 |
| 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.
