Art & Entertainment

Chashme Buddoor (1981)

The acting is great and pace unhurried. But what you notice most are the small things. Joy forever.

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Chashme Buddoor (1981)
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Starring: Farooque Sheikh, Deepti Naval, Ravi Baswani, Rakesh Bedi, Saeed Jaffrey
Directed by Sai Paranjpe
Rating:

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Each time you view Chashme Buddoor it makes you long for Delhi of the ’80s, quiet and laidback. It lets loose a nostalgia for simple pleasures like Campa Cola and Tutti Fruti ice cream, and makes you rediscover the times when jaunty young men could fall for girls in two-plait hairstyle and “leheriya dupatta”. Yet you also sense that the characters and their relationships still have a contemporary ring. The bachelors’ barsaati with half-smoked cigarettes and coconut shell ashtray could be true of any age. The theme of friendship, jealousies and misunderstandings coming in the way of love is as timeless. Yes, the acting is great and pace unhurried. But what you notice most are the small things. How the minutest of characters come alive, how Sai Paranjpe liberally uses popular Delhi actors like Vinod Nagpal (music teacher) and Keemti Anand (the waiter), regulars back then in the theatre circuit and DD serials. There’s an unca­nny eye for detailing, right down to the banal chore of the grandmot­her: filling achaar from a huge martbaan into a small bottle.

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The magic is in Paranjpe’s writing. She is irreverent and cheeky, be it the inventive titles where she asserts herself by showing a woman’s hands replacing the man’s in the director credit. Or the way, she rolls in the interval. The odd line from the song (kali ghodi pe gora saiya chamake) is delightfully tongue-in-cheek, when juxtaposed with the hero riding a black mobike. Even the romance begins quirkily—over a besan laddoo served in a tea cup and a clean towel washed with “khushbudaar, jhaagwala Chamko”. And then there’s the dad refusing to acknowledge his daughter could be in a relationship with insane logic: “Chhoti hai abhi, ice cream khaati hai”. Best is the manner in which Paranjpe plays with the conventions of Hindi cinema—right from the brilliant songs’ montage to the deliberately over-the-top climax with a suitably deafening BG score. Chashme Buddoor is joy forever.

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