MERE APNE (1971): A Movie about What went Wrong with India

Stills from MERE APNE (1971) starring Meena Kumari, Vinod Khanna, Shatrughan Sinha, Yogita bali & Danny Dengzongpa

Independent India of the fifties was a nation of opportunity and hope. The sixties saw it settling down, and then burdened with two wars and successive droughts. The seventies began with expanding cities unable to provide jobs to a new generation of youngsters. Born in the cities after 1947, this generation was very different from the India that was largely left behind in the villages. It aspired for the moon, but was left high and dry after devoting a childhood and adolescence to formal education. It was their restlessness, more than anything else that marked the India of seventies.

It was also this restlessness, which echoed in MERE APNE (1971), a movie that documented virtually everything that was going wrong with India. In the form of an old widow, it made apparent how the ageing rural India saw the new urban India lacking the finesse as well as the essence of its civilization. In the form of an old widower, who failed to help his sons settle down, it saw the first degree migrants wondering what went wrong in their approach, and in the form of the unemployed youngsters, it brought out the frustration and anger of a young India, which suffered from its problems, but neither knew how to solve it, nor had the means to do so. 

But MERE APNE was much more than the policy challenges that were facing India. Its main focus was on relationships. It highlighted how a profit maximizing approach of the market was beginning to kill the social relationships that had always been the hallmark of Indian civilization. It showed how compassion nurtured relationships in India, even beyond the family, and how it could heal even the deepest of wounds filled with hate. In a way, MERE APNE gave us a glimpse about everything that was going wrong with India.

MERE APNE (1971) saw Meena Kumari in the unusual role of an old widow

Before her death, Meena Kumari blessed Bollywood with two great movies very different from each other. The more famous of them is PAKEEZAH (1972), the story of a young and beautiful courtesan, which had been in the making for two decades and is the movie with which the legacy of Meena Kumari is associated. The other was a movie in which Meena Kumari played the role of an old widow. This movie was MERE APNE, released in 1971, with a bunch of youngsters and a director, whose only credit to fame before it was the lyrics that he had written for three movies. His name was Gulzar. The movie, many still feel, did not have a story, and yet, there are others who would be willing to consider it as one of the best ever movies of Bollywood!

The Plot

The movie begins with Arun (Ramesh Deo) coming to visit Anandi (Meena Kumari), an old widow, who lives all alone in her village. Arun, who is a distant relative, convinces her to come with him to the city, where he lives with his working wife, Lata (Sumita Sanyal) and a small child. Once Anandi joins them, she is made to take care of the child, and gradually comes to realize that she has been brought as a domestic help. There, Anandi is surprised to see the rude and indifferent ways of the cities that lack compassion for fellow human beings.

In the neighborhood, there are frequent quarrels among youngsters. There is a group headed by Shyam (Vinod Khanna) and another headed by Chhainu (Shatrughan Sinha), which are at odds and keep targeting each other. There is also a small child, Babbu (Master Chintu) who lives with her paralyzed sister, Tini (Baby Geeta) in a shed and begs around. One day, a boy from Chhainu’s gang, Raghunath (Asrani) is targeted by Shyam and his group, consisting of Bansi (Paintal), Sanju (Danny Denzongpa), Billoo (Dinesh Thakur) and Ranbir (Sudhir Thakar). In retribution, Chhainu’s group abducts Billoo. Shyam and his group, armed with a pistol and home-made bombs, have a show down and release Billoo. Their skirmishes continue. 

One day, Anandi takes Babboo along with her to feed him, which angers Lata, who scolds Anandi. Taken aback at such rude treatment, Anandi leaves their house, and finds shelter in the shed where Babboo lives and which is also the place where Shyam and group spend time together. There, she settles down taking care of Babbo and Tini, and develops a close relationship with Shyam and his friends, who call him Nani Ma (Granny). Shyam tells herabout his failed love story with Urmi (Yogita Bali), and how he and Chhainu had a fight after he insulted her. She shares her memories with them, sometimes makes snacks for them and also attends to Shyam’s younger brother, when he is sick. She is fed up of life in city and wants to go back to the village, and Shyam agrees to come along. Around this time, elections are happening, and rival candidates, Biloki Prasad (Asit Kumar Sen) and Anokhe Lal (Mehmood) hire the groups of Shyam and Chhainu respectively for their election work. A fight breaks out between them and Anandi, who tries to pacify them gets killed accidentally by a bullet.

What was going Wrong with India?

This movie is one of the best documentaries on everything that was going wrong with India during the early seventies. Till the early twentieth century, India had been a civilization that lived largely in the villages, where social life used to be at complete variance with what happens in the cities. The four largest metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai were actually the residency towns of the British during the colonial period, and were the places were major public infrastructure was developed, financed by taxes paid by people all over India. Markets require public goods to become functional, and so the economic growth was concentrated in these large cities. After 1919, the year of big demographic divide, the population of India began to boom, while there was little additional land available for cultivation. With rural industry that had sustained Indian prosperity, demolished under the onslaught of industrialization and exploitative colonial policies, the only option left for people was to migrate to cities. This led to an ever increasing stream of migrants, who struggled and gradually made a place for themselves.

MERE APNE (1971) is a movie about the frustration of unemployed youngsters

However, for the generation that was born around or after independence in the cities, it was a completely different scenario. They had a higher level of education than their parents, and were brought up with higher aspirations. Unfortunately, by that time, in early seventies, India was reeling under the economic onslaught of a failing economic system, two wars, successive droughts and inflation. Unlike rural economy, urban economy needs a lot more public infrastructure, which can only be financed with taxes, but instead of tax compliance, what India witnessed was a growth of black money, a colloquial term for tax evasion. 

This is the background in which the youngsters of MERE APNE found their aspirations for a job and decent life drowned. Their frustration was often compounded by the disappointment of their parents, and an ever widening generation gap, which made it increasingly difficult for the two generations to understand each other. Their resentment against corruption, nepotism and in particular, the indifference of the state and the society to their plight is excellently expressed in the song, “hal chal theek thak hai..” Faced with a vacuum, they find solace in groups, and the empowerment that it brings. It is the same power that electoral candidates like Bilaki Ram and Anokhe Lal were only too willing to harness and pay for, in the process giving birth to the dominance of criminal elements that have plagued Indian democracy. 

MERE APNE does not limit itself to documenting the systemic rot that was setting in a young India. In the form of relentless comments of Anandi, it also shows what this new India was in the process of losing forever. The age old Indian civilization owed both its sustenance and its survival to the enormous social capital that it had accumulated and preserved. It is this social capital that was shown embodied in the compassion of Anandi towards all around her in distress, and which makes the youngsters of both factions to empathize and respect her. Those who have lived in the seventies can identify with them, though one wonders whether such things are possible today, half a century later. It represents the social capital that has been lost, and though economic and financial capital can compensate it today when most of our population is young, it is difficult to say how it will affect us, once the demographic dividend is over and the demographic decay sets in. 

Epilogue

Meena Kumari was one of the finest actresses of Bollywood. She was also very lonely in her personal life during her last years. This loneliness and a longing for affection became a part of her character in many of her movies, beginning from DIL APNA AUR PREET PARAYI (1960) and can also be witnessed in SAHEB, BIBI AUR GHULAM (1962), AARTI (1962) and PAKEEZAH (1972), but MERE APNE is the most clear reflection of it. Unlike other movies, in this movie, her character is not alone. The song “koi hota jisko apna..” featured on Vinod Khanna makes it a shared virtue among all the main protagonists of this movie. 

Actually, the number of individuals who share this feeling has grown since the seventies, as social relationships give way to profit maximizing contracts. Perhaps, the worst cases are those, where individuals begin to maximize their profits within relationships that were meant instead to maximize welfare by creation of social capital. While all this happens, economists remain blissfully unaware of what is social capital and how it works, and the legal fraternity is still unable to differentiate between a legal contract and a social relationship!

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