The Death of an Unknown Man

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the name Navin Nischol? I suspect for many people it will be the tv serial Dekh Bhai Dekh; or the famous toe-sucking scene in Aastha; or Raat kali ek khwab mein aayi from countless Chitrahaars; or maybe the uncannily believable theatre actor playing a business tycoon in Khosla Ka Ghosla.
For me, it’s a song sequence from the 1982 Manmohan Desai romp Desh Premee, one of my all-time favourites from the ’80s. This was a movie that Nischol did after he had flopped as a lead actor and fallen on bad times—he got a fair bit of footage and said in an interview that he was truly thankful for the opportunity. Desh Premee had a big star cast, led by Amitabh in a double role (the characters are not named Desh and Prem, in case you were wondering, but Dinanath and Raju). The elder Amitabh is an ex-freedom fighter and upright schoolteacher who comes to live in Bharat Nagar, and keeps the peace among four factions representing the north, south, west and east, led by Shammi Kapoor, Prem Nath, Parikshat Sahni and Uttam Kumar (his last Hindi movie). The younger Amitabh, the son, represents the lax moral values and opportunism of the post-Independence generation—he’s a small-time thief and extortionist.
Now Parveen Babi has some diamonds and Raju lands up at her place disguised as a police inspector, complete with a fake moustache for effect, saying I’ll take care of these, thank you very much. Nischol (Deepak) is the real police inspector from the local thana, and he lands up in plain clothes. Raju recognizes him of course, and Deepak recognizes Raju too. Raju then proceeds to ‘arrest’ Deepak, and takes him away. He un-handcuffs Deepak in the jeep, and the song begins.

Raju: Upar se mein sakth hoon
Andar se naram hoon
Andar se thanda hoon
Upar se garam hoon
Deepak: Arre baap re baap
Raju: Ha ha ha ha ha!
Ja jaldi bhag jaa…
Deepak: Nei baba nei
Raju: Bolta hoon bhag jaa…
Deepak: Nei baba nei
Raju: Seedha jail jayega…
Deepak: Koi baat nei
Raju: Badi maar khayega…
Deepak: Koi baat nei

And so it goes on; by the end of the duet the roles are reversed, and Deepak is chasing Raju. Simple situational comedy, but made memorable by the fact that it’s Kishore Kumar and Amit Kumar singing for Raju and Deepak, it’s a very hummable LP track with typically apt lyrics by Anand Bakshi, and the comic timing of the two actors is fabulous.
For those really into Hindi movies, it’s an interesting outtake on one of Nischol’s early films, Parwana (1971), where he played the ‘chocolate-faced’ hero and Bachchan the villain. Since Nischol was always an actor on the periphery, these ‘recalls’ happened with him at least a couple of times without—I think—anyone really intending it that way. In 1997, twenty-seven years after they debuted together in Sawan Bhadon, Nischol played the middle-aged sensualist who is Rekha’s first client when she decides to have sex for money in Aastha; bare-bodied and vulgarly obese, Nischol seduces Rekha rather than the other way round, awakening her to erotic pleasure. And, a full fourteen years before Khosla Ka Ghosla, in Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman (1992), Nischol played a business tycoon—for real.
Desh Premee was the second time I watched Navin Nischol on the big screen. The first time was in The Burning Train (1980), in which Nischol had a bit role as Hema Malini’s doctor husband, the only person who knows the secret of her amputated leg. I grew up in a fairly typical Bengali middle class family in Calcutta, and one driven by values derived from the 1940s, when my parents would have been young. So you didn’t go to the movies, except to see the latest Ray and the occasional Sound of Music. I therefore missed all of Nischol’s early work as a hero, including Victoria No 203, a classic case of a lead actor putting in a performance worthy of a nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. (I also missed all of Amitabh’s seventies’ movies, including Sholay and Deewaar; the first new Amitabh movie I saw was, I think, Barsaat Ki Ek Raat, in the Bengali version.) I went to see The Burning Train with my parents; my father had got it into his head that it was a thriller ‘in the tradition of Douglas Fairbanks’—so we went.
By the time Desh Premee was released, in 1982, I had passed my school-leaving exams with flying colours and had discovered the charm of movies and movie-going, a charm that hit you full-on if you bunked classes and travelled alone to one of the seedier cinema halls, bought a ticket in black, and sat in the front stalls surrounded by unemployed ne’er-do-wells who had seen the movie umpteen times already. I caught up on Amitabh’s entire filmography in a matter of months. By the time Desh Premee was released, I was a diehard Amitabh and Manmohan Desai fan.
I saw Desh Premee at the morning show on the first Friday (the 1100am show I think) at one of the cinema halls in north Calcutta that had decidedly seen better times and classier clientele. The jute-spewing seats hosted an assortment of vermin—this did not bother me since I always carried a plastic bag to sit on. I was also used to the stale air and the stench of urine. It was a big movie and I had paid five times the price for my seat in the very first row. The theatre wasn’t really equipped for a cinemascope screening, so I often felt like a midget on the shooting set, looking up at towering actors and edifices which were distorted at a curious angle. Before the film was screened, as the audience was filing in, they played some music—a vinyl record on what must have been a vintage mono record player. I still remember they played Dum maro dum and Kanchi re kanchi re from Hare Rama Hare Krishna. There was something about that mono record player and the antiquated speaker system that accentuated the rhythm and the melody. I keep listening to the Hare Rama Hare Krishna soundtrack at all times of day and night on all kinds of equipment, but it never sounds quite the same way it did that morning.
I felt a sense of real dismay when I heard that Navin Nischol had passed away. There are some people you take for granted, without thinking about them too much—you never really think they might be gone one day. When they go, and you feel a sudden sense of loss, you grope in the past trying to figure out what on earth they meant to you, why their passing matters to you at all. Then you realize it’s not the person you’re thinking of at all, but a time in your own past, in which they were a piece.
So this post is not about Navin Nischol at all. (That’s a pretty typical Navin Nischol scenario, isn’t it—he always was rather incidental in the main scheme of things.) His death had a sense of drama though. The day after his sixty-fifth birthday, he sets off with Randhir Kapoor for a trip to Pune. Before they are out of Mumbai, he suffers a fatal heart attack. What was it? Why did his heart decide to give out just at that moment? Did he overdo the celebrations the previous night? And in his final moments, did he think of his wife who committed suicide four years ago, blaming him in the suicide note?
A flicker of interest, but that’s all. Can’t say it’s inspired me enough to delve into the forty-year-long filmography of this FTII gold medalist. I’ve never seen Sawan Bhadon, and I don’t feel like seeing Break Ke Baad either. I’ll watch Khosla Ka Ghosla again when it comes on tv. And once the World Cup is over, I must remember to pull out my dvd of Desh Premee, and immerse myself all over again.