Balraj Sahini in Do bigha zamin (1953)

Bimal Roy, one of India’s foremost film-makers, made many great films including Do bigha zamin, which is one of Roy’s best works and is a remarkable film by any standards. It brings together Roy’s neo-realist form of Hindi cinema’s melodrama with his deeply felt political concerns, to form a great study of human values and dignity among the poor.

Do bigha zamin explores the real impact of money-lending on the peasant farmer, as he becomes enslaved by his debts. Driven to try to raise money to pay off his loan, Shambu (Balraj Sahni) leaves his pregnant wife (Nirupa Roy) and elderly father to head for Calcutta. His young son smuggles himself onto the train and helps his father as a shoe-shiner. Robbed on their first day, the couple soon remake their village ties by finding surrogate families in the city: Dadi as their mother and Rani as an elder sister to the boy. Shambu’s experience of helping a sick man leads him into rickshaw-pulling. While terrible accidents befall the family, the film avoids easy answers to the serious problems facing the urban migrant. Roy’s melodrama is restrained, and he uses few devices of the Hindi film, with songs kept to a minimum, placing the emphasis instead on the black-and-white photography of realistic sets and wonderful footage of contemporary Calcutta.

The main strength of this film lies in the performance of Balraj Sahni as Shambhu. Sahni is regarded as one of the greatest actors of Indian cinema, both during his lifetime and with hindsight. He rarely appeared as the Hindi film hero but usually, as he said, as ‘all those fathers and uncles’, often taking roles in films dominated by the outstanding female stars such as Nargis and Meena Kumari. While Sahni’s younger brother, Bhisham, became one of the great figures of modern Hindi literature, Balraj had a variable career in theatre and cinema, as well as working for the BBC in London before independence. Despite his own elite and educated background, Sahni is totally plausible as the desperate but determined peasant, his physical movement accurately reproducing that of a labourer, while his facial expressions are restrained and powerful.

One scene in this film is particularly resonant, its images condensing the narrative of the invisibility of the poor and the way the rickshaw- pullers are seen as little more than draught animals. A middle-class woman, arguing with her lover, leaps into a rickshaw. The man follows her and they egg the pullers into a chase, where the pullers seem to be running after the extra money itself with no other sight in mind. The rapid editing by Hrishikesh Mukherjee adds to the speed of the chase and the desperate pursuit of a few extra coins. During the race, Shambu’s rickshaw overturns and he is severely injured, but the couple pay no attention.

The setting of this film in the Bengali village and Calcutta of the 1950s inevitably invites comparison with Ray, and the differing merits of the Hindi film and the ‘art’ film.

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 1953, Genre – Drama, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Bimal Roy, Director –Bimal Roy, Music Director – Salil Chaudhary, Cast - Murad, Ratan Kumar, Tiwari, Balraj Sahni, Nirupa Roy, Nana Palsikar, Nazir Hussain, Noor, Kusum, Hiralal, Misra, Rajlaxmi, Dilip, Nand Kishore, Jagdeep, Mehmood, Paul Mahendra, Navendu Ghose, Sunil Das Gupta, Ashit Sen, Shelly Banerjee

Sadhana in Waqt (1965)

Waqt was a landmark in many ways: it is a multi-starrer with four main heroes and two major heroines; it set a trend for showing the lifestyles of the super-rich; it is a ‘lost and found’ film, a storyline that became a favorite in the 1970s; and it has memorable songs.

A prosperous merchant, Lala Kedarnath (Balraj Sahni), believes nothing can disrupt his happy family life until an earthquake tears his world apart and he loses everything including his loved ones. He is on the verge of finding his eldest son but, hearing he has just escaped from an orphanage where he was beaten, Kedarnath kills the warden and goes to jail for twenty years. The eldest boy, Raja (Raaj Kumar), is raised by a criminal and becomes a professional thief, while the second son, Ravi (Sunil Dutt), is adopted by a rich couple and trains as a lawyer. They both live in Bombay, while the youngest, Vijay (Shashi Kapoor), looks after their mother in Delhi, where he falls in love with Renu (Sharmila Tagore), a rich college girl.

Raja and Ravi both love Meena (Sadhana) but Raja, finding a childhood picture of Ravi, realizes that he is his long lost brother and sacrifices his relationship with Meena. Vijay has moved to Bombay, where he is hired as a chauffeur by Renu. Ravi reproaches Renu

for having an affair with his driver, then Meena’s parents object to Ravi marrying their daughter when they do not know who his parents are.

Raja throws a party to announce the identity of Ravi’s parents. Although other members of the family bump into one another — such as Vijay and Kedarnath — no connections are made.

When Raja is framed in a murder, he hires Ravi as his lawyer. A courtroom drama ensues, in which Vijay appears as a witness; then his mother comes into court. Kedarnath recognizes her and is reunited with Vijay, after which Raja reveals that he and Ravi are his other two children. The family returns to open a shop, with the two future laughter-in-laws settled into the family.

The film is an example of an early ‘lost and found’. Although Waqt hows the family separated by an earthquake, probably referring to the Quetta earthquake of 1935, it requires only a little imagination to see its as a partition story, where the earthquake is a metaphor for a far greater human upheaval. The line of migration from Punjab to Bombay is the one followed by many in the Hindi film industry.

Waqt is justly famous for its whole new glamorous ‘look’ in clothing and lifestyle. While the outdoor locations were in Kashmir, Simla, Nainital, Bombay and Delhi, the film spares the viewer no detail of the lifestyle of the super-rich, who have motor boats, American cars, throw lavish parties and live in houses adorned with fountains, circular beds, sunken seating and grand pianos. This set the style for a whole ‘look’ for Hindi films, away from the drama of feudal riches to newly upwardly mobile social groups. The women are glamorous in every respect, displaying highly stylish outfits, diamond jewellery and elegant grooming. The men wear the tight suits that were fashionable at the time, while only the older generation appears in ‘traditional’ clothes.

Waqt has enduringly popular songs, composed by Ravi with lyrics by Sahir, including ‘Ai meri zohrajabeen’ (Manna Dey) (which Yash Chopra’s son Aditya includes in his debut film, Dilwale dulhaniya le jayenge, as a love song for the older generation) and ‘Aage bhi jaane na tu’ (Asha Bhosle).

Waqt was the first colour film made by B. R. Films and established Yash Chopra as a major film-maker, a position he still holds nearly forty years later after directing films such as Dhool ka phool (1959), Daag (1970), Deewaar, Kabhi kabhie, Trishul, Silsila, Chandni, Lamhe, Dil to pagal hai and Veer-Zaara (2004), and producing other films, such as Dilwale dulhaniya le jayenge – Rachel Dwyer

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 1965, Genre – Drama, Country – India, Language – Urdu/Hindi, Producer – B.R. Films, Director – Yash Chopra, Music Director – Ravi, Cast – Sunil Dutt, Sadhana, Balraj Sahini, Achla Sachdev, Raj Kumar, Rehman, Sharmila Tagore, Shashi Kapoor, Shashikala