar Ke isn’t an awful film, but it’s not great either. By virtue of a fairly ebullient first half-hour or so, plus better songs, I would rate this higher than Phool aur Patthar.