Another unforgettable film from Bimal Roy - Parakh netted him his third consecutive Filmfare Award for best direction (he won earlier for Madhumati and Sujata). The story - written by music director Salil Choudhury - is a satirical fairytale set in rural India and comes complete with wicked people, good people, a damsel in distress, a hero and a fairy godfather.
We are taken to a small village called Radhanagar and meet the people there - the penurious village postmaster Nivaran (Nazir Hussain) and his charming daughter Seema (Sadhana) who is in love with the popular village schoolmaster Rajat (Vasant Choudhury), the irreverant postman Haridhan (Motilal), the pious priest Tarkalankar (Kanhaiyalal), the lecherous rich man Haribhanj (Asit Sen) who is keen on Seema, the greedy Doctor (Rashid Khan), the zamindar Tandav (Jayant). The good, the bad and the ugly - they are all here, but remarkably true to life.
“When you forget your own religion, you also forget hatred against other religions. If only everybody in this country had amnesia – it would solve all our communal conflicts.” Thus spoke our amnesiac hero, whilst I valiantly tried to imagine a gigantic operation mounted by the army to bop every one of India's 1.2 billion people over their individual heads to solve India’s caste/religious problems! Though my imagination isnt built on the scale required to accommodate such ideas, I do recognise good intentions when I see them, and this film is chockful of them. More importantly (for me at least), it is also brimming over with some of my favorite beautiful people (Shashi Kapoor, Hema Malini, Naaz, Helen) and some nice songs. Here’s one that I’ve been humming ever since I saw it!
