When Dharmendra passed away earlier this year, it struck me that while I have watched many of his films—from both before and after 1970, the cut-off year for my blog—I have reviewed relatively few. I decided, therefore, to make amends. By watching, for instance, Aaye Din Bahaar Ke and Aaya Saawan Jhoomke. Here’s another one, teaming Dharmendra with one of his more frequent co-stars, Sharmila Tagore.

The story begins on a road where Sunil (?) is walking along with his father, Hari Ram (?). Daddy, walking in the middle of the road [? Why? Also, you know what’s going to happen when a character walks in the middle of the road], is hit by a car, and the next we see, he’s dying in hospital, with Sunil, Sunil’s younger sister, and their mother (Achla Sachdev) looking gloomily on while a policeman tries to get Daddy’s final testimony. Daddy manages to gasp out an accusation: Seth Vishwanath has murdered him; the car accident was no accident. He dies, and the cop goes off to arrest Sethji.

Sethji (?) has either had a tip-off or is realistic enough to guess what’s coming. He has a hurried conversation with his friend and confidant Ajit (Rehman). All his business, as well as his little daughter Anita, he hands over into Ajit’s care. There is one other instruction: on no account must Ajit allow Sethji’s estranged (and pregnant) wife anywhere near Anita. Ajit promises.

Years later, Ajit is not only looking after the business interests of Anita (now Sharmila Tagore) but is also trying to get her interested in him [given that he took charge of her when she was a child, and that he was her father’s friend and probably old enough to be her father, this is icky]. He spares no opportunity to flirt with Anita, but she gives him the cold shoulder or tries to deflect his attentions.

… especially as she has fallen in love with Sunil (now Dharmendra). The first time Sunil sees Anita is at the studio of an artist friend of his, Bharti (?), for whom she is modelling. Sunil catches one glimpse of her and is bowled over. In whispers, he asks Bharti who she is, and Bharti says, dismissively, that she’s a model whom he picked up somewhere for this particular artwork. Sunil assumes she’s poor, and before leaving, slips Anita a five rupee note.

When he’s gone, Anita laughs over the incident with Bharti and warns him not tell Sunil the truth about her: that she’s an heiress. Let him believe I’m poor, she says: I’ll have some fun at his expense. Later, when Anita has begun dating Sunil, she admits to her friend and companion, Meena (Mumtaz), that she feels even more deeply about Sunil because his love is sincere. Because he thinks she’s poor, he is not—like the many other men who fawn over her—after her money.

But for now, she’s not going to be telling Sunil who she really is.

It’s not easy, though, to carry on a charade of this sort when you’re dating someone. Anita ends up spinning a series of lies to keep Sunil in the dark: that she works as a maid in a wealthy household, and all her fine sarees and heavy jewellery are hand-me-downs or borrowed from her generous mistress. One day when Sunil insists on escorting Anita to her home (she says she lives in the garage of this palatial mansion), Anita is forced to pretend that Meena—who emerges just then—is her mistress.

Meena plays along, to the extent that some days later, when Sunil and Ajit both arrive at the mansion simultaneously (and she knows that Ajit will be furious if he discovers that Anita is dating Sunil), she tells Sunil surreptitiously that Ajit is her fiancé; and she tells Ajit (also surreptitiously) that Sunil is her fiancé. Why on earth? Why not invent a completely unromantic reason for each man to be at the mansion?

One day, Anita inadvertently listens in on a conversation and discovers that Meena is not quite the innocent and loyal friend she had imagined: she is a plant. No, not a green-leaved one, but a spy for Ajit. Ajit was the one who had introduced her to Anita, and all this while she has been keeping an eye on Anita. And reporting back to Ajit. Anita is very hurt about Meena’s betrayal [such hypocrisy, from someone who is doing all she can to keep Sunil in the dark about who she really is]. She confronts Meena, Meena breaks down and is remorseful—and they kiss and make up, with Meena promising to give Ajit a taste of his own medicine.

In the meantime, Anita has also met Sunil’s mother and his sister Mohini (Snehlata). Both of them are very eager to have Anita as daughter-in-law/sister-in-law ASAP.

Also in the meantime, another person has appeared on the scene: Ramesh (Santosh Kumar?) is a very old and very good friend of Anita’s, so when he arrives in India from a stint abroad, she goes to the airport to receive him—and there bumps into Sunil and his family. It turns out [this has to be the unlikeliest coincidence of all] Ramesh is Mohini’s fiancé. Um. Given that Ramesh is such a good friend of Anita’s, why hasn’t he yet told her of his engagement?

With Ramesh in town, Anita decides to host a party. Sunil, of course, is invited, to Meenaji’s party. There, however, he bumps into his boss (Brahm Bhardwaj), who wants to know how Sunil happens to know the wealthiest heiress in town… and, to cut a long story short, the cat is out of the bag. Sunil realizes he’s been duped, and is livid.

What now happens is a whole series of hissy fits and I’m-going-to-have-my-revenge stuff as Sunil seethes, Anita simpers and tries to woo him back with coy smiles, and Meena comes up with the most woolly-headed ideas to charm Sunil back to Anita’s side. All of them backfire, and it is seriously beginning to look as if the Anita-Sunil romance is a thing of the past.

But there’s more. Remember Anita’s father’s instruction about his pregnant wife? That woman is still alive. And so is the child she bore.

If you’d rather not watch the film (and I would strongly advise against watching it), just let me know and I will tell you what happens next.

What I liked about this film:

The music, by Laxmikant-Pyarelal, with lyrics by Majrooh Sultanpuri. Every single song in Mere Humdum Mere Dost is a classic, from the title song to Chalo sajna jahaan tak ghata chale to Allah yeh ada kaisi hai in haseenon ki, to Chhalkaaye jaam to Hui shaam unka khayaal aa gaya. Humein toh ho gaya hai pyaar may not be as well-known as the other songs, but it’s still a good one, and one of the rare Lata ‘cabaret’ style songs.

And, the beauty of Sharmila Tagore and Dharmendra. And of Mumtaz, too, who is cute as a button.

What I didn’t like (hold on to your seats; this is a long list)

The sheer lack of logic through much of it. Why would you think that a girl, just because she’s a model, is automatically dirt-poor? Why would a girl so poor she lives in a garage and wears her mistress’s hand-me-downs have all the time in the world to gallivant about rather than be working? (Also, if her mistress is so very generous, why does poor Anita live in the garage?)

Then, the utterly inappropriate title of this film. Your dearest friend, your kindred spirit, your soulmate: is a person you trust, a person you confide in. Not someone you believe the worst of (and this happens again and again, both on Sunil’s part and on Anita’s). Both Anita and Sunil, too, are emotionally rather immature, and seem to think romance consists of singing nice songs. Their love story is basically one string of songs and misunderstandings, the latter mostly stemming from bad ideas.

Instead of telling him at the outset that she let him believe her poor because she suspects all men of chasing her for her wealth, Anita chooses to try and coax Sunil out of his fury by pulling a fast one on him and staging an engagement, basically ‘trapping’ him into a formal bond. And when that only serves to get him even more angry, she happily acquiesces to Meena’s harebrained idea: snuggle up to Ramesh to get Sunil jealous so that he comes right back to Anita. Guess where that goes.

Then, the icky age-gap-but-still-trying. There’s Ajit, who took over as Anita’s guardian when she was a child but is pursuing her. There is also Sunil’s idiotic pal Dhand (Om Prakash, in one of his more annoying roles), who has a grown-up daughter but spends a good deal of his time trying to flirt with Meena. Ugh.

Also, the slip-ups and plot holes and total lack of attention to detail. For example, why does Bharti sign his paintings ‘S. Kumar’? [because S. Kumar is credited with the paintings in the film; in which case why not give the painter character a name that began with S? Not rocket science]. Also, who is the little kid Sunil and Mohini’s mother is seen tending to in a very motherly sort of way? Since Mohini and Sunil are both unmarried, this is obviously not a grandchild. And since it has at least been fifteen years since Hari Ram died, and the kid is definitely only about four or five years old… samajhne waale samajh gaye hain, as they say.

Director Amar Kumar (who also wrote the screenplay) was the man who directed the sensitive Garam Coat; who’d have thought?

Basically, despite the good cast, the excellent music, and the big names in the crew (Hrishikesh Mukherjee as editor, Rajinder Singh Bedi as dialogue writer), this one’s a dud. Do not watch.

I think I need to watch another Dharmendra-Sharmila film to get over this one. Perhaps Anupama.