One might say the 21 year old glamgirl called Ayesha Takia is rather young to be commented upon at great depth; one would be wrong, because there is a great deal to be said about and around her. Let’s start with the beginning: a few months ago, I wrote this article about Sex and Bollywood. And two of the photos I found to illustrate what I had to say on the subject were (perhaps a hasty choice?) of Ayesha Takia in very suggestive poses (little voice: nothing hasty there! Lots of preparation). No nudity, mind, but we all know that sexiness goes much beyond skin exposure. In fact, true eroticism needs clothes to suggest what an exposed body can’t do, because it doesn’t hide anything anymore. So, anyway, in my mind, the young lady was henceforth categorized as not much more than a bimbo. So when I recently came upon Daddy's girl's blog speaking about her fascination for Ayesha, I exclaimed: “has she got a soul?”… “Of course”, said DG. And so I started on my quest for her soul!!

First stop: Socha na tha. In that little movie, that I quite appreciated (I admit: so did I), she’s a serious young woman who tries to live her life the best she can, and knows that she’s doing something she doesn’t completely approve of when she lets herself fall in love with a boy who’s already somebody’s boyfriend. But, like all of us, she half-lies to herself, as we see when she defends herself in front of her parents, and at the same time, she’s truthful: she could stop this pleasant relationship, and she does, in fact, when she sees it’s becoming too complicated. Ayesha Takia plays reasonably well, and the way she deals with her character shows a personality which certainly is not that of a sex bomb (again, have to admit it). This is corroborated by what she says herself:

"I cannot do what Meghna Naidu, Mallika Sherawat or Neha Dhupia did in 'Hawas', 'Murder', and 'Julie' respectively. Neither can I do a 'Girlfriend.' Yes, I can wear short tops and minis, but I would be uncomfortable wearing anything more revealing. And don't forget Bhagyashree and Juhi Chawla never did any bold and brazen stuff in their first ventures to get noticed. 'Taarzan' will get noticed, and then, so will Vatsal and me."(link)

Then I saw her in Dor, another very nice film where her character is of course very far from any suggestion that she (or the film-maker, producers, etc) is using her body or looks to attract more spectators. She’s in fact quite remarkable for an actress of her age, very confident, very convincing. She pulls off the difficult task of seeming both a widow, with all it means in terms of suffering and frustration in that region of India, and a girl who realises she does have a right to life and pleasure, that what she feels in spite of the guilt pressed on her, is not wrong at all. Her round face is beautiful only when she smiles, and without any makeup she strikes us as a rather ordinary young woman. What she says here is I believe a reflection on that attitude:

“There’re things that I wouldn’t do, like kiss and wear certain kinds of clothes. And yes that does put me at a disadvantage. But I’m very happy with the work that I’m getting. After Dor, I’m being taken seriously as an actress.”

Her saying no to kissing, is however, causing her to lose out on parts but Ayesha says, “But I don’t mind losing out on roles. At least ten years from now I don’t want to look back and cringe at anything. I’ve a family and a boyfriend. And I don’t want to embarrass anyone.”

What she does in films – from what I was able to judge - is indeed in keeping with those words. But the pictures that we see here and there on the net tell another story (don't they, too!) :

She has obviously accepted to play the game of submitting to the male dominated star-system. A system which needs her for example to add some padding in her bra… And needs to see her in positions and clothing that male fantasies appreciate much more (arched back, uplifted arms, etc.) 

And so that’s my examination: why does she seem to make such a difference between how she shows herself in films and outside them? Does she understand the impact she makes? (little voice: course she does, come on!) Is she blissfully unaware, or carelessly neglectful? One possible answer is that “today’s values have changed”. Witness what this article says about Preeti Jhingiani, in a discussion intended to explain the issue with Ayesha Takia:

And while this mum takes her daughter's job as just that, a job, Govind Jhingiani, Preeti Jhingiani's dad, feels that exposure in films is just a part of an evolving society. "There's a lot of skin show now as compared to the yesteryears. But change is a natural process and competition exists everywhere. Preeti has a flair for acting, so we gave her liberty to enter this field." But considering the fact that Preeti was the first one to enter films in their family, wasn't it difficult for her parents to give her the green signal? "Not having a filmi background puts us at a disadvantage actually. If we had connections in Bollywood, we would have known the industry better. Nevertheless, Preeti took an individual decision, and we decided to guide her," adds Govind. (Ayesha Takia Fan Site)

I believe there’s some truth here. But I’d also say that, at barely 22, Ayesha Takia is still playing, playing with her image, playing with the media. She’s looking at herself in the mirror, and enjoying what she sees, as much as all of us. She probably thinks there’s no harm in playing the bimbo as she does in these photos. Let’s say she’s manipulated by our sex-ridden society, then, where skin and suggestive poses are trivialised. But on the other hand, saying as she does that she doesn’t want to embarrass anyone and not wear certain types of clothes is rather naïve: she doesn’t embarrass a society who is only too pleased to set eyes on her tight outfits and buxom shape! She’s already started “adapting” to her public image, and pandering to the tastes of lusty males isn’t difficult. Perhaps she’s not consciously doing that yet, but in our star-obsessed media-run society, there are so many subtle suggestions and temptations that she can submit to without needing to admit that that’s what she’s doing! We can compare her to other Bollywood actresses like Rani Mukherjee or Kajol: they’ve not submitted to that level of “sexposure”, even if it’s of course a question of degree.

Bollywood is of the XXIst century, there’s no need to deny that, and I have no desire to go back in time. I openly appreciate girls like Ayesha Takia, and don’t see much harm to her attitude. But in her openly modern image, there’s something of our contradictions that linger: we are satisfied with women’s relaxed attitude towards their bodies, in reaction to centuries of male oppression, but on the other hand, we still recognise that there is something degrading in reducing women to their physical appearance, and fantasizing about some predefined shapes which dictate their measurements to young and old. The trouble is with all of us. In fact, we could even say the way Ayesha Takia deals with that contradiction is a rather refreshing one. She accepts to appear in front of the cameras and strike poses that men around the world will gorge upon, but she resists doing anything sexy in films. So much so that somebody has said: “she is the most decent girl in bollywood i know” (Ayesha Takia - Biography)!! 


(yeah! we've finally found her soul!)

To inattentive spectators this 1956 film starring Raj Kapoor will probably seem a little naïve and perhaps shoddy, for it has enough imperfections to justify a less than perfect opinion about it. Some inconsistencies here, some lengthy bits there, a humour that sometimes annoys, and a rather surprising ending, halfway between reality and fantasy. I must say that I was, and still am, determined to explore films with and by Raj Kapoor, and this one (not directed by him, but by Amit and Sombhu Mitra) did strain my patience at first. Even if Raj Kapoor does a hell of a job.

The storyline is very simple: one night, Mohan, a villager, arrives in town in search of work, and he’s thirsty. Bending down to drink from a public fountain, he gets chased away by a policeman, and has to try elsewhere. This time the tap is behind the gate of a block of buildings. The policeman spots him again, and the peasant, terrorised, runs in instead of out. He’s seen, and mistaken for a thief. From then on, he goes from flat to flat, trying to escape the angry inmates who are bent on finding him, and what starts out as a respectable civilian’s duty turns into a crazed manhunt.
 
First the initiatives are scattered, but soon they institute a local surveillance squad, much like what happened in Maoist China (or any collectivist state in the mid-XXth century), and give themselves the right even to trespass into people’s homes in order to find the felon – one might as well say: the anti-revolutionary.

 

Meanwhile, Mohan, who is always powerless and speechless (more about this in a minute) is a witness to the lives of the people whose flats he visits as hiding-places, and he is our guide to these superficially “normal” people’s lives. For under this respectable surface are hidden not just what he himself is wrongly accused of, i.e. stealing, but also deceiving, brutalising, bullying, all kinds of morally condemnable and even criminal behaviour, that go on without no one knowing or caring. Here a drunken husband blackmails his own wife into unclean attitudes to satisfy his lust, there a man tries to rob his wife to get money with which to bet on horses, and of course the biggest crime of all, an underground joint busy printing counterfeit money is revealed, in which false doctors are ready to kill any involuntary spies. From his hideouts, Mohan does what he can to stop the evil, but it’s stronger than him. Humour and fooling doesn’t always win!

What’s interesting is that, as the story moves on, there is more and more focus and suspense. Mohan is finding it more and more difficult to hide, and even if funny episodes light up the search (Raj Kapoor hobbling along in the barrel… A distant forerunner of R2D2!), the general tone is one of anguish: he is trapped anyway; it’s just a matter of time before they get him. He can run, climb, hide: they know he’s in the building, and he’s overtaken by the sheer numbers. That’s frightening, by the way: the way a crowd can be brainstormed into believing they’re still doing the same morally good thing, as if they were one or two people. They don’t realise that when you are a crowd, the nature of the accusation changes. The supposedly guilty person’s defence shrinks in function of the numbers of his accusers. The more people are convinced of a man’s guilt, the harder it is for that man to defend himself, or even to believe he’s innocent, if he is innocent.

I’ve read that the film should be looked upon as an allegory, “where the darkness is the cloak of respectability under which a city supposedly sleeps but thrashes around in the throes of crime and evil.” (back of my Yashraj films DVD box) Yes, all this is true. But better than an allegory, I’d say you have to look at the movie as a filmed dream, or a nightmare, rather. Then it all makes sense. The lengthy and naïve passages are the exasperating moments of childish powerlessness which dreamers experience; Mohan’s speechlessness and lack of understanding; his constant panicky attitudes are the typical dreamer’s quandary. Shut up in a story which he cannot modify, he tries to escape, only to fall into another trap. Sometimes there is a lull, and then a new twist projects him deeper into the nightmare. Everybody looks the same, are dressed the same, the corridors of this huge block of flats are all the same, as are the doors, windows, staircases. The maze of which he a prisoner is in his head, and all he can do is wrench his hands to beg somebody, anybody, to stop the infernal machine. The film’s title “Jagte raho”, which means “Stay awake” is clearly a call not only to the morally asleep who have forgotten the clear light of virtue, but also to us spectators who should be jolted into realising that Mohan’s nightmare is happening because of our sleep. Mohan is our conscience, struggling from the layers of our Unconscious to emerge in the daylight and free us from our shackles. Our lives are often full of subtle lies, of delicate arrangements with our conscience, of elaborate constructions to hide to ourselves the hypocrisy of our double-standards! Who has never been tempted to trick his own conscience?  

Mohan is speechless throughout the film, so when he does speak, it’s a shock. He does so when cornered on the roof, between the bloodthirsty crowd armed with the sticks of rightful punishment, their eyes injected with the desire of a victim, and the void, ten or so floors below. This recovered voice is a sign that here the dream ends, that the sleeper wakes up, and when he shouts his anguished cry to all of us, he is at that moment revealing to us the recesses of our own souls. It’s a sort of psychoanalytical process, healthily violent, which is taking place: the springing forth of speech shows that there has been a shock in the mind, and that a watershed has been passed. The dawn is that of exposure, of truth. What was hidden now comes to light: beneath the respectable surface of citizenship and worthiness, there is gaping hole, full of vermin; instead of the righteous solidarity against all evil, there is the tyrannical enrolment of mimesis and prejudice; and Jesus’ words resonate in the bright and empty morning: “do not judge, and ye shall be judged”; “why do you see the speck of dust in your fellow man’s eye, and never notice the plank that is in yours?” (I mention Jesus here because at one stage Mohan is stuck on a Cross-like pipe up in the air, and being lapidated from below, and one stone breaks a nearby window, revealing a crucifix). 

The end is mysterious, but in its mystery, it has the simplicity of vision. The child who wipes the blood and dirt off his face, the swooning, the magic door that opens on to a garden (editor's clever work), the walk through the crowd of his former enemies, as if he was now invisible, and at the temple, the virgin fountain-bearer who recognises him,  and quenches his thirst: the symbolical allegory is clear of course, and I won’t reduce its charm by interpreting it further. Let me just suggest that it is bathed in the gospel light which shone on Easter morning, and can still shine on the souls that wish never to be thirsty again, “for the water which I will give them will become a spring of water inside them, always welling up to give them eternal life” (John 4,14)


And it's Nargis (absent from the film otherwise), who is in charge of pouring that water of life on the vagabond.

Of Arundhati Roy’s very personal novel, no doubt much has been said. In the edition that I have, reviews have been put on the first pages, celebrating its magic, its mystery, its powerful rhythm, its innovative structure. Well, I must say I was slow at accepting all this as true [1]. But I couldn’t escape the vivid lavish texture. Story? I asked. But style, Sure. While I was reading the novel, I kept marvelling at some of the “tour de force” crafted by the young authoress (when I say young, it’s because the novel is her first, and so far only one). I relished in her language, an amazingly versatile tool under her pen, that is almost like a living organism, a glowing dough that she can knead into all the stupendous shapes you can (or can’t, in fact) imagine. For example she evokes (Virginia Woolf like) the goings-on in a twin’s childish (and sometimes not so childish) mind, and how it reacts to the grown-up rules, the adults’ reductionism of a world they have trapped for their own interests. For me that is the book’s great merit. The world that is created, with its assonances, its quirkiness, its sheer poetry, its humour, its flashes of beauty and its colourful, odourful, or tactile impressionism: wow, it leaves you breathless and gaping.

But in fact, it was almost too much. Style had taken over. I kept saying: okay, this lurid, weird, stunning style is something; but where is it taking me? Why do all the names sound the same? What is this story about? I had trouble balancing the versatility of the style effects and the contorted storyline, which sometimes looked like a boring digression. I told myself: patience, this is somebody’s first novel. And I persevered, and the end did bring together a good many of the strands. But until the end I believed the book was a strange creation, a monstrously beautiful monument of introspection and experimentation. It lacked in purpose what it displayed in creativity.

It’s only now that I have the whole picture in mind that I can assess its worth. It’s the ending that gives it its purpose. You need to sort of turn the volume around and look at it from the end. Now I can add to its smells, tastes and echoes the profound meaning that erupts at the end. The very physical presence of bodies, either loved or maimed, which fill the end of the story, their absolute price and unfathomable sensitivity, this is something which the skin can’t forget, which fills the imagination with a burn, or a weight one remembers intensely. And because the tragedy then becomes a social and political statement, as much as a poetic and intellectual one, the writer’s mission is justified. Thanks to her idiosyncratic language (and not in spite of it), she has said things which all of us can hear: the lush world of free childhood exists in all beings, and must be nourished and explored, and understood, by the educational institutions. The religious notion that all men are brothers, that we all have one loving Father who created us all equal, all filled with the infinite powers of love and responsibility, of compassion and dignity, of intelligence and self-respect, that no man is deprived of these, potentially, if society educates him towards this humanity: all systems which categorise men in a higher or a lower rank are an insult to that God’s power and gentleness.  

  
Decreeing human beings as “untouchable”, “impure”, “dirty”, and such like alienating notions, are nothing but man’s revenge on that gentle God. They are the evidence that man is limited (and sinful?), in spite of the divine seed within him. The God of small things demonstrates that without a well directed historical and social environment, the worst violence can monstrously maim and insult God’s creation. The book is an attempt at exploring the teeming proliferation of meaning and beauty, hidden in the human body and mind, along with a demonstration of the power of prejudice and deformity coming from limitation and alienation. Lack of understanding of God’s purpose in his Creation crushes bones and stamps nailed boots in defenceless groins. If we can’t see that the God who created the Universe is first the God who created the smelly and armless beggar, if we think that the God who engineered the marvels which physics and biology describe (or whose mystery is there “behind” and beyond them), doesn’t also love passionately the sneering aristocrat, we are creating our own God, a God of big things, of order, of hierarchy, a moral God that rewards and punishes.

Childhood is the time of life when we are yet open to this Creation, struck by its novelty, its wonder, its crispness. And it’s normal to lose some of that impact: one becomes accustomed to its splendour and its revelation. One tends to forget that what is there in front of us is a show of the Creator’s great Act. There is a moment in the book when policemen are arriving to the river house where the entire story converges, and one of them for a moment sees the workings of Creation: a dragonfly poised on a leaf, and he starts wondering at its beautiful reality. But the flap soon falls, and the view is obliterated. Pressed by duty, he resumes his policemen’s thoughts. What follows next is a scene whose horror I have rarely met in literature, not because it says things that are new in any way, but it’s how they are said. We are no longer in the flow of consciousness, or rather, the contrast with the novel’s general tone and that passage is so brutal and harsh – we know it’s going to happen, too – that it creates all the “literary” pain you can possibly feel concerning one individual. Luckily for us, in a flashback, the novel ends on a love scene whose intention might well be to soothe the reader's pulse. I don’t know if it’s that scene that won Roy ten years of harassment in the form of a lawsuit for obscenity charges, but that’s just it: the novel contains that weight of experience which is probably too hard for some to swallow.
   

  
Not surprisingly, Arundhati Roy is well known for her activism, and for those who are interested (and it has a rather important bearing on the understanding of her novel, the only one so far, which in part is autobiographic, I discovered), the same Wiki link gives a good description of that passionate if sometimes naïve commitment, says the author. Well, it’s not always naïve. In this Guardian article, she speaks of her commitment, and to me it has the ring of true concern:

“Unlike other Indian-born writers who have relocated to the US and Europe, Roy is determined to remain a thorn in the side of the establishment in India. "Here you see what's happening. People are driven out of villages, driven out of the cities, there's a kind of insanity in the air and all of it held down by our mesmeric, pelvic-thrusting Bollywood movies. The Indian middle class has just embarked on this orgy of consumerism."

What she says about that “mesmeric, pelvis-thrusting Bollywood movies”, I have often described in this blog (even if I admit that at first I didn’t see that aspect). A lot of the films which many enthusiastic spectators write off as great entertainment are guilty of alienating the poorer classes into believing that whatever they do, things will not change. The masses watch these films, dream about those heroes, and forget what makes their dreams so necessary: a drab life which they are made to accept by that way. The fact that so many of the films are violence and sex-filled is obvious: only a few escape that temptation. But what this characteristic means is that it transforms the public into addicts, it takes away their better judgement, and feeds them with heroes and heroines instead of educating them.

Upon reading Roy’s sobering comments on the inefficiency of certain types of activism, which according to her will be be able to change the age-old practices of corruption, torture, and political self-interests, one wonders: can literature do something that activism is powerless to do? Could the God of small things be more powerful than the other one?

“Roy says she had given ideological opponents a handy hate figure.  "In India I'm portrayed more as a hysterical, lying, anti-national harridan. 
"In this adversarial game that goes on, you can get pinned down to spewing facts and numbers, but those are not the only truths ... I've done that. I've fought that battle," she says. "But the distillation of those things into literature is a different kind of intervention." (same article)

Another classic ! Raj Kapoor (actor and director) and Nargis are once again at the top of their art, and create a masterful, a superb story of love and temptation, of self-deception and redemption. Not only is the story a moving and profound parable on ambition and success, but the way the film is done is inventive, touching, funny, symbolical… It has everything. These black and white movies had the cardinal virtue of presenting moral issues in a contrast that our modern pictures cannot rival. Were B & W directors conscious that they had one foot further in Art? And wouldn’t you say the realism of colours and digital rendition tends to blur the ethical questions? I particularly appreciated Raj Kapoor in this film. He’s absolutely perfect. And very handsome too! Made me think of Errol Flynn and Clark Gable. His tramp character might well be a copy of Chaplin’s (you can actually see Chaplin’s tricks, the automatic hat-lifting, the shoulder shrug, and whole scenes are Chaplin-like) he loses it quickly enough to embody that wistful and moody Raj that we so easily identify with.

Raj is Everyman, he’s Adam: he is first innocent, full of hope, clever and charming (I loved that little bird-flute of his), he has a determined spirit and a courage which makes him friends with all, and loved by the no-less spirited Vidya. When he falls prey to charmers greater than him, he sways between good and evil, but the good heart is always there, his humanity never relinquishes him. Even in sin he remains potentially redeemable. He does sin, he does taste the acrid apple of corruption and vanity, and even if his innocence dies in that fall (perhaps represented by the false death on the stairs at the end), he will shake off the “mind-forged manacles” that enslave him, destroy the mask of falsehood, and be born again to virtue and love. His saviour is of course Vidya, his love and the voice of his conscience.

Nargis is a marvel of femininity. Her expressions are a rapture to watch. I remember for instance that moment when she is teaching the children the song Eechak Daana Beechak Daana and her face changes from sweet to severe (and her body from flexible to rigid) as she notices Raj at the window involved in the same guessing as the children, only with a different intention. 


She is proud, bursting with life, magnificent, queenly. Oh, that scene in the rain while Raj’s iron is burning a hole in the table at the laundry, and they sing Pyaar Hua Iqraar Hua: it burnt a hole in my heart! She is SO amazing there! There is in her eyes a mixture of rapture, of gravity, of certainty, of tenderness, of subtle and strong presence beyond what words can express. She is youth, she is maturity; she is virginity, and she is motherhood. The beauty of that walk is enhanced by its silent spectators, the watchful tea-merchant, the little children passing by, and the false sets, the false rain only serve to underline the purity of that sheer cinematographic artistry. And oh, the haunting melody of that song, with its nostalgic resonances, combined with its piping joy!

Now, the forces they have in front of them: first of course, Maya, Illusion. Nadira was at the height of her glory too. She’s the eternal temptress here, especially in that arch-famous dance number Mud Mud Ke Na Dekh, where the Audrey Hepburn like diva is surrounded by as stunningly beautiful and fresh faces as hers, all worthy of having the first role in any masala. (Which by and by is a clear sign that beauty on its own is not virtue). 


Maya’s sparkling knowing eyes, her full and ravishing figure, the vivacity and the utterly seductive power that, Serpent-like, she displays, are stupendous. No wonder Raj can’t “look back”: there is too much in front of him! That future is far more enticing than the past he’s made to forget, like a spell cast on his soul. 



The classic figure of the enchantress is once more portrayed, but in an extremely vivid light. So blinding, in fact, that one can understand Raj, perhaps: the creature in front of him is simply too strong for him. If we didn’t know that Raj is falling into a huge trap, we would be enjoying their show as a high-flying display of pleasure and dream-like romance, and we would sigh with contentedness! But the tiger’s soft fur hides the fiercest claws that Nature has crafted: Maya is Raj’s doom, his Mr Hyde side. She will never love him, but only use him for her own gigantic greed and ego-worship. 

More sinister than Maya the Illusionist, there is Seth the Realist (played by actor Nemo). He’s a sight too, a perfect character. I’d say he symbolises the Devil lurking at the back of the scenes, grinning because he’s sure of his ultimate victory. He’s the one who pulls the strings; he’s the one who lays the traps. He doesn’t mind losing temporarily, because he can read in the mind of petty human beings who are manipulated by their desires. Upon seeing his delightful physique, I was reminded of Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars! 


Seth doesn’t need to tempt, others do that for him. He’s just there to remind his slaves that they have enslaved themselves from their own free will, and they are now prisoners. Nevertheless the end of the film will show him to be the greater slave of all: he’s enslaved to power and greed, and this slavery will be his downfall.

So this is a very classic (but universal) story, the story of the young ambitious man who believes he can conquer the world (or in this case, Bombay), only to realise too late that it is the world that has conquered him. Innocence and Experience. It contains nevertheless a very urgent question, which revolves around the notions of honesty and poverty. Before realising that he has gambled and lost both honesty and purity, Raj is faced with this dilemma: why should the poor suffer from their poverty, and at the same time justify it by their virtuous resignation? He has noticed (during one of the first episodes of the film, when Raj is picked up by Seth in his car) that the poor are accepted by the rich only if they are reliably virtuous. As soon as they start lying, or double-dealing, they are no longer acceptable as “the poor”: they must be punished and rejected. That’s why Seth, who professes in this scene to want to “help humanity” throws him out: it doesn’t occur to him that lying and faking are a way for Raj (and all poor people) to gain sorely needed advantages which otherwise would always elude them.

So Raj first sees his ascent to riches as a revenge against his humiliation. The poor are made to suffer because of the satisfactions of the rich, and it would be wrong to fight against such an injustice? Can’t the poor transgress a law which is unlawful, since it serves in fact the sole interests of the rich? After all, there is nothing bad in money, it is only a means. One needs it to be happy, to be comfortable, to raise a family, to ensure the safety of the children’s future. Raj feels all this, and if he tricks the rich into letting him benefit from some of that comfort, he sees no wrong in it, and he tries to convince Vidya that his position is honest, and morally acceptable. Such a position is not very far from the anarchist or revolutionary theories which communists have tried to bend into a more organised and socially acceptable programme.

Vidya’s response is interesting (her name, as Carla reminds us, means knowledge - thanks, by the way, Carla, I saw the film thanks to you). It is backed by Raj Kapoor the director too, because the film insists overwhelmingly on the simple but happy life of the street-people. They don’t work, true, they don’t have that source of social recognition. But they dance, sing, share, and they cope. Their resilience is a solution that economists do not generally take into consideration when putting forward arguments with which to counter communism. Vidya tells Raj that his “revenge” has in fact corrupted him, that he has been bought by immoral profiteers who have found another prey to satisfy their greed. She gives him the key to a life of happiness: alone one cannot build a family and ensure a future for the children to come, but together it’s possible. But he hasn’t heard, or if he has, this solution doesn’t weigh against the lure of power and pleasure. Raj hadn’t counted on the fact that he would become infected by the corruption which goes with money, power and artificiality. But Vidya sees that, and resists with all her might to the easy temptation of compromise. All this does not mean, I suppose, that Raj Kapoor was against any type of political reform, but it debunks the moral stance according to which one can feel justified by transgressing the law if one is poor. Certainly the poor have extenuating circumstances if they steal and lie, but not a right to riches, no more than the rich, in fact. The rich have a moral obligation to redistribution, and their social selves are never made any greater thanks to belongings.

There would be a very interesting commentary to be made about what clothes mean as a social and psychological object in the film. As a launderer, Raj deals with visible and arranged surfaces. These surfaces can hide and reveal at the same time. He keeps on telling Vidya that she must not be deceived by appearances, that you can’t tell a book by its cover. But can’t you? In fact, clothes and attire say a great deal. A person’s essence is not summarised by his or her surface, but this surface often tells a story which words don’t always want to admit.

I would like to finish this review by stressing Raj Kapoor’s poetic inventiveness. The poetry and the magic of Śri 420 come first from its moral and spiritual message, but there are scenes where the director’s art is remarkably poetic and inspired. One of them is that moment when a drunken Raj, not understanding what it means to be in danger, leaves Vidya after she has expressed her disapproval of his conduct. This has already happened, by the way, in an early, premonitory scene at the beach:

Anyway, here, as Vidya stands rigidly still, looking at him run away from her, the director visualises for us the torment she’s in, and we see another ghost-like, tormented Vidya, extracting itself from her figure, and imploring the moral Vidya to run after him and compromise. 


But Vidya doesn’t move, at least outwardly, and as the music rises, the tension between her two passions rages. On one side, love and weak forgiveness, on the other resolve and educational truth. This scene stuns by its sheer inventiveness, even though it has been filmed with the limited means of 1955.

There is another moving scene, again happening at the moment of a song (notice how, in this classic, most of the songs are situated at pivotal moments of the movie, contrary to so many modern Bollywood films where the musical moments are just decorative intervals). Raj is at present at a loss about what his life means, and is back on the street where his friends the beggars and peddlers are seen to sing and enjoy themselves. A young lass is dancing and singing a trite romance: “I’ve given my heart to you”. Raj comes closer, and, transfixed, listens. 


Slowly he understands the words apply to him and Vidya, that his pact with Seth, his association with Maya are traps and deceptions. And the simple song sung by an ordinary street dancer restores in him the truth and the promise he has made to his beloved. He takes up the words and joins in. The music lingers on, the words float in the air, a rickshaw driver catches its tune, and it passes on to a cyclist whom we follow in another part of town, and from there we arrive in sight of Vidya’s porch, where she is sitting, disconsolate, and the miracle of music happens: she too is now singing the same words: “mere dil tujko diya”! What was at first nothing but rhymester’s banal lyrics become an all-important human reality: if they are both in love with one another, nothing should sunder them, purity is again possible, in spite of all separations and distances. In Sri 420, the victory of truth and honesty is not just there to satisfy the spectator’s need for a happy end; it is a testimony to the fact that life is stronger than death, God more powerful than the Devil, and His image set deep inside us, more human than is our animality. 

One last moment of great inventiveness, reminiscent of Oscar Wilde's The Portrait of Dorian Gray: Raj passes in front of a mirror, and surveys his new persona, his elegant demeanour. But suddenly, in front of him in the mirror, stands not Raj the gambler, not Raj the Superhero, but Raj the tramp, and he's grinning, he's laughing! A little conversation ensues, where Raj from the happy past inquires whether Raj of the present is happy with all his succese. The new Raj can only admit that no, he isn't, and when his double disappears, this is what happens:

 
So poignant.

Well, this will be probably be my last instalment before Christmas, so I'll take advantage of it and wish you all a Merry Christmas, and a happy New Year.