Ek baag mein khilenga ek gulab,
Pilade Pilade Pilade Saaqi
Ek glass julab.
Not only did Ghalib take a 1140 degrees turn in his grave, a thunderous applause must have welcomed Keshto Mukherjee?s amazingly cute attempts to carve out a niche for himself in the immortal world of Urdu Poetry. Yeah I am talking about Chupke Chupke, a movie that has spawned many imitations but remains alive in the minds of all who have watched it even once.
With a formidable cast of Industry stalwarts such as Amitabh, Dharmendra, Jaya and Sharmila, it would be difficult to imagine that the fringe elements would be remembered for their performances and that?s the lovely part about working in a HrishiKesh Mukherjee movie.
Each character is so well defined that no one practically no one can find fault with the script or complain of having been given a cold shoulder. Be it Om Prakash or David, Asrani or Keshto, each character was endearing in its ways. No attempts to get people to laugh. It was simple humour without having any elements of slapstick comedy that were a part of movies which had Rajendra nath, Ashok Saraf or Lakshmi Kant Berde.
Coming back to the point, so here we have a hill station where a botanist having done seminal research and written well acclaimed books, is staying at a guesthouse having limited number of rooms served by an old gentleman who happens to be the watchman as well.
Enter a bevy of young ladies out to study botany along with a rather loud delicately proportioned lady as their professor. As was common to all the movies at that time, these ladies wearing sarees enjoying themselves at night around a bonfire admire Prof. Parimal Tripathi, the same gentleman staying over in the same guesthouse happily disguised as the watchman for the oldie had to go to his village to run an errand.
One of the students gets to know the truth and hands over a love note to our very own botanist. What follows is a marriage between humour and love, envy and enjoyment. So the student who has married her role model, the botanist, has a ?jejjaji?, her brother in law whom she respects a lot and is completely awestruck about ?Jejjaji?s multifaceted personality.
So there goes our botanist disguised as the driver of our lovely doe-eyed beauty?s beloved ?Jejjaji? and then starts the fun, the chaos and the cute little moments when everyone in the family seems to be clueless about whats going on. The rest of the story is way too interesting for me to reveal in words. Guess it has to be seen to be believed or rather disbelieved.
Confused, are we? Should be because that was the idea.
For once Amitabh and Jaya are not the protagonists; in fact as was the case of Masoom, this movie has no such leading actors. Each have added a different hue to this rainbow. Jaya as the sincere botany student and Amitabh as the professor of literature have a terrific chemistry onscreen. Amitabh?s futile attempts to mug up concepts of botany and Jaya under the tutelage of our Shakespeare getting even more confused made this whole drama worth watching a zillion times. For those who are yet to watch this masterpiece of wit, all I can do is sigh!
Best scenes:
Naah, ?Aap log to meri baat samajhte hi nahin na?. Watch it and decide which ones would qualify for the title of best scene. Chances are you would rate the movie as too good to have selected scenes rating them the best.
Music:
As if the script wasn?t good enough, songs such as Sare Gama by Rafi and Kishore, Baagon mein and the title song by Lata and Ab ke Sajan - Sharmila giving mischievous glances to one and all along with Dharmendra made this movie an evergreen selection for any family reunion. But then when its S. D . Burman, you can?t doubt the music part can you?
Keerti
P. S I know the ending to the story was kinda abrupt, somehow didn?t want to elaborate any further.