This week's release, Junglee (March 29, 2019), is about a man's friendship with elephants. Visuals of the pachyderm bring to mind the 1971 hit Haathi Mere Saathi, the film that established Salim-Javed as a hit team of writers and put Rajesh Khanna firmly on the path to 17-hits-in-a-row superstardom, though he signed the film only to get the fat fees that would allow him to buy his bungalow, Ashirwad.
The film was a huge hit, particularly with children, though watched nearly half a century later, it looks a bit clumsy and very melodramatic. Keep in mind, however, that the film was made with real elephants—Maneka Gandhi was not around to make rules about protecting animals on film sets.
The story of the old film was written the well-known producer Chinappa ‘Sandow’ Devar (head of Devar Films) and directed by his brother, MA Thirumugham. Some reports say Salim and Javed were reluctant to do this assignment, but were persuaded by Rajesh Khanna, who did not want to do a bad film, but needed the money. They also saw it as an opportunity for bigger things, and there were right. After a dozen superhits, Rajesh Khanna could do no wrong by the time this film was made.
Haathi Mere Saathi was about an orphan, called Raju, who was rescued by four elephants when he was a child and as he grows up, they are his only family. The elephants perform with Raju on the street. After a few years, he sets up a zoo called Pyar Ki Duniya, in which a variety of animals live alongside the much-loved elephants, among which the playful Ramu is his favourite.
He falls in love with Tanu (Tanuja), daughter of a rich man, Ratanlal (Madan Puri), who, like all fathers of that age was opposed to the match. However, they do get married, and soon, Tanu starts feeling that Raju cares more for the animals than for her. When their child is born, Tanu is nervous with the elephants around the house, and gives her husband am ultimatum—he has to choose between the animals and his family and he chooses the former.
Ramu tries to bring the couple together and also helps Raju fight the villainous circus owner Sarwan Kumar (KN Singh), eventually sacrifices his life, taking a bullet meant for his master. Audiences in the cinemas reportedly wept with Rajesh Khanna as he sang Nafrat ki duniya ko chhod ke (in Mohammed Rafi’s tear-soaked voice), dragging his elephant buddies corpse to perform the last rites.
Laxmikant-Pyarelal composed some hit songs, written by Anand Bakshi—Chal chal mere haathi, Dilbar jaani chali hawa mastani, Sun ja ae thandi hawa, which contributed greatly to the success of the film. (It was remade in Tamil as Nalla Neram with the legendary MG Ramachandran playing the Rajesh Khanna role).
The sets had to be built at a scale to allow elephants to pass through; the pachyderms came from a circus and were trained to do tricks, but making them ‘act’ was the job of clever editing. Still, the film had a message of humanity and enough entertainment to make kids watch the film repeatedly and then catch telecasts on Doordarshan.
Films made today are undoubtedly slick, and have computer generated animals. Kids are also smarter and have seen more sophisticated films made for them; but back then, in the age of innocence, the film turned out to be a blockbuster and Chinappa Devar’s investment paid off. It turned out to be the biggest hit of his career (many of his films centred around animals). Rajesh Khanna bought the bungalow from Rajendra ‘Jubilee’ Kumar. Salim-Javed went on to make movie history.
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