Ankahee

I had this subject in mind for days but kept putting it aside. Yesterday saw a short film, “Kundali” which made it compulsory. It had a star crossed pair meeting after 15 years. Due to the horoscope they don’t marry. But he names his daughter,Payal & she names her son,Sandeep. He has lost his wife two years back.

Ankahee (Unspoken) is a Amol Palekar directed Hindi film. It was made in 1985 with Amol Palekar & Deepti Naval in the lead. It is based on a Marathi play,’Kalay tasmai namah’ By CT Khanolkar. It is noted for it’s sound track & has national awards for Music & singing to Jaidev & Bhimsen Joshi. Probably the only film that has Bhimsen Joshi as the playback singer.

Pandit Satyanarayan Chaturvedi is an Astrologer played by Dr Shreeram Lagoo. He wants his son ,Nandu (Amol Palekar) to marry Indu (Deepti Naval) but Nandu loves Sushma & wants to marry her.At this stage father tells his son that he is destined to marry twice & his first wife is destined to die with in a year after marriage.

He decides to marry Indu, who will be his first wife & then he will marry the love of his life, Sushma. Indu is a uneducated girl. When the telephone rings, she is merely staring at it & her husband is angry. Deepti Naval does it by her eyes only. She is advised to keep her distance from her husband. But of course the inevitable happens & she becomes pregnant. Her transformation into a knowing person is just too good.she comes to know of her fate & decides to visit Sushma.

She climbs the stairs & as is drinking a glass of water talks to Sushma. She asks her to take good care of Nandu & tells her that you may have him now for the lifetime but the golden years that I spent with him can never be yours. She is panting & as she descends she has to be rushed to the hospital. She delivers. Nandu comes to visit her & tells her that Sushma committed suicide.

Jyoti Bhaskar who has always been right is shaken. Nandu realises that in his mind Sushma was always the first,so she had to die.Here the guilt makes her do it. At the end of the story we keep thinking about it.That is the speciality of a Khanolkar story.

Another film ,Ankahee, was made by Vikram Bhatt but had the story of “Arth”. A husband deserting his wife & staying with the other woman, She is mentally unstable so he starts regretting his decision.

I had read a story on similar lines about ‘Vasanti’, a beautiful girl who is of a marriageable age. She is met with her future sister-in- law to convince her to marry her brother.But Vasanti refuses saying she cannot look after her ailing mother-in-law. She wants to enjoy her life.

Vasanti marries,but they have to rush back from their honeymoon because the MIL has met with an accident. She is taking care of her sick mother-in-law when she meets one of her friends, none other than her would have been sister-in-law! They just stand & stare at each other.

I remember my cousin who was asked if she had any objection to the thinning hairline of the groom. She was prompt to answer, it can happen even after marriage! I was amazed. The horoscopes are just the guideline what you make of your life is entirely in your hands. Reading it everyday is also not proper. Let the day begin as you wish & let go of bad things & hold fast the good ones!

More later.Happy viewing!