The LO Goes to Agra, Part – I

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Some of you who’ve been following this blog over the past few years might know about the LO. The ‘Little One’, my now-nearly-nine year old daughter, has figured prominently in my travelogues over the past several years. She is an enthusiastic traveller, and few things bring her greater joy than to go to new places, stay at nice hotels (yes, a vital part of travel for the LO) and generally let her hair down.

Agra is a place we’ve been meaning to go for a while now. Of course the Taj Mahal is iconic, but there are several other wonderful old monuments in the city that my husband and I wanted to see again, and the LO, from seeing photos of the Taj in school textbooks and elsewhere, was eager as well. What’s more, the LO’s best friend has her nanihaal —her maternal grandparents’ home—in Agra. Every few months, the kid goes off to Agra, and of course tells the LO all about it.

The Taj Mahal on a rainy day
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L’armata Brancaleone (1966)

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Which is literally translated as The Army of Brancaleone, though this Italian film, directed by Mario Monicelli, was marketed to the English-speaking world as For Love and Gold.

Can one list, as a favourite, somebody whose work you’ve only encountered a few times? Is it necessary to view all (or most) of an actor’s films in order to be able to label them a ‘favourite’?

I think not. I hope not, because Vittorio Gassman is one I count among my favourites, even though I’ve watched probably not even ten of his films. And, given that today is Gassman’s birth centenary (he was born in Genoa on September 1, 1922), I decided it was a good day to show some Gassman love.

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Bhoot Bungla (1965)

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The last of the ‘silly Indian films’, at least for now.

I watched Bhoot Bungla for the first time as a child, when it was aired on Doordarshan. I remembered very little of it, except that RD Burman struck me as very funny (even funnier than Mehmood, who—back then—I had still not begun to think of as irritating). And that my mother, sitting beside me and watching Tanuja lip-sync to O mere pyaar aaja, remarked that she (Mummy) used to sing this song as a lullaby for my sister when she was a baby.

Then, when I reviewed Adhey Kangal some time back, a few blog readers observed that the plot was pretty similar to that of Bhoot Bungla.

Time, I decided, for a rewatch.

As the credits roll, an unidentified man screams “Lakshmi!” and having pulled a bloodied dagger out of his chest, proceeds to keel over, dead. A woman (Minoo Mumtaz), presumably Lakshmi, goes running out of the house, clutching a toddler to her, looking panicked.

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Chalti ka Naam Gaadi (1958)

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In response to that unwarranted comment about me ‘wasting my time watching silly Indian films’, I’ve done something (reviewed Bhabhi ki Chudiyaan and Devi) to uphold my contention that all Indian films are not silly. Now it’s time to look at Indian films which are silly, but where the silliness is intelligent, and deliberate.

What, after all, is wrong with silliness, or with humour? For me, the stuffy idea that humour is somehow low is very irritating. Some humour may be unpalatable to certain people (I, for one, find nothing humorous about sexist or racist jokes, or toilet humour), but humour can be sophisticated, it can be the result of a great intelligence.

As, I think, comes through in this delightful film about three brothers, all motor mechanics, who run a garage.

Brijmohan Sharma ‘Bade Bhaiya’ (Ashok Kumar), as he’s known, is the eldest of the three, and he rules with an iron fist in an iron gauntlet.  Bade Bhaiya is a hard taskmaster, and lords it over Jagmohan ‘Jaggu’ (Anoop Kumar) and Manmohan ‘Manu’ (Kishore Kumar), as also their apprentice Maujiya (Mohan Choti). One important aspect of Bade Bhaiya’s personality is his aversion to women: he sees red even when Maujiya hangs up a calendar with a painting of a woman on it.

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Devi (1960)

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When I posted on Twitter about the person who’d advised me to not ‘waste my time’ watching ‘silly Indian films’, a Twitter follower pointed out that Satyajit Ray was also Indian. And I had to concur: Ray, in fact, was the first person who came to my mind as a refutation of that ‘silly Indian films’ generalization. His films are works of art. Occasionally ‘silly’ (Goopy Gyne Baagha Byne fits there), but that silliness is on genius level. It takes brains and creativity to be silly in the way Ray was with that film.

But Devi, ‘The Goddess‘, is nothing like that. There is no silliness here, unless you interpret toxic superstition as silliness.

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Bhabhi ki Chudiyaan (1961)

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Some days back, a blog reader wrote to me (after having recommended several Hollywood films over the past weeks) to tell me that I was ‘wasting my time’ watching and reviewing ‘silly Indian films’.

I was initially too furious to be able to respond, but I eventually wrote back to say how unjustified and insulting this comment was. This, after all, is my blog. Nobody— not my family, not my friends, not the people who might be considered to have some sort of say—tells me what to watch. Recommendations, requests: more than welcome. Judgemental and rude remarks, no. You do not govern how I spend my time.

Once I simmered down a bit, I decided this called for a tribute to ‘silly Indian films’. So, for the duration of August 2022, I’m only going to be focusing on Indian cinema. Not one film from outside India is going to feature on Dustedoff all through this month.

So, to kick off ‘Silly Indian Film Month’, a review of a film I’ve been meaning to watch for a long time now.

Bhabhi ki Chudiyaan begins by introducing us to Mohan (Master Aziz), who lives with his elder brother Shyam (Balraj Sahni). Shyam and Mohan only have each other for family; their mother died giving birth to Mohan, and their father died a few months later. On his deathbed, he entrusted to Shyam the care and bringing up of Mohan. Shyam works as a clerk, and in order to be able to focus on Mohan’s education and upbringing, hasn’t even married. The two brothers somehow make do, but on days such as this—when Shyam has been too busy to make it to Mohan’s school function, where Mohan is getting various prizes—there is angst. Mohan is annoyed and tearful.

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Jeevan Naiyya (1936)

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While I knew of this film, I hadn’t paid enough attention to it until I read Nabendu Ghosh’s Dadamoni: The Life and Times of Ashok Kumar. Jeevan Naiyya, produced by Himanshu Rai and directed by Franz Osten (at a time when there were several European, especially German, technical experts in the Hindi film industry) is not a landmark film in itself, but simply viewed as Ashok Kumar’s first film, this is worth a watch.

The story begins bang in the middle of things. Ranjit (Ashok Kumar) and Lata (Devika Rani) are engaged to be married, and the film begins with a telephone conversation in which they’re cooing sweetly inane nothings to each other. Ranjit’s boisterous friends barge in on this conversation and break it up, but it’s obvious that these two are very much in love with each other, and looking forward to being married.

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The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

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The Hound of the Baskervilles was the first Sherlock Holmes mystery I read: an abridged version of the book was there in our home when I was a child, and since I was a voracious reader, always looking for ‘new’ books, I read it fairly early on. Later, I slowly made my way through whichever other Holmes stories I came across, and finally, in my twenties, I bought the complete Sherlock Holmes, the omnibus edition. There are many Holmes stories that I like a lot, but this one, I must admit to a special fondness for.

When Popka Superstar mentioned this film the other day (as part of a list of favourite Christopher Lee films), I decided it was high time I watched it.

The film begins with a voiceover, a narrator describing a scene set many years earlier. Near Dartmoor, abutting the Great Grimpen Mire, lives the dissolute, debauched Sir Hugo Baskerville (David Oxley). On a dark night, he and his equally evil friends are whooping it up at Baskerville Hall; they’re drunk and in the mood for cruelty. Baskerville has forced his butler’s daughter upstairs and locked her in a room; when the butler protests, Baskerville thrashes him…

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Kati Patang (1970)

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Our recent trip to Nainital prompted me (actually, even before we left on our trip) to read Gulshan Nanda’s novel Kati Patang. Gulshan Nanda, for those who may be unfamiliar with his work, wasn’t just a hugely successful writer of Hindi social-romantic popular fiction, but also a script writer for Hindi cinema: he wrote the scripts (many of them based on his own novels) of blockbusters like Saawan ki Ghata, Khilona, Kati Patang, and Jheel ke Us Paar. This insightful article about Nanda’s writing, as well as its adaptation to the big screen, is worth a read.

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Ten of my favourite Sheila Vaz songs

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RIP, Sheila Vaz.

This post is a little late in coming—Sheila Vaz passed away on June 29—but by the time I learnt of her passing, I was just about to post the first of my Nainital-Corbett travelogues, and knew that it would anyway take me at least a couple of days to compile a suitable tribute to one of Hindi cinema’s best dancers. So I decided to go ahead with that, and come back to this.

Sheila Vaz, without my knowing it, was probably one of the very first Hindi film dancers I ever saw onscreen: the first Hindi film I remember watching was CID, which I was taken to see when I was about nine. And there, lip-syncing to Leke pehla-pehla pyaar was this unabashedly effervescent woman, her eyes sparkling and her movements graceful. I won’t say that image stayed with me; I have no recollection of the song from back then. But Sheila Vaz became, years later when I grew much more devoted to Hindi cinema, one of my favourites. Besides the fact that she was so graceful and so emotive, I loved one thing that struck a chord with me: she was, like me, somewhat plus size. I’ve always been overweight, and have faced a lot of derision, hurtful ‘ribbing’ and more, for it: and here was Sheila Vaz, by no means a size zero, but undeniably beautiful and successful—I loved her the more for that.

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