Mera Gaon Mera Desh (1971) or Sholay Lite

As part of Beth Loves Bollywood‘s international mandate,  7 days of 70’s, a week-long festival of any and all things 70’s from Bollywood, I offer to you my readers, Mera Gaon Mera Desh (1970) somehing I like to call Sholay Lite!  
 

This film is a delightful mix of  some of the 70’s most delicious masala staples: orphans, dacoits, bandits, dancers, damsels in distress, amputated limbs, music by Laxmikant-Pyarelal,  Anand Bakshi as lyricist,  playback singing by Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammad Rafi, and starring Dharmendra, Asha Parekh,  Vinod Khanna, Laxmi Chhaya, and Jayant.

Now let me take you on a visual walk through Mera Gaon Mera Desh.  We start with Ajit (Dharmendra) as a pick pocket, caught and put on the stand, explaining his fate to the judge and jury…

Ajit gets a chance after serving a light sentance to start over in a small village to where he’s been summoned by  a one armed Hawaldaar-Major Jaswant Singh (Jayant).  Ajit carries a coin that he flips to help him make major life decisions, and it flipped to the side that made him agree to go to the little town. But why?  Why would the one armed man want orphan?

Maybe to help him with some farm work.  That seems to be the reason. Then Ajit hangs out partying with the villagers, and Jayant’s character doesn’t like this and dekh what happens:

Such ugliness! Such mean words!  That’s the limit!  So he tells Ajit to leave, but then has to change his mind:

Enter bad guy, dacoit, and bandit extrodinaire, Thakur gone bad, Jabbar Singh! I’m telling you Vinod Khanna was delicious in this part.  Look at the sideburns and the scoul on his face. Hot!

So as it turns out, the one armed guy sought Ajit for the village (gaon) not for farming alone, but instead to take the lead in fighting off the band of dacoits who have long been terrorizing the villagers. Luckily Ajit finds a double agent in Munnibai (Laxmi Chhaya) who was sent by Jabbar to find out about Ajit, but ends up falling for him instead.

Munni does her spy duty, finds out what’s going on in Jabbar Singh’s dacoit camp and reports back to Ajit.

Ajit informs the authorities, Munni’s mom get’s upset at her indiscretion because like all villagers she rears the wrath Jabbar Singh and his bandits.

In the song, Hai Sharmaon,  Laxmi Chhaya‘s character alerts Ajit to what disguises the bandits are wearing to the fair so that he can catch them.

After some of his men are captured by police at the full moon fair, Jabbar Singh suspects a traitor among his flock and conducts a threatenging interrogation fitting a bandit.

Thing get a wee bit misogynistic.

Meanwhile, back in town, Asha Parekh’s character, Anju, freaks out when Hawaldaar-Major Jaswant Singh (one armed guy) is killed by the bandits. I love it when Asha breaks down. She of course needs a tight slap to the face in order to get a hold of herself.  To make matters worse, now poor munni is thought by Ajit to be responsible for the bandits’ attack on the gaon village.  So she’s once again subject to some man handling, and once again, things get just a tad mysoginistic.

Oh no he didn’t!  Ajit can verbally abuse her, choke her, shake her, and shove her down into the river two times, but what sets her over the edge is that he doesn’t understand that she did not betray him, and that she loves him!  He pushed her over the edge in so many ways, and now look at the face of a woman scorned! DEKH! LOOK AT IT!

Jabbar Singh cointinues with his dacoitery and kidnaps Anju to lure Ajit into his evil den, where he proceeds to tie them up for torture.  Any chance I get to screen cap a scene with the word enmity in it I do, so here:

NOW here is the scene and song that compelled me to see this film in the first place: Maar Diya Jaaye Ya Chhod Diya Jaaye, Bol Tere Saath Kya Sulook Kiya Jaaye.  Raj and Pablo, the charming and lovely radio hosts of BBC Asian Network’s Love Bollywood,  posted this video from the film on their Facebook page. It starts off with Dharmendra tied to a pole getting slapped in the face, and that was only the beginning of this outlandish number, featuring him, Laxmi Chayya and Asha Parekh.

Spoiler moral message ending alert! In the end the lesson is learned: The village must take responsibility to self govern and not rely so heavily on the government, meaning it’s a joint effort, but this effort must first begins at the grassroots level.  As it’s said it takes a village to raise a child, and in this movie, it takes a village to eliminate a dacoit. So now that title makes more sense: Mera Gaon Mera Desh = My Village My Country.

EXTRA CREDIT:  Here’s why Mera Gaon Mera Desh can be called Sholay Lite

Since Asha freaks out so beautifully, I shall end on this note:

Check out all the other groovy 70’s week posts HERE and HERE.

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“Kati Patang” (1970) Nahin! Amputations, and Bindu’s “Mera Naam Hai Shabnam”

Finally I’ve gotten around to seeing Asha Parekh in a film with 1970’s Kati Patang. I even love the title, which the subtitles translate to Guideless Kite. I know I feel like a guideless kite a lot of the time, so that title spoke to me. How about you? I loved the film right off the bat, since within the first few minutes there’s lots of drama. Lovely Asha is just about to get married when she opens the gift from her former flame and reads:

Now how great is THAT? Way to guilt trip her! Plus even better, should the future bring me a situation where I’m in love with a Hindu man who is just about to walk around that marriage fire 7 X with his new bride and not me, his true love, I can easily plagiarize that for my own dialogue. “But when you go around the holy fire with your wife, think this to be a funeral pyre of my love. Yours, and all the best! Sita-ji.” I don’t want to spoil the movie in any way, but let’s just say some stuff goes down shortly after this wedding scene which results in seeing the big nahin. Another reason to love the film for me. I love hearing nahin screamed as much as I love to be surprised by seeing a tight slap to the face.

Yet another thing I like in Hindi films is to frequency of limb amputation. Remember that Sholay, Lawaaris, and Mother India all have double arm amputations, which always makes me think of insurance dismemberment clauses. You may also remember the limb amputations parodied in Om Shanti Om. I know I’ve seen other Bollywood films with limb amputations, but I can’t remember others right now, so I welcome your comments if you remember any others.

Then for even more pleasure, I get to be simultaneously repulsed and attracted to Prem Chopra. I am grossed out by Prem’s character, yet also strangely attracted to the sleaziness, evidenced by the his open shirts, chest hair and large medallion. Yuck! Yet I must see more! See his effect of Bindu’s character? She just hangs on him. She can’t help it. In addition to his medallion, his glasses are noteworthy.

I’m seeing what I like in Kati Patang, the same stuff I see repeatedly in these Bollywood films: the drama, the big nahin, sleazy bad guys and gals, amputations, misunderstandings, and coincidences. Then there’s the requisite item girl number with outlandish costuming and suggestive choreography, but this time I am startled more than usual. I invite you to watch Bindu in the scary and captivating number Mera Naam Hai Shabnam, with music by R. D. Burnam and playback singer Asha Bhonsle. The choreography is by Surya Kumar. Surya, hats off to your work. Unfortunately, the only quality footage I could find from this song for now is rather short, so see the entire film with the complete song, which involves Bindu rolling around on the ground a lot. Now dosto, I dare you NOT to have the same expression and reaction that Asha Parekh’s character has when you watch Bindu’s dance, because I know I shared Asha’s response, “I can’t believe this is happening. NO WAY!”

This ARTICLE states that, “Overnight Kati Patang turned Bindu into the hottest dancer in movie town.” I can certainly understand why that was true. Now if you’d like to read more on the film, head over to memsaabstory.

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SOS! Or SOB, as in Save Our Blog! Help save a fellow Bollywood fanatic’s blog.

Calling all Bollywood bloggers and Bollywood blog readers! SOB!

I was hopping around the web tonight and found some spectacular photos of Bollywood stars. Let me tell you how it all happened. I finished watching the thriller Aggar (2007) and was doing my customary post movie research. I usually like to refresh my memory about where I may have seen the actors before and find out about the ones I don’t remember after I’ve finished a film. So this evening, like many other nights, I jumped over to IMDB & wikipedia, and checked out filmographies of the movie’s stars: Shreyas Talpade (hot!), Udita Goswami, and Tusshar Kapoor (also hot, hmm, where have I seen him before?) click:

Tusshar Kapoor(　तुषार कपूर; born 20 November 1976) is an Indian actor. He is the son of Bollywood actor Jeetendra and Shobha Kapoor and brother of producers Ekta Kapoor & Sharan Kapoor. He studied at the University of Michigan. (wikipedia)

Then I think, “Hey, I still haven’t seen Jeetendra, maybe I’ll see Caravan (1971) since it also stars Asha Parekh who I also haven’t seen!” So I’m thinking I will kill 2 birds with one stone, hain na? Now I want to see some photos of them, so I do a google image search and find great stuff. Excellent stuff! So many great shots at this one place. For example, photos like these of Madhubala and Asha.

The blog source of these fantastic pictures About section reads:

About Me: Karen, Fanatic fan of hindi movies! Love the classical ones just as much as the new ones (pretty apparent from the blog)! Madhuri Dixit is my favorite actress and Salman Khan is my fav actor!

Ahh! a kindred spirit! Then I read this sad news there:

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Regarding anyone who has iterest in my blog if it hasn’t already become apparent, i have pretty much abandoned this blog. reason being that i thought that no one cared about this blog so i stopped doing stuff with it. plus i have so many pics that it became very long and tedious to upload pics. so i uploaded my pics into webalbums! which if you want you can view at http://picasaweb.google.com/home i have now also ran out of space here and i still have a lot of pics to upload! so i will i guess make another account! well thanx for all the comments and feedback! do checkout the webalbums!

NAHIIIIIIIIIN! I write this post to show that some one cares. Ek person cares and I’m certain many more care. You’re not the only Bollywood fanatic out there Karen! I feel like this is the MD telathon and I’m Jerry Lewis, asking for your help to save Karen’s Everything Bollywood, This is the Opium of the Masses blog. Yaaro, we can find a cure! At least now you will know where all these pictures are located and be able to find her goldmine of a webalbum if you haven’t already. Here’s to you Karen in Canada! I hope you get some more space on your blog or get another account. I’ll be watching. Hopefully some people reading this will shoot you a word of encouragement too. Thanks for taking the time to upload all those fantastic photos Karenji!

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