FILM REVIEW

Do Aankhen Barah Haath (1957) 

or Two Eyes, Twelve Hands

This Tuesday, for Overlooked Films & Television at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom, I’m going to get off the Hollywood bus and hop on to the Bollywood bandwagon and write about an award-winning black-and-white classic Hindi film. Don’t forget to check the other entries over at Todd’s blog. 

The “two eyes” belong to a kind jail warden and the “twelve hands” belong to six dreaded convicts.

The jailer, Adinath (V. Shantaram), takes the dirty (half) dozen under his wing in a valiant effort to make virtuous men out of monsters and rehabilitate them in civil society. The police officer takes the paroled men to an old farmhouse in the countryside and orders them to work on the fields and do odd jobs around the place. Adinath joins them in hard labour and together they produce a rich harvest. 


Do Ankhen (two eyes) Barah Haath (twelve hands) is the touching story of one man’s belief in, and compassion for, six convicted murderers. The jailer is aware that the odds of reforming the prisoners are high and so are the costs of failure. He is undaunted and determined to succeed because he knows what he is doing is right. 

The men are shabby, unkempt and unruly and look like they are straight out of a medieval horror film. They appear mentally unstable and in one scene even beat up the jailer. The twelve hands don’t have even a modicum of decency as they appear to lust after Champa (Sandhya), a street vendor who sings her way from one village to another, and exhibit traits of anger and greed that is common to their lot. The men even try to escape but return to their ramshackle dwelling because the jailer has finally made his way into their hearts and they in turn have learned to respect him.

Do Aankhen Barah Haath, directed by V. Shantaram, who was one of India’s renowned directors, ends on a tragic note. By then, however, the jailer has succeeded in his mission. 

Actress Sandhya as Champa in the film. 

Shantaram, who, in real life, married his co-star Sandhya, kept the moral of the story simple—man is inherently good and even if he strays, owing to adverse circumstances, it’s never too late to bring him back on the path of righteousness and make a new man out of him.

The story, screenplay and dialogue are by G.D. Madgulkar, a noted Marathi poet, lyricist, writer and actor. Marathi is the official language of the western state of Maharashtra of which Bombay (Mumbai) is the capital city, and home to Bollywood. 

Adinath (Shantaram) gets a shave from one of the convicts.

Typically, the film also has some good songs, with music and lyrics by Vasant Desai and Bharat Vyas, both well known names in the film industry. The most popular song is Aye Maalik Tere Bande Hum, which loosely translates into Oh master, we’re your servants, sung by the Indian nightingale Lata Mangeshkar. The song, rendered by Champa in the film, is actually a paean to the love and respect that she and the six men have for jailer Adinath.

One of the noteworthy elements of Do Aankhen Barah Haath is the cinematography by G. Balkrishna who has shot portions of the black-and-white film against a stark backdrop, a sweeping landscape. If I remember correctly, in one scene, the convicts are making their way through barren land and there is absolutely nothing around them except for the dilapidated house. The filmmakers didn't bother too much with the lighting as many of the scenes are in contrasting shades of black and white. It gives the impression that Shantaram made his film only with a camera, seven actors, and a rundown house in the middle of nowhere. 

The film's pre-release in 1957, apparently, received a “cold response” from Bollywood stalwarts but as Usha Prabhatkumar, Shantaram's daughter-in-law, was quoted by The Times of India as saying, “Do Aankhein Barah Haath touched the nation's chord as it revolved round the universal concepts of love and brotherhood.”

Fifty-five years later, the Indian cinemagoer still feels a deep kinship with V. Shantaram’s classic.

Stamp of a Statesman: Jawaharlal Nehru

The following quotes have been excerpted from Toward Freedom: The Autobiography of Jawaharlal Nehru (1941), which the first Prime Minister of independent India dedicated to his wife Kamala Nehru. His prose in this book as well as in his other two major works, The Discovery of India and Glimpses of World History, is mersmerising.

"(Toward Freedom) was written entirely in prison, except for the postscript and certain minor changes, from June 1934 to February 1935. The primary object in writing these pages was to occupy myself with a definite task, so necessary in the long solitudes of jail life, as well as to review past events in India with which I had been connected to enable myself to think clearly about them. I began the task in a mood of self-questioning and, to a large extent, this persisted throughout. I was not writing deliberately for an audience, but, if I thought of an audience, it was one of my own countrymen and countrywomen. For foreign readers I would probably have written differently, or with a different emphasis..."

"Letter writing and receiving in jail were always serious incursions on a peaceful and unruffled existence. They produced an emotional state which was disturbing; for a day or two afterward one's mind wandered, and it was difficult to concentrate on the day's work."

"My main occupation (in jail), however, was reading and writing. I could not have all the books I wanted, as there were restrictions and a censorship, and the censors were not always very competent for the job. Spengler's Decline of the West was held up because the title looked dangerous and seditious. But I must not complain, for I had, on the whole, a goodly variety of books." 

"The only books that British officials heartily recommended were religious books or novels. It is wonderful how dear to the heart of the British Government is the subject of religion and how impartially it encourages all brands of it."

"I was well up in children's and boys' literature; the Lewis Carroll books were great favorites, and The Jungle Books and Kim. I was fascinated by Gustave Dore's illustrations to Don Quixote, and Fridtjof Nansen's Farthest North opened out a new realm of adventure to me. I remember reading many of the novels of Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray, H.G. Wells's romances, Mark Twain, and the Sherlock Holmes stories. I was thrilled by The Prisoner of Zenda, and Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat was for me the last word in humor. Another book stands out still in my memory; it was Du Maurier's Trilby; also Peter Ibbetson. I also developed a liking for poetry, a liking which has to some extent endured and survived the many other changes to which I have been subject."

"It is a little absurd to discuss this question of freedom of mind in prison in India when, as it happens, the vast majority of the prisoners are not allowed any newspapers or writing materials. It is not a question of censorship but of total denial." 

"In Lucknow Jail I used to sit reading almost without moving for considerable periods, and a squirrel would climb up my leg and sit on my knee and have a look round. And then it would look into my eyes and realize that I was not a tree or whatever it had taken me for. Fear would disable it for a moment, and then it would scamper away."

"Reading was my principal occupation during those winter days and long evenings. Almost always, whenever the superintendent visited us, he found me reading. This devotion to reading seemed to get on his nerves a little, and he remarked on it once, adding that, so far as he was concerned, he had practically finished his general reading at the age of twelve!"

"Sometimes I would weary of too much reading, and then I would take to writing. My historical series of letters to my daughter kept me occupied right through my two-year term, and they helped rne very greatly to keep mentally fit."

"From sunset to sunrise (more or less) we were locked up in our cells, and the long winter evenings were not very easy to pass. I grew tired of reading or writing hour after hour, and would start walking up and down that little cell four or five short steps forward and then back again. I remembered the bears at the zoo tramping up and down their cages. Sometimes when I felt particularly bored I took to my favorite remedy, the shirshasana (a yogic exercise) standing on the head!"

"Travel books were always welcome records of old travelers, Hiuen Tsang, Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, and others, or moderns like Sven Hedin, with his journeys across the deserts of Central Asia, and Roerich, finding strange adventures in Tibet. Picture books also, especially of mountains and glaciers and deserts, for in prison one hungers for wide spaces and seas and mountains. I had some beautiful picture books of Mont Blanc, the Alps, and the Himalayas, and I turned to them often to gaze at the glaciers when the temperature of my cell or barrack was 115 F or even more. An atlas was an exciting affair. It brought all manner of past memories and dreams of places we had visited and places we had wanted to go to." 

"One extravagance which I have kept up will be hard to give up, and this is the buying of books."

For previous Celebrity Stamps, see under Labels to your right.

BOOK PREVIEW: Fantasy

Memoirs of the Moon Dragon by D.W. Middleton

Ripped out of his home world and transformed by the Source of Life itself, Waldo is plunged headlong into an epic saga of good versus evil.

Australian writer D.W. Middleton spins an "enthralling tale of magical adventure" in his new fantasy novel In Memoirs of the Moon Dragon: The Maligrandé and the Source of Life published by Trafford Publishing of Bloomington, Indiana, USA.

The novel chronicles the adventures of two friends, Waldo and Maidrag (the moon dragon), who, together, "complete the Source of Life, which bestows upon Waldo powerful gifts from the elements of earth, water, fire and air. As Waldo and Miadrag set about their quest to recover the Great Book of Knowledge, they soon discover that once they have it, they will be pursued by their evil counterparts, the Salimandé and the sinister Red Dragon, who has but one desire: to be rid of them once and for all!"

Middleton says: "Memoirs of the Moon Dragon demonstrates how the power of love conquers all manner of disastrous circumstance, and that love being the essential element of the Source of Life, will find a way to restore all things good to the world."

The 138-page novel was published on May 10, 2012, and is available in Perfect Bound Softcover (B/W) format and the price is $14.53.

Source: Trafford Publishing

BOOK REVIEW

The Ninth Configuration (1978)
by William Peter Blatty

It's not easy to read an entire book every week and review it every Friday but I try not to miss out on Friday's Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott's blog Pattinase. Here's my modest offering for the week that coincides with the release of Skyfall across India. People say it's the best Bond film ever but as someone on the train said, “How is that possible? Craig is so short, just two inches taller than me.”

“Robert Browning had the clap and he caught it from Charlotte and Emily Bronte.”
A second man, angry, bellowed, “Cutshaw, shut your mouth!”
“He caught it from both of them.”
“Shut up, you crazy bastard!”
“You don’t want to hear the truth.”
“Krebs, sound Assembly!” the angry man ordered.

My tattered copy of the book

Over the past fortnight, I couldn't finish even one of the three books I’m currently reading because of personal, albeit non-critical, issues. I'm thirty-eight pages into A Son of the Circus by John Irving, a little over half into the 146-page The Ninth Configuration by William Peter Blatty, the author of The Exorcist (1971), and I have just read the opening pages of a virtually unknown suspense novel I hope to review next Friday.

In a post on October 14 I’d mentioned that I would finish Blatty’s short fiction in another two days. Since then, however, I have managed to read only a dozen pages. That means, technically, I've no book to review for FFB this week. Of course, I could write about any one of the many novels I read over the past few months, or even years, but I'd have to scour the internet to refresh my wafer-thin memory. That's no fun. So what I'm going to try and do is give you a partial review of Blatty’s psychological thriller mixed with a strong dose of philosophy. I know that’s not much fun either but at least it’s something.

The Ninth Configuration, originally written by Blatty as Twinkle, Twinkle, “Killer” Kane! in 1966, is the outrageous story of twenty-seven decorated military officers who are interned by the Pentagon in a secret installation, “a grotesque rotting mansion,” in the remote forests of the Pacific Northwest. All the men are seemingly crazy for no apparent reason and when they talk sense and nonsense at the same time, you can’t help wonder if they really are mad or if they are only pretending.

In walks Colonel Hudson Stephen Kane, a brilliant Marine Corps psychiatrist, who is assigned by the Pentagon to treat the patients at Center Eighteen. Kane is cool as a cucumber as some of the inmates—the lead characters in the story and particularly the highly animated former astronaut Captain Billy Thomas Cutshaw—unleash their verbal missiles at the new commanding officer in his office and in his quarters. He refuses to keep the doors locked because “ They've got to be able to see me whenever they need to.” 

Kane studies their case files and listens attentively to their crazy voices, each increasingly making less sense than the next, and you don’t know who is humouring whom.

Here are some instances…

When Colonel Richard Fell, the medic, walks into the office without wearing his trousers, Kane asks him, “Do you plan to get dressed?” To which Fell replies, “How the hell can I get dressed when Lieutenant Fromme won’t surrender my pants? You don’t want me to rip them off!”

Or when Kane asks Cutshaw why he aborted his moon mission, the ex-astronaut answers: “Why should I? What the hell’s up there? When Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain, did he ever dream that he’d find America? All he ever dreamed about was compasses. Idiot starts out looking for India and then plants the flag on Pismo Beach.”

Lieutenant David Reno is adapting Shakespeare’s plays for dogs including his own, called Irresponsible, which bolts into Kane’s room and starts licking his shoe. When Kane asks Reno if it’s his dog, the latter shouts back, “Does he look like my zebra? Christ, what the hell’s wrong with you people?” He looks at the dog and says, “He’s ten minutes late for rehearsal. Now out!”

When Kane asks another inmate, Price, why he wants his flying belt back, Price says with acid hostility, “I want to play Tinker Bell in drag in a fungoid production of Peter Pan, All right? Are you happy? Now, where the hell is it?”

Blatty tells us that the forerunner to these delusional military personnel and their delusional rants is Nammack, a captain in the USAF, who, while piloting a B-52 on a bombing run over Hanoi, abruptly stands up in the cockpit and claims he is superman with superhuman powers. Nammack cannot be cured without Kryptonite, it would seem, and he is soon followed by scores of officers who manifest sudden mental disturbance even though none of them has a history of mental or emotional imbalance.

If the inmates of Center Eighteen are absolutely crazy, as you are given to understand, their commanding officer is not above suspicion either. In fact, there’s something decidedly fishy, and chilling, about Colonel Kane: it involves a recurring nightmare about his past, something that happened in Vietnam, possibly a nervous breakdown he suffered during the war, and involving a person by the name of Killer Kane.

Cutshaw may be a loony himself but he is convinced that Kane is more crazy than he is. 

The Ninth Configuration, which received critical acclaim, starts out as a farcical comedy but the plot soon gathers a serious tone as Kane’s past catches up with him. I have enjoyed the book so far because of the strong element of humour, however whacky, not to mention the philosophical debate that Kane has with Cutshaw over the idea of God and the divine plan. It’s a well-written novel and the initial dialogues between Kane and the “mad” officers will make you laugh as you visualise the absurdity of the comic situations.

I’m hoping to read the rest of the book this weekend and find out why the twenty-seven men are behaving like lunatics or what secret Kane has up his sleeve. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, though. Now, did I say a partial review!

Incidentally, William Peter Blatty wrote, directed and produced the film The Ninth Configuration in 1980 where Stacy Keach (known for his Mike Hammer roles) is Colonel Kane and Scott Wilson (of In the Heat of the Night and In Cold Blood fame) plays Capt. Billy Cutshaw. I haven’t seen the film but my natural choice for Cutshaw’s role would have been John Cassavetes or Telly Savalas. Get the picture?

FILM REVIEW 

'Allo 'Allo! (BBC One, 1982-1992)

For this week’s Overlooked/Forgotten Films and Television over at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom, I have written about the "little-known" British sitcom 'Allo 'Allo! one of the funniest serials I saw in the 1990s.

British sitcoms lack the finesse and the glamour that American serials usually have but they more than make up for it with an abundance of humour, especially dark comedy, and a caboodle of oddball characters and their eccentricities that are quite enjoyable.

’Allo ’Allo! created by producer David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd and broadcast on BBC One from 1982 through 1992 is one such sitcom that looks at the funny side of Nazi occupation of France through the eyes and ears of its rather bizarre characters, albeit with an unmistakeable undertone of reality that isn’t lost on viewers.

René François Artois (Gorden Kaye) is the squint-eyed owner of the town café who manages it with his wife Edith Melba Artois (Carmen Silvera), a cabaret performer, her mother Madame Fanny La Fan (Rose Hill) who lives out of an attic above the inn, and two young waitress, Yvette Carte-Blanche (Vicki Michelle) and Maria Recamier (Francesca Gonshaw), who are both in love with René. There are a few other interesting characters too.

In one of the serial’s many ludicrous moments, Edith often catches René in an awkward embrace with one or the other girl but forgives her husband as soon as he makes a farce of an apology. 

René (Gorden Kaye) and his wife Edith (Carmen Silvera).

That’s just a small aspect of the serial. Actually, the café, located in a small village, is the hub of secret activity on both sides of World War II, the Nazis and the French resistance, and its a glum-faced René’s job to pretend that he’s on both their sides; of course, they don’t know it, but the truth is that the inn-keeper is the reluctant hero of the French resistance. He even has a codename, Nighthawk.

The only way René can keep his head above water and his café running successfully is by ensuring that both the German officers and the French partisans are happy. It’s not an easy task as the Nazis and a ridiculous looking Gestapo chief on one hand and the French rebels and an Italian captain on the other troop in and out of the restaurant throughout the day. The German officers often catch René up to something but they quickly forget what he’s up to as René charms his way out of the situation. 

René and the waitresses

Like I said earlier ’Allo ’Allo! is full of absurd moments. For instance, the German officers use the inn to hide stolen paintings, often from one another, while the French resistance uses it to hide RAF pilots shot down over France and plan their next move with René who, in reality, wants no part of it. The floorboard under ma-in-law’s bed up in the attic is where the resistance movement hides its radio and despatches secret messages. 

René serves the Germans.

’Allo ’Allo! is a parody of the German occupation of France and the French resistance to the Nazi invasion. In reality, René would have been terrified of both the Nazis and the Partisans and probably buckled under the pressure of staying true to either side. Yet, hundreds and thousands of ordinary citizens in German-occupied Europe must have done exactly what the innkeeper did, fought the invaders with a brave face, a smile on the lips, and some dark humour to boot.

I’m currently watching the reruns on BBC Entertainment and I’m enjoying the serial as much as I did the first time I saw it. Highly recommended.

MUSIC & LYRICS

Lay All Your Love On Me by ABBA

I was listening to this song even as I decided to do a post on it. Actually, the hit song playing in my ears was the inspiration for writing about Lay All Your Love On Me by Swedish pop group ABBA. It's part of their 1981 album Super Trouper and has been my favourite song by ABBA to this day. I like most of their love songs, some more than others, but this one I like the most. ABBA made good music with effective lyrics. 

Many of the ABBA songs can pass off as disco numbers but to me the single most defining feature of ABBA is the way their music and lyrics blend with each other. Every song will have you humming the tune and your feet tapping to the beat.

I wasn't jealous before we met 

Now every woman I see is a potential threat 

And I'm possessive, it isn't nice 

You've heard me saying that smoking was my only vice 

But now it isn't true 

Now everything is new 

And all I've learned has overturned 

I beg of you... 

Don't go wasting your emotion 

Lay all your love on me...

For previous Music & Lyrics look under Labels

BOOK BUYS

When good books sell cheap

There is no spectacle that is as terrifying as the sight of a guest in your house whom you catch staring at your books.

— Attributed to Roger Rosenblatt, American journalist, author, playwright and teacher

A couple of days ago, I visited the popular Crossword bookstore located within the sprawling Inorbit Mall in Malad, a northwest suburb of Bombay, and glanced through the wall-to-wall section on fiction. I was looking for the novels of three well-known authors—John le Carré, Tom Clancy and John Irving—and found them jostling for space on a couple of shelves.

While many of their books were there, each priced at Rs.299 ($6), I was looking for specific titles like The Constant Gardener and The Tailor of Panama by le Carré, a few Op Centre novels by Clancy, and The Cider House Rules and A Son of the Circus by Irving. 

I'd no intention of buying any. All I wanted to do was compare their prices with those I'd bought recently from the secondhand bookstore I frequent, like a drunk going into his favourite hooch joint on the dot of six in the evening.

The price difference between the new and used books mentioned above was Rs.279 ($5.60). I bought three of the four novels by le Carré and Irving and a couple of Op Centres by Clancy for a measly Rs.20 each (less than 50 cents), which was as good as free.

All my books were in mint condition and some of the covers were the same as the ones I saw at Crossword. I might as well have bought them from the new bookstore.

The only book I didn't pick up for Rs.20 was A Son of the Circus. That particular novel cost me Rs.100 ($2) at another bookstore in central Bombay. I was poorer by Rs.80 ($1.6) but it was still a good bargain.

This is where I feel for authors, publishers, distributors and sellers who have every right to think they have been ripped off; screwed, in fact.

I know what you're thinking: if you feel so bad about this, then why did you buy the "used" books in the first place? It’s one way of looking at it. 

The Inorbit Mall at Malad in northwest Bombay.

Here’s how I look at it.

I bought the books secondhand because ordinarily I’d never buy them from a new bookstore as I seldom buy new books. I have plenty to read as it were, nearly a hundred used books on last count, not to mention dozens and dozens of copyright-free ebooks, short stories, comic-books, and magazines and anthologies. I have gone from being an earnest reader to a mean hoarder of books.

Two, I cannot afford to pay Rs.299 ($6) and more for each new book by every popular author just because I enjoy their work. I like reading fiction by John le Carré, Tom Clancy and John Irving and would love to read every book they have written. Now how many of their books can I possibly buy? Not many. But I can buy most of their novels for as little as Rs.20 or Rs.50 ($1) and try and read all their books. 

Three, for all my love of books I would be loath to spend money on a new book when I can put it to better use on the home front. There’s always something that needs fixing or replacing. New books can wait. Yet, I do occasionally purchase those I won’t find secondhand; for instance, The Complete Prose of Woody Allen, The Master of Petersburg by J.M. Coetzee, and Flint by Louis L’Amour, a favourite.

Four, a swanky bookstore always leaves me confused. I rarely know what to buy even if a wad of currency is sticking out of my pocket and I can spend it as I like.

I blame it on my ten-year affliction, secondhand books syndrome, and it’s not going to go away soon.

For more Book Buys see under Labels.