I vividly recall going to see this film with family, a sister
visiting, and being treated in style because we knew someone; on the
way a poem of the director whose poems were amongst my collection and
some very favourite including that one kept going on in my head, what
with it being now a song on radio, and to my surprise it was a song in
this film, albeit a lesser version compared to the original poem. That
was sort of augury to further changes to the story of the film as we saw
it.
We had seen the original version of the film
before India had emergency declared and the film was forced to be re
shot and cleaned up version substituted for the original one, because
although the original story (by Kamaleshwar who is a well known and
respected veteran author in Hindi literature) was inspired by another
politician (who happened to be from Orissa) arriving in a helicopter for
her pre election meetings and raising a dust storm (Aandhi), with no
reference to anyone's real life in the rest of the story, this was less
known to general public that read less and so the authorities during
emergency instantly saw the film as dangerous in that it might be
identified with the then prime minister of India. The cleaned up version
obviously was far less genuine, but then the bits that were changed
were probably from the director and not the original author anyway, so
merely deleting them could have been better rather than substituting
lesser ones.
A man gets away with much neglect and
even destruction of his family in seeking his goals of career and more,
but a woman forever is judged by whether she has sacrificed herself for
her family - and if she has given up any notion of a personal life in
quest of higher ideals she is then judged for not having given up those
ideals in being a slave to all other humans, blood relatives and whoever
else might demand her blood.
If she is successful in
her career and if her career happens to be public service and she has
had to give up a personal life for this, she is nevertheless judged and
forever under suspicion for being possibly not quite as virginal as men
would like all women to be except when serving their own pleasures, and
even then.
Aandhi is about trials and travails of one such woman, who gave up her marriage and family to follow her chosen path.
In
the original she is divided between her father who is a top politician
and her husband who is a small hotel manager who resents her attentions
and following her father because all he would wish for is a small happy
family life, but the cleaned up version had her father changed to a
businessman who proclaims her being useful to his business if she
pursues politics, hinting at his selfishness and the unclean nature of
the politics with unethical nature of business and the nexus of the two.
Wonder how that bit was passed by the censor in preference to the
daughter following a father.
Subsequently the now
successful politician campaigning once again for election is
mysteriously faced with everything at a small town hotel being of her
tastes not known to people generally, until she realises her husband -
they never did divorce or at any rate remarry, so in effect the two are
still bound and bonded after all the years of separation - is the
manager of the hotel. They meet when she has time, but then there is a
cloud of suspicion about her character until she publicly clarifies that
she has been meeting her own husband whom she left so she could serve
people.
She is in a quandary because now she is
exhausted and would rather return to a nest to rest, but husband would
rather she returned because of preference and not because of failure,
and of course if she wins she is not going to give it up - so it ends in
her leaving and raising another dust storm as her helicopter leaves.
The
original had her own daughter among a bunch of schoolgirls asking for
her autograph in the last scene, and the poignancy of a mother who left
her infant not recognising the now grown up daughter who nevertheless
pines for recognition and any little bit the she can have of the mother
she knows only from afar and not even by sight; but this too was cut by
the censor during emergency and another bland end substituted.
Wonder
what stops the director from restoring the original film - or was that
too destroyed by the censors as they did to some other famous ones?
Tuesday, April 1, 2014.
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