Meerabai/Guddi

Guddi

This week's release Meerabai Not Out, about a young woman's obsession for cricket and cricketer Anil Kumble, is reminiscent of Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Guddi (1971), about a girl, who is crazy about films and star Dharmendra.

The delightful film with a screenplay by Gulzar had Jaya Bhaduri (now Bachchan) in her first Hindi film (Hrishida had spotted her at the Film Institute, Pune; she had earlier done Satyajit Ray's Mahanagar in Bengali) as Kusum, nicknamed Guddi, a school girl who loves movies and idolizes Dharmendra. To her simple and innocent mind, films are real, she imagines herself in love with Dharmendra, so much so that she refuses to marry anyone else, and turns down Navin (Samit Bhanja) who lover her and proposes to her. Her family is fed-up of the situation, till Kusum's uncle Professor Gupta (Utpal Dutt) offers to tackle the problem.

Taking Dharmendra's (playing himself) help, he decides to show her the fakeness of the film world, as opposed to reality. He takes a thrilled Guddi to Bombay to see a shootings and meet her idol. She sees that behind the scenes, films and stars are not all that fascinating, stunts are done by doubles, screen villains are nice people in real life, and that Navin is a real hero, not the screen star Dharmendra—of course the star sportingly goes along with the plan to open Guddi's eyes by agreeing to get bashed up by Navin.

A sweet coming of age film, with Gulzar's gentle wit and Hrishida's affectionate handling, the film was about Kusum's coming to grips with reality, or maybe a sad end to illusion, treated with warmth, humour and realism. Thanks to Hrishda's standing in the industry, many stars like Dilip Kumar, Vinod Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan, Navin Nischol, Mala Sinha and others, appeared as themselves, and the film could never have been as effective, if Dharmendra, dripping charm, had not played himself.

Under all the fun, games and romance, was Hrishida and Gulzar's poignant message about the grime behind the glamour, the struggles to achieve (through the character of a failed actor played by Asrani) and how ephemeral fame can be.

The film had a fine score by Vasant Desai, with the hymn Hum ko man ki shakti dena topping the charts, along with Bol re papeehara, that introduced a new singer Vani Jairam to films, who, unfortunately did not last as long as the film's lead actress Jaya Bhaduri.