If it’s true that films mirror reality then life couldn’t have been easy for women in the 1960s. I’m saying this after watching an old Hindi film on Youtube. The film- Gumrah. Directed by BR Chopra. It was said to tackle a bold theme (infidelity) and was also called a film that was ahead of its time.
Setting apart the moral and ethical conundrum of a married woman in love with another man (a situation for which there is no easy way out), the plight of the heroine did make me realise that we women really have made great strides since then..
The way the heroine was passed around from one man (her father) to another (her husband, previously the husband of her dead sister) for the simple reason that two motherless kids needed someone to take care of them, and who better than a loving aunt instead of an unknown ‘stepmother’. Never mind that she was in love with another man.
Well, off she goes and settles down to a life of marital bliss, because that’s what a woman is expected to do, right? Unfortunately, a year later she meets the former love of her life again (a very handsome and intense Sunil Dutt) And she gets Gumrah (led astray) because she had no mind or will of her own, right?
The clandestine meetings, the emotional dilemma, the longing, the denial are glossed over. What is dwelled upon are the heavy-handed platitudes, steeped in patriarchy.
– a woman can be given ‘azaadi’ but she has no right to leave the four walls of her father’s/husband’s house.
– If she does so, she will end up ‘be-izzat’ and ‘badnaam’ for the rest of her life. Doomed to live in disgrace forever and ever. Amen
– the husband who plays a cruel cat-and-mouse game to test her loyalties, by sending a vampish stranger (Shashikala at her evil best) to pretend to blackmail her is actually the good guy. Why? Because when she breaks down and confesses, he nobly forgives her and even offers to ‘take her’ to the man she loves. How very magnanimous.
Of course, predictably, the heroine slams the door shut in the face of her former love and falls in the arms and at the feet of her generously forgiving husband. All’s well that ends well.
As a member of the generation who’s grown up seeing one side and living it too, but now having crossed over successfully to the other, better side; I can safely say that… ‘We’ve come a long way, ladies!!!”
With Gumrah and some of its now out-dated notions, there is one thing however; that stays as true today as it was 56 years ago; the last verse of that haunting melody so beautifully rendered by Mahendra Kapoor.
” Woh afsaana jise anjaam tak laana na ho mumkin
Usse ik khoobsurat mod dekar chod na acchha…”
And so be it.
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