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| DAMINI (1993) Starring Rishi Kapoor, Meenakshi Sheshadri, Sunny Deol & Amrish Puri |
It is not very common for a mainstream Bollywood movie to highlight several important social issues in a realistic manner and at the same time retain its box office appeal. DAMINI, a 1993 movie directed by Raj Kumar Santoshi achieved this extra ordinary distinction with a story that involved love, a gruesome crime, a respectable family, a lady unable to suppress her conscience, a husband torn between his wife and family, and a courtroom drama that many can identify with. In the process, it raises an issue that has occupied central stage in Indian literature since several thousand years and the final answer to which continues to remain elusive.
It raises the dilemma that most of us face at some point of time in our life, the choice between our moral duties on one hand and the duties towards our personal loyalties to someone on the other. It is the same question that was faced by Bhishma, Krishna and Karna in the epic story of Mahabharata. But, DAMINI raises other issues too. The plight of poor domestic maids faced with exploitation in households that they desperately cling on in search of livelihood, the dichotomy of standards that differentiate privileged from the unprivileged and the problems faced by those lacking adequate resources in the face of manipulation of criminal trials inside and outside the courtroom. Every one of these issues remains as relevant today as it was a quarter of a century back when this movie was released.
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| Meenakshi Sheshadri in DAMINI (1993): Arguably her Best Performance |
1993 gave us a number of movies that can be considered a milestone for different reasons. These include Govinda and Chunkey Pandey’s AANKHEIN, Sharukh Khan’s BAAZIGAR, and Sanjay Dutt’s KHALNAYAK. One of those hits was DAMINI (1993), a movie that is difficult to forget. In many ways, it was an atypical movie, which threw two unexpected stars, Meenakshi Sheshadri and Sunny Deol, and can be arguably considered the best movie, even though both have illustrious careers and have given bigger box office hits.
