Chashme Buddoor (1981)

1981

Directed by Sai Paranjpye

Music: Raj Kamal

Starring: Farouque Shaikh, Deepti Naval, Ravi Baswani, 

Rakesh Bedi, Saeed Jaffrey, Leela Misra, Vinod Nagpal

A long time ago, Nalini, one of the readers of my blog asked me why I had never reviewed a Farooque Shaikh-Deepti Naval film yet. It got me thinking; it was not as if I had not reviewed films from the 80s before. Yet, I had never touched one of the most effective star-pairings of middle cinema. Like Amol Palekar-Zarina Wahab, one knew what one was going to see when one went to watch a Farooque Shaikh-Deepti Naval film. It would be more 'real'; the plot would be simple, there would be no violence, there wouldn't be the overt trappings of 'masala' films, and the end result would be rather sweet - not the diabetic-inducing sugary sweet confection that later Barjatya movies would turn out to be, but the bitter-sweet reasonable endings that are what an ordinary man and woman would have. 

And so, even though it took me a long time to get around to it, I watched a few of their films. Now that Chashme Buddoor has been remade (or murdered - depending on what view you take of the classics being revamped), I figured this was the right time to shine the spotlight on the original. By and large, Hindi cinema (or any cinema for that matter) tends to forget how to make a real comedy - clean, frothy, and without being puerile or resorting to double-entendre. This film from the not-so-great 80s should be required viewing for anyone who even dreams of making a film in that genre.

Three young men living in a typical bachelor pad in Delhi; sparse, messy, and filled with various articles holding piles of cigarette butts - when they run out of cigarettes, they smoke the butts. The first few shots establish their personalities.

There is Omi (Rakesh Bedi), a self-proclaimed shaayar (poet), who prefers to listen to ghazals. Next is Jomo (Ravi Baswani), who leers at the neighbourhood aunties as well as at their lissome daughters, and has pictures of scantily clad women and the top heroines of the time plastered on one wall. And the third is our hero, Siddharth Parashar (Farooque Shaikh), quiet and sensitive, and mortally afraid of girls. An Economics student, it is his money that subsidises his usually-broke friends.

While Omi and Jomo are lamenting the lack of girls (or ones who will pay them any attention), Siddharth is studying. Or trying to. His friends soon spot a new girl in the neighbourhood but Siddharth is still not interested. Do they even know where the girl lives or who she is? Pshaw! says Jomo. It's easy enough. Sure enough, with some help from Lallan miya (Saeed Jaffrey), he succeeds in his quest. 

She lives in their neighbourhood, in fact, in the next bungalow with her father and grandmother. Since Omi and Jomo squabble over who should woo her first, Siddharth provides a solution: cut a deck of cards to decide. And so the cards decide their fates. 

Omi wins, and the next morning, off he goes to try his luck. That evening he comes back ready with a tale of his conquest (that never was). 

Despite Siddharth's reservations, Jomo sets off the next day to woo the same girl. Reality and fantasy collide just as much in his recounting the tale to his friends that evening. 

Siddharth is impressed but it doesn't give him a very good opinion of the girl next door. He is also amused - how are his friends going to manage now? After all, there is only one girl.

Funnily enough, he gets to meet her, without knowing who she is. Neha (Deepti Naval) also moonlights as a door-to-door salesgirl for Chamko washing powder. When she lands up at their door, Jomo and Omi are flabbergasted, and afraid their lies would be caught out, jump out of the balcony.

So a bewildered Siddharth is left to bear the brunt of her sales pitch. With practised ease, she begins her spiel: Chamko. Kapdon ke liye behtareen sabun. Baar baar. Lagatar. Chamko. 

She then insists on demonstrating the product. Siddharth, by now charmed by his unexpected guest, offers a towel for washing. Now begins the wait for Chamko to perform its miracle. 

It's an awkward silence, because neither know what to say. Siddharth is fidgety and to escape his gaze, Neha begins to look around the room. Her gaze falls on the various pin-ups and Siddharth is embarrassed when a strategically placed towel falls off.

Nervously, he turns the radio on only to have Hum tum ek kamre mein bandh ho come blasting out. Now it is her turn to be embarrassed, and he jumps to ensure the door is open. 

This is just the beginning. Soon, Siddharth's and Neha's little romance is moving along at a fast clip. Jomo and Omi are worried. If Neha finds out they are Siddharth's friends, she is sure to tell him the truth about what happened. And so, they get to him first, offering him proof that she is a flirt; they even tell him details of her house which, they claim, they couldn't have known unless she had taken them there.

So, when he goes to her house for tea for the first time, and recognises those very details, Siddharth's confidence crumbles, leading him to reject her cruelly. And Neha is too self-respecting to want to listen to explanations. Will the lovers' tiff be resolved? Will Omi and Jomo even comprehend what they just did?

Sai Paranjpye, straight from making the heartwarming, and serious, Sparsh  the previous year, decided to make a 180-degree-turn and make a completely whacked out comedy, and did a fantastic job of it. It took a woman to make an honest-to-goodness film on male bonding, and her insights into the world of young men were both incisive and humorous. 

What made Chashme Buddoor stand out was the fact that nowhere did the film veer into slapstick territory. What stands out as possible melodramatic plot points veers into the delightfully banal (the scene where Omi and Jomo find a bottle of poison in Siddharth's drawer); the dialogue was natural, the camaraderie was genuine, and the boy-girl interactions were so devoid of artifice that the film was like the summer rains - cold and refreshing.

Witness the scene where Siddharth spies Neha, waiting for the bus, and offers her a lift. When Neha remarks on the coincidence of them meeting like this, he sheepishly tells her that he had been circling around the vicinity waiting for her singing class to finish. Neha is no coy damsel - she confesses that she had deliberately given Siddharth the information hoping he would swing by. There is a sudden camaraderie visible in both their faces, of having had the same thought/feeling, and of having acted on it.  

Or the scene where Neha, selling soap powder, proudly wrings out a sparkling white towel which she has just washed in demonstration, and Siddharth confesses that it was a freshly-laundered one.

Or the scene where Siddharth proposes (it's a very cute scene), and Neha says it's a huge decision and she needs time to think, lots of time; Siddharth, nervous, asks her how long, and she grins - until she finishes her tutti-frutti. 

This was Ravi Baswani's debut as an actor. Having previously worked with Sai on her debut film, Sparsh, as a member of the crew, Ravi stepped into Jomo's harmless-Lothario shoes with a comic timing that was both perfect and believable. Jomo's imagination is obviously in overdrive when he is talking of his conquest of Neha - long before Farah Khan decided to affectionately lampoon the tropes of a masala film, Sai Paranjpye used a parody of hit songs (and a special appearance by Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha) to poke loving fun at Hindi films. Yet it is so warmly done that we laugh as much at the parody as we do at ourselves. 

Rakesh Bedi, on the other hand, is no Lothario. He is a would-be poet, and is more a man of talk than action. Of course, he is not beyond telling tall tales of his (imaginary) conquests. Both of them were the perfect foil to the reserved Siddharth, played with subtle restraint by Farooque Shaikh.

Farooque Shaikh was adorable as the geek-turned-mod guy, who forgets to remove the price tags from his clothes when he goes out on his second date with Neha. And how can one not love a guy who orders the best item on the menu when the girl agrees to his proposal and spoons it up with a goofy grin on his face? And claims he is just waiting for a 'special girl' to ask him to quit smoking? 

Deepti Naval was the perfect girl-next-door, with her lustrous hair, glowing smile, and minimal make-up. After this film, a generation of filmgoers would enshrine her as 'Miss Chamko'. You couldn't have had a more attractive salesgirl than Neha. Her chemistry with Farooque Shaikh would extend to other films - Katha, Saath Saath, Kisise Na Kehna, etc. 

Leela Misra had a small role as Neha's grandmother, and she was adorable! The love and affection between the two was heartwarming, and she is not above a bit of scheming to get the estranged lovers together.

And of course, who can forget Lallan miya? The neighbourhood paanwaala who gives the young men cigarettes on tick, all the while scolding them for not paying their past dues. As the man who both harangues them and at the same time, offers a sympathetic ear and shoulder, and who is not beyond gaping at a beautiful girl himself, Saeed Jaffrey was a delight.

Finally, a word about the music. Raj Kamal's career never really took off, but the score in this film was very nice, from Is nadi ko mera aaina maan lo to Kaali ghodi dwaar khadi to the well-known Yesudas-Haimanti Shukla duet Kahaan se aaye badira. Add in the fact that Sai Paranjpye used old Hindi songs beautifully, including in the Jomo-Neha fantasy sequence.

For a fun-filled afternoon, when you want to wax nostalgic about your growing up years, a beautiful Delhi, or both, do watch the original Chashme Buddoor again. 

And of course, don't forget to buy yourself a tutti-frutti.