BAWARCHI
(“the cook”)
1972, Hindi, approx. 2 hours
Directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee
Produced by N. C. Sippy
Story: Tapan Sinha; Screenplay: Hrishikesh Mukherjee; Dialogues: Gulzar;
Songs: Kaifi Azmi; Music: Madan Mohan; Cinematography: Jaywant Pathare;
Art: Ajit Banerjee
To the often-heard middle-class Indian lament that “You can’t get
good servants anymore!,” this comedy—by India’s master
of the so-called “middle class” film (see notes on ALAAP)—has
the answer: a talented cook and all-around handyman who appears out of
the blue,
gladly takes on extra and even demeaning tasks, manifests unfailing good
cheer, and actually requests a salary lower than he is offered,
because of “inflation” (afflicting
his employers, that is!). Incidentally, he is also a soulful poet, gifted
musician, enchanting storyteller, master psychologist, and—in a
word—Mahatma,
who takes charge of dysfunctional families and turns the petty animosities
and irritations of everyday life in extended households into a succession
of opportunities
for the manifestation of selfless love and service. More surprisingly
still, he transforms (with the help of Hrishkesh Mukherjee and his talented
team) this
potentially saccharine scenario into a highly original, witty, and entertaining
film that truly deserves the adjective “heartwarming.”
An opening shot of a velvet curtain appears ready to serve as a backdrop for the film’s credits (as was the case in Mukherjee’s early hit ANARI), but instead, the voice of Amitabh Bachchan offers an unusual oral credit sequence, followed by a prologue introducing all the characters, of the sort spoken by the sutradhara or “director” in classical Sanskrit drama. Retired postmaster and widower Shivnath Sharma shares his comfortable but unostentatious home (ironically named “Shanti Niwas” or “Abode of Peace”) with three quarrelsome sons and their families. Ramnath (A. K. Hangal) is a deferential head clerk who nightly drowns his sorrows in cheap country liquor; his nagging wife Sita Devi (Durga Khote) suffers from gout and a martyr complex. Their daughter Meeta is an aspiring but self-centered kathak dancer. A second son Kashinath is a schoolteacher and self-important intellectual, whose wife, Shobha Devi, doesn’t get along with her sister-in-law. The youngest son Vishvanath, a.k.a. “Babloo” (Asrani) is a would-be film “music director” (i.e., composer), presently working as assistant to the composer team “Rajnikant-Nyarelal”; he affects the self-absorbed persona of the Artist—which naturally precludes helping out around the family home. The burden of housekeeping amidst the din of constant petty squabbles among all these denizens of the “Abode of Peace” falls heaviest on Krishnaa (Jaya Bhaduri), the orphaned daughter of another Sharma son who died with his wife in a car accident—especially when servants quit abruptly because they cannot bear the stormy domestic atmosphere.
This happens regularly, until one day when an amiable young man named
Raghu (Rajesh Khanna) turns up, announcing that he is their new
bawarchi or cook—though,
as soon becomes clear, making excellent cuisine is only one of
his many talents. A smooth talker who claims to have worked for a
whole galaxy of eminent personalities,
acquiring knowledge and skills from each, Raghu is initially
distrusted by the Sharma sons, who fear that he might be a conman
(one is rumored to be working
the area), but they are soon won over by his effusive attentions
to their needs, his magical skills in the kitchen, and his overall
take-charge attitude—represented
by his habit of exuberantly concluding pronouncements with a
mock trumpet-fanfare: “Taa-ta-raah!” (a
Khanna-ism that quickly entered popular speech).
With peace, happiness,
and timely meals restored to the household, it is only a matter
of time until the hapless
Ramnath gets a promotion at work, the feuding wives become
as close as sisters, and shy daughter Krishnaa wins a dance competition
(beating out the arrogant
Meeta by performing a piece taught her, of course, by cook
Raghu). Then, just when the household seems to be living up to its name,
Tragedy Strikes: the sleeping
family is robbed of a wooden chest, which the eccentric patriarch
had insisted on keeping under his bed, that contains their major
assets in the form of old
wedding jewelry. Worse still, the chief suspect is none other
than the saintly—but
now apparently absconded—bawarchi.
The “surprise” ending that Mukherjee abruptly tacks onto this dramatic
climax may not surprise attentive viewers; moreover, it leaves a number of plot
details unexplained. No matter: the great charm of this film lies in its saucy
and rapid-fire dialogue, its unpretentious mise-en-scene, and its parade of memorably-acted
characters who evoke all-too-familiar types in the middle-class milieu of smaller
Indian cities. Like the inhabitants of R. K. Narayan’s beloved “Malgudi” stories
and novels, the denizens of Mukherjee’s world live constrained lives and
have dreams to scale, yet they are viewed through a lens that manages to be at
once satirical and affectionate. Shanti Niwas feels familiar and homey—from
the faded bazaar “framing pictures” on its walls, to the slippery
drain area in the courtyard that nobody wants to clean—and so do its inhabitants,
who interact incessantly in its privacy-proof living space. Even the outspoken
interventions of the bawarchi suggest the casual intrusiveness that servants
often assume in Indian households, and Rajesh Khanna’s
diction, gestures, and body language effectively evoke
a simultaneously deferential
and spirited
subaltern.
As in some of his other films (e.g., GUDDI) Mukherjee pokes
fun at Bombay cinematic conventions even while largely
adhering to
them—perhaps permitting his
middle class viewers to feel intellectually superior
to the “masses” who
(supposedly) unreflectively accept such fare. When
Babloo is stumped over a song he is composing for a
DEVDAS-like sequence in which a hero sees his beloved
being
driven off in a bullock cart to marry another man (adding
the “new twist” of
having the cart driver rather than the spurned lover
sing it), Raghu comes to the rescue with the lovely
song Tum bin jivan (“What sort of life
is it without you?”); simultaneously, the dreamy
and impressionable Krishnaa “picturizes” the
song in her mind, with herself as bride-to-be and her
boyfriend Arun as the suffering lover—Raghu,
wearing a rakish pink turban, is of course the singing
cartman.
Later, during the morning raga sung by Raghu, Bhor aayee gaya andhiyara (“Dawn has come and darkness fled”)—a light classical tour-de-force which gets the entire family singing—would-be music director Babloo (who, we have been told, has “stolen countless foreign melodies,” though he has never yet crafted a hit) breaks into a guitar riff that parodies the Western-pop-influenced style of the then-prominent R. D. Burman.
[The DEI DVD of BAWARCHI offers an excellent quality
print of the film (though on the copy I viewed
there were some
momentary digitalization
flaws in the
image toward the end of the film), with good
subtitles for dialogue.
Unfortunately, none are provided for the film’s
three songs. The film is also offered on DVD
by “Bollywood Entertainment,” and
the disc appears to be of comparable quality;
however it offers
subtitles
for the
first of the
three
songs,
Tum bin jivan (though not, oddly,
for the other two).]