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The rise of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has given an outlet for the exasperation and frustration with the political system faced by the educated middle-class youngsters in this country. Idealism -- hitherto masquerading as apathy -- has found a refuge in politics rather than just activism and literature.
When it comes to Indian movies, until recently, the disillusionment of youngsters with the system was largely reflected as just that, disillusionment. This applied more to Hindi cinema -- both mainstream and parallel -- more than regional films.
In mainstream cinema, it was more of the protagonist becoming a one-man army and banishing the antitheses, gaining acceptance in the minds of viewers. Commercial cinema’s more realistic cousin was interested in the process of how idealism metamorphosed into disenthrallment in the common man’s psyche, which then oscillated between free will and fatalism.
In such films, after exploring and exhausting various options of integrating his ambitions and ideals into the system and faced with the prospect of sinking into passivity, he is forced to opt for vigilantism. However, unlike his doppelganger in mainstream cinema, he almost always ends up self-destructing. The viewer comes in with idealism of his own but takes away only the passivity. We ask ourselves the question: Is political violence the only way to seek justice while preserving our dignity?
The protagonist’s existential angst stems from a sense of injustice, because of not being able to do justice his talent, because of not being able to find employment, or simply because of his position in the pecking order, his desire to climb up the social ladder.
One films that comes to mind here is Gulzar’s directorial debut Mere Apne , which came in 1971, at a time when disgruntlement among youngsters was reaching its peak.
With the death of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, his form of idealism started getting corroded. Government -- the primary source of employment for the youth -- became synonymous with chicanery, nepotism and red tapism.
What would an educated young man do in such a situation? Filmmakers started exploring different ways of showcasing him. There was not much space for the romanticism found in the poetry of Kavi Pradeep and prose of Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, one that got expressed through films like Dharti ke lal and Jagruti .
The children in Jagruti , instilled with patriotic fervour by songs like Sabarmati ke sant tune kar diya kamaal , would have grown up to be youngsters in films like Mere Apne -- unsure of what to do with their lives and finding refuge in violence and ultimately self-destructing. Shakeel Badayuni’s Insaaf ki dagar pe bachchon dikhao chal ke, ye desh hai tumhara, neta tumhi ho kal ke (Tread on the path to justice my children for this is thy country and thou will inherit it) would be out of their moral universe and songs like Sahir’s Ye duniya agar mil bhi jaaye to kya hai (I don’t belong to this venal universe, I have nothing to achieve here) would be part of it.
To present the contrast between the optimism of the previous generation and the cynicism of the present one, Mere Apne is seen through the eyes of someone from the previous generation (Meena Kumari in one of her last films), not literate but educated by any generation’s standards -- though she has only attended a few classes in madrassa . Having married an ace stage actor, she is prepared for the facades she is about to encounter on her first tryst with city life. Though greeted with a culture shock, she manoeuvres her way to conquering the reality.
A remake of Tapan Sinha’s more overtly political Apanjan , the movie takes Allahabad -- the birthplace of India’s first Prime Minister -- as the theatre of moral and political battle. Rival gangs, formed as a result of personal rivalry, indulge in constant acts of one-upmanship to display the inherent machismo.
Muscle power trumps education
One group is shown more educated, and as a result with lesser shades of grey than the other. Its leader Shyam (Vinod Khanna) has a college degree but a brief spell in lock up for a petty brawl with his friend-turned-rival Chaino (Shatrughan Sinha) creates a blot in his professional life. Chaino, on the other hand, is unlettered and understands only the language of violence.
The young muscle men fill up the vacuum created by lack of effective policing by becoming self-appointed custodians of law and order, maintaining and sabotaging it at will.
Both the lead actors were known for having done out and out negative roles and hence made a perfect fit for the roles of two vigilantes.
Politics here is more subdued compared to Apanjan . It is the simmering tensions between the two gangs that take centrestage. However, it is clear that their circumstances provide ideal situation for politicians to further their own ends.
The haal chaal theek hai song , where one group explains predicament of youngsters of the generation was the satire song of the time. It translates to: “But for the fact that we are educated, hungry, unemployed, things are all hunky dory.”
Old lady’s optimism
Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anand -- another film with which Gulzar was associated and which released in the same year as Mere Apne -- is another delightful motif in the film. As soon as the old lady steps into her distant relative’s home, we hear an audio trailer of Anand ; when members of the rival gang clash, we can clearly see Anand ’s poster and when, finally, the old lady bears the brunt of the gang rivalry, we again see the poster.
The unemployed folks -- shown as coming from different parts of the country, including a refugee from Bangladesh who has learnt ventriloquism -- are too caustic to bring out the Anand in them. It is the old lady who plays an Anand here, a beacon of hope to their dark lives. She who treats members of both the gangs as her own, is able to discern a charm even in their unkempt, untidy, uncouth visage. As a delicious irony, Gulzar gives her the name Anandi Devi!
A compassionate lady in the final stages of her life, she is no different from Anand. It is a pleasant revelation that unlike other humble villagers shown in films of that era she is not fatalistic but a go-getter in her own way. A doctor with her own home remedies; a propertied peasant with her own mango grove, one where there are enough fruits for everyone; an intelligent maid with an individuality to adopt those destitute with scarred souls.
If Mere Apne reflected disillusionment with city life at another level, it was Anandi Devi harking back to her silent village life, where she could be content without the need to define her life in terms of money. In a scene before the climax, she expresses her desire to revisit her home.
This undoubtedly was Gulzar’s way of portraying the failed Nehruvian experiment of rapid urbanisation. Feeling excluded because of the widespread power struggle at every level in cities, people feel nostalgic about their past life in villages. However, it is uncertain what is left for them back in those cocoons of ignorance: they have not yet been ameliorated from the feudalism, casteism and superstitions that constitute their very core.
A poet’s politics
The movie was Gulzar’s only attempt at political realism for more than two decades, up to Maachis . As for his other films, there were certain interludes with political undertones, like the Salaam keejiye song in Aandhi , where a group of youngsters take jibes at a politician as she attempts to canvass for votes, However, Gulzar focused more on exploring human emotions with poetry acting as a bridge taking a narrative forward. In that, the poet in him conquered the activist within, until Maachis , where he gave a quasi-realistic depiction of the Khalistan movement and how impressionable youngsters from Punjab got sucked into it.
