The need to divide want and privilege is an important theme in Bollywood

THE OTHER DAY, I was watching the 1954 Bimal Roy film Naukri with a young Kishore Kumar in a solemn role as the job-seeking naujavaan Ratan, who travels from his village to Calcutta, but encounters disappointment at every turn. The film has plot elements we think of as clichés of a cinematic past: the beloved sister suffering from TB, the widowed mother, the arrival of a letter bearing exam results, the journey that begins with tearful farewells. But these were understandable concerns of the “social” cinema of the post-Independence decade. The main markers of that new world were: a naukri or job (which often went to less deserving people with “connections”); a muchcoveted makaan or house of one’s own (the first song in the film is Chhota sa Ghar Hoga, where Ratan dreams about having a home under the clouds, with a golden throne for his mother); and the ladki, girlfriend (often the girl in the window across the lane, inaccessible until job and accommodation have both been secured). There was also  idealism, which sometimes went sour. Understandably, male bonding featured strongly in this filmic universe. In Calcutta, Ratan boards in the ominously named bekaari block, which he shares with other unemployed men who have been there longer than him. One lovely scene has Ratan humming to himself about his joblessness; soon, heads pop up from behind the partition and other boarders start singing about their travails. One of them, played by the then-young character actor Iftekhar, warbles “Main collector na banu aur na banunga officer / Apna baabu hi bana lo mukhe, bekaar hoon main”. (“I couldn’t become a collector and won’t become an officer / At least give me a job as your assistant or baabu.”) Watching that scene, I was reminded that more than 20 years later, the same Iftekhar played a man in a position of great power in Deewaar: the rich businessman-cumsmuggler who gets his shoes polished by a little boy on the footpath. In the fantasy world where movies can converse with each other across time, it is  conceivable that the two men are the same person: that Ratan’s frustrated friend in Naukri found a way to operate outside the law, until he achieved everything he couldn’t achieve honestly— eventually arriving at a position from where he could guide the next generation through dubious routes.

Social aspiration—the need to move up in the world, to bridge the divide between want and privilege—has always been an important theme in Hindi films. And how could it not be, in a society where the gap between the advantaged and the disadvantaged is always so large? The theme has played out in different ways: from social realism of the Naukri kind to black comedy (Ray’s Jana Aranya, about a man drawn ever deeper into a vortex of amorality) to Angry Young Man dramas (Deewaar and Trishul), and even comedies that conceal serious themes (Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s delightful Biwi aur Makaan, about five modernday Pandavas exiled in the city).

Given the changes in Indian society in the past two decades and the concurrent changes in Indian cinema, it is tempting to think that the world depicted 60 years ago no longer exists. Look again. The basic internal struggles experienced by the characters in those stories are still very much in place, even if mainstream Hindi cinema tends not to venture into villages nowadays.

For instance, one of the best Hindi films of the past decade, Dibakar Banerjee’s Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, was not about the village-city dichotomy– it was about a subtler divide within Delhi itself, what wearing fashionable clothes to an exclusive hotel or mall can mean to someone who grew up in a cramped house. The narrative about a West Delhi boy who becomes a master thief, understands the spiraling nature of class aspiration, and the tricks of survival in a dog-eat-dog world where the kindly, family man who befriends you might have a dagger ready to plunge into your back. Many old films like Guru Dutt’s Baazi and Raj Kapoor’s Awaara featured street naifs being led into a lavish world, but retaining their personal integrity; not becoming “corrupted” by wealth. Some of this idealism has vanished in our own times, where films like Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! and Special 26 are based on a more amoral sense of social justice: in an inherently unfair world, it is okay for the underprivileged person to reach out and take what he can. There are also some fine films about youngsters who choose to stay on the “right” path or who get swayed into doing something underhanded but collect themselves just in time. One of my favourite recent examples of a good-hearted, well-observed film about aspiration was Fukrey, about four youths dreaming of a bright future, starting with admission to a smart college. This could easily have been an Indian version of American horny-teen films, but even when two of the boys talk about the ‘hot girls’ in college, it doesn’t come across as gratuitous leering: it is more about fearfully approaching a new milieu, wondering if they will gain acceptance (it is reminiscent of a girl from a conservative background in Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! watching short-skirted college-goers with a mixture of envy and distaste). When these boys mispronounce words or when one of them tries to be cool by pretending he knows what a French kiss is, the film isn’t mocking them: it invites us to see where they come from and where they want to go. Scenes like the one where the Sikh boy Lali prays in a gurdwara, asking for college admission and even giving God a list of his requirements, are played for humour (a child watching him says “Roll number bhi likhwa de!”). But they have a sense of character and circumstance built into them. Lali speaks in slang, wears torn jeans and T-shirts, and is a teen of the new millennium, but at this moment he evokes the Ratan of Naukri, smiling and keeping his spirits high as he walks from one door to another, running his fingers over the “No Vacancy” signs.