Director: Rabindra Dharmaraj; Writer: Jayant Dalvi; Producer: Manmohan Shetty, Pradeep Uppoor; Cinematographer: Barun Mukherjee; Editor: Bhanudas; Cast: Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Ranjit Choudhury, Anjali Paingankar, Savita Bajaj, Uttam Sirur, Rohini Hattangadi, Suhas Bhalekar, Dilip Dhawan, Shashi Saxena, Sudhir Pande, Alka Kubal
Duration: 02:15:13; Aspect Ratio: 1.367:1; Hue: 33.535; Saturation: 0.128; Lightness: 0.204; Volume: 0.129; Cuts per Minute: 7.943; Words per Minute: 50.096
Summary: Predating Salaam Bombay (1988) by several years, Dharmaraj’s only feature (he died in 1981) provides a less idealised look at Bombay’s slum-dwellers. It is based on Jaywant Davi's novel by the same name in marathi. Amma (Patil) and her son Benwa (Choudhury) move to Bombay’s slums when her husband killed a moneylender who tried to rape her. The husband was then shot trying to steal some tin to build a hut. In Bombay, she lives with the vain pimp and petty crook Lukka (Shah), Benwa’s idol. Lukka is banned from Bombay by the police and Benwa marries the young Chenna (Paingankar). Amma acquires another lover, a truck driver (Kharbanda), and becomes pregnant. Lukka reappears, ravaged by syphilis and drugs; he kills a chemist to feed his habit and hides in Amma’s hut. The cops find him and arrest both him and Benwa, beating them up in the process. Amma has a miscarriage in the scuffle. In the end, bulldozers arrive to flatten the entire slum area. Patil gives her best ‘realistic’ performance and some shots of her moving unrecognised among Bombay’s slum-dwellers were taken with a hidden camera (Do Bigha Zameen, 1953, had made the same claims).
Song: oobi aankon mein tuti hui neend hai
ूबी आँखों में टूटी हुई नींद है
(there is broken sleep in the glazed eyes) Music: Hridayanath Mangeshkar. Singer: Bhupinder Singh. Lyrics by Madhosh Bilgrami, who also wrote the lyrics for the opening song in
Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho.
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