 "Made for each other: Kishore Kumar and Madhubala")
When watching an inspired scene in a film, it often happens that your attention during the first viewing is absorbed by a particular dominant element; but then, on re-watching, you appreciate the other, subtler things around it. This happened recently when I saw the classic 1958 comedy Chalti ka Naam Gaadi, in which the Ganguly brothers — Ashok, Anoop and Kishore Kumar — play car mechanics who get embroiled in romance and intrigue.
The film is fuelled by Kishore Kumar’s manic personality, so familiar to anyone who has ever seen him perform onscreen (as opposed to playback-singing for other heroes), or read his surreal 1985 interview with Pritish Nandy. (If you haven’t, Google it immediately. An excerpt: “There were so many films I was doing in those days that I had to run from one set to the other, changing on the way. Imagine me. My shirts flying off, my trousers falling off, my wig coming off. Very often I would mix up my lines and look angry in a romantic scene or romantic in the midst of a battle.”) There are scenes in Chalti ka Naam Gaadi where you can see Kishore Kumar’s character, Manmohan, next to a signboard in the garage — an ad for Mobil brake fluid — that reads “Play safe”, and this makes complete sense; it is as if the film’s set design is beseeching Kishore Kumar to slow down, so that the viewer can pause for breath!
One of the funniest scenes in this film is the fantasy song “Main sitaron ka tarana” (better known as “Paanch rupaiya baarah aana”), wherein Manmohan implores the beautiful Renu (Madhubala) to pay the five rupees and 12 annas she owes him for fixing her car. There is a superb juxtaposition here: the gorgeous woman who preens and poses like a classical statue worthy of adoration, and the crackpot who is concerned only with the practical business of getting his money. Renu is dressed like Juliet, but she carries a very modern handbag with her. She glides about the room sings self-adulatory lines like “Main sitaaron ka taraana, main bahaaron ka fasaana”, and then Manmohan struts into the frame like a cockerel, giggling dementedly and yodeling. At first he is costumed as Romeo (naturally) but over the course of the sequence he morphs into various Indian archetypes such as the Bengali bhadralok, the jogi, and so on.
When I first watched the sequence, I couldn’t take my eyes off Kishore Kumar, and for good reason; look away for even a second and you feel you’re in danger of missing some madcap gesture, even a little lunatic twitching of an eyebrow. But when I returned to the scene later, I found myself more appreciative of Madhubala’s contribution to it. She has been cast for all time in the public imagination as Hindi cinema’s ultimate tragic, ethereal beauty, but here she is the perfect comic foil, so willing to be lightly made fun of, to have the pedestal knocked out from under her feet so to speak — and this is absolutely central to the effect of the scene. Kishore Kumar comes across as even more of a weirdo because he seems so oblivious to her charms.
This is more generally true of Kishore Kumar’s pairings with other actresses who had a flair for comedy. In a film like Dilli ka Thug, for example (the one with the “C-A-T cat, cat maane billi” song), he finds a perfect counterpoint in Nutan, who is so often associated with “serious” roles today, but who knew how to have fun onscreen when required. Despite the surface daintiness of their mannerisms (the need to be at least somewhat coy, or not let themselves go too much), these actresses were clearly in on the act; they were on Kishore Kumar’s wavelength and they play a big part in making these films fresh and timeless.
The film is fuelled by Kishore Kumar’s manic personality, so familiar to anyone who has ever seen him perform onscreen (as opposed to playback-singing for other heroes), or read his surreal 1985 interview with Pritish Nandy. (If you haven’t, Google it immediately. An excerpt: “There were so many films I was doing in those days that I had to run from one set to the other, changing on the way. Imagine me. My shirts flying off, my trousers falling off, my wig coming off. Very often I would mix up my lines and look angry in a romantic scene or romantic in the midst of a battle.”) There are scenes in Chalti ka Naam Gaadi where you can see Kishore Kumar’s character, Manmohan, next to a signboard in the garage — an ad for Mobil brake fluid — that reads “Play safe”, and this makes complete sense; it is as if the film’s set design is beseeching Kishore Kumar to slow down, so that the viewer can pause for breath!
One of the funniest scenes in this film is the fantasy song “Main sitaron ka tarana” (better known as “Paanch rupaiya baarah aana”), wherein Manmohan implores the beautiful Renu (Madhubala) to pay the five rupees and 12 annas she owes him for fixing her car. There is a superb juxtaposition here: the gorgeous woman who preens and poses like a classical statue worthy of adoration, and the crackpot who is concerned only with the practical business of getting his money. Renu is dressed like Juliet, but she carries a very modern handbag with her. She glides about the room sings self-adulatory lines like “Main sitaaron ka taraana, main bahaaron ka fasaana”, and then Manmohan struts into the frame like a cockerel, giggling dementedly and yodeling. At first he is costumed as Romeo (naturally) but over the course of the sequence he morphs into various Indian archetypes such as the Bengali bhadralok, the jogi, and so on.
When I first watched the sequence, I couldn’t take my eyes off Kishore Kumar, and for good reason; look away for even a second and you feel you’re in danger of missing some madcap gesture, even a little lunatic twitching of an eyebrow. But when I returned to the scene later, I found myself more appreciative of Madhubala’s contribution to it. She has been cast for all time in the public imagination as Hindi cinema’s ultimate tragic, ethereal beauty, but here she is the perfect comic foil, so willing to be lightly made fun of, to have the pedestal knocked out from under her feet so to speak — and this is absolutely central to the effect of the scene. Kishore Kumar comes across as even more of a weirdo because he seems so oblivious to her charms.
This is more generally true of Kishore Kumar’s pairings with other actresses who had a flair for comedy. In a film like Dilli ka Thug, for example (the one with the “C-A-T cat, cat maane billi” song), he finds a perfect counterpoint in Nutan, who is so often associated with “serious” roles today, but who knew how to have fun onscreen when required. Despite the surface daintiness of their mannerisms (the need to be at least somewhat coy, or not let themselves go too much), these actresses were clearly in on the act; they were on Kishore Kumar’s wavelength and they play a big part in making these films fresh and timeless.
Jai Arjun Singh is a Delhi-based writer