The rules of succession… a note on Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki

Raj Khosla’s Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki is a cleverly disguised film about the fall of the princely states and the ascension of the republic. Masquerading as a female-centric plot about the lifelong respect that the wife of a Rajput develops for her husband’s courtesan-mistress, the film actually confronts the idea of a post-independenceIndia, and the struggle of the princely states to come to terms with the loss of power.

Vijay Anand, a man whose talents were inversely proportional to the grotesqueness of his mop of hair, plays Thakur Rajnath Singh. The Thakur takes pity on a kothewali Tulsi (Asha Parekh) and provides her with shelter, before falling for her hopelessly and siring a male child. The Thakur meanwhile, at the behest of the sacrificing Tulsi and for the sake of his emotionally blackmailing mother, marries into royalty. Sanjogta (Nutan) remains the virgin wife to the Thakur, lamenting Tulsi for having denied her both the bliss of marital consummation and motherhood to the Thakur’s first-born. Tulsi, realizing that as long as she is alive the union of Thakur and Sanjogta will be impossible, takes her own life. The accomplishment of this act is two-fold. One, Sanjogta and the Thakur consummate their marriage and a male heir is born; and two, Tulsi earns the respect of Sanjogta who swears to raise the lovechild of Thakur and Tulsi with as much love as she would shower on her own son.

The disenfranchised son of Tulsi then, Ajay (Vinod Khanna), raised in a Christian orphanage, is the actual heir to his father’s seat. While the son born to Sanjogta, Pratap (Deb Mukherjee), is the heir apparent. So when the Thakur falls to his death, literally being ‘overthrown’ off a loyal horse, the question of rightful claim arises, and constantly simmers till it reaches a climax where the quest for identity is resolved and paternity restored at the father’s shraadh no less.

Based on the Marathi novel Ashi Tujhi Preet, itself a misleading title that chooses to allude instead to the sacrificing love of the danseuse, director Khosla, most notable for his song picturizations and strong female roles across genres like thrillers, dacoit dramas and family melodrama, fashions a subtextually political narrative that is a departure for him. Unlike the Salim-Javed scripts of the time envisioned with the ‘Vijay’ persona, Khosla was making straight commercial entertainers. Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki is not as razor edged in its polemics as those Amitabh Bachchan films, especially in its resolution where the narrative loses its political will to emotional compulsion.

Even otherwise, the ‘Vijay’ films dealt directly with a post-independence ‘creature’ that was born with a rage fuelled by disillusionment and promises unfulfilled. The Ajay of Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki is devoid of rage. And this is more so because unlike Vijay who is well aware of his paternity and demands an acknowledgement of it, Ajay’s identity is unknown to himself even. In a way then, this narrative is closer to the immediate post-independence age when princely states were just about making way to the ‘idea’ of a provincialIndia.

Goga Kapoor’s Thakur gets a fine line of dialogue where he boasts of his 300 year old lineage, and questions Ajay of his parentage; just as the reluctant aristocrats questioned the concept of a unified Indiaas opposed to their ancestral kingdoms. It is Rahi Masoom Reza then, the fine Urdu dialogue writer, who should take most of the credit for why this film works. The movie is peppered with some of the best dialogues I’ve heard… all simple, but very potent. As are the songs, the best video being a bhang-induced sexual consummation song (Chaap Tilak Sab Chhini Re) that is shot imaginatively even by today’s standards. The film also boasts two well-executed Polo sequences… what good would a Rajput film be without polo-matches. If only the film were seamless. The film suffers from a too-quick-for-its-own-good editing pattern.

Among the performances, this is truly an ensemble, with no one being able to claim ‘authorship’ to the film. Still, Nutan stands tall with an act that would have fallen prey to screeching in the hands of a lesser talent. Asha Parekh thankfully has little to do, while Vijay Anand is effective (you must learn to look at him beyond his hair!). Vinod Khanna is serviceably nice, but I did miss a ‘stronger’ presence. In fact, Deb Mukherjee has a presence that made me wonder why he didn’t work much more.

I’ve been on a 70s revisiting spree for the past few weeks. While I’ve always been a fan of the stuff that Bollywood churned out in this glorious decade, this determined revisit was borne, apart from the genuine love and respect I have for films of the 70s, out of a desire to explore the many films that I may have overlooked or films that I just about vaguely remembered. Trishul was one of the first stops, a film that I caught last week for the first time in 3-4 years. And it was amazing how truly unique the experience was, despite me having seen Trishul at least 10 times earlier. This week the stop was Raj Khosla’s Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki. And my belief is consistently reassured with every film that I see from the period that they truly made films where intelligent and commercial were not mutually exclusive attributes.

- Abhishek Bandekar