Conversations Over Chai: Dharam Veer (1977)

Directed by: Manmohan Desai
Music: Laxmikant-Pyarelal
Lyrics: Anand Bakshi, Vitthalbhai Patel
Starring: Dharmendra, Jeetendra,
Zeenat Aman, Neetu Singh,
Indrani Mukherjee, Pran,
Jeevan, Ranjeet,
Sujit Kumar, DK Sapru,
Pradeep Kumar, Dev Kumar,
Chand Usmani

When I wrote a tribute to Dharmendra, I basically updated a post I’d planned for his birthday. I decided I needed to do more – review a film, but because I haven’t watched many of his films recently (other than Ikkis and Aaye Din Bahaar Ke, which Dustedoff reviewed here), I fell back on a film that I’d watched with Shalini, more than six years ago. The choice of this film was also due to Madhu’s comment (on my tribute post) about the condescension towards masala flicks. After all, who can symbolise ‘masala’ more than Manmohan Desai? Besides, I love these faux raja-rani stories; they satisfy my love for camp.

As we began, Shalini quipped that she fully intended to ignore Jeetendra and ‘focus on Dharam and Zeenie Baby’. I fully agreed – poor Jeetu didn’t stand a chance.

The Maharaja (DK Sapru) of an unnamed kingdom is receiving proposals for his daughter, Princess Meenakshi. Neighbouring rulers have sent princely presents – a necklace of gold coins, a necklace of pearls (that looked, according to Shalini, and I agree, like a plateful of motis)… to register their attendance at her swayamvar. The third platter contains only a garland of flowers and a sword, without the sender’s name. Just then a falcon flies into court bearing a letter – the sender is neither an emperor nor a prince; just a hunter who knows ‘samurai’.

The Maharaja is furious at the sender’s impudence. As Prince Satpal Singh (Jeevan) hits the platter out of the maid’s hands, the falcon flies down to rescue the sword.

Meanwhile, Princess Meenakshi (Indrani Mukherjee) has gone out hunting alone. She’s just killed a tiger (Bad Princess! Bad!), when she’s surrounded by a gang of dacoits. Things look rather bleak when Jwala (Pran) appears on the scene. The grateful princess promises him anything he might ask for in return. Despite Jwala’s cautionary advice, the princess is adamant; ask of her what he will, she will keep her word.

So, Jwala makes his request – he’s been in love with her for years… would she agree to marry him? Here and now?

Back in the palace, Satpal is furious with his men for having failed to kill his sister. The Rajguru had foretold that the prince’s death would occur at the hands of his eldest nephew.

The Maharaja, who overhears his son’s vow to kill his sister, banishes him from the kingdom. Meanwhile, Princess Meenakshi has wed Jwala. On their wedding night, a tigress attacks Jwala’s hut. Sure that the tigress has come to avenge her mate, Jwala goes after her. On the way, he sees the body of a man killed by the tigress. Putting his coat over the dead man, Jwala continues in pursuit. As he wrestles with the animal, they both roll off a cliff. The princess, following her husband, sees the villager’s dead body with =her husband’s sword by his side. She goes into deep shock.
Me: Why doesn't she uncover the man's face?
Shalini: We wouldn't have a film then.
I had to agree.

Despite months of treatment, Meenakshi doesn’t get any better, and the Maharaja is at his wits’ end. And soon, the date for the princess’s swayamvar rolls around but the assembled suitors are furious; they had come to wed a princess, not a statue. However, Pratap Singh (Pradeep Kumar), the King of Dheerajpur, is willing to accept the princess as his bride.

[That someone thinks marrying a woman who's unaware of her surroundings is a good idea boggles the mind.]

On their wedding night, Princess Meenakshi comes to her senses. When he realises that she is an unwilling bride, Pratap Singh generously informs her that, upon his oath as a Rajput, he’ll be her husband only in name. While the princess is still mulling over his generosity, she feels faint, and realises she’s pregnant.
Me: How does she know she’s pregnant so early on?
Shalini: She’s watched Hindi films?

Initially shocked, Pratap Singh insists that her child will be his heir, but requests, for the sake of his honour, that she never reveal the secret of the child’s birth. [The seeds for further misunderstanding are sown.]

It is then that Satpal comes to Dheerajpur. He begs forgiveness and requests his sister to let his pregnant wife Roopmati (Chand Usmani) live with her as her maid. Meenakshi is kind enough to invite both of them to stay with her. And Pratap Singh, who’s leaving for the battlefield, entrusts Satpal with Meenakshi's safety.

[Given that Satpal had earlier tried to kill his sister, this can't end well.]

Soon, both Meenakshi and her sister-in-law give birth to sons. This is the chance the wily Satpal has been waiting for. When the midwife is recalled to the queen's bedside because she's gone into labour again, Satpal flings the baby from the ramparts. But Sheru appears just in time and whisks the child away.
Shalini: As negligent a mother as Nirupa Roy was, at least she didn’t have her kids taken away by birds!

As the distressed queen orders her attendants to search for her elder twin, Satpal switches his son for the other prince.

Meanwhile, Sheru brings the baby to the blacksmith’s hut, where Jwala has been lying unconscious these past nine months. The blacksmith and his wife are delirious with happiness – they had been praying for a child for years. Back in the palace, Roopmati waits until her husband is asleep and swaps the babies again.
Me: Ooh! Double-switch! Me like!
Shalini: Trust MD to throw in a sucker punch!

When Jwala [conveniently] regains consciousness and reaches Dheerajpur in search of his Meenakshi, it is to witness their son’s naming ceremony. Assuming that Meenakshi had remarried, Jwala leaves in disgust.

Years pass and the princes have grown into strapping young men, Dharam (Dharmendra) and Veer (Jeetendra), as has Satpal’s son, Ranjeet (Ranjeet).

Shalini: Wow! Could Dharam’s skirt be any shorter?
Me: Are you complaining, woman?
Shalini: What I always liked about Dharam and Feroz Khan was their willingness to be eye-candy. Very generous of them!

We are also introduced to Princess Pallavi (Zeenat Aman), with whom Dharam has a run-in. She is holding what seems to be a gladiatorial contest (or are they knights jousting for her favours?)

Me: What MD lacks in production values, he makes up for in imagination! Krishna and Kans, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, Rajput pageantry, medieval knights, Arabian Nights fantasies, Pirates, modern/western something or the other…
Shalini: Totally agree. MD’s movies are so outlandish, so preposterous that they warm the cockles of my heart.

But when Dharam wins the joust and has the temerity to ask for her hand, the princess sets her men on him. He is captured, but Veer manages to escape, pursued by the princess’s men. Veer hides in a gypsy camp where he meets Rupa (Neetu Singh).

He manages to convince her to hide him from the soldiers and to take him along to the palace the next day. The next day, Dharam is brought to the arena in a cage and is being needled by tiny dwarves when Veer makes an appearance as a gypsy singer. [Add Gulliver’s Travels to MD's sources of inspiration.]

When the song ends, Dharam has been rescued and Princess Pallavi’s fiancé, Prince Sujan Singh (Sujit Kumar) is trapped inside the cage. The next day, just as Princess Pallavi is ordering her men to bring her Dharam, dead or alive, he appears. He abducts the princess, and then proceeds to tie her up and threaten her, drag her behind his horse and manhandle her.

Me: Assault, in the name of love?
Shalini: We are in sexual harassment territory now.
Me: Casual sexism was par for the course then, no?
[The fact that Pallavi falls in love with Dharam despite (or because of) this mistreatment is facepalm territory for both of us.]
Me: In any case, I don’t understand how a forced ‘maang mein sindoor’ makes me married to anyone?

But Pallavi stabs Dharam before escaping, and it is Jwala who finds him faint by the riverside. He takes Dharam home and binds his wounds. He also offers some sage advice – stay away from palaces and the people who live in them. But Dharam has gone too far to turn back. He begs Jwala to teach him the art of ‘samurai’.
Shalini: Did MD know that Samurai is a person not sword fighting? I doubt he cared.

Jwala refuses – he will teach the art only to his son or to the brave son of a brave father. When Dharam proves himself, Jwala, impressed by the young man’s tenacity, agrees to teach him.

They are seen by Veer, who mistakes the training for a fight. But once he's appraised of the truth, Veer returns to the palace, where he tells the queen of the brave warrior he met in the forest. Meenakshi goes to Jwala's hut at night but the promise made to her late husband forces her to keep silent about her sons’ paternity. Jwala sends her away.

Meanwhile Dharam is pining for Princess Pallavi. Veer and he concoct a plan to persuade Pallavi to reveal her love (!). Similarly, Rupa, pining for Veer, manages to enter the palace but is met by Ranjeet who attempts to molest her. Rescued by Veer, she tells her story to the queen, who, suspecting how things lie between her son and the gypsy girl, tells him to go ask the gypsy chieftain for Rupa’s hand in marriage.

And Ranjeet’s punishment (for attempted assault) is being decided in court – his own father asking for the most terrible punishment to be accorded to him. It is only when Roopmati confesses that she’d swapped the babies back that Satpal realises that he’d been treating his own son badly over the years. A penitent Satpal begs his son's forgiveness.

As the father and son join hands, Satpal cautions his son that Dharam stands between them and Veer. They need to end that friendship. So they sabotage the Queen’s chariot, and when the wheel runs over the coachman’s hand, the blacksmith is deemed guilty of negligence. In a land where ‘an eye for an eye’ is the law, his hands are chopped off. Though the Queen and Veer beg for compassion, the coachman, bribed by Satpal insists on vengeance. Dharam is furious. And as Wodehouse would say, there’s a serious rift in the lute of Dharam’s and Veer’s friendship. And when his foster mother is killed, the rift is complete.