Desi Train

I have a crutch this evening. Bottles of Beer. I realize it is to pass the “boredom” (each and every channel on Desi TV) peacefully… silently. But in the days, when beer was above my age limit it was Bollywood. To me this all means… you are born with it. Whether you will become a drunk asshole or a film fanatic. Both though lead to the same desitination. Disaster.

And it was the same destination of the producers. Many many financiers of those darn 80s and 90s. On one hand, from a different point of view, I feel pity. These producers sold everything they had, borrowed as much as they could, pawned their wife’s jewelry (case in point: N.Chandra for Ankush), begged at the feet of the then stars… to give them the required dates before the dawn of utter ruin, beat every door they could… to achieve their goal… make a movie.

And yet, all this went into the belief that the films (which were a 100% purified trash) would find the success and give them a decent bank and black balance. Then I realize that making a film for all these (or most of these) people was nothing beyond playing a lottery. Their strife and pain to make a movie had nothing to do with art, their non-existent love for cinema and its quality. It was pure lust for making money.

The initial pity for these kind… vaporizes. DIE you mother fuckers! DIE!

And I’m not sure what shit did the producers of Main Khilona Nahin may have had to go through. Perhaps they didn’t. It was a pure attempt to make money. Nothing wrong with making money. Everyone or atleast most want to make money. But not everyone barges into a bank to rob and get rich.

The poster above should tell it all. What the intentions of the team of Main Khilona Nahin (MKN) were. The film starred Kajal Kiran who came with a bang, in Hum Kisise Kum Naheen, in 1977. My family and I were in the then Madras (it is called Chennai now). The train back to Bombay (it is called Mumbai now) left in the evening. With a whole day to kill we decided to entertain ourselves by going out and watching a movie (it is called surdard now). Two options. Dulhan Wohi Jo Piya Man Bhaye or Hum Kisise Kum Nahin. Since my family believes in a family, we went for DWJPMB inspite of my cries to watch HKKN. Cause I always went for movies that had dishum dishum. And even at the age of seven, I could bet my ass, that DWJPMB would not have anything close to a slap.

Anyways, back to Kajal Kiran who after HKKN, progressed steadily from A to B grade movies to C grade and finally disappeared. Ironically her last movie was called Aakhri Sanghursh (Hinglish: Last Struggle) directed by the late Narendra Bedi who made real good movies in his lifetime like Benaam, Rafoo Chakkar, Jawani Diwani.

The hero of the movie, Main Khilona Nahin, was Puneet Issar. Issar, like Kajal Kiran, started with a bang… which unfortunately resulted in Mr. Amitabh Bachchan landing in hospital fighting for his life. Issar’s miscued punch hurt Bachchan-saab so bad, that the whole nation prayed together, an event never seen since 1948…. Gandhi-jee’s assassination. Issar though managed to keep himself intact even when the entire nation went against him. He started doing B grade movies (well he had no choice, everything in those days was B Grade)… and found his glory, five years later when he played Duryodhan in B.R.Chopra’s tele-serial Mahabharat. He recently directed the Salman Khan starrer Garv : Pride and Honor in which he squeezed all that he had learned and experienced as an actor in C to Z grade movie filmography.

Which leads me to a minor momentary tangent. 20 years from now when we look back, perhaps, we will be saying the same things about Salman Khan. Except for a few Rajshri productions and of course “Maine Pyar Kiya” and “Andaz Apna Apna”… perhaps most of his movies will be listed by cine fans, 20 years from now, as B and C grade stuff… and that to me is a sad waste of talent… someone who started with so much potential, just got sick, bored and tired of the medium or perhaps got too caught up in stardom in his own way.

The Torture Series continues…

MAIN KHILONA NAHIN (1985)

MKN was produced by one Mohan T Gehani and directed by one Qamar Narvi, who have given us quite a few films, many of which/all of which - you may not have heard of, but it is quite important and essential to list the names of these movies that find their place in the books of Hindi Cinema history. The movies that came from either or both of these esteemed gentlemen are listed below. For the convenience of the present generation that may be unable to read a movie title if it doesn’t contain an “English slogan” below the title, I’ve made the necessary arrangements :

Badnaam Farishte a.k.a. Angels gone bad a.k.a. Infamous Angels

Meri Izzat Bachao a.k.a. Me Rape Save Me a.k.a. Save my Raping

Kasam Kali Ki a.k.a. Promise of Black Woman /or, maybe/ Promise of Goddess Kali

Rahemdil Jallad a.k.a. Evil Man Soft Heart

Adi-vasi Queen a.k.a. Half Smelly Queen

Raja Ranis Love In Jungle a.k.a. One King Many Queens doing chitti chitti bang bang in the Jungle

And then producer Gehani’s undoing love for the word Bijlee shows up in his produced -

Daku Bijlee a.k.a. Dacoit Bijlee (perhaps a social docu-drama on dacoits in India who are named ‘Bijlee’)

Bijlee Aur Toofan a.k.a. Lightening and Storm (perhaps a joint collaboration with National Geographic to study thunderstorms in India /or maybe/ a sequel to Daku Bijlee… Part 2)

Bijlee Aur Badal a.k.a. Lightening and Clouds (perhaps another joint collaboration with National Geographic to study Lightening and Clouds in India… /or perhaps/ a sequel to the sequel Daku Bijlee… Part 3)

For the above works and those not listed above, both Narvi and Gehani find their names permanently “itched” in the history books of Hindi Cinema. And so does the word Bijlee. To honor this portion of Cinematic history, I have humbly and with utmost respect tagged this post as… Bijlee.

I don’t remember much of the details of this movie. What I remember is this movie begins with a biker gang of women led by Kajal Kiran. Black leather jackets, steel buttons and of course the Indian touch. A long red tikka gracing their foreheads. The goal of this biker gang was to catch the bad people and literally slash their noses off. I swear I’m not making any of this up. That’s how their movie begins.

But there’s always a story behind the story. So it seems that Puneet Issar and Kajal Kiran were husband and wife. Then like it happens… Mr. Issar has to go out on a business trip. I think he sold kaccha banian in the movie, so am not sure what business trips do kachcha and banian selllers undertake. Anyway it’s not important.

What’s important to note is that, as soon as Issar leaves, the villains enter the scene and rape Kajal Kiran. The camera focusses on Kajal Kiran’s face during the rape scene and as a viewer it was difficult for me to make out if the humanly impossible stretching and contracting of Kajal Kiran’s face muscles meant whether she was performing the rape scene or whether she had diarrhea and was holding it real hard, so that the villains could finish their scene and she could run to the bathroom in the studio. Expressions those days were supposed to give the Indian audience a hardon. So every rape scene (which appeared in practically every movie in the 80s) had the close up shot of the female’s face shoulder up and she went through her diarrhea-tic face expressions. I tell ya. The Indian audience of the 80s was quite sick. They got turned on by looking at women suffering from diarrhea.

For those bloggers born post ‘85 and who scream and shout at every Yash Raj movie being the same while watching it from the comforts of their cushion seats in a full on A/C multiplex… here’s the kicker… EVERY movie was the same in the 80s that we watched from seats that were more like commodes in theaters. Theater which had fans running in slow motion. I never understood why they even bothered to switch on the fans. The damn fans would run so fucking slow they couldn’t even fan themselves!

Back to Kajal Kiran. After the rape is done and the villains leave, the 80s offered only two choices to raped heroines. (A) Suicide (B) Join a bikers gang

Wait.

If you choose (B), you still have to die in the end.

So practically speaking the heroines had no choice. They could die immediately or they could torture us audience for 3 hours and then die. FUCKING BITCH!!! So it comes as no surprise that Ms. Kajal Kiran decides to torture us. Muroongi magar torture karke muroongi

One of the villains in the movie was Raza Murad. And boy what a tragedy to see him in such crap. Actually he did a lot of such crap. Here was an actor with a gifted booming boombox voice, that matched and even at times aced over the booming voice of Amitabh Bachchan. The two were seen in Ek Nazar. Murad in that movie was full of confidence and his booming voice in top notch form. Bachchan had still not discovered or perhaps yet to master the voice modulation quality that he came to be known for. A few years later they both were seen in Namak Haram. By this time, Bachchan had the booming voice completely in his grip, while Murad’s, though still impressive, had it’s edges coming off. Discipline has been one of Bachchan’s forte. For even today in his mid sixties he retains that voice quality. Murad’s though eased off very shortly. There was still that spark of a boom, but it was a hit or a miss thing now.

Back to the story, Ms. Kajal Kiran leaves home and joins the bikers’ gang that slashes noses of rapists, thieves, the usual zulmis. So when Puneet Issar comes back from his chaddi baniyan business trip he is informed by the nosy neighbors about what happened and which results in Mr. Issar discarding Ms. Kiran (please don’t even think of asking Why? What? etc.).

So Issar discards Kajal Kiran and then discards his kachcha chaddi baniyan lay lo business. And becomes an official alcoholic who sings in his drunk stupor while looking at Ms. Kalpana Iyer who’s sitting on a roof top and decorated enough by the director to make sure she looks like a prostitute. One would have to be real dumb not to realize that Ms. Iyer going “Aja Aja” to Mr. Issar is a prostitute, with or without her carrying 10kgs of powder and lipstick makeup and a plunging neckline exposing one third of her left breast and one third of her right breast.

Anything above one third of breast exposure, in those days, was censored by the respectable Censor Board of India. I imagine, there was one person with a measuring tape in the censor board office measuring the exposed lemons or water melons that came in each and every movie in those days. I’m pretty sure this Censor Board Measuring tape official is the guy who at nights wrote 32 page novels like Mohalle mein Chudai, Rani key Lay Lee and a thousand such titles and then had them sold to us poor school and college students. Talk about corrupting the Indian youth. It started probably right at the Censor Board’s door step!

But then I guess, anyone who’s job is to carry a measuring tape and measure the entire breasts and then measure the exposed part of the breasts and then use an almost broken down Casio calculator to measure if the exposed breast part is one third or less of the whole breast, must be a very sexually frustrated person.

Strangely enough it was the late Raj Kapoor who broke the one third rule with Mandakini in Ram Teri Ganga Maili which… surprise surprise release the same year of MKN… 1985. Only Raj Kapoor could beat the Censor Board at their own game and I have no clue how he did it.

Anyways, back to Main Khilona Nahin (MKN)… since the whole point of the esteemed director and producer of MKN was to provide sexual release a.k.a. cheap titillation we are bombarded with sexual comic scenes and a few songs.

I would certainly like to see the look on the music director (Anwar Usman) and the singers’s (Chandrani Mukherjee and Mohammed Aziz) faces when they composed and sang this song for the movie:

Saabun bina gora badan kaise hoyi

If this song was supposed to be sexy I would like to know what the hell was the heroine doing - holding a big ass Lifebouy soap in the shower while singing a song on sex?

On the other hand the song reveals the mystery to having white skin. Use Soap. And I had no clue until this point, that Lifebouy had moved from their Tandurusti business to Gora Badan business.

But on a serious note, to me that bathing with a big soap scene meant that the director was trying to impress on some point. Perhaps he was trying to say, that all non-white people on mother earth, do not use soap for a bath. I was aghast, went home and cried in front on Ma in Dharmendra-paaji’s tone “Ma… tune mujhe pundhra saal bewakoof banaya. Mujhe kaha, yeh saabun hain… but it is something else… tu nahin chahti thi ke main gora banoon” The real in life scene ended with Ma’s tight slap on my left cheek and the saabun doubt immediately evaporated from my peanut sized brains.

Back to the movie, which continued on it’s various stupidities and reaches the climax where the male villains along with the female villain hold a bunch of kids at gun point and Ms. Kajal Kiran and Mr. Puneet Issar are at the other end. Yes the movie also had a female villain. Long time Gujarati theater actress Nayan Bhatt, for whatever unknown reason ended up playing the villainess who gets, naturally, her nose slashed midway through the movie.

Husband and wife fight the villains, destroy them, Ms. Kiran follows Rule (B) dies in the end.

Such was the state of the movie, that even during the worst period of Bollywood, this movie could manage only a morning show release. Even substandard distributors had their standards, and this one, it seems was way below their existing low standards.

So if the new age bloggers are banging their heads over Bachna Ae Haseeno… RELAX!!! We Gen X have suffered a lot worse. We’ve been to hell and back. Bachna Ae Haseeno atleast offers you some timepass, and if not, enjoy the multiplex, the crowd, the food et. all!

Up Next: Mawaali (1983) starring Jeetendra, Jaya Pradha, Sridevi

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Filed under Bollywood, Memories Re-brewed
Tags : Bijlee, Kajal Kiran, Puneet Issar, The Torture Series.

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