Gaata Rahe Mera Dil... an interview with the authors of a book about Hindi film songs

[Did a version of this Q&A for Scroll]

Introduction: Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Balaji Vittal won the National Award for best film book in 2012, for RD Burman: The Man, The Music. Their new collaboration Gaata Rahe Mera Dil: 50 Classic Hindi Film Songs expands the canvas to look at some of the most iconic songs from the long and varied history of Hindi-film music. The book combines deep-seated knowledge of musical traditions, anecdotes and back-stories, and analysis of what these songs contributed to the form and language of Hindi cinema.

Your RD Burman book was one of our most detailed cinema books and clearly a labour of love, but this must have been an even more daunting project. Such a huge treasure trove to choose from, thousands of songs representing many musical forms. What criteria did you use to keep the list down to fifty?

Anirudha Bhattacharjee: The song had to be well known. It had to be very melodious. Should have struck a chord with the listeners when released and also thereafter. Nostalgia value was a must.

Balaji Vittal: We wanted to pay tribute to the composers, lyricists, filmmakers and singers who comprise the hall of fame – anyone who reads Gaata Rahe… should get a panoramic view of the who's who of Bollywood playback. But yes, it’s true that even 500 songs wouldn’t have been enough!

Did you consciously go for as much variety as possible? What are the extremes represented here – between, say, Hindustani classical and western-influenced music?

AB: Not really. We went mostly by gut feeling. We did think of genres – like the rain song, the qawwali, semi-classical, disco, songs set on modes of transport like the train, the boat and the car, ghost songs, the ghazal, medley, soliloquy, cabaret, Arabic, etc – but in the end it was the heart ruling the head. We found that we had missed the lullaby, but some of the songs chosen are soft and tranquil enough to act as lullabies too.

We tried not to include too many of our personal favourites – else the list might have been very different. Having said that, we were both born in the 1960s, and most of the songs are from the period 1951 to 1977. We prefer arrangements without clutter, hence we avoided very fast and frivolous songs as well as songs with an overdose of leather.

BV: Variety in genre, instrumentation and mood were key. One can also see from the selection the gradual changes in the landscape in the choice of instruments, recording techniques and arrangement styles – as well as the different sound flavours identified with different singers and composers, and the personal styles of different poets.

You begin with a prologue about “Babul Mora” (from the 1938 film Street Singer) and then “Chale Pawan ki Chaal” (from the 1941 Doctor). How did these early songs pave the direction of Hindi-film music?

BV: How could we think of writing a book on Bollywood music history and not pay homage to KL Saigal? "Babul Mora" was not a playback; the song was recorded live whilst the sequence was being shot. It is a landmark that represents a period before playback singing. This chapter is followed by a rare translated extract about how the idea of playback singing came into being.

"Chale Pawan ki Chaal" can be technically called the first road-song, set in a fast-paced rhythm that OP Nayyar would patent later. It is very significant for other reasons too, as you will read in the book – not the least being that it features another granddaddy of Indian films, Pankaj Mallick.



AB: I think the best-remembered songs are those that we can hum along to. “Babul Mora” is such a song, which, despite being from the 1930s, gives the average listener a comfort level. This was a light song with a classical base (Bhairavi / Sindhu Bhairavi), and subsequently defined the types of songs that would flood Hindi films. Most of the other songs before or around that time were rather complicated and mandated a generous level of classical knowledge. Their reach too was relatively low.

When in your view did the defining era for Hindi-film music begin? Who and what were the major catalysts?

AB: Each era came with its own flavour. The 1930s and the 1940s were more in the mould of sombre songs. Raichand Boral, Pankaj Kumar Mallick, Khemchand Prakash, Anil Biswas, brought in lots of folk and classical music. Husnlal Bhagatram were the masters of Punjabi melodies – as was Naushad, who fused UP folk with Indian classical music. C Ramachandra was an instinctive composer, and his melodies were very fresh even when he blended Indian music and western genres. SD Burman came with his repository of Bengali folk and Rabindra Sangeet. He was perhaps the greatest singer among the old masters.

However, the first defining era I think is the 1950s. Shankar Jaikishan changed the landscape. Their melody was light, and their arrangement trendy. They could also handle large orchestras and could create the big sound without being noisy. They influenced an entire generation of composers. OP Nayyar had a style which was very different from any other composer of his time or any other time. Madan Mohan tasted little commercial success, but is one of the most revered composers even today, forty years after he left us. His tunes were very intense, and could create a deep feeling of tearful craving. Salil Chowdhury was the composer’s composer, I don’t think there will ever be another like him. His knowledge of Indian melody and Western Classical-based arrangement is still unparalleled in Indian film music. Roshan fiddled with lots of classical music, but came out with soft, simple, and hummable tunes. Jaidev and Khayyam had a distinctive style, which they could maintain through three decades. Film music evolved during the 1950s.

The next defining time was the coming home of RD Burman. He redefined sound. And AR Rahman with his electronic sound could be the catalyst of our times.

BV: And then there have been the unsung heroes, like Sajjad Hussain. It is impossible to pick one, two or even three catalysts. The inconclusiveness is what makes for interesting debates. One more pitcher of beer please!

Was Hindi-film music in the 1930s and 40s limited by primitive technology? (You mention that there weren’t proper reverb systems and that mikes needed to be heated and prepared, which complicated the song-recording process.) And were there any upsides to this – in the sense that it forced composers and musicians to innovate?

AB: Primitive, yes. Recording facilities were limited. Studios were not equipped in the manner one would have liked them to be. Regarding innovation, I would not be able to comment as I was not there then. One needs to be there to understand what went on. Armchair journalism in film and music is the reason why nobody takes the critic seriously!

BV: Fifty years from now, when someone writes another Gaata Rahe Mera Dil, they will state that the early 2000s were limited by primitive technology! The industry will keep innovating, of course. But it would be sad if technology were to completely replace melody – music should always be about melody first. Everything else later. Our book has emphasised this.

You mostly focus on the songs themselves – the music, instrumentation and lyrics – but there are a few instances (e.g. the grand Awaara dream sequence) where you dwell on the picturisation too. When you think of your favourite Hindi-film songs, are the visuals an essential part of your fondness for them?

BV: Absolutely! In motion pictures, visual appeal is important. It demonstrates the film-maker's imagination. The split-screen sequence of "Ek pyaar ka nagma hai" (Shor) shows a happy family, as well as the calamity that hits them, and the submission to destiny. Each mood captured so poignantly on the lens by Manoj Kumar. Also check out Raj Kapoor's passion for the grandiosity in the medley in Awaara. Or how Yash Chopra brings adultery into the flower gardens of the Netherlands. But we also love songs that have been left out of the film altogether.

AB: I love all forms of music. Visuals are secondary. Some songs are BHNS (Better Heard and Not Seen, a jargon in use on social media since the days of Yahoo Groups). For the regular viewer, however, visuals do play a very important role.

You mention that there have been times when a beautiful song had already been composed and the director had to create a situation for it in the film’s narrative – even something as iconic as “Waqt ne kiya, kya haseen sitam” (Kaagaz ke Phool). Any instances of key films that moved away from a director’s or writer’s initial vision because of the demands of the music?

AB: Many. SD Burman was someone who could create or alter song situations. “Mora gora ang lai le” (Bandini) is one, where he demanded that Kalyani (Nutan) would sing this song outside her house. Another would be “Jaltein hain jiske liye” (Sujata), where the phone was brought in as a prop at the insistence of Burman.




BV: The star system sometimes played a role in this too. “Zindagi kaisi hai paheli” (Anand) was supposed to be a background song, but Rajesh Khanna found the song so enchanting that he wanted to be part of it. Raza Murad also had reportedly stated that “Main shaayar badnaam” (Namak Haraam) was supposed to be pictured on him. Priya Rajvansh too wanted a piece of “Tum jo mil gaye ho” (Hanste Zakhm) and so the Lata Mangeshkar one-liner was added later.

Picking a single representative song from a soundtrack as brilliant and varied as Guide (SD Burman) must have been very difficult. Why did you go for “Mose Chhal Kiye Jaaye / Kya se Kya Ho Gaya”?

AB: To be very frank, it gave us the opportunity to showcase two songs instead of one within the same story. It also sums up the dilemma of the lead pair, of having loved and lost.

BV: This twin song – "Mose chhal kiye jaaye" and "Kya se kya ho gaye" – was the climax of the saga, when Raju and Rosie, the estranged lovers, confront each other. Their estrangement had to go through that one final public catharsis where each accuses the other. The twin song sums up their ornate tragedy. SD Burman had composed two very different-sounding songs with the same tune, which was incredible. And Fali Mistry's cinematography painted the tears of Raju and Rosie in a motley of colours.






The use of the song in Hindi cinema has undergone a change. In the earlier sort of sequence, actors lip-synched and the narrative entered a new, “non-realistic” space when a song began. Now songs tend to be used more as background, running through a film in snatches rather than occupying a separate 5-6-minute space. Has this in your view affected their charm or durability?

BV: You think so? I observe nowadays a number of song sequences force-fitted just to capture the music-channel space and for DJs to add to their playlists. In fact, many of them feature in the closing credit rolls. So technically they are not part of the storyline at all! Film producers are trying to cover some of their investments beforehand – all you need to do is throw in a Bhangra mix or a tapori number. That is why many of the songs today are quickly forgotten and replaced by new ones. Many of them sound similar anyway – synthetic voices, same rhythm.

AB: How many songs, say from the last ten years, can you sing in full? I bet you would not be able to name ten. Previously, people used to remember songs with the full set of music – preludes, interludes and coda. Hemant Kumar said even snake charmers would use his been music. The connect then was both aural and visual; the common man become the character while crooning the songs. That art is almost extinct.

Actors like Dev Anand, Shammi Kapoor and Nutan gave so many outstanding performances within song sequences. Do you get the impression that the young actors of today are more self-conscious about doing old-style musical scenes?

AB: The running-around-trees business was invented as an escape mechanism; it never happens in real life. Singing while running around trees or in rocking boats is an exercise best avoided! And singing while biking or driving could be life-threatening as well. The new-age filmmakers and actors are perhaps more conscious about this, as is the metro audience. Obviously, the language of Hindi cinema has been affected.

What we really lost in this transition is the sad song. I went to a corporate fest in Gurgaon as a judge and found that there were at least five entries where the song was “Abhi mujh mein kaheen” (Agneepath, 2012), one of the best songs of recent times. This shows that people still love melody and are sold on sad songs too. But today we hardly create nice, lovable sad melodies, something like “Main shayar badnaam” (Namak Haraam) or “Sada khush rahe tuh” (Pyar ka Saagar).

Also, the new heroes do not have innately romantic voices. Imagine Hemant Kumar or Talat Mahmood singing for say, a Shahrukh Khan or a Sanjay Dutt. It is almost nightmarish! How many leading stars would be able to pull off a “Kuch toh log kahenge” I wonder? Or a “Saranga teri yaad mein”?

Related to this: most of the major directors from the 50s and 60s had a degree of training in music, and they took the shooting of song sequences seriously. V Shantaram, Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, later Vijay Anand, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Nasir Hussain. Have we in some ways moved away from that culture to one where directors are not as entrenched in music?

AB: Technology often comes with a price tag. I do not know how much the present-day directors know music. However, the directors you named were all musically very creative. Shantaram is supposed to have helped his composers with the creation of tunes. Raj Kapoor could play more than one instrument (he in fact played the tabla with Kishore Kumar during the latter’s audition at a radio station) and at times used to play secondary percussion during the recording of background scores of his films. Guru Dutt brought with him the teachings of Uday Shankar’s school. Vijay Anand supposedly learnt music, and the Anands as a family were known for their musical sense. Hrishikesh Mukherjee was a sitarist himself. Nasir Husain understood what goes and what does not, and, as per Pancham, could inspire composers to give their best.

Add the fact that their stories were socials and mostly around the theme of romance. Today there is lot of aggression in the stories. It certainly does not lead to musical outputs.

BV: Even today's filmmakers, we are sure, understand music. But when a producer has invested Rs 200 crores, the director is left with very little room. Forget music, the director would not even have much of a say in the screenplay of the film. For example I can't believe that a third-rate film like Chennai Express was directed by the same Rohit Shetty who had made very different films like Zameen. The music often has to match the hero's persona and the lowest denominator of public tastes.

I noticed that post-1982, you only have one other song from the 1980s (from Qayamat se Qayamat Tak). Was that a particularly dry decade for Hindi-film music? And if so, why?

AB: Well, you’ll agree that the 1980s were not what you call very musical. The best singers were past their prime. Some were no more. Creative composers got less work. I feel that the mass-scale migration from villages and small towns to cities created a culture which was not conducive for cerebral consumption. Also, a film named Deedar-e-Yaar failed in 1982. The producer, who was also the hero, went south to recover losses and played the leading role there in a few films….. Whatever happened next is history, and better not discussed here!

BV: The Bappi Lahiri brand of music in the period between 1982 and 1988 was all nonsense. Even today when I hear “Oo La la” from Dirty Picture, it brings back bad memories of “Ui Amma” from Mawaali. Kudos to Jagjit Singh for having creating global space for the non-film ghazal. And 30-year industry veteran Khayyam came up with a stunning album in Bazaar. And RD Burman too delivered the oceanic Saagar. But by and large, 1983-1988 was musically very bad. The music matched the quality of the films. We have had badly made films earlier too, but in these, the intent itself was shallow – those vulgar pelvic grinding by Sridevi, or the imitation disco stories, were made solely to cater to the front-bench audience. These could not be viewed with the family.

And then came the revival in QSQT.

The last song included in the list is Roja’s “Dil Hai Chhota sa, Chhoti si Asha”. Why end in 1993?

AB: We kept a shelf life of twenty years for a song to be in public memory. And we finished writing the book in 2013.

BV: A song has to stand the test of time for at least (we guess) two decades for it to be considered a classic. We have included "Dil Se" in the "new age" tributes. Albums like Dil Chahta Hai, Don, Rab ne Bana di Jodi and select tracks from Omkara, Tashn, 3 Idiots, Badmaash Company, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, Chak de India, Ye Jawani Hai Diwani will make for enjoyable listening years later too.



This is the sort of project that can easily move beyond the confines of a one-time printed book. Have you considered expanding it into a website with essays on other songs, as well as multimedia and space for discussion? Or a regularly updated e-book?

AB: Never thought of it, but now, as you have mentioned it, we are thinking! Movin Miranda, a friend who works out of Kuala Lumpur, had actually suggested this.

BV: In the countdown to the launch, we have already published posts on the songs that could not be included in the 50 Classics list. The Facebook page on the book invites discussions and debates. The back cover of the book urges everyone to write their own stories on 50 or 100 songs! We would love to see Gaate Rahe Mera Dil start a trend of more music fans crafting their own list of songs.

Two people writing a book together: how does that work? Does one of you handle research while the other does the actual writing, or is it more integrated than that?

AB: We share the workload. Both of us do the running around and writing, and exchange chapters to review / add / edit material. For this particular book, Balaji did a lot of travelling though. You will find many firsthand interviews which he managed via extensive travel.

BV: We have done college quizzes and Antakshari together and hence always enjoyed a deep understanding. We research independently so that we get more “masala”. While drafting the manuscript, we alternate between one of us writing the first draft and the other adding to it. Sometimes an insightful interview with a luminary itself provides the core of the story script e.g. in the case of “Woh shaam kuch ajeeb thi” (Khamoshi). It starts with composer Hemant Kumar stretching out his long legs and telling Gulzar something.... and, in a snap, Gulzar gets the first two lines of the song.




There are more cinema books in India now than there were a few years ago. But when it comes to something like popular cinema (or in this case, popular film music), do we have enough people willing to read thoughtful literature about it? Or is there still the attitude “Watch the film/listen to the music and that’s enough. No need to analyse”?

AB: Rightly said. Film magazines are seen and not read. Most film books read either like a PhD thesis / seminar paper, or something like a cheap bestseller. Film music books are worse. Serious writers are very few, and what we get is mostly gossip or 30 superlatives spread in many forms over 200-250 pages. Forget research, there is not even basic sincerity.

However, film criticism is now acknowledged as a subject. The awareness level of the audience is now higher. The internet, now a household commodity, has been a major catalyst in the change – hence we do have a serious readership for cinema. Though after a certain point, most readers tend to get restive. Somehow, our DNA is attuned to stories and gossip, and not appreciating the technicalities of cinema. I am told that film-based books, apart from autobiographies by stars, do not sell. Coffee-table books sell because of their novelty value and celeb tags.

Coming to music, there is nothing called music criticism (especially for film music) in our country. Branded critics take pride in naming some ragas, without trying to explain why and how this fits the need of the script. There are some critics who have no clue about music, and are mostly engaged in equating the commercial success of the film with its musical greatness. Some of them have vested interests too. Sadly, critics who review classical music do not tend to touch film music. Maybe they consider it beyond their dignity. Ashok da Ranade is perhaps the only classical music critic who does write about film music.

Given the state of things, we thought that there is a world to be explored in dissecting popular film music. Hence we did get into analyses. It also helps us appreciate music better. I always ask myself – why do I like this? And then try and put my mind into it. I call up my friend Ranjan Biswas too - who is a brilliant western classical musician - to discuss progressions and chords.

BV: Things will change, hopefully. Wanting to read about your favourite music or film is a natural progression. The success of Anupama Chopra's book on Sholay or yours on Jaane bhi do Yaaro bear testimony to this. But writers must make sure that the research is original and that the stories are interestingly told, keeping the general audience in mind. A technical discourse will not sell. Also, e-book versions present easier procurement and storage options. These would help. Also, I get the sense that the publishers have that “3000 copies” number in mind when launching a film book title. The traditional channels will work in a limited way only. Publishers must invest in film and music-based books with newer and more innovative channels of distribution. They must leverage social media to create those affinity groups, forums etc.

You stress in the Intro that there could be dozens more books like this, with completely different lists of classic songs. Could you name just five songs that you seriously regret not being able to include here? (I know that will be another torturous exercise in list-paring!)

Bhattacharjee (centre, in red kurta) and Vittal (in blue shirt) at an
RD Burman tribute show in Dubai

AB: Five is too small a number. I can name a hundred easily. If you notice, we have kept the selection to one song per film. In a film like Amar Prem, any of three Kishore songs or the two Lata solos could have been there. Hence, we used the chapter to talk about all the five. Using this principle, the number of songs actually discussed in the book could be 200. However, to name just five (and this list will be entirely personal, and I am not considering the films which are already there in the book), in no particular order:

‘Mujhe le chalo’ (Sharabi, 1964) – The ultimate sad song in my opinion. There was a time when I used to get up early in the morning and sing this song at a stretch. Sanjeev Ramabhadran, a US-based musician, sings it like a dream. 

‘Lau lagati’ (Bhabhi ki Choodiyan, 1961) – My favourite Yaman from films. There is a Marathi / Konkani touch which makes it sound so honeyed. It reminds me of a similar Yaman-based song, the Ganesh Arati “Sukh karta dukh harta varta vighnachi”, which was taught to me in college by Nagamani, a friend who, in my opinion, was the closest to Lata I’ve ever heard.

‘Na tum bewafa ho’ (Ek Kali Muskayee, 1969) – This is my dearest Lata-Madan Mohan song. Even today I call up my friend Pathasarathi Bhattacharyya Ekalavya any time of the day and ask him to sing this song. He knows my fixation and would never say no. He is easily one of the best singers today in Bengal – only that he is an oncologist by profession.  

‘Aaja piya tohe pyaar doon’ (Baharon ke Sapne,1967) / Baahon mein chale aao (Anamika, 1973)’ – Two songs which made me take note of a composer named Rahul Dev Burman. The reason why I could write the previous book. And this one too. 

‘Aankhon aankhon mein hum tum’ (Mahal, 1969) – My favourite romantic song. There are very few days when I do not sing this. Connects me to my childhood, the rains, and one very cold night in 1989 when this song was playing on someone’s tape, softly cutting through the pin-drop silence of the fog, taking me back in time. Very nostalgic.

BV: 1) O sajna barkha bahaar aayee (Salil Chowdhury – Parakh) 2) Mere sapno ki rani kab aayegi tu (SD Burman - Aradhana) 3) Na tum bewafa ho (Madan Mohan - Ek Kali Muskayee) 4) Aapki yaad aati rahi raat bhar (Jaidev - Gaman) 5) Sajanwa bairi ho gaye hamaar (Shankar-Jaikishen - Teesri Kasam).

The joker and his disguises - Raj Kapoor as innocent and masochist

Raj Kapoor, whose 90th birth anniversary was earlier this week, is a polarising figure for many movie buffs. Even those who don’t much care for his screen persona (because it is mawkish or narcissistic), or have reservations about aspects of his films, tend to agree that he was – from a very early age – one of mainstream Hindi cinema’s leading auteurs. And that his important films, beginning with his directorial debut Aag in 1948, and continuing till at least Bobby 25 years later, were deeply personal, even autobiographical in places. If one function of art is to present a particular, individual sensibility – even if it is a discomfiting one – then there is little doubt that Kapoor was an artist working out his compulsions through a commercial medium.

There is plenty in his work for the cine-aesthete too. For a moment, set aside the Chaplin homages, the women in white, the romantic showboating, the father-son conflicts, the idealising of male friendship – and instead watch the brilliantly show-offish dream sequence in Awaara, or the smaller moments in that film, such as the scene where the judge suspects that his wife was unfaithful: the slanted compositions, the use of lighting, the shadows from a rain-soaked window playing across Prithviraj Kapoor’s handsome face. This is style-driven cinema helmed by a young man excited by the tools and possibilities of film; it reminds me of Orson Welles’s description of how he felt when given complete freedom to make Citizen Kane at age 25 (“It was the best toy-train set a boy ever had”). That isn’t to make a facile comparison, but to point out that Kapoor had genuine filmmaking panache, along with a knack for bringing together a team of people whose sensibilities matched his own – from lyricist Shailendra and composers Shankar-Jaikishan to screenwriter Inder Raj Anand and cinematographer Radhu Karmakar – and making them part of his extended family.

And of course, there are the women – from Nargis to Padmini to Vyjayanthimala – and the conflict one senses in Kapoor’s attitude to them. An easy interpretation is that he was a controller, an exploiter or a voyeur: playing caveman by dragging Nargis around in Awaara; draping much younger heroines like Zeenat Aman and Mandakini in semi-transparent clothes in his later films. Yet to look closely at his work is to be fascinated by a duality in his screen image – one that is backed by the revelations made in such books as Raj Kapoor Speaks (by his daughter Ritu Nanda) and Madhu Jain’s The Kapoors: The First Family of Indian Cinema.

On the one hand, there is the naïf of films like Awaara and Shree 420 – embodying pastoral innocence, a misfit in a corrupt, modernising world – or the good-hearted clown who makes others laugh while hiding his own sorrow under greasepaint. Yet, within the DNA of this iconic character is also a nastier, sulkier Raj Kapoor – the masochist who seems to expect rejection and disappointment all the time and then, when it comes, almost revels in it. In his extravagant 1964 romance Sangam, one of our most fully realised melodramas, the conventional hero is the sensitive, new-age lover Gopal, played by Rajendra Kumar, while Kapoor’s Sundar is the suspicious, animalistic alpha-male who wants to possess the woman (and seems faintly aware that he isn’t worthy of her). And in Mera Naam Joker, often seen as Kapoor’s emblematic film, his character Raju keeps falling in love with – and idealising – different sorts of women, but the intensity of his feelings is never reciprocated in the terms he requires. (What exactly those terms are, though, is hard to say. Is it something as straightforward as sexual desire? Probably not. In Raj Kapoor Speaks, Kapoor mentions his early attraction towards his mother and says that his interest in female nudity may have begun during his childhood bathing sessions with her. It certainly casts a new perspective on the knotty father-son relationship in Awaara!)

While being mindful of the dangers of pop-psychology, the relationship between Kapoor and his women (both as it was rumoured to be off-screen and as it was in films like Sangam) reminds me a little of Alfred Hitchcock and his blondes. One view of Hitchcock (presented in studies such as Donald Spoto’s book The Dark Side of Genius) is that this short, fat man, constantly surrounded by glamorous actresses who may have seemed to him out of reach, used his films to exorcise his demons – casting Ingrid Bergman (who was on the verge of “leaving” Hitchcock for another director, Roberto Rossellini) as a sickly, dominated woman in Under Capricorn, or putting the attractive Tippu Hedren in real danger during the shooting of the climactic scenes in The Birds. But a more nuanced view comes from Camille Paglia, who responded to the charge that Hitchcock was “clearly a misogynist” with a discussion about the push-pull relationship – adoration mixed with fear – that male artists from Michelangelo downwards have often had with their female subjects. “Any artist is driven by strange and contrary forces,” she said, “The whole impulse is to untangle your dark emotions” – adding that before rushing to make one-dimensional judgments, one should remember that “we are talking about a man who made films in which are some of the most beautiful and magnetic images of women that have ever been created”.

Some of this applies to the portrayal of women in Kapoor’s cinema: the worshipful gaze coexisting with the need to pull down or debase. Watch how lovely and elegant Vyjayanthimala so often is in Sangam (as in the gorgeously shot “Yeh Mera Prem Patra” sequence, where she is courted by the gentle Gopal), and then see how she is made to look outlandish in the “Budha Mil Gaya” scene. By revealing as much of himself as he did in his work, Raj Kapoor also revealed a great deal about the many dimensions – including the uglier ones – of love and romantic obsession. The clown had quite an assortment of masks.

[Did a version of this for Business Standard]

P.S. Below is the “Yeh Mera Prem Patra” sequence, including a two-minute prelude before the song itself starts – one of Hindi film’s finest depictions of idealised love, where one is left in no doubt about the high-mindedness of Gopal’s love. It makes an interesting contrast with the “Bol Radha Bol” song in the same film, which is much more physically charged – the sangam in that case being not just of the mind and heart but of the body. And there are the lyrics, suggesting two different views of love. Where Gopal puts Radha on a pedestal, comparing her to both the sacred rivers Ganga and Yamuna, Sundar is more worldly and self-absorbed – he likens his own mind to Ganga and Radha’s mind to Yamuna, and calls for a union. But in this story about two different forms of possessiveness, one can also consider that Gopal, for all his decency, is treating Radha as a goddess-statue rather than a human being – which is why it is so easy for him to “sacrifice” his love in the name of friendship, without consulting her.



And here, just by way of a small tribute, is one of my favourite RK songs (which conveniently segues here into another fine song):

Sublime, meet surreal - thoughts on Chalti ka Naam Gaadi

A still from the classic comedy Chalti ka Naam Gaadi, wherein a signboard in the motor-repair shop asks the manic Kishore Kumar to “play safe”:

When I first saw that ad in the background of another shot, I thought it was for fuel, and this seemed inappropriate – surely this man, of all people, needs no external source of energy. But then I realised it was for brake fluid, which made sense – it’s as if the very set is beseeching him to slow down. Many a doughtier wall (not to mention writer, director or co-performer) must have made similar requests over Kishore Kumar’s career, to no avail.

In an essay about the “ugliness” of the male actor in Hindi cinema, and how this reflects life, Mukul Kesavan observed, “The first thing that strikes the eye gazing upon India is that the men can be nearly as ugly as sin […] Indian heroes look the way they do because desperate male audiences pay money to watch men like themselves succeed with beautiful women […] Hindi cinema is unfairly dismissed as escapism: it is, in fact, a great reality machine designed to remind Indian men of their good fortune and to reconcile Indian women to their fate.”

The piece is tongue in cheek, but even where it contains patches of real social observation, I don’t think you can apply it to one of the most unusual romantic pairings in Hindi-movie history: Madhubala and Kishore Kumar. Here’s the rub: in so many of the scenes these two did together, even with her ethereal presence on the screen, it is difficult to take your eyes off him. The clichéd way of describing them would be “the sublime and the ridiculous”, but it’s really more like “sublime and sublimer”.

To clarify, I don’t think Kishore Kumar was bad-looking at all, though there may be a psychological component to this (from early childhood, I have associated the man with so many wonderful things – initially as a singer, later as an actor – that my reptile brain would probably raise its drawbridge against the very suggestion that he was “ugly”). But one may safely concede he wasn’t anywhere near as beautiful as Madhubala. Someone who knew nothing about the two of them might, if they saw a still photo of them together, think of court jesters and fairy princesses, if not gargoyles and damsels.

It’s when that still photo resolves itself into the moving image that one discovers that the jester unbound is really the centre of the frame, while Madhubala is more often than not happy to be the gorgeous foil. And a good example of this is in the Chalti ka Naam Gaadi song “Main Sitaron ka Tarana” (a.k.a. “Paanch Rupaiya Baarah Aana”). The scene is built on a brilliant juxtaposition: the beautiful woman who poses like a classical statue worthy of adoration, a Galatea waiting for her Pygmalion; and the crackpot who is concerned with the practical business of getting the money she owes him. First Renu (Madhubala) glides about the room singing the self-exalting lines “Main sitaaron ka taraana, main bahaaron ka fasaana / leke ik angdaai mujhpe daal nazar bann jaa deewaana” and then Manmohan (KK) struts into the frame like a cockerel, giggling dementedly like Mickey Rooney’s Puck in the 1935 version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Just watch:




Within the context of the film, this fantasy sequence is one of the breeziest depictions in 1950s cinema of the rich-girl-poor-boy theme, with its contrast between the privileged heroine who can afford to forget her purse in a garage and the hard-working mechanic who must get his mazdoori no matter what. Also note that it is presented as Manmohan’s dream as he lies sleeping in the back of Renu’s car: there is a subconscious recognition that she is an attractive woman, but at this early stage he is heavily conditioned by fear of his stern elder brother and the need to get his 92 annas. This will extend into their relationship later, where she is the desirous one taking the initiative, making romantic overtures, while he doesn’t quite articulate to himself what is going on between them.

I was surprised at how well Chalti ka Naam Gaadi held up after all these years, despite the fact that the film has an almost obligatory “serious track” about big brother Brij Mohan (Ashok Kumar) and his tragic thwarted romance – and such tracks can be the kiss of death for a lunatic comedy. But part of what makes that work is that the eldest of the Ganguly brothers plays his role dead straight right from the beginning. 
 
“Ashok Kumar was a charming man, but he had the physical presence of a cupboard wearing a dressing gown,” Kesavan writes elsewhere in that same essay. It’s a funny line, but not one I can agree with: AK was often miscast or made poor choices, especially from the late 1950s onward, but he was one of the giants of our cinema and I think he had wonderful presence in his better roles. Chalti ka Naam Gaadi may contain one of his most underappreciated performances (something that often happens when an actor associated with dramas or social-message films appears in an “inconsequential” comedy). He offsets the clowning about of his younger brothers, playing the straight man without ever becoming a foil (he is too canny and too much in control for that – that role falls to middle brother Anoop) and this adds layers to the chemistry between the siblings. 

I love little touches such as the one where Brij, apologising to Renu late in the film, says “Main boxer hoon, mera dimaag bhi boxer…” and then trails off. There are other “dramatic” moments like this that stop just short of becoming maudlin or dragging the film down, simply because the acting makes the characters believable irrespective of whether they are being funny or serious (or both). And of course, because Kishore Kumar is such a force of nature in nearly every scene he is in that some “brake fluid” is always welcome.

Music, fantasy and colour in V Shantaram’s Navrang

V Shantaram’s 1959 film Navrang is, true to its title, one of the most brilliantly over-the-top explosions of colour and classical music in Hindi-film history, but it begins with a black-and-white sequence that is almost subdued. The opening credits appear over a stationary shot of a door, as a song with the refrain “Rang de de” (“Give colour”) plays alongside. It is more like a hymn, really – as if the singers are beseeching God (or the film’s director) to give a fresh coat of paint to this monochrome canvas. And he obliges: as the words “Screenplay and direction by V Shantaram” appear on the screen, the door opens and the man himself emerges, a deity giving darshan. Addressing us directly, Shantaram relates how he nearly lost his vision while shooting the scene with the bull in his previous film Do Aankhen Baarah Haath. A strange thing happened during those weeks when my eyes were bandaged, he says – I began to experience colours more vividly than I had before, and through this new movie I want to share some of those experiences with you. Upon which the screen transforms into a cornucopia of bright colours that spell out the film’s title. There will be no going back.

Narrative-wise, Navrang has many balls in the air, which gives it a certain unevenness, but also a pleasingly capricious quality. It begins in the 19th century, in a British-ruled Indian town, with an old man singing the stirring patriotic number “Yeh Maati Sabhi ki Kahaani Kahegi”. From his earliest years, Shantaram was a social-reformist filmmaker (he has a reputation as a proto-Bimal Roy in some circles) and pride in one's own culture and "maati" will be a central theme through this film. But as we go into flashback and meet the younger version of this man, Diwakar (played by Mahipal), the main plot point is introduced.
 
Diwakar, a struggling young poet, is disheartened by how quickly his wife Jamna (Sandhya, who was married to the director in real life) has slipped into her mundane domestic roles – looking after the house as well as his father and sister – and wants her to be more indulging of his fantasies. Disconsolate that she thinks it is shameless to dress up in colourful clothes, to do shringaar for her husband (“chhodo yeh vaahiyaat baatein!”), he starts daydreaming about Mohini, an enchantress with Jamna’s face but a markedly more playful attitude to romance, music and dance. (One might say that like Shantaram colouring his canvas in that opening sequence, Diwakar takes Jamna’s expressionless visage and projects his own desires on it.) “Mohini” becomes his muse and leads him to professional success as a court poet, but also ironically threatens his marriage, since Jamna becomes convinced he is in love with someone else.

Consequently, there are some intriguing scenes about the nourishing (but also potentially harmful) power of fantasy. “Zara muskura do,” Diwakar tells the apparition-like Mohini: he “directs” her to dress up just so, to cock her head in a particular way (some of these early moments may remind you of the obsessed Scottie in Vertigo, giving similar instructions to Judy, fitting her to the image he carries in his head) and even imagines her dancing about in a shiny blue outfit while going about her work in the kitchen, where she uses the chulha like it is a musical instrument. (A woman who can be glamorous even while she cooks delicious food for the family! What more could a man want!) But one can also see the fragility of these daydreams and the consequences they might have for the family and for Diwakar’s work. Nor can one forget the old Diwakar in the film’s framing narrative, telling a British baker he needs to take some food back home for his ailing wife.

Alongside this personal story are reflections on the relationship between art and the marketplace – does the latter destroy the former’s integrity, but then can one be an artist on an empty stomach? These are, of course, concerns of another major film of the time – Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa – but they are handled in a lighter way here. (The rabble-rousing pitch of “Yeh Maati” is similar to that of Pyaasa’s “Jinhein Naaz Hai Hind Par”, but the tones of the two films have little else in common.) One of Navrang’s liveliest sequences takes the form of an informal sammelan where Diwakar’s friend, himself a composer of lowbrow verses, performs “Kavi Raja Kavita se” (sung, incidentally, by the film’s lyricist Bharat Vyas) about the impracticalities of being a poet (“Yeh sab chhodo / dhande ki kuch baat karo / kuch paise jodo […] Kavi raja, chupke se tum bann jao baniya”). It’s a lovely scene, with plenty of camaraderie between the singer and his audience, and a wonderful performance by Agha as the friend (watching him here, one can see where his son Jalal Agha’s vivacity came from), but of course Diwakar and the others do have to deal with the very real repercussions of the art-commerce debate. And things will go downhill for him when, after the British take over the country, he refuses to toe the line by singing encomiums to the colonists.

But to discuss this film principally in terms of its plot might mean overlooking what a visual and aural feast it is. C Ramachandran’s score is full of gems, from the duet “Kaari Kaari Kaari Andhiyari” to the Holi song “Arre ja re Hat Natkhat” (which reaches a crescendo when Sandhya dances simultaneously as a man and as a woman) to the popular “Aadha hai Chandrama”. And Navrang contains some of the boldest use of colour I have seen in a movie. Watching its elaborate musical scenes, I was reminded of the Powell-Pressburger classic The Red Shoes, especially the magnificent ballet performance at the centre of that film. But no other film I can think of has anything comparable to the costumes worn by Sandhya in this film’s many fantasy sequences. One scene has “Moti the Smart Pony” in something of a dance duet with the actress, and the animal seems almost in awe of this bizarrely costumed two-legged creature in front of him (if you wove random images from the Star Gate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey together into an outfit, and then stitched a few unconscious peacocks on it, you might get something close to what Sandhya is wearing here).

If you have no taste for the deliberate theatricality and artifice of Shantaram’s staging, or if you can only take so much of dancing ponies, peacocks and wonder elephants spraying coloured water about, this film might not work for you. I loved most of it though. It must have been some big-screen experience back when it was released.

“Tere Mere Sapne”, a visual treat

Returning to an infrequent series about old song sequences (some earlier entries here, here and here) with thoughts on “Tere Mere Sapne” from Guide. Hindi cinema has a long history of the song sequence as a declaration of love or commitment, but rarely has it been done as well as it is here.

First, here is the scene (which you should grab this opportunity to watch anyway, whether or not you intend to read the rest of this post):



While the song in itself is one of the loveliest we have ever had, the visualisation shows Vijay Anand’s talent for using the long, unbroken take to add dramatic intensity and continuity to a given situation. This sequence lasts more than four minutes, but it is made up of only three shots, which increase progressively in length – in other words, there are only two cuts in the whole scene. And this isn’t an arbitrary stylistic decision, it is central to what is happening in the film at this point. 

Waheeda Rehman’s Rosie has just confronted her unpleasant, domineering husband and announced that she is leaving him. She has lately developed a bond with Dev Anand’s Raju – the “guide” of the film’s title – but this is the first time that the possibility of a future together will be properly broached. So we have two people who are very vulnerable in different ways: Rosie, having shown fire and resolve in the scene just before this one, is now uncertain about the road ahead, and Raju, a hitherto carefree man, is taking on responsibility and baring his own heart. As if mindful of the significance of the moment, the camera moves slowly, respectfully around the duo, observing them but not being intrusive.

The “language” of the sequence, with its long takes and tracking shots, is easier to understand if you consider that in filmic terms, a cut can represent disruption or a shift in tone. The two cuts in this scene (the first around the 39-second mark, the second around 1.44 minutes) both occur after a movement of the song has been completed, and both have Rosie drawing away from Raju after initially reaching for him. In the first scene, she strokes his shoulder; in the second she hugs him briefly, but then bunches up her fist and moves away. She is still conflicted at the end of both these movements, and in each case the cut serves as punctuation, indicating that the process of reassuring her must begin anew. And this is done at a dual level, by the lyrics of the song as well as by the sympathetic, probing movement of the camera.

All this leads up to the final, pivotal shot, which lasts for well over two minutes. Raju follows Rosie again, but his approach has changed now: instead of leading her by her hand, or drawing her close, he moves back, stands at a distance and holds his hand out – inviting her to come to him when she is ready. And it is here that the unbroken camera movement finds its strongest, most purposeful expression. The camera follows Raju, then moves back to Rosie, bridging the (largish) gap that has opened up between them; it watches her as she makes up her mind, and then accompanies her as she moves toward him.

Think of how different, and less intense, this scene would have been if it had simply cut back and forth between the two people. Instead it is done in one fluid take, with a near-perfect melding of performance and technology – every time I see it I have the spooky feeling that the camera, by not allowing Rosie the option of “escaping” to another shot (via a third cut), is coaxing her and then gently leading her to Raju. That unbroken take, tracking from left to right and then left again, appears to facilitate the final “milan” - an effect that could not have been achieved if the scene had been shot in a more conventional way, with multiple cuts and the shot/reverse-shot process.

It remains to be said (and unfortunately this is a defensive caveat that often follows any such analysis of a popular film) that none of this is intended to take away the beauty and emotional immediacy of the sequence by “intellectualising” or “over-analysing” it, or by turning camera movements into mathematical equations. But there is already a much-too-common tendency to undervalue the thought and effort that can go into such scenes from popular films, which are viewed mainly as “entertainment” or as diversions. (And as I have written elsewhere – here, for instance – the questions “Did the director really mean this?” or “Why analyse so much?” often signal laziness, or an unwillingness to engage with the nuts and bolts of narrative cinema.) In his book Cinema Modern, Sidharth Bhatia quotes the cinematographer Fali Mistry’s son as saying of this sequence, “It was shot over two evenings and a morning, at dusk and dawn, which means they must have had a very small window of about 10 minutes each time, so they had to ensure nothing went wrong in the acting, camera placement, lighting etc … It required great coordination.” There is similar fluidity in other song sequences in the film, including the much more exuberant “Aaj Phir Jeene ki Tamanna hai”.

Incidentally, another insight about the “Tere Mere Sapne” sequence comes from my friend Karthika, who points to the scene’s unusual use of light, or the time of day, “in signifying both solitude and the comfort and safety of love”. The scene begins in dusk, and as it continues the darkness grows – this is a notable departure from the kind of symbolism where a declaration of love coincides with dawn breaking (or is shot in bright daylight throughout). “Instead, what Rosie finds as darkness descends and envelops them is companionship, arms to hold her, a homecoming,” Karthika says – it underlines the fact that the scene is not about casual, youthful infatuation but about long-term responsibility.

P.S. and there is that lovely hug around the 3.10 mark. I showed this sequence during a talk at Ramjas College recently, and one observation made was that it was a little startling to see a hero and a heroine hugging so candidly in a 1965 film. Of course, the Navketan school was always a little more “forward” in such things, and the subject and back-story of Guide (an English-language version of the film made by an international crew was shot too) probably encouraged such candour. There is also the matter of the Dev Anand persona, and what he could get away with, both on-screen and off-screen. In the new book Conversations with Waheeda Rehman, the actress tells Nasreen Munni Kabir:

[Dev] was the only star who could put his arms around any actress and she would not object or push him away. Today the stars are physically affectionate with each other – there’s a lot of hugging – but we were reserved in our time. Yet none of us minded when Dev put his arms around us. He would say ‘Hi, Waheeda! Hi, Nandu’ – that’s what he used to call Nanda. The other actors were jealous and complained that whenever they tried to give us a hug, we girls would push them away. Dev was a decent flirt [laughs].

[An old post about R K Narayan's droll account of the shooting of Guide is here]

All aboard the Matinee Express (Gaadi bula rahi hai)

[A vignette-ish piece I did for The Indian Quarterly, about train scenes in Indian cinema. Many more films and sequences could have been mentioned, of course - feel free to add to the list]

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One of the earliest "movies" to be screened – perhaps the most famous of its time – was a 50-second record of a train pulling into a station: the Lumière Brothers’ Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, made in 1895. There is something oddly apt about this early union of locomotive and celluloid, for trains represent movement, and movement was also the unique selling point of those mystical things called motion pictures, which began to haunt people’s dreams towards the end of the 19th century.

No wonder there is a widely told story about viewers leaping out of their seats in terror as the Lumières’ train seemed to head towards them. The story may be exaggerated, but it sounds like it should be true: as a famous line in an American Western (a movie genre that would make significant use of the railroad) put it, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” So let us propose that that train was the first ever movie monster (dare one say “bogie-man”?) – predating filmic depictions of literary characters like Dracula or Frankenstein or Mr Hyde, not to mention the thousands of monsters that were first dreamt up for cinema.

(Illustration by SOMESH KUMAR)

Might Satyajit Ray have had this in mind when he employed train imagery to such sinister effect in the Apu Trilogy? There are scenes in Pather Panchali and Aparajito – visualisations of Ray’s carefully drawn storyboards – where a train seen in the distance, moving across the landscape, resembles a venomous black serpent. In these scenes, the locomotive with its trailing plumes of smoke also reminds me of the hooded Grim Reaper wielding his scythe in another film of the era, Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. And indeed, the trains in these early Ray films are closely linked to death: the young protagonist Apu frequently suffers the loss of people he loves, beginning with his sister Durga – with whom he waits in the fields for a glimpse of the passing train.

In the larger context of modern Indian history, trains have another very dark association: the most vivid horror stories about Partition involve ghost trains containing massacred bodies, moving back and forth across the newly created border, and there have been echoes in more recent tragedies like the 2002 Godhra train massacre. Ray’s contemporary Ritwik Ghatak was among the few directors who used trains – in films such as Megha Dhaka Tara – to emphasise fractured relationships in a country divided along communal lines.

However, making trains a representation of a single idea would be folly: it is equally possible to see them as the things that bind a large and complex nation. If they can be tied to death and destruction, they can also stand for development – the development of an individual, or of society itself. Remember that it is on a train that Apu travels to a life with bright new possibilities, from village to city. And consider how one of our most iconic films, Sholay, is book-ended by shots of moving trains. The opening scene has a train coming towards the camera (a nod to the Lumières?) before the camera moves forward to meet it, almost like an impatient family member. Sholay owes a big debt to the Western, and in that genre the railroad was a symbol of progress and civilisation. Little wonder then that the film's first action sequence has Veeru and Jai proving their heroism (and their status as “good guys”) by fighting off bandits who are trying to pillage a train. Not long after this, a train will carry the two men to a station near Ramgarh village, where the epic confrontation between good and evil will take place.

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Incidentally, though trains play an important function in Sholay, I find it difficult to picture Gabbar Singh traveling in one. Being a representation of primal evil, Gabbar inhabits a universe very different from that of the modern railroad. He lords it over his minions in a sun-baked, rocky valley far from the civilised world, trades with gypsies, and is associated with the outdoors; enclosed spaces, be they prison cells or train compartments, cannot contain him.

But let’s stage a little drama of our own now. Let’s imagine a special cinematic train – the Matinee Express? – made up of as many compartments as we could possibly need, and with no attempt at internal consistency. Thus, one section of this train could be a luxurious, velvet-curtained, gliding hotel of the sort that Anna Karenina would make an overnight journey on, but there would also be the squalid, overcrowded compartments that are so familiar to almost anyone who has traveled by train in India. And the people in this imaginary vehicle would represent different character types and situations, all filtered through our cinematic memories.

And let us begin with a contrast in moods, as exemplified by two songs. Sitting in one of the first compartments is Maanav, played by Dharmendra in the 1974 film Dost, and the song in his head is the beautiful “Gaadi Bula Rahi Hai”, which uses a train as an inspiration to draw the best from life: “Chalna hee zindagi hai / Chalti hee jaa rahee hai” (Life means movement / the train keeps moving). As our locomotive enters and exits hillside tunnels, the song exhorts young people to learn the following lesson: the train has fire in its belly, it toils away and bellows smoke (“Sar pe hai bojh / seene mein aag”), yet it continues to sing and whistle (“phir bhi yeh gaa rahi hai / nagme suna rahi hai”). What better analogy can there be for working hard and honestly, and staying upbeat as well?

But further back in another compartment, looking mournfully out the window, is a less sanguine hero from that same year, Kamal (Rajesh Khanna) in Aap Ki Kasam, and a less upbeat tune: “Zindagi ke safar mein guzar jaate hain jo makaam / woh phir nahin aate” (In life’s journey, when you leave a place behind / you never see it again). Here again, life is presented as a train journey, but one where each departing station represents something that has been irretrievably lost.

Since time travel is no constraint on our fantasy journey, let’s go back a few decades to the early 1950s and make room for a villager named Shambhu, who is eager to clamber into the cattle-class section. The hero of Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin is on his way to the big city to earn enough money to pay off a debt – at this point the train is for him a vessel to a better, more fulfilling life, so we won’t tell him that his illusions will soon be shattered. Instead, we’ll allow him a few hours of grace in the company of his little son, who is stowed away on our Matinee Express because he wanted to be with his father, but also because of the sheer novelty of being on a train: “Calcutta toh rail gaadi se jaana hoga, na?” he asks. (We can only travel to Calcutta by train, right?)

When hard reality does strike, Shambhu might be demoted to the Bogie of Lost Travelers. This is a purgatory for forgotten souls – for people who are trying to escape from themselves – and here all differences of class and background melt away. Thus, in one corner sit the many Devdases of our movie heritage, accompanied by their faithful but despairing servants. This is the tragic protagonist’s last journey: just as it seems like he might yet be able to redeem himself, the train stops at a station and he encounters his old friend Chunnilal, who does nothing more useful than tempt our hero into another fatal drinking session.

Elsewhere in the Lost Travelers’ compartment is a less central character from another major film, Deewaar: the disgraced trade unionist Anand Verma, father of the film’s heroes Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) and Ravi (Shashi Kapoor). Anand left his family when his children were little; many years later, when they are young men, their destinies firmly set on opposite sides of the law, his corpse is discovered on a train and we realise he has spent half his life shunting aimlessly from one station to another. This means he has probably covered the country a thousand times over, but it scarcely matters: for Anand Verma, Devdas and their sad brethren, the train is a moving coffin, not the means to a destination but the destination itself.

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Enough morbidity; let’s get some positive energy into our chook-chook now. There is place in this cinematic fantasy for double and triple roles, and so, as we pass under another bridge, we can see another Dharmendra – the Shankar of Yaadon ki Baarat – looking down at us thoughtfully. Just a few seconds earlier, this character was a young boy standing at exactly the same spot on the bridge, but then a 360-degree camera movement (which also showed the train passing below) allowed him to morph into the man. Perhaps this is an example of the train as a metaphor for growth – after all, there is no dearth of scenes in those action-hero-centred movies of the 1970s and 80s where a fleeing child leaps off a bridge onto the train running underneath; when his feet hits the top of the compartment, he is the grown-up hero.

That said, trains might also permit one to go in the opposite direction, to regress into childhood – and who is this man-child in half-pants, licking at a lollipop, hopping aboard our rail-gaadi? It is the Vijay (Kishore Kumar) of Half Ticket, who has disguised himself as a child because he doesn’t have the train fare for an adult. We recognise the deception, but we’ll let him in; his presence will provide some entertainment during our ride, and serve as a reminder that trains can be mobile amusement parks if you have the right company and a sense of humour.

Having stopped briefly at that last station, the Matinee Express is now pulling away, but not at great speed, which is just as well, for a soulful young man is posing dramatically at the door, stretching his hand out. A few suspenseful moments later another, softer hand meets his and a young woman is pulled onto the coach and into his arms. Rahul (Shah Rukh Khan) and Simran (Kajol) of Dilwale Dulhaniya le Jaayenge are on their way to a bright future together, and it scarcely matters to us (being allies of young romance) that she hasn’t bought a ticket.

Elsewhere, a more discreet romance is being conducted between Vandana (Sharmila Tagore), the demure heroine of Aradhana, and a dashing air force officer named Arun (Rajesh Khanna); she is in a special mini-compartment, reading or pretending to read - Alistair MacLean, no less -  while he is in an open jeep passing on the road outside, and flowing between them is the song “Mere Sapnon Ki Rani”. But Sharmila Tagore must be allowed one more role in our improbable mise-en-scène, so here she is again, more serious-looking, as a magazine editor named Aditi, who confronts a film star named Arindam (Uttam Kumar) and makes him face his private demons. The film is Satyajit Ray’s Nayak, and mark the contrast from the Apu Trilogy: the director appears to have got over his fear of train-travel and is now using one as a setting for personal therapy. Not long after this, he will even set part of his rollicking adventure Sonar Kella – with the detective Feluda pursuing villains from Bengal to Rajasthan – on a train.

Speaking of adventure, one of the most sustained train movies we have ever had – where most of the action takes place in a train and the plot centres on a super-fast train too – is B R Chopra’s The Burning Train, which was a big-budget disaster movie in the Hollywood tradition while also being a shining tribute to the railways and to Indian unity. Having made sure that our magic train has a generous supply of fire extinguishers, I’m now going to allow some of the characters from that film on board.

They represent the many colours of India, so here are a Hindu priest and a Muslim maulvi who initially bicker but later find common ground. Here is a Catholic schoolteacher escorting a tribe of children, and a loud-voiced but genial Sardarji. With this motley crew, who can resist a few songs? But with the arrival of the villains, our heroes are forced to climb outside the speeding vehicle and onto the roof of the compartment, where a battle for life and death will ensue.

Watching them from the distance of a few compartments – and the span of more than 40 years – with a little smirk on her face is Fearless Nadia, who has seen and done all this before these boys were even born. Among the earliest of her films was Miss Frontier Mail (1936), its title derived from the real Frontier Mail of the era, which – as Rosie Thomas puts it in an essay about Nadia – was “the height of glamorous modernity, its name synonymous with speed, adventure and the sophistication of the railways”. Nadia brought an element of chaos to that sophistication as she fought baddies on train rooftops, and her films also drew intriguing parallels between a speedy train and a fast-modernising world, where a woman could do all the things that fell traditionally in the male domain (and do them twice as well).

If the open spaces atop trains are perfect setting for such fight sequences – or for the equally rambunctious performance of such songs as “Chhaiya Chhaiya” (Dil Se...), the interiors of trains can be closed and claustrophobic, and thus effective settings for suspense or intrigue. (Think Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes or Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.) One of our fellow passengers – sitting by himself in an overcoat – is an intense young man with a preoccupied look on his face. This is Kumar (Amitabh Bachchan) of Parwana (1971), who is using this train journey as part of an elaborate alibi that will enable him to commit murder without being found out. But in the very same compartment, unbeknownst to him, is his admirer and doppelganger, the title character in Johnny Gaddaar (2007) who was so inspired by the plot of Parwana that he employs a similar technique to pull off a complicated heist. 

Of course, all our characters don’t actually have to be on board – some very poignant movie moments involve people who are seeing off other people but going nowhere themselves. Notable among these is Salim Mirza (Balraj Sahni) in Garm Hava, standing ramrod straight, bravely concealing his sorrow as one family member after another leaves him for the freshly created country across the post-Partition border. And there is the armless Thakur in a similar pose at the end of Sholay, his own life barren as the desert, but watching others move on with theirs, as the train carrying Veeru and Basanti pulls out of the station. Or think of the metaphoric use of the railway station waiting room as a crossroad: in Gulzar’s Ijaazat, a divorced couple named Mahender (Naseeruddin Shah) and Sudha (Rekha) re-encounter each other and exchange memories and revelations. We never see either of them getting on to a train, and we don’t need to.

I’m going to exercise an engineer’s licence here and permit our fantasy train to have a few compartments that are meant only for very short-distance traveling and can be detached from the whole - for these are the local city trains or the metros, and the kinds of plots that unfurl within them are necessarily different from the ones that take place in languid, long-distance travel. The time that passengers get to spend together per journey is limited, but it is possible to meet every day, and for a romance to unfurl slowly: thus the burgeoning of the relationship between working-class boy Tony (Amol Palekar) and the sweet Nancy (Tina Munim), chaperoned by her uncle, takes place on a Bandra-Churchgate route in Baaton Baaton Mein, as they move from passing notes to direct conversation.

There are opportunities, but there are threats too, as we are reminded in A Wednesday, which depicts the frustrations of the train-travelling common man in a world afflicted by terrorist strikes, and in Kahaani, which begins with a scene showing a chemical attack on a metro – and later has a scene where the film’s protagonist almost finds herself hurled before an oncoming train. This is why the staff of our Matinee Express is so meticulous about their security checks. Kindly excuse the inconvenience.

One man who moves freely from one coach to the next is a ticket-collector named Sanjay (M K Raina), from the low-key 1973 film 27 Down, and watching him is a reminder that so few of our movies have had interesting protagonists who work in the railways. (Need one mention the Bachchan-starrer Coolie here?) Sanjay is the quiet, subdued type, but there’s a lot going on inside his head. He didn’t want this job – he had to give up his art studies because of his railway-employee father’s insistence – and now he feels like he has spent his life crossing bridges without really getting anywhere; he lives, literally and figuratively, on the tracks, and measures his life in train sounds and distances. In fact, the first words we hear in the film are his subconscious musings: “Phir koi pull hai kya? Shaayad pull hee hai” (Has another bridge come? Seems like it).

If this hard-working young man were to take a cigarette break by going to the very end of the train and standing outside the last bogie, he might see that the stones on the track are forming words! Unfolding here is the inventive opening-credits sequence of Vijay Anand’s Chhupa Rustam where the names of the cast and crew members are spelt out in white chalk on the pebbles that litter the rail tracks.

It's a very odd sight, but we should be used to that by now. The fact that our train has enough space in it for both the melancholy ticket-collector and for the boisterous hero dancing to “Chhaiya Chhaiya” – along with so many others in between – is a reminder of the variety in both cinema and in rail travel. And so, while the Matinee Express continues on its merry way – picking up and dropping off more passengers along its endless line – I’ll give the last word to that very unlikely rap star, Jogi Thakur (Ashok Kumar), from the 1968 film Aashirwad.

He isn’t on board our train, but think of him as a sort of ringmaster, perpetually moving alongside it, commenting on the journey, giving voice to the stations that implore us to stop (“Rail gaadi / chuk chuk chuk / Beech waale station bole / ruk ruk ruk”) but also describing the scenery and people outside (“Buddhaa kisaan / hara maidan / mandir makaan / chai ki dukaan” – An old farmer / a green field / a temple and a house / a tea-shop) and ending with a list of cities and towns that this train will pass through. But we could equally think of him as a relic from our cinematic past, asking the train not to move too fast, to not try to compete with a world of jet planes. After all, we live in a time of diminishing attention spans, reduced travel time... and smaller screens too. (Could the audience at those Lumière films have possibly imagined watching movies on a mobile phone?) And so, it’s good to be reminded that life can still occasionally be both leisurely and king-sized – a view of a picturesque landscape through a train's windows, unfolding like an epic film on an old-fashioned 70mm screen.