Garm Hawa (Hot wind) is undoubtedly one of the best movies ever made on
the Partition. Director M S Sathyu’s best work till date, it was based
on a gripping short
story by the immensely talented Ismat Chugtai. As
eminent filmmaker Satyajit Ray observed in his review, the poignant
theme of the
film itself placed it on a pedestal but Sathyu, with
playwrights Kaifi Azmi and Shama Zaidi, spared no effort to make the
adaptation stand tall on its cinematic merit.And of course, with the
luxury of an exceptional star cast, they had every reason to be
reassured. Balraj Sahani, Shaukat Azmi, Farooque Sheikh, Jalal Agha,
Gita Siddharth..…. The names give an idea of the caliber. The film
revolves around the
life of Mirza Salim (Balraj Sahni), a middle-aged
shoe manufacturer from Agra. His leather business has flourished over
generations and his personal life has been quite fulfilling. But the
Partition turns his life upside down as one by one; disaster strikes
his household in a chain of tragic events. A Sindhi refugee claims
their ancestral dwelling soon after Salim’s elder brother leaves for
Pakistan and the house is declared evacuee property. Immediately after
shifting to a smaller rented place, his ageing mother breathes her last
in the ancestral Haveli, her wish fulfilled through the magnanimous
gesture of the new owner. Salim Mirza is helpless before the new
realities but retains his stoic calm in bidding goodbye to the growing
procession of Muslims heading towards Pakistan- his relatives,
neighbours and friends among others. His stance rests on the firm
belief that things would be soon be normal again. But the string of
misfortune is longer than he expects. Prime among the tragedies is his
daughter’s (Gita Siddharth) suicide, devastated by the tragic end of
her love story – not once but twice in her short life. Finally with a
heavy heart, Salim Mirza sets out bag and baggage as the other have.
The films ends on a note of leftist hope when his son Sikander
(Farooque Sheikh) joins a procession of student activists demanding
fair play from the government. The father, after a momentary reckoning,
decides to follow suit.It’s interesting to note the multi-pronged
attack the film invited before and after its much-laboured release in
1973. The now controversial BJP luminary L K Advani was then the editor
of the RSS mouthpiece Organizer. It is believed he condemned the film
by labeling it a Pakistan sponsored initiative. As a result, the
producers had a torrid time to get things back on track – what with few
distributors backing out besides delay in securing the censor
certificate. Even among the
people who liked the film, some thought it
painted a bleak picture of the Pakistan immigrants showing them as an
unpatriotic and immoral lot. Quite a strange conclusion, as the film so
beautifully highlighted the agony of the commoners against the backdrop
of the socio-economic transformation following the partition. It is as
much a story of a wrecked nation and dubious political stratagem as it
is of personal trauma and crumbling individual lives, the torture
equally vicious on either side of the border. Some accused the director
of employing a deliberate leftist twist to Chugtai’s original story of
an ordinary stationmaster protagonist, going by Kaifi Azmi’s known
communist leanings. Yes, such twist the tale definitely carried, but
did not Azmi enhance the theme, astutely exploiting his stint as an
ex-union leader of a shoe factory in the portrayal of a personal trauma
of national significance. The towering presence of Balraj Sahni, his
last major appearance on celluloid, is undoubtedly the hallmark of the
film. With his exception, most of the players came from the
experimental reservoir of IPTA but the entire cast contributed to the
film’s cause in equal measure, so did Shama Zaidi’s authentic Agra
settings and Ustad Bahadur Khan’s soulful music. To this day, people
find it hard to believe Sathyu hails from Karnataka. To them, such
authentic reproduction of surroundings could only come about with first
hand experience rooted in lineage. Such was the effect it had on the
insightful audience- very much in minority akin to the subject matter
of the film. The film is replete with memorable scenes depicting pathos
of enduring quality. In one such profound scene, Salim Mirza’s Tonga
accidentally upsets a fruit seller’s cart and a near-riot ensues in the
Moholla. Advising his Tonga puller to check his mounting emotion, Salim
Mirza remarks in his characteristic seasoned voice, “Nayi Nayi Aazadi
mili hai, log apna apna matlab nikaal rahe hai” (With a brand new
freedom at hand, people are hoisting their own versions.) Such times!
Such films!
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