EAST meets WEST

Harnam leaves with his blood money and his son (Prem Chopra) abandoning his wife (Nirupa Roy). Shattered,Guruji (Ashok Kumar),swears that he will never go on a pilgrimage to Benares until Harnam returns with the grandson.

Many years later,Bharat leaves for Oxford for higher education. Bharat’s cousin Gopi (Bharati) is his silent lover. In London,Bharat stays with a family friend (Madan Puri) who had come to the UK to study and never returned. He has two children,a son named Orphan (Rajendranath) and a daughter Preeti (Saira Banu). Both are drifters and swingers. Purab Aur Pacchim thus saw hippies shown in Hindi cinema a full year before Hare Rama Hare Krishna.

Preeti is intrigued by Bharat and how he begins to positively influence the social circle of Indians. Her brother Orphan turns hippie and joins the Hare Rama Hare Krishna cult. Harnam and his son OP (Prem Chopra) also come in contact with Bharat,but OP is a complete villain.

Preeti accompanies Bharat to India to meet his family and has a cultural awakening,changing her mind about going back especially since Bharat and she are now in love. Gopi finds solace in another young man (Vinod Khanna) who has been her silent lover. Harnam too repents but his son is not easy to reform and Harnam does pay a price for his past sins.

The return of Mr Bharat
After portraying Shaheed Bhagat Singh in Shaheed and the quintessential Indian farmer Bharat in Upkar (inspired by Lal Bahadur Shastri and his slogan Jai Jawan Jai Kisan),Manoj Kumar,in this official debut as producer,took on the issue of brain drain.

According to Manoj,that was the real issue,of not forgetting one’s motherland and culture when one goes to advanced Western countries for higher education.

Says Manoj,“I never said anything derogatory about Western culture or lifestyle. It just stated that our culture was right for us Indians,and theirs for them.”

The film’s story took off when Manoj’s wife Shashi told him how a relative had shocked them by going abroad to study and had never come back. The story idea was thus rightfully credited in the film’s opening titles to Shashi Goswami.

And after the cult success of Upkar,Manoj had to be Mr Bharat,and so he was the son of a freedom fighter who led an exemplary life and propagated his culture to the Westerners as well as to the NRIs.

Heroine matters
The film had an ambitious cast,but the most fascinating character was that of Saira Banu. “She seemed to leap out of the script again and again!’ recalls the actor-filmmaker-writer. “We had worked together on Shaadi,but when I wanted her as the apt casting for a swinging,smoking,mini-skirted girl torn between her roots and upbringing,I could not contact her for weeks. Rumours abounded that she was sick and even had cancer. She had actually gone abroad for the treatment of some intestinal ailment,but I waited for her.”

Manoj’s luck changed when he went to his music director Kalyanjibhai’s home one day and met Dilip Kumar there. Dilip arranged a meeting,and Saira was in.

“She was the epitome of cooperation,” says Manoj. “After understanding her role,she had no qualms about wearing minis,certain camera angles or anything else. She would even ask for another take after I okayed a shot as she wanted to do it even better.”

And Manoj treasures the compliment that his senior gave her after the film’s release. “This is my wife’s career-finest performance,” Dilip Kumar told him.

But the film wasn’t just about a strong heroine. All the characters – white,gray and black – were etched memorably through a formidable cast.

Highlighting Bharat – the nation
The highlights of the film were the sequences depicting the differences between East (Purab) and West (Pacchim). Madan Puri,a repentant NRI,nostalgically listens to K.L.Saigal’s Babul mora and sheds a tear as he recalls the family that he deserted while his Westernised wife smokes away; Manoj chides Preeti with the hard-hitting yet beautiful Indeewar lyrics,Koi jab tumhara hriday tod de,in which he gently tells her that Indians are ever-faithful to their beloveds; the sequence of Harnam (Pran) realising his mistakes,and the party scene of Manoj singing praises of his motherland,when a disparaging remark is passed about India,stood out.

Significantly though,the benefits of education were subtly highlighted by Bharat preferring Preeti’s open-mindedness and tendency to seek knowledge and ask questions over the completely traditional Gopi.

The making of the film
Manoj Kumar’s brilliant idea of filming the pre-Independence sequences in black-and-white and shifting to colour as the Tricolor is hoisted on August 15,1947,was a masterstroke.

“For the first time,the title was split – the word Purab appeared in the second reel and Pachhim in the fourth!” recalls Manoj. Incidentally,it had been Manoj again who had earlier introduced the freeze frame to Indian cinema in Shaheed.

For the first time again,a large set comprising temples,houses and streets was built at Raj Kapoor’s farm in Loni. Besides that and the studio shoots,the film was shot outdoors in Mumbai,Kanyakumari,Shimla,Badrinath,Benares and Pune and in three countries abroad (UK,Germany and Italy).

Kamini Kaushal (who played Manoj’s mother in all his home productions from Shaheed to Roti Kapada Aur Makaan) and Krishen Dhawan (after Upkar) once again played Manoj’s parents.

“My film did a business of Rs 50 lakh per major territory,but I was disappointed because Upkar had done double that business. However,even today,the film is a rage on satellite and cable television and DVD. And almost every week,I get congratulatory calls from people who have watched it for the first time!” smiles Manoj.

Purab Aur Pacchim,interestingly,also was the blueprint for Vipul Amrutlal Shah’s 2007 hit Namastey London.

The lyrical narrative

Inspired by Guru Dutt and Raj Khosla (in whose Woh Kaun Thi? Manoj had also ghost-written a lot of the dialogues),Manoj too believed in telling a significant part of his story “lyrically” as he put it.

His keen music sense that had inspired evergreen melodies in Shaheed and Upkar was noticed again as he extracted a humdinger of a score from good friends Kalyanji-Anandji.

Says Anandji,“Justice to this film could only be done by people who were aware of pre-Independence India and the freedom struggle either through their personal knowledge and experience or because they had done extensive reading and research. Indeewarji was a freedom fighter at one time,and he did the evergreen patriotic songs like Dulhan chali o pehen chali and Hai preet jahaan ki reet sadaa (which was immortalized by the line Jab zero diya mere Bharat ne / Duniya ko tab ginti aayi).”

In the latter song,Manoj’s knowledge of Hindu culture and history also helped,with scientific facts about Indian mathematicians first offering the concept of zero,on which every subsequent human triumph from space technology to computers is based. The masterful song,a rousing rendition by Mahendra Kapoor,also spoke of how astronomy,civilised society and the concept of a decimal all originated in India.

Adds the composer,“Manoj inspired all of us and then trusted us. The most challenging song was Mukeshji’s Koi jab tumhara hriday tod de. It had sparse orchestration and yet was completed only after 45 takes only at 5 am the following morning. But Mukeshji would never complain. Like Manna Dey,Mukeshji’s voice would improve and open up with more retakes,while most singers’ voices would tend to become tired.”

For the first time,two traditional aartis,Raghupati Raghav Rajaram and Om Jai Jagdish Hare were re-recorded for a film with a 40-strong chorus led by singers like Mahendra Kapoor,Manhar,Brij Bhushan,the popular radio announcer,and Suman Kalyanpur’s sister Shyama Chittar. “Kalyanjibhai and I just kept a single microphone at a height above all of them,which gave a real feel of the temple,because of the fraction-of-a-second delay that came from the differing distances of the singers from the mike!” says Anandji. “We also parodied the nursery rhyme Twinkle twinkle little star,which Prem Dhawanji penned,and Manojji introduced us to a librarian from New Delhi,Santosh Anand,who wrote the song Purva suhani aayi re.” Santosh Anand went on to be Manoj’s preferred lyricist in several films later. Another unusual voice was of Usha Uthup (then called Usha Iyer),a pop pioneer in India,who till then had only recorded for Laxmikant-Pyarelal’s Devi. She sang the brief track Love me.

The genius of the background score
Anandji describes a background score as “that which narrates things not told by the camera,director and the spoken lines. A background score needs a lot of thought and scientific precision. I got involved even with the camerawork and editing and while composing for the 18-reel film took a month with eight-hour recording shifts daily,the background of a two-minute sequence in the film took an entire day!”

Explains the composer,“There was a short sequence that showed Saira Banu touring the country from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. It was a challenge to fit the music pieces and orchestra to the quickly changing locations around the country. For example,the tabla came in only at the Taj Mahal in Agra,because as an instrument,it was really discovered by the Moghuls! But it was a challenge fitting it into the few bars needed!”

The graph of the film also had to be kept in mind. “Manoj first showed the East,then the West,and then both together. When you watch the film again,please observe how the background score follows that graph!” concludes the composer.

rajiv.vijayakar@expressindia.com