ESSAY: Jawaab And The Unforgettable ‘80s

*In which I revisit Smita Patil's forgotten films

WHAT IS IN A NAME?

I watched Ravi Tandon's Jawaab in 1985 when it first released. Not out of Smita-love but because we couldn't get tickets to Rahul Rawail's Arjun which was running to packed houses. Disappointed yet determined, my dedicated film-watcher uncle and I rushed to Chitra in Dadar East for the last show of Jawaab. (The logic being, if you're stepped out to watch a film you must watch a film.) Incidentally it's director is Raveena Tandon’s father, his only notable venture being Khel Khel Mein the whodunit of “Khullam khulla pyaar karenge” fame. 

Unlike Smita’s occasional successful women-oriented mainstream film like Aakhir Kyon or Amrit (both co-starring Rajesh Khanna and subjects of future posts) this is a standard issue revenge drama of the '80s in which she’s reduced to walking two steps behind her man (Raj Babbar) and gazing at him with adoring eyes. She felt compelled to do this a lot in the latter half of her career, promoting him as a hero even though he always looked more convincing as Insaaf Ka Tarazu's lecherous predator. (Notice how easily he makes the switch from being a respectable family man in Jawaab to a stalker who threatens, coerces and kidnaps women, before doing a convenient volte-face to redeem himself in the end.) 

The film’s theme is about how much a man's identity is linked to his name, hence the protagonist is bombastically called Thakur Ram Pratap Singh. An occasional singer, he cuts an album thanks to a random well-wisher’s encouragement (Parikshit Sahni the permanent pipe-smoking well-wisher of ‘80s cinema) and attains minor celebrity.

Which poses a slight problem when he gets on the wrong side of Jagmohan (Danny Dengzongpa) whose ‘black deeds’ (you have to say ‘kaali kartootein’ here) he inadvertently exposes when a journalist dumps an envelope in his hands before being bumped off by the villain’s henchmen. Against his wife’s pleas Ram decides to risk his life and hand over the evidence to the cops.

Back then the filmi police were still reeling from the Angry Young Man’s assault on their credibility and given to being staggeringly dim-witted. So that Inspector Sharma (Suresh Oberoi) spills out Ram’s name to his boss on a phone line tapped by Jagmohan seconds after assuring him of complete secrecy.

Jagmohan is arrested––it’s necessary to give the narrative an impetus and his precious teenaged daughter (Kiran Vairale) to get horrified about her father’s alleged misdeeds and arrest, which leaves her distraught and him thirsting for revenge.

Before long Ram starts receiving bouquets with tape-recorded threats which the couple thoughtlessly plays in their young son’s presence. (No matter how the parents looked, their children had to be fair and light-eyed after Jugal Hansraj’s short post-Masoom burst.)

Writer Shabd Kumar may have got hold of some VHS tapes of Hollywood movies and picked up the idea of the witness protection programme from there. He adds a Manmohan Desai touch so that the false names Sharma gives Ram for his new identities are Amrit, Peter and Mohammed. They’re forced to keep switching names because Ram sings at a party and is found out while Sharma is still being tailed without noticing.

Rajani is outraged about replacing her sindoor and mangalsutra with a cross (I cringe to think how Smita must have felt playing this whimpering wife) but the question of a Hindu taking on a Muslim identity is merely alluded to (for serious engagement with the subject watch Aparna Sen’s Mr & Mrs Iyer) because by then Ram has figured out that the cops can’t be trusted to protect them and he must take matters in his own hands to restore the family name.

Fortunately for him, Jagmohan and his henchmen (Madan Puri, who had been relegated to sidekick status by then, and Mac Mohan in a bigger role than usual, perhaps by virtue of being the filmmaker’s brother-in-law) are unimaginative and instead of attacking the family on its return to Bombay, they refuse to act when Ram starts making threatening calls.

He has gathered vital info about their weaknesses with the help of another well-wisher (Satyen Kappu)––now really, don’t start to ponder over what kind of man he must be to have a ready reckoner on a drug lord and his cronies.

In Hindi film hierarchies, villains are bumped off in order of importance, so the first to be attacked is Puri’s Lakhani a scamster who’s been skimming off his boss’ profits and is in a relationship with a widow. As B-movie codes go, if she were a regular widow, she’d be dressed in a white sari. But since she’s in the villain’s party, Ram sneaks into her bedroom while she’s in a state of semi-undress so that he can righteously criticise her loose morals.

Finally Ram kidnaps Jagmohan’s daughter and sends him videotapes of her captivity through which he claims to inject her with the same cocaine her father is peddling to unsuspecting youth. Again, instead of doing anything about tracing his whereabouts, Jagmohan sits in his plush bungalow and watches the tape over and over.

The filmi houses of the ‘80s are worthy of a separate thesis. The same locations were being recycled endlessly. Shah Rukh Khan’s Bandra residence, for instance, was once a popular haunt for film shoots and featured as Madhuri Dixit’s home in Tezaab among many others. The green and red telephones (green for the good guys, red for the bad ones), the flashy imported cars, the bars and glass-top tables (always useful for fight sequences), and the gaudy home décor all gave this period a distinctive look. Outdoors were often restricted to Film City or the Powai-Vihar lakes and songs were shot on tacky sets.

Expectedly, Ram’s son proves smarter than the cops and Jagmohan’s army put together and before long has discovered his father’s hideout, shown it to his mother and landed up with her to rescue the girl. But before that Rajani gets to deliver a Deewar-type dialogue about how she’s ashamed that her husband is no different from the bad guys.

Which falls on deaf ears because the climax is yet to come and the whole party must assemble at the hideout where everyone threatens, beseeches, and forgives one another within a span of minutes (so much so that Jagmohan starts addressing Rajani as ‘behen’ and you don't double over with laughter because you understand that the filmmaker always wanted him to be forgiven in the end), while bewildered Inspector Sharma and his troops are left twiddling thumbs as always.

Jawaab doesn't make you hold your head in despair––it's a well-chronicled fact that the '80s were the worst decade of Hindi cinema. Smita was an inevitable part of over a dozen such misadventures in her short-lived career, a fact that can't be wished away.