A while ago, our friendly neighbour, the Sultan of
Pitustan held a hunk-fest and released a list of
Bollywood's top 10 hunks. The surprise winner was Balraj Sahni. Aye, the man who drove a rickshaw and channeled the angst of the dispossessed in
Do Bigha Zameen, wore a dhoti and glasses in the true "Unkil" tradition and sacrificed
ad infinitum in several family dramas -
Bhabhi (1957),
Choti Behen (1959),
Bhabhi Ki Chudiyan (1961), etc. What is so attractive about him? He was a great actor, very good looking, gave
great talks at my favorite University, was
an acclaimed writer, and an overall good guy in the bad bad bad world of Bollywood. Is that why I echo Sultan Pitu's liking? Nope. The guy did
romance like
no-one else and always played such intellectually idealistic characters that its hard not to like him! But that isnt all - he could also do
masala and carry it off with great panache as I discovered in this unknown movie I stumbled across recently. OK OK, So I will stop rhapsodizing about Sahni
saab, already. Without further ado, readers, I give you the
Black Cat.
Bombay is terrorised by a series of ingenious robberies engineered by the master thief "Black Cat". The Master Thief has an organisation that is more efficient and deadly than the city police (lets face it - it could hardly be
less efficient than them!) and has a network of spies and informants second to none. The network alerts the Black Cat to
Number 14's potential treachery and the unfortunate 14 soon ceases to be.
Before intermission, the vilaayti twin Shyam (Shashi Kapoor) was romancing Dhanno (Tanuja) and the desi twin Gopal (also Shashi Kapoor) had just left a drunk Kamini (Sharmila Tagore), to go to Kashmir to figure out why everybody was mysteriously interested in his maternal relative. I must warn you that this is a very looong post (with spoilers), since I’ve had compress the entire second half of the film in one post. For lack of space, I’ve had to concentrate on the main plot and neglect such delights as Helen trying to seduce Mr. Mehra (Shammi Kapoor), Dwarka (Pran, now Dilawar in Pakistani Intelligence) being smuggled into India, Shalu (Bindu) and her hubby Dheeraj (Ranjeet) sharing a cute romantic interlude in the police station where they’re both police officers, etc.
