Happy Rama Navami! On this day Hindus celebrate the birth of Lord Shree Rama - the 7th incarnation or Avatar (not the blue CGI kind, although I guess some could be blue ...) of Lord Mahavishnu, the Preserver. Rama was born on Earth to destroy the wicked King Raavana of Sri Lanka, which he did with the assistance of his brother Lakshmana and the monkey God Hanuman. Want to know more? The Ramayana Epic is available in the Kindle Store at Amazon.com, or you could watch one of the fabulous mythological movies of India (my personal favorite was the one where Jaya Prada played young Princess Sita). If you are really dedicated, you can watch the entire detailed series by Ramanand Sagar in which Arun Govil plays Rama.
Anyway, I was singing some bhajans (Hindu hymns) this morning and then I started laughing to myself thinking of this song from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1999), which is really a tragedy when you consider how beautiful the original bhajan is, but it's still kind of funny. Especially the little cameo by maestro singer Shankar Mahadevan himself as an annoying hippie singing in Shah Rukh Khan's ear.
I am REALLY, REALLY curious. I want to know about Ravikant Nagaich. Particularly what he was on, and whether he shared it with half the film community to convince them to be in this movie.
I saw Rani aur Lalpari (1975) as a child, and remembered snippets of it, the full Cinderella sequence starring Neetu Singh for example, but I absolutely did not recall the whimsical Alice in Wonderlandy, Willy Wonkaey craziness of this film. This fantasy children's movie, featuring Baby Rani (whom I recognized from Hum Kisise Kam Nahin as the young Kaajal who fell into the sea and almost drowned from 10 feet away - miraculous!), has a crazy mixture of melodrama, fantasy and mythological genres. The amazing thing is how many popular film stars are featured in it, including Asha Parekh, Rajendra Kumar, Reena Roy, Neetu Singh, Jeetendra, Feroz Khan, Aruna Irani, Jagdeep, Danny Denzongpa, etc.
The basic storyline is of a poor, young girl named Rani (played by ... Baby Rani!), whose father is working abroad. Rani and her mother (played by Asha Parekh) are forced to live with her cruel Aunt and Uncle while her father is away. The aunt is lazy and stingy, hoarding food and treats for herself and making Rani do laundry and clean their home. The uncle is a drunk who wrestles Rani's mother's hard-earned money away from her. Rani's only joys are her mother's love, her best friend Pappu, and her pet white rabbit named Moti (named for the pearl, not because it's fat).
Pappu tries to cheer up Rani by telling her stories, like the Cinderella tale, featuring Neetu Singh as Cinderella, Jeetendra as Prince Charming, and Reena Roy as the fairy godmother, aka Lalpari:
and by showing her fairy tale stories on his fancy home projector, like the story of Gulliver Travels, featuring Feroz Khan as Gulliver and Jagdeep as the King of the Lilliputians.
Pappu also teaches Rani that the crowds of Mumbai send the idol of Ganeshji into the sea because the entrance to heaven is underwater. Way to drive her to suicide Pappu, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Eventually things go from bad to worse for little Rani. Her uncle finds out she's been harboring a secret pet and in an extremely disturbing sequence, kills it, splattering rabbit blood all over little Rani.
Is this movie by Tim Burton? Later that same day, since the rabbit killing and the blood-spattered child weren't enough violence, we're subjected to a "Parents Day" program by Rani and her schoolfriends. Rani sings a pleading song about the State of the Union while all the children pantomime war, murder, etc. It's all very lovely and uplifting. At least we're graced by the gorgeous young Danny Denzongpa playing himself, there to give a special trophy and statue to Rani for her performance. Of course, Rani's mean uncle snatches it away from her.
Then comes the fateful day that Rani's dad is finally coming back to Mumbai. They go to the airport to receive him, and watch as the plane crashes and buuuuurrrrrns. Rani's mom is so overcome that she faints dead away -- well into a coma really. The doctors at the hospital declare that they cannot do anything to save her and she's declared a vegetable.
Sucks to be you Rani!
Rani decides she will go to heaven and bring back her mother (I guess at this point she's like Screw Pappa, he can burn in hell!). She dives into the sea and man, what a rabbit hole that is! The rest of the film is utter madcap psychadelicness ... lots of back projections of giant sea creatures, glittering sets, crazy costumes, etc.
Rani narrowly escapes a giant octopus and finds herself in front of Ganeshji who tells her the directions to heaven. She climbs in a boat with a mysterious lady in white who tells her not to touch her throughout the ride. Because kindergarten age kids never listen to crap like that, Rani ends up touching her and the lady disappears.
Rani is then thrown in a wild boat ride that made me intone the "rowers keep on rowing" sequence from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. She lands up amongst these weird mermaidly ladies led by Padma Khanna writhing about in clamshells, who point down a hole of DOOOOOOOM. Rani totally leaps in the hole which transports her to the land of the little angels (which are actually all the same kids that did a school performance all about war and violence with her earlier in the movie).
So the little angels take her to the Lalpari, who agrees to help her find her way to her mother. She sends with new GPS coordinates to Indralok, I guess, where the celestial nymph Menaka (played by a very RK-Films dressed Aruna Irani. Think Ram Teri Ganga Maili or Satyam Shivam Sundaram) is totally getting it on in the Rangoli hot tub with her nymphy (nympho?) friends.
Menaka does some apsara dancing for Indradev, and Rani can't keep her grubby little paws off of shiny things and picks a golden lotus which I guess blows up or something. Menaka is all sad when she sees Rani hurt, and runs with her to the feet of a giant plaster statue of Shiva (what the Devtas couldn't swing for marble?). Indradev is all, "She misses Shakuntala ..." which is super-duper insightful of him.
So Aruna Irani/Menaka sings a song beseeching the plaster Shiva to revive Rani, which he does. And Menaka decides to help Rani (despite the other apsaras, including Manju Bhargavi as Rambha - holla! questioning her getting involved with a stinky human child) and goes to seduce the info out of Yamaraj's secretary (played by Jagdeep again). She finds out that Rani's mother isn't dead yet, but is scheduled to be one of Yamaraj's victims soon. Menaka warns Rani that the path to Yamaraj's palace will be the most dangerous one she's encountered yet, but Rani insists that she has to go to save her mother. Menaka blesses her by throwing a bunch of plastic beads on her head, which will apparently protect her from numerous blurry back-projections of giant snakes, scorpions, lizards, weird ghost people, etc.
Finally she meets Yamaraj in the Palace of Hades. I must say, Yamaraj kind of seems like a jolly, kindly teddy bear of an uncle and not much of a Lord of Death! And ... well ... let's say if you know the story of Savitri-Satyavan then you can guess how Rani tricks Yamaraj into giving her mother back to her.
I want to love him and squeeze him and call him George.
There's an awesome review/blog post about this movie by Todd - I found this post after I wrote my recap and it turns out we had a lot of the same sentiments, particularly the Willy Wonka episode! I think I enjoyed this movie more than he did though ...
It's a pretty crazy ride, but it stuck in my memory all these years - mostly because of Neetu's Cinderella scenes, but also because there are so few old Hindi movies that were specifically for children, and this was a movie in which a child is the heroine throughout! I might suggest that viewing this movie with the booze flowing might make for an enhanced experience. Since this is all about Neetu - here's some Neetu-as-Cinderella picspam:
I hope to re-watch and review Chorni next, so stay tuned, and don't forget to visit this link for all the Neetu Squeeing in Bollyblogging Land!
So obviously since I'm a dancer and come from a family of dancers, most of my movie song memories from the early days were songs that we performed on stage. Today's song of the day was one that I've actually never seen the original before today! Since I was six we've been doing the Satyabhama Aur Rukmini Rani mini-dance drama from Raja Aur Runk (1968). I had NO idea that Sanjeev Kumar was in it, much less that he played Krishna!!! I don't know what this all had to do with the movie but it appears to be a dream sequence while someone is relating the tale of how Krishna got stuck in a massive ego-battle between two of his wives. That's why polygamy = bad Krishna. Get with the program. Oh ok, I guess it's ok if you're GOD and all. Anyway Satyabhama is known to have a lot of pride, and she gets all pissed when Krishna goes to hang out with Rukmini for a while (who incidentally I thought he married first?!). Narada, our favorite troublemaker/sage tells her that if she can provide Krishna's weight in gold she'll get him back. She tries, and no matter how much wealth she heaps on the scales she can't lift Krishna at all. Insert Nelson's "Ha Ha" from The Simpsons.
So Narada takes Krishna off and tries to sell him in the bazaar (???) and Bhama is forced to go make nice with Ruks to pray and sing bhajans till they get Krishna back and learn to share like Kindergarten 101. Except it's your husband.
When I was little I got to be little sidey roles in this drama, but I was all excited when I got the big starring role of sociopath Satyabhama in 1999. Gotta find that tape. If I do I'll edit this post and add it.
So here's today's bollystalgic song of the day, "Oh Kanhaiya" or the Story of Satyabhama and Rukmini, from Raja Aur Runk.
The very first Bollywood movie (then known as simply "hindi fillum") I remember seeing was the 1979 Rajshri film GOPAL KRISHNA starring the adorable Sachin Pilgaonkar as Krishna and Zarina Wahab as Radha. Considering we went on to re-watch this movie 2-3x every year since then, I'd say it goes down as one of my favorites of all time.
As a kid I watched a lot of mythological films, including Hara Hara Mahadev (old black & white), Hara Hara Gange, Sampoorna Ramayana, Kumara Sambhavam etc. Somehow this one captured us more than others ... which probably had something to do with the fabulous songs by Ravindra Jain, the flute music by Hariprasad Chaurasia (woot!) and the boyish charm of Sachin as Krishna.
What a charmer Sachin-Krishna is! So rommy, ya.
I have to say I simply don't understand why Sachin wasn't a huge superstar in the 80s. He seriously had it all, looks, charisma, acting chops, dance skills ... I mean what more could anyone want? Between this movie and his character of "Sunny" in Satte Pe Satta (my ALL-TIME favorite movie), he totally had my heart.
Notably, Yashoda was played by Rajshri Pictures favorite Reeta Bhaduri! I remember thinking she was just ultimately gorgeous in this movie - even more so than Zarina Wahab's Radha. She gets two great songs in this movie, "Koi Math Jariyo" with Baby Krishna and "Tu Man Ki Athi" with the adorable Master Sandeep as Child Krishna.
The story, narrated through song, starts right from Kamsa terrorizing the countryside, capturing his father and usurping his throne, and generally looking wicked on his throne while random chicks in scanty costumes feed him grapes and fan him. He imprisons his sister Devaki and her husband Vasudeva after hearing a prophecy that their 8th child would be his downfall.
The scenes of Kamsa killing each of Devaki's babies by dashing them on the ground was very haunting for me as a kid, though they made it as pleasant as possible by showing it in shadow and then having the "spirit" go up into the sky and become a star.
Finally Vishnu decides to step in and take the form of Devaki's 8th child to do in the evil uncle:
So Krishna grows up as the child of Mother Yashoda in Gokul, and we get to enjoy all his childhood antics like disappearing and scaring Kamsa's dumb minions, Attacking the demon Trinavrata with his super-strength, and stealing butter from the cowherd maidens of Gokul.
One of my favorite sequences to this date is when 5-yr-old Krishna is playing his flute for Radha in a grove and they morph into adult (teenage?) Krishna and Radha, and Zarina Wahab does one of the most awkward, ungainly, ridiculously choreographed dances ever.
Once Krishna grows up, we get to see him fight possessed bulls, wrestle and dance atop a giant 5-headed snake, and so much more until he eventually ponies up and goes to defeat his evil uncle Kamsa. But all of that was just filler for the main attraction of this movie - the dance songs!
Now I grew up in a house of dancers (my mom is a Bharata Natyam teacher) and so we were obviously the most jazzed about the songs we could choreograph for stage performances ... I think I was 3 yrs old the first time we did a dance to "Oh Gopala":
And my mom taught the Holi song to a bunch of older ladies in Canada somewhere around 1983, and me and my best friend Ami learned it and danced it so much that she finally let us perform it with the older girls in 1984:
Super heart. Such great memories. My eldest sister even danced to Neer Bharan Ka on stage with her best friend. We were seriously obsessed with this movie. In fact, I need to go ransack my mom's house now to see if I can find the DVD I picked up a couple years ago!
