Fifty Years of Pakeezah: The Grand Old Dame of Indian Cinema
As a young girl, the circumstances at home forced her to step out of the house and look for work. As a grown woman, she was deprived of the very things she had worked so hard for: a family, a home, friendships, love.
But between her birth and her death, between the innocence of those early days and the loneliness of her later years, between a stifled childhood and her final agony, there hangs a life: the thirty-eight dazzling years of Meena Kumari.
And almost as a testimony to those years, Pakeezah — Meena Kumari’s valiant, blood-soaked swansong — is a gem that continues to dazzle. Tragedy. Tension. Drama. Beauty. Poetry. Music. Sorrow. Hope. Romance. Love. Loss. It is almost as if all the emotions found in human experience came together in this movie to tell a story that has seeped deep into our consciousness and will remain there for many more decades to come.
The great Indian epic, the Mahabharata, opens with a confident claim, “What is here is found elsewhere. What is not here is nowhere.” It is this breadth of life’s canvas and the entire spectrum of human experience that Pakeezah shares with the great epic.
When Meena Kumari was making Pakeezah, she was ailing, both physically and mentally. She was on the brink, not of a new world, but of one left behind, a world that had promised her hope and happiness once, but had failed her miserably. And in the film, one of those rare examples of art imitating life and quite sadly and superbly so, Meena became one with her character — a much-adored, much-desired courtesan from Lucknow who loses out on life so many times that even a glimpse of joy and love, even a promise of happiness, makes her tremble with fear and push all these prospects away.
What was so poignant was that Meena, in the movie as in her life, wanted to step across the brink and was willing to leave everything behind. One can only imagine the pain that she must have borne that brought her to such a pass, the hopelessness rising high within her that made her pursuit of death sweeter and more satisfying than that of life itself. And it was not a quick, easy death that she desired, but a long, drawn out one — to fade out slowly, like embers — as if in defiance, to put all those who had heaped miseries upon her to shame, as if trying to make them realize their guilt by living as if she were not alive at all.
But it wasn’t Meena’s loss. It was ours. It was the world’s. It says a lot about the society that we have built that denies hope and love to so many, especially to a person who had encountered its worst but was willing to go on … and live. She had to wade through ugliness and sorrow to arrive at the point where she expected to find love and sunshine. What she encountered instead, broke her and made her give up on life and love altogether.
It is the destiny (read: injustice) that has befallen the loveliest of our kind. Most of them remain unnamed and obscure because they weren’t famous individuals, but they share their plight with those who did become famous and were able to offer their voices to a million other tragedies. Marilyn Monroe, much like Meena Kumari, was a victim of our world. Both emerged from unfavourable circumstances, rising out of misery and dearth. Both reached the summit. Both gave up. And both died young and lonely. Yet neither of them appeared to be creatures shaped only by the injustices and tragedies that had befallen them. On the contrary, both Meena and Marilyn came across as healthy living beings, as if born and raised in some kind of radiant utopia, nurturing an immense capacity to grow and to love. It was their personal achievement to have emerged from the holes of ugliness without any scars or bitterness. It was the failure of their societies to applaud them for it and celebrate them, and offer them hope and kindness and love.
Pakeezah is a cry, a pleading, a protest, a prayer … for a better and just world.
The music and songs in the film, composed by Ghulam Mohammed and finished by Naushad, written by Kaif Bhopali, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Kaifi Azmi and by the director and screenwriter, Kamal Amrohi, himself, are perhaps the most hummed ones of all time. They are a gateway into the world of Pakeezah. If played in sequence and back-to-back, the songs tell the same story, albeit through music and dance and poetry: an epic story of hope and love and loss.
The playful accusations in Inhi logon ne, the pleas to the beloved in Thahre rahiyo, the love-ridden desires and requests of Mausam hai aashiqaana, the hope of finding a new, better world (even if it lies beyond the moon!) in Chalo dildaar chalo, and finally, the portrayal of thwarted desires and anguished hopes in Chalte chalte: the music of Pakeezah is a unique expression of cinema in itself. Each song adds to the narrative, takes the story forward. They are not there to provide a break from the plot, or some kind of fun and entertainment in the middle of a complex story. They are not item numbers, or a relief, to make the audience stay. They are there to push the viewer further, to make you singe and burn, so that what follows after each of the songs can be perceived and realized with all the intensity and passion that Pakeezah requires of anyone choosing to watch it. That is the confidence of the film. She is sure of herself.
The film speaks of many things, both the ugly and the beautiful. The ugliness comes from the depiction of patriarchy, of the position of women and children in society, of prejudice triumphing over love, and people, especially men, trying to put up a facade of strength in order to exercise authority, but, in conclusion, being just weak and spineless when they should have been defiant and brave (which the handsome Raaj Kumar is, towards the film’s climax). The beauty, on the other hand, comes from recreating a world that is lost now — the world of thumris and ghazals — and more importantly, one where people, especially the women, conducted themselves with grace and dignity but also with passion and love.
Cinematically and artistically, Pakeezah is an achievement of the highest order; perhaps one of the best movies to have been made anywhere on earth. Personally, the world of Pakeezah isn’t one that we would want to live in. But it is a place we would want to visit for a while: to learn the graces, to receive an education in pride and dignity, to bolster our capacity to love and celebrate life, and, then, to help and rescue the people living in that world.
She is fifty years old now, Pakeezah — the grand old dame of Indian cinema. Much has transpired in these fifty years. The world has changed. India has changed. And the change is so gigantic that Pakeezah might feel out of place: a misfit in the topsy-turvy, pretentious, dishonest world of ours.
Will there be takers and admirers and suitors for Pakeezah in today’s India? Will she be adored and celebrated and loved? Will she find hearts to settle into? The sad answer is no. Not in the present world. Not till the world changes again, for good this time, and returns to the values that have always defined the best of humanity for millennia: truth, love, beauty, justice, and that quiet, tenacious, steadfast determination to live — and let live — and to celebrate all the good things the universe holds for us.
It’s unlikely that this change will happen anytime soon. Our air is toxic. Our culture is dead. Our politics is evil. Our dreams are broken. Our society is trapped. It might take years — even decades — to rebuild the world as it ought to be: in the image of the highest possible. And when that happens, when the values that make us human are imbibed and enshrined again, the likes of Pakeezah, Marilyn Monroe, and yes, Meena Kumari, might, just might, want to return from the brink and dream and love and live again.
If and when that happens, the world would have become a better place to live in.
