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Directed by Raj Kapoor Music: Ram Ganguly Lyrics: Behzad Lucknowi, Saraswati Kumar Deepak Starring: Shashi Kapoor, Raj Kapoor, Kamal Kapoor, Premnath, Nargis. Nigar Sultana, Kamini Kaushal, Indumati |
Of his
first-born film, Kapoor said, "I'll never forget Aag because it was the
story of youth consumed by
the desire for a brighter and more intense life. And all those who flitted like
shadows through my own life, giving something, taking something, were in that film."*
Aag begins as Kewal (Raj Kapoor) climbs the
stairs to the accompaniment of suspenseful music. In the room at the top of the stairs awaits the new bride, Sudha (Nigar Sultana, in a cameo). The camera follows him as he
walks into the room and sees his ghungat-clad bride sitting demurely on
the bed. There’s a moment of teasing which ends abruptly in a horrified scream
that pierces the night.
Her horrified expression pierces her husband’s gentle good humour. His agonised response is no less heartbreaking as he rues the reasons that have led to a now-familiar expression of horror from anyone who sees him. If she’s willing to listen, he says, he will tell her how all this came to be.
"Jab main dus saal ka tha…” begins the flashback. Of his fascination with the theatre. Of his love for Nimmi, his childhood friend. Of his quest for a life to call his own.
Kewal (Shashi Kapoor), the only son of a wealthy but strict father and a loving, docile mother, is always up to mischief with his friend and partner-in-crime, Nirmala/ Nimmi. He sneaks out at night to see a play at the travelling theatre that visits their little town. The love story between Bilwa Mangal and Chintamani catches the young lad’s fancy. He will open a theatre company when he grows up and Nimmi will be his heroine, he tells her and she agrees enthusiastically.
Nothing if not ambitious, Kewal plans to produce ‘Bilwa Mangal’ for his school’s annual day. It’s a nightmare for the young producer who has to corral his inexperienced cast (none of whom are very interested) into a reasonable production. Alas, on the day of the performance, Nimmi doesn’t show up. She’s left town with her family; she hasn’t even said goodbye. A heartbroken Kewal forlornly watches the bus taking his Nimmi away.
Now grown up (Raj Kapoor), he subsumes his passion for theatre to meet his father’s approval. He comes from a family of lawyers; his great-grandfather, grandfather and father have all been lawyers and judges, and his father wants him to follow in their footsteps. Reluctantly, he joins college, a mostly male bastion with few exceptions – Nirmala (Kamini Kaushal), a new girl who joins their class, much to the excitement of her male classmates. Kewal is one of the few who doesn’t importune her, and Nirmala is soon drawn to this brooding young man with a poetic bent.
She is curious about his query as to whether they called her 'Nimmi' as a child, and Kewal tells her of his Nimmi. When did he know her? "Sau saal pehle jab main dus saal ka tha" he says, and Nirmala is intrigued by his continued attachment to his "zindagi ke pehle sunahre sapne". Like many young women who aspire to change the men they fall in love with, she hopes to be his ‘Nimmi’, his ideal woman forever. (A few scenes serve to establish the couple's growing closeness.) Kewal perks up under her attention and soon his theatrical aspirations are aroused again. Alas, history repeats itself.
On the day of the performance, Nirmala cannot be Shakuntala– she’s to be engaged to another. (It’s a stark reminder that whether the woman is educated or not, she has little say in how her life pans out.) It is a bitter pill to swallow for Kewal for whom, this was yet another Nirmala [he never calls her 'Nimmi' until she begs him to, just as she's leaving] to whom he was bidding goodbye. However, he’s gracious enough to wish her well, hiding his own heartbreak.
Unfortunately, Kewal fails his exams as a result, and is driven to thoughts of suicide. But, an epiphany strikes and he resolves to follow his dream even if his father disinherits him. “Mujhe tedhe medhe raaste pasand hain,” he says, and despite his mother’s pleading, Kewal leaves home.
But life is not all roses. Not everyone is interested in making his dreams come true, and Kewal is soon draining the bitter dregs of reality. Starving, struggling, desperate, he wanders into the Royal Opera House. There, on the empty stage, he pours out his angst.
He is overheard by Rajan (Premnath), the wealthy owner of the theatre
who’s overheard this pent-up emotional outburst. His theatre is defunct, he
needs someone with Kewal’s passion to help him resurrect its past glory. "Have you worked in theatre before?" he asks Kewal who replies, "Yes, a hundred years ago, when I was but ten years old." Rajan is charmed. He employs Kewal at once; the latter is free to do as he wishes; there will be no restraint on his creativity.
Despite
himself, Kewal is drawn to this man’s unconditional friendship. Basking in an
affection he’s rarely experienced, Kewal soon draws up plans to bring the
theatre to life. He throws his blood, sweat and tears into achieving his ambition and living up to Rajan's faith in him. The plays are successful, and soon the theatre company is thriving. And now it is time to present Aag. Only, they have no heroine, someone who has the innocence and
beauty he’s looking for.
But none of the
regular female actors who audition for the role meet his approval. Until a
bedraggled, sullen young woman stumbles into the theatre. She has no home, no family. She doesn’t know her
name (or wants to forget it). When asked where she's coming from, she says, "Hell".
Underneath the grime and repressed emotions, Kewal spots the heroine who fits his imagination. He christens her ‘Nimmi’ – it is as much the name of his childhood love as it is the aspiration of the 10-year-old Kewal who wanted to stage Bilwa Mangal.
Nimmi is a gamin presence and her trauma dissipates under Kewal’s avuncular interest and Rajan’s evident interest. She’s smitten by Kewal, a fact that he doesn’t full comprehend, absorbed as he is in his other passion, the theatre. In fact, in her first scene as the heroine of 'Aag', while Rajan praises her performance to the skies, it is to Kewal that she looks to for approval.
Unbeknownst to him, Rajan is falling head over heels in love with Nimmi, the woman who had fired his imagination upon his first glimpse of her, and whom he had been obsessively painting since then.
It’s a volcano waiting to explode, destroying not just Raj’s face, but his dreams and aspirations.
Aag, based on a story by Inder Raj Anand, contained themes that Kapoor would return to again and again – the theme of youth rebellion, of loves lost and gained, of spiritual vs. inner beauty. The film has a raw potential waiting to explode – the anger simmering under the surface in Aag would flow like molten lava in Awara.
Kapoor also makes a strong case for letting young people chase their own dreams instead of living out their parents’ ambitions. In a telling scene in the film, Kewal states, Aur aaj kal ki padhaii hoti bhi kya hai? Aathve Henry ke aath biwiyaan thi… Main poochta hoon, Henry agar aath ke bajaay dus shaadiyaan kar leta toh hamaare liye kya farak padhta?”
“Main apni manzil khud doondhna chaahti hoon (I want to achieve my own goals)” he continues when his father objects, “Manzil doondhte doondhte tum bhatak gaye toh? (And what if you falter on that journey?)” Kewal replies, “Main apna raasta phir se doondhne ki koshish karoonga (I'll pick myself up and try again),” It is the plea of a young man to be allowed to make his own mistakes and learn from them. What’s telling is that Kapoor also provides the logical counterpoint to his in the father’s voice: Main poochta hoon ki agar tum college mein ek saal aur padho toh tumhaare liye kya farq padhta hai? (What difference would it make if he set out to achieve his goals after completing his studies?)
But at its core, Aag is a psychological drama and a daring experiment for a debutant director – the protagonist is not the most sympathetic character. Kapoor plays Kewal, a man so obsessed with theatre and his childhood love that he gives up a life of affluence for the former and searches for the latter in every woman he meets thereafter. In fact, so lost is he in the memory of that first love that he imagines her in every woman who walks into his life, especially in Nargis's character, reimagining her in child-Nimmi's image. His obsession is self-destructive – it is what causes him to burn himself and destroy his theatre.
In his first soliloquy, he agonises over the three facts of his life that have now destroyed him: if only he hadn't been so handsome, if only he hadn't been so easily attracted to women and if only he hadn't been so obsessed with theatre. The next monologue (in the theatre) is a masterclass in depicting a man’s mental breakdown; his guilt at failing his father; his grief at leaving his heartbroken mother; his agony over whether he had made the right decision to sacrifice everything for art; it ends with him questioning whether a human being has the right to live life as he wants. Kapoor’s fascination with the soorat vs. seerat (face vs. character) theme begins here, as does his questioning whether beauty is truth or truth, beauty.
Kapoor plays Kewal with brittle desperation – this is a man consumed by his demons, tempered by the fires of his twin passions, and burning in a hell of his own making. Yet, Aag is restrained melodrama, highlighted in the light and shade shot brilliantly by Kapoor’s cinematographer, VN Reddy who, at 34, was the oldest member of the cast and crew.
Kewal's lost love is a memory preserved in amber, yet he is not immune to the other women who come into his life. When Nirmala is forced to break off their fledgling relationship due to her impending marriage, Kewal is broken-hearted but he moves on. His undying passion is for the stage, not women. Even Nimmi. If she had consented to accept Rajan's love, Kewal would have shed a few tears and continued to direct plays. That is his overwhelming obsession.
Nimmi's refusal leaves him just one option, to show her that a handsome face cannot be the bedrock of a relationship. It is an extreme step taken by a young man in the throes of emotion – and burdened by obligation to the man who proffered him the reason to live. As he tells Nimmi,“Neeli aankhen aur sunehre baal
zindagi ke mushkil raahon par saath nahin dete. Sapnon ka sunehra sansaar zara
si aanch lagne par moam ki tarah pighal ke reh jaata hain.” [Blue eyes and golden hair do not offer you support when times are troubled. The land of dreams is a radiant illusion that will melt like hot wax at the slightest sign of trouble."] That is practical advice from a man who's anything but!
Premnath, Kapoor's brother-in-law, plays Rajan, the other angle of the love triangle involving Kewal and Nimmi. He is Kewal’s mentor, the man who gives him a new lease of life when he grants Kewal his defunct theatre to manage. Rajan is an artist in search of his muse; the ideal woman he paints on multiple canvases but has never met.
He is not unaware of Kewal's interest in Nimmi nor hers in Kewal, and his heart breaks for a love that will never be. It is his momentary breakdown that drives Kewal, burdened by the weight of the gratitude he feels towards Rajan, to take a step so drastic that it will destroy himself.
While Kamini
Kaushal plays the second ‘Nimmi’ with empathy, it is Nargis, appearing only
two-thirds of the way into the film, who breathes life into this recurring idea
of a character. This is Nargis’s first appearance with Raj Kapoor – in fact, he
met Nargis for the first time when he approached Jaddan Bai to sign her for the
film. Nargis, at 16, was already an established star by this time.
Nargis’s unnamed character is a refugee, and though she shares nothing of her experiences, it is clear that she has been traumatised by the events of the Partition. She wants to remember nothing, not even her name. She’s as much Kewal’s creation as she’s a free spirit. One never knows whether she loves Kewal because he gave her a reason to live or because he’s handsome (neeli aankhen, sunehre baal, she breathes in wonder) or because she truly loves him. Her last scene with him argues that she does: "You said you wanted to delve deep into the soul," she tells him. "Why didn't you look into mine?" Why doesn't he notice her troubled heart, hear her wounded sighs?
Kewal has no answers. That physical attraction is a valid facet of love, or that Nimmi is hardly mature enough at this point to understand the difference is something that Kewal doesn't understand. He owes the life he now lives to Rajan and Rajan has fallen in love with Nimmi. So, when his exhortations do not move Nimmi – in answer to his query as to what he should tell Rajan, Nimmi answers quietly: "Keh deejiyega Nimmi mar gayi. Aap ne apne haathon se uska gala ghont diya." In the scene that follows, every word she says on stage is directed at Kewal, not her co-actor – so, in one impulsive moment, driven by the passion that was his since he was ten, 'sau saal pehle', he tests his thesis of truth and beauty, beauty and truth. It is an over-the-top reaction by a man giving in to extreme emotion.
Nargis effectively conveyed Nimmi’s repulsion at his disfigurement, her guilt at his condemnation, her despair at the situation, her conflict, and her shame.
The younger Kewal is played with adorable spunk by a very young Shashi Kapoor. His winsome face and charming smile, coupled with a very natural performance (a credit to his brother’s direction) make it easy to empathise with his sensitive temperament and root for his happiness. He makes us understand the grown-up Kewal better.
His relationship with Nimmi is also carefully etched. One understands the relationship between the two children (who are too young to really understand romantic love) when it is Nimmi who weeps when Kewal is caned. One sees a glimpse of how his passion for theatre mingles with his love for Nimmi, and how, if there cannot be the one, there cannot be the other.
Ram Ganguly, barely 20 then, had already composed for several of Prithvi’s plays. Kapoor roped him in for his debut venture, and Ganguly delivered a wonderful score, the crowning jewel of which was surely, Zinda hoon is tarah ke gham-e-zindagi nahin. It was not just the musical language in cinema which changed with Aag, but also the way in which the debutant director picturized the songs. Solah baras ki is the perfect example (as is Dekh chand ki ore) – a pot swings mid-air while a ghatam plays in the background; then, the camera pans to different music instruments (while they play in the background); there’s an extreme close-up of the musician's hands as they play the ghatam and that of a dancer’s hands as they move gracefully to the beat, and slowly, the stage lights up to show the performers.
Kapoor had wanted to use Shailendra's poem, Jalta hua Punjab that he had heard the poet recite at a mushaira. Shailendra refused; it was only during Barsaat that the poet would approach the director for work, leading to the formation of Kapoor's dream team.
Aag is by no means a perfect film. It is rough around the edges but it's an emotionally satisfying celluloid
experience and shows the promise of a young filmmaker who dreamed big
and, like his protagonist, was willing to stake everything to fuel his
passion. It displays his inspirations for the technique – Citizen Kane and films from European
masters – and the breadth of his vision. His mastery over his craft would come later but it was clear that Kapoor understood, perhaps better than his peers, the importance of a team driven by the same vision. He had the knack of extracting the best out of his cast and crew. (For all his talent,
Ganguly would never again compose a song that matched his output in Aag.) Aag also displayed Kapoor’s ear for great music and his creative virtuosity.
A clean print of Aag can be watched on Tom Daniel's YouTube channel, here.
*https://bampfa.org/event/aag-fire
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