Shikar (1968)

1968

Directed by Atma Ram

Music: Shankar-Jaikishen

Starring: Dharmendra, Asha Parekh, Sanjeev Kumar, 

Helen, Johnny Walker, Rehman

The last few weeks haven't been fun. Battling deadline demons and ill health at the same time took its toll, to the extent that I didn't feel like watching a film, much less writing a review. With the pressure off, for the moment, I dragged my creaking bones, weary and protesting to do some much needed housekeeping, quite forgetting that my ill health meant that I tired quicker, and that aches and pains seemed much sharper and lasted much longer. Trying to not think of the pain, I was browsing through a new website that a friend told me about; I wasn't in any mood to watch any movie that required me to think, so when I saw Rajkumar, I decided a raja-rani film, even one from the dreaded nineties, would be the very thing. Ugh! I'd obviously forgotten how bad the early nineties were - fashions, dances (or what passed for them), plot (or the lack, thereof) - even Naseeruddin Shah hammed his way through an execrable excuse of a film. Ghastly!

The next day, I decided to be a bit more circumspect. Scrolling through the selection on the site, I came across a film that was described as a murder mystery. I had never watched this film, and truth to tell, had not heard of it before. No, that is not true. I do (vaguely) remember discussing this with someone in the blogging world, but I have no clue who. Whoever it was spoke highly of the film, and that is all I knew about it. But Dharmendra in the 60s had not entered his Main tera khoon pee jaaoonga phase, and was rather dishy to boot. So was Sanjeev Kumar, long a favourite of mine, and while Asha Parekh is not a house favourite, the film had Helen and Johnny Walker. It had  to be better than Rajkumar! (It was.) 

Naresh (Ramesh Deo), the owner of Timli Forest Estate is a wealthy bachelor. His good friend, Ajay (Dharmendra), manages his estates, and kills man-eating tigers rather casually in his spare time. As they enter the office, Naresh finds his secretary Veera (Helen) there and is not too pleased. 

But he doesn't pay much attention to her as he informs Ajay that he has made a will, leaving his estate and his immense wealth to his aunt in Africa. Ajay is amused. This is the first he has heard of a young man making an old lady his heir. Veera is listening, though she pretends to be cleaning up.

Naresh is also looking through his mail. He burns a letter after reading it, but throws the envelope into the wastepaper basket. He also assures Ajay that his will had made provision to ensure the latter will continue to be estate manager for life. Ajay leaves and so does Veera, but not before she surreptitiously retrieves the envelope and hides it in a book in the library. She seems cognisant of the fact that Naresh is watching her. Or perhaps not.

That night, the tribals celebrate the death of the man-eater. The noise of their drums awakens Ajay, and he goes to the window to shut the din out. It is raining quite heavily, and as he stands at the window, he sees a jeep come careening down the hilly path, and crash into a tree just outside his house. He quickly picks up a flashlight, throws on a jacket and dashes out, to find the sole occupant thrown out of the jeep, unconscious. He carries her in and lays her on his bed. She comes to for a moment, but seems to be terrified of the tribal drums that have started playing once again. 

Before he can question her, she faints once again. Ajay is worried. Leaving her in the care of his servant TejBahadur / Teju (Johnny Walker), he drives off to fetch a doctor. 

On his way, however, he passes the estate house, and notices that the gate is broken. Concerned, he stops to check and finds Naresh - dead. He's been shot through the heart, and the gun is right beside his corpse. Sensibly, Ajay leaves everything just as he found it, and goes off to bring the police. Inspector Rai (Sanjeev Kumar) and his team come back with him, and while the constables are searching the house, Ajay is surprised to see that the gun that lay near the corpse is now missing. He tells Inspector Rai that Naresh had two .32 pistols. The police find neither.

What they do find is a lady's handkerchief under the jeep in the driveway, and a red rose in the hall.  Inspector Rai also notices two sets of footprints - a man's and a woman's - the latter that of high-heeled shoes. Ajay points out that the footprints were leading  away  from the house, not towards it, so obviously, the pair did not enter the house that way.

While talking to the inspector, Ajay suddenly remembers that he had left an unconscious woman in his house. Perhaps she knows something about this? They rush back to Ajay's house to find that the woman had vanished, and so had the overturned jeep. There is also no sign of any accident having taken place. 

Inspector Rai is much inclined to think Ajay's imagination had run away with him (why he should think that, I do not know), but Ajay is not amused. He is even less amused when he looks around for Teju and the inspector grins - Teju must also have vanished. End result is that when the inspector leaves him after telling him that any further evidence he brings should be real and not imaginary, and Ajay finds some cigar ash on the floor, he doesn't bother the inspector with the findings.  

Meanwhile, Mahua (Bela Bose), a tribal girl who has a soft spot for Teju has come to visit. Fleeing the spot when Ajay chances upon them, she stumbles behind the tree against which the jeep had crashed - and finds a woman's gold clutch. 

Fascinated by its beauty, Mahua keeps it for her own. Ajay goes to Naresh's lawyer to check on the will and learns that sending it for probate will take its own course - Naresh was murdered, after all. But as he is leaving, the lawyer invites him to a charity show. No prizes for guessing who the dancer is. 

Ajay, not being as perspicacious as the average Hindi film viewer, is stunned to see her. From the lawyer, he learns that she is Kiran, the daughter of the retired police commissioner, Mr Sharma (Rehman). That makes no sense to Ajay, but he follows Kiran home and confronts her - she seems rather puzzled. She hasn't been in any accident, she has never been in his house, and no, she has never seen him before either. Mr Sharma, who has overheard their conversation, is equally adamant that Ajay must be mistaken. And if he is not, then, why, it is clear that his daughter has a doppelganger. 

Ajay, not very convinced, leaves their home. However, he confides in Inspector Rai the next day, quite sure that Kiran is hiding something. Inspector Rai is amused. This is even better than a vanishing lady. Kiran Sharma was at the Police Club Ball the night of the murder, and there is photographic evidence of her presence. 

Ajay is taken aback, but he borrows one of the photographs from Inspector Rai and mails it to Kiran, telling her that this is her look-alike's picture, and if she wants to know who the woman is, she should meet Mr Ajay Singh at the Timli Estate. 

Kiran is puzzled, and curious enough to know the truth, and not knowing who Ajay Singh is (Ajay had not introduced himself the night he follows her home), she drives down to the estate to meet him. That is enough to convince Ajay that she is innocent. He also seems to have fallen in love with her by this time (quick work, there), and with a little bit of flirtation on both sides, followed by a jungle tour and a soupcon of danger, they are well on their way to falling in love with each other. 

Mahua is still wandering around Tejbahadur though he seems blind and deaf to her intentions. The gold clutch she found that night is now her prized possession and, trying to evoke some interest from Teju, she shows him  a letter that she found in the purse. Teju struggles to read it and we learn that it is a letter to Naresh - from Veera. 

But Ajay comes there by then, and Mahua leaves in a hurry. 

Veera is busy flirting with Ajay much to his displeasure, when a man named Ranbir Singh/ Robbie (Manmohan) enters the office. 

Ajay remembers that Naresh's lawyer had rented the guesthouse to the man and his hunting party for a month. Ajay signs the rental agreement and asks Robbie to sign it and give it to Veera. We are soon made aware that Robbie knows Veera - though he doesn't mention how. They are obviously very well-acquainted, and Robbie, having already proved his ability to forge signatures, is trying to persuade Veera to give him a specimen of Naresh's signature. Veera refuses, and Robbie leaves, promising to try again later. 

Meanwhile, at the police station, Inspector Rai is not asleep. He realises that while they have no way of tracing the rose, they could, perhaps, trace the handkerchief. His subordinate warns him against washing the handkerchief since they cannot muck around with the evidence, but Inspector Rai tells him that it is either a question of cleaning the handkerchief or ending up with mud on their face. 

Discovering that the handkerchief is monogrammed with a V, the light bulb goes off. There is only one woman associated with the case whose name begins with a V. Off he goes, armed with a search warrant, and proceeds to turn Veera's home upside down. Veera welcomes him with humour, sarcasm and some flirting - and the beleaguered Inspector Rai carts her off to the station on suspicion of murder. 

The next morning, Ajay comes to the police station to find that matters have taken a curious turn. While the police were still holding Veera on suspicion, an elderly lady named Vimla Devi (Mridula Rani) has just confessed to the murder. 

Her motive was that Naresh had ruined her niece's life and honour. Amongst her clothing, which Inspector Rai has fetched from the hotel, are more monogrammed handkerchiefs. She also puts out a petite foot from under her sari - and it is clad in high heels. The Inspector is not very convinced she is the murderess; he thinks she is shielding her niece. And Vimla Devi refuses to name her niece because the latter's reputation will suffer if it is known that she was Naresh's lover. 

The inspector is not helped by Veera either - she is still making fun of him, and completely denies ever having seen Vimla Devi before. 

Neither woman seems to know the other, and the inspector is forced to let them both go, for lack of evidence. But he is not such a fool either. He deputes his subordinate to keep an eye on Vimla Devi, in the hope that she would lead them to her niece. 

Mr Sharma calls up Inspector Rai to enquire about the case; he had heard that someone had confessed to the murder. Inspector Rai is puzzled; why is his superior, now retired, so curious about it? The answer to that is handed over to him by Veera who invites him home and, after having flirted with him as usual, hands him the envelope she had stolen from her employer and hidden away. 

He recognises Mr Sharma's handwriting, and upon visiting him supposedly for advice, is rather summarily informed by his ex-superior to stop acting so innocent - Rai must know it is his, Mr Sharma's, handwriting! 

To add to the confusion, Ajay walks in on Veera fighting with Robbie. Robbie has managed to get his hands on Naresh's specimen signature, and is going to make a new will - leaving Naresh's estate and wealth to Veera. Veera is aghast at his stupidity - the police already suspect her of Naresh's murder; if this will surfaces, it will only tighten the case against her!

And while Ajay does not know just why Veera and Robbie are fighting, it is clear that they know each other. His suspicions are further aroused when he finds Veera searching his house - though Veera is clever enough to use that episode to sow the seeds of suspicion in Kiran's heart. (Not that that lasts very long - the hero and the heroine actually seem to trust each other!) 

And then Teju finds a .32 pistol - in the hollow of a tree. That is obviously the murder weapon. But what about the other gun - the one near the corpse? And just who is the murderer? Vimla Devi? Or Veera? Or Vimla Devi's niece? And who is the niece anyway? Kiran? Or Kiran's lookalike who vanished on the night of the murder? How does Mr Sharma fit in? And Robbie? There are a few twists in the plot and many red herrings (some of which make no sense at all but are fun, anyway) before the mystery is solved. 

Shikar is a murder mystery with a difference. The hero is sensible, the police are intelligent, the 'vamp' has a sense of humour (and does not die in the end), the heroine, well, umm, she is the one who gets short shrift. When the 'bad' girl has the more interesting role, you know you are going to like the film. 

The film had some terrific acting (Sanjeev Kumar walks away with the honours here), and a halfway intelligent plot with well-fleshed out characters. It is interesting that the best etched ones are the supporting roles - both Inspector Rai and Veera were well beyond the usual cardboard characters that pepper Hindi films. As Inspector Rai, Sanjeev Kumar is not the usual caricature. He is human, seems to have more than two brain cells, and Sanjeev Kumar plays him with an understated naturalness that is unbelievably appealing. And he looked very, very dishy doing so, too. 

Helen's Veera, similarly, is more than just the vamp who is there to seduce the hero and die in the last reel. She is intelligent, has a sense of humour, more courage than you can shake a stick at, and her own sense of integrity. She is not above treating men with slight mockery, almost as if she is silently laughing at them even when she is ostensibly flirting, and is supremely confident of her own self. 

Luckily, as the 'ruined' woman, she doesn't get her cinematic comeuppance. It would have been very sad to have her die in the end. 

Dharmendra is eye-candy. He does do a good job of the material at hand, but he is the straight hero, and is not very interesting, actually. I did like that he has a touching faith in his beloved, and even when he finds out she is the murderess, he is willing to stand by her. That must surely be a first. I suppose I should have expected the sensible plot line considering the screenplay is by Abrar Alvi (story by Dhruva Chatterjee), though I do wish he had not gone overboard with the red herrings. 

Some of them were a total waste of time  (the jeep that vanishes from outside Ajay's house the night of the murder, for instance) and the director (Guru Dutt's brother Atma Ram) seems to have forgotten that he had used them in the first place, while others were ridiculous. (*Spoilers ahead* The jeep Ajay finds parked outside Naresh's house the night of the murder - Naresh is dropped back home by Veera, and the only other jeep there is the one that Kiran came in, and later uses to flee the scene of the murder - so where did this jeep come from? But...  don't ask questions!) 

What I didn't like at all? The tribals. And the animals. Oh. Why? *head to desk* The elephants in the film seemed to have spent their time stampeding (I counted three stampedes), and the last scene was a joke, but the film was definitely entertaining for all that, and the murderer was someone whom I did not suspect at all. So, final verdict? Shikar was definitely better than Rajkumar (which, I would strongly advice everyone to stay away from!).