Unforgettable melody, utterly forgettable movie….

I saw this movie in the late 80s while travelling overnight to Rural Maharashtra for helping to serve the underserved people of the state. I was unable to bribe the cleaner of the video coach I was travelling by in time, as I had reached late to do it. I had worked out the bribe-the-cleaner-routine (who would make the VCR “malfunction” a short time into the journey) very successfully scores of times so that I would be spared the assault by the Dolby sound systems (that made me feel like a Tom and Jerry movie when a heavy metal band of street cats descend on their neighborhood and start an impromptu, noisy concert, with resultant eardrums knocking on one other inside their skulls and a monstrous headache) & give me a few hours shuteye in the reclining seat (that usually refused to recline as much as it was supposed to).

The movie is called Sunny eponymously after the male lead (Sunny Deol whose character is also called Sunny in the movie). The movie has Dharmendra as  the father who’s married to Waheeda Rehman but she can’t get pregnant, so Garam Dharam quenches his thirst (so to speak) with a Kothewali (Sharmila Tagore) who promptly and predictably gets pregnant. Waheeda gets enraged at the sowing of the oats, but before the delivery, Dharam dies in a plane crash. The lady now under the pretext of caring for the pregnant prostitute, organises the parturition and claims the baby is stillborn. The boy is now brought up by Waheeda as her own. The boy, Sunny, grows up and falls in love with a dancer/singer, Amrita Singh, who most inconveniently (for Waheeda, that is) turns out to be Sharmila Tagore’s niece. The utterly melodramatic movie had a great score by RD Burman. This is one of his best songs, Anand Bakshi wrote the lyrics which Lata didi has sung soulfully. Dharmendra and Sunny Deol don’t appear in a single frame together in the movie. https://youtu.be/FQYcjNxfsoc

Sunny Deol was a truly wonderful actor and has won Filmfares as well as National Awards for Best Actor as well as Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Surprisingly the plot of this film is very similar to the film Zameen Aasman starring Sanjay Dutt released in the same year. Even more surprisingly- and this can only happen in Bollywood- both the movies had music by R. D. Burman. Sunny also had another wonderful composition, Aur Kya Ahd-E-Wafa, sung as solos by Suresh Wadkar and also by Asha Bhosle.

Hope you folks like the song I was forced to see some 3 decades ago. Take my advise and don’t bother seeing the movie.

An earlier blog on the same song had touched upon its Bangla source. Amazingly the Bangla version is sung by Asha Bhosle. Why Pancham asked Latadidi to sing the Hindi version, I don’t know. You can read the earlier blog written 2 years ago on this link. https://abchandorkar.wordpress.com/2021/02/22/melody-recast-and-reborn/

Have a wonderful Sunday, folks. Enjoy the day. I will make the transition from 15 to 32 degrees.

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