Summary: The last film
Raj Kapoor directed (his elder son
Randhir directed
Henna which was released in 1991 under Raj Kapoor’s name). The son of the evil industrialist Jiwababu (
Kharbanda), Naren (
Rajiv Kapoor, Raj’s youngest son making his debut) falls for Ganga (
Mandakini), a country girl from the mountains, but is forced by his family to abandon her when she becomes pregnant. Much of the rest of the film is an elaboration of the metaphor of the ‘purity’ of ‘Ganga’ - the Indian name of the holy
Ganges river, originating in the girl’s native village and the setting for the narrative, Gangotri - who has been ‘soiled’ by the corrupted political leaders of modern India, exemplified mainly by Bhagwat Choudhury (
Murad), a vile politician whose daughter Radha (
Rana) is to marry Naren. Ganga, now an abandoned single mother, falls prey to a brothel madam who tries to sell her and a temple priest who tries to rape her. In
Varanasi she is sold to a ‘kotha’ and, eventually, is bought by Choudhury to be his mistress. The final reunion of the lead couple takes place with the support of Naren’s canny Uncle Kunjbehari (
Jaffrey). Kapoor’s obsessive preoccupation with the soiling of ‘pure’ womanhood extends his 70s explorations of the same theme (cf. Satyam Shivam Sundaram, 1978).
