Original and Hatke

28 June 2010
Original and Hatke

I have grown up watching Hindi movies like most of you. They captured my fantasies like sheer poetry on a canvas, leaving me mesmerised. Watching movies was like looking at great works of art. Each one, a masterpiece in its own right with the right medium, perfect strokes and a vivid colour scheme, conveying a meaning deeper. The Black and White images left me spell bound. The progression to Fuji and Eastman colour was exciting and like any other child I marvelled at this technology- the sole aim of which was education and entertainment.

I am a Hindi movie buff and have been enjoying watching movies since the age of maybe five. Beside being in awe of them, I seem to find everything about all of our movies is original - the larger than life characters, the sometimes gaudy sometimes designer costumes, the song and dance sequences, the dialogues, the screenplay, the direction, the 'hatke' treatment and even the “ The end”. Romance, Comedy, Drama or a Thriller, entertainment is guaranteed! As I rack my brains to find something ‘unoriginal’ about our movies, I am at loss even after persistent persuasion. This is how my train of thought goes…

First, the music which is an integral and inseperable part of our movies. The music of our films have added quality to our lives- whether it is the original rendering of yesteryear stalwarts or the ongoing trend of “originally inspired music”. Mukesh singing “ Kisi ki muskurahaton pe hon nisar”, Asha’s “ Katra katra”, Kishore Kumar’s “ Nadiya se dariya”, “Rafi’s yeh chaad sa roshan chehra”, Lata’s-“Lute koi man ka nagar ban ke mera saathi”, S.D., R.D., L.P., Shanker-Jaikisan , Nayyar, Madan Mohan, Kalyanji Anandji to Bappi Lahiri and todays Anu Malik, Jatin Lalit, Shakar Ehsaan loy or A.R Rehman, the music- original, inspired or version, lilting melody or a foot tapping number- will remain a dear part of our lives. The lovely poetry – be it Yeh Kahan aa gaye hum, Mera kuch saaman, Ek ladki ko dekha, Kal ho na ho or even a beedi chalay le, is music to our ears.

The choreography, be it Gopi Krishna with Sandhya in Navrang, P.L. Raj with Vaijayanti Mala for Jewel Thief, or Saroj Khan and Madhuri’s controversial Dhak Dhak, Prabhu deva, or Sridevi, Hemamalini and Waheeda Rehman’s graceful movements, these are people capable of enthralling us. Whether lucid and beautiful, sensuous or vulgar, we never tire of watching some of the most beautifully picturised songs on beautiful faces complete with wind and fog machines, artificial rain, dancers coming out of nowhere in colour co-ordinated clothes, flower showers from helicopters, dramatic body movements and more............ The sets- a thousand pots arranged in symmetry with Jeetendra jumping around, Rishi Kapoor and the revolving C.D in the song Om Shanti Om, the lavish sets of Mughal-e Azam, or a Ranbir Kapoor in an exotic location……… whether an outdoor set inside a studio with quaint little streams and a boat and artificial flowers hanging on trees and Nutan draped in a saree singing-“Woh chaand khila, woh tare hasen”, or a grand palace built outdoors for Jodha Akbar, the songs and dances are nothing but a display of great creativity. They transport you to that different world which is its creator’s imaginative best. Who can forget the symbolic 'coming together of two flowers' or the camera changing its frame to show us the blue sky just when lips are about to be locked!

"Yeh dhai kilo ka haat jab kisi pe padta hai, toh aadmi uthta nahin uthjatahai", Anil Kapoor’s – "Jhaakas", Amjad Khan’s- “Are O Samba kitne aadmi the?”, Amitabh’s “……..mere pas ma hai”, “Mein aaj bji pheke hue paise nahin leta”, “yeh toh mera farz tha” and many many more dialogues, are etched in our minds forever. Nowhere else but on the 70mm screen have I seen characters use lines such as –“Kutte, kamine main tera khoon pi jaoonga”, or “Apni ma ka doodh piya hai toh saamne aa!” I don’t know of any woman who has ever said- “Main tumhare bachhe ki ma banne wali hoon” and has then been swept off her feet filmy style, or an overtly melodramatic bhagwan ke liye mujhe cshod do, nor have any of the men who have fallen prey to somebody’s wrath made statements like- Mard ko dard nahi hota! Hah! Maybe they weren’t men after all!!

The antics of Rajanikant, He-Man Dharamendra pulling back a chopper with ropes, angry young Amitabh and his dishum dishum, Sunny Deol and his telephone –booth ‘ukhadna’, Rajesh Khanna setting of an avalanche with the shot of his gun in Roti, Mithun catching two bullets shot at him in mid-air and hurling them back to kill his enemy............ What more can one ask for? If this isn’t original, what is? Is art, architecture and literature an imitation of life or does life imitate them? Do our films hold a mirror to the society or is our society shaping up under influence of the audio-visual media? A creation however original has to have an inspiration- whether it is drawn from within or from the outside, whether it is Leonardo’s Monalisa or Michealangelo’s David.