Avishkaar
Encyclopedia
Avishkaar is a 1974 Hindi movie. Produced and directed by Basu Bhattacharya
the film stars Rajesh Khanna
and Sharmila Tagore
.The movie was critically acclaimed with critics giving it five out of five stars in the Bollywood guide Collections and was a box office hit.
Amar (Rajesh Khanna) works in an Ad Agency. One night, he’s all alone in his office, all the other staff have already left when Rita (is she Dennis Clement?) walks in. Amar is surprised that she’s still around. She says she knew he would be all alone in office and over a conversation invites him to join her for a movie. He says he doesn’t even have an excuse this time so agrees to go with her (excuse as in…it’s obvious that she likes Amar, but he usually ignores her and keeps her at bay). They both converse about life before marriage and after marriage. Amar is married but feels lonely and doesn’t seem all that happy, about which Rita is well aware of. To this Rita says that’s because married people don’t have dreams left in their lives. The dreams people see when they are in love gets replaced by desire (khwab aur khwahish) once they get married. She was herself married for 4 years but when she realized that she couldn’t live a life void of dreams she walked out of it. They go for a movie but Amar keeps thiking of his wife and feigning a headache he walks out of the theatre and drives back home. On his way home, he stops at a Florists shop to buy a bouquet of flowers (not sure if he remembers it’s his anniversary or he buys flowers just out of his guilty conscience of having gone out with another woman).
Back home, Mansi (Sharmila Tagore) is at home with her Child and Margarette, the maid. Sunil, Amar’s childhood friend comes home with flowers. He wishes her and gives them to her. It’s Amar’s and Mansi’s wedding anniversary and such an irony that they don’t remember it themselves.After seeing the house, Sunil feels even he should get married but one look at Mansi and he changes his mind.
Sunil : What have you done to yourself?
Mansi : Why? What’s wrong?
Sunil : Look at you!!! You used to look so good before you got married. And now….
Mansi : Who do I make myself up for and look good for now?
Uninvited guest that he is, he’s not sure if there’s enough food for three. But Mansi tells him Amar might have dinner and come since it’s so late already. So he might as well stay back for dinner or else the food will get wasted.Amar overhears this conversation, drops the flowers he had bought in the flower-pot and walks in saying he has a terrible headache and goes straight into his bedroom.She serves dinner to Sunil and sits holding her child as he eats. She goes back in time – their first anniversary. She’s in a Taxi with Amar (the transition here is so beautiful, at present she’s holding her child to her bosom, and the next scene shows them in a Taxi with Amar’s head on Mansi’s lap).He has taken a day off so that he gets to spend time with her. They hire a taxi and just go around, nowhere in particular, their only objective being spending some quality time with each other. The Taxi Driver (Satyendra Kapoor), quite an interesting character, asks them if he can also bring his wife along. He says coming from a joint-family, they hardly get any privacy, to which Amar and Mansi readily agree. And all four of them set out together.She’s woken up from her revierie when Sunil gets up to leave. Amar in the mean time is lying down in the dark, also thinking about their past – of the time when he had gone to meet Mr. Sharma, Mansi’s father to ask for her hand.Lying down on the bed, they both think about their past – about how happy they were.
They think of the days when they were carefree and madly in love with each other, when nothing seemed impossible, when they cared a damn about the rest of the world, when life’s only meaning was to dream together of times to come and of realities these dreams promise.They start off with an ideal marriage, their small world is brimming with love, it’s so perfect just like what they had dreamt. Hours to days to months to one whole year and they are still happy with each other. On their second anniversary they decide it’s time to extend their family and plan to have a child.
In a flashback, they show Mansi’s father is against their relationship. One day Amar bunks office and stays back home, Mansi runs away from college and comes to his house to meet him. She cooks for him and they are eating when Mansi’s brother comes running saying that her father came to know she ran away from college and will he arriving here anytime. Mansi tries to go back home but Amar stops her saying there’s nothing to fear – they are in love and it’s not a crime to fall in love. As long as they havent done anything wrong, there’s no reason to get scared (in a very filmy style he says – pyaar kiya toh darna kya?)
Mr. Sharma slaps Amar and tries to take Mansi and go but Amar stops him from taking her, saying she was eating when he came and she’ll go only after she finishes her meal. After he leaves Amar says it’s time they also go back home and try to convince him. At this Mansi says - ”Let’s eat first. There’s no work that you can do properly without eating.”
Looking back he thinks there was a time when she cared so much for him, knew that he couldn’t do anything without a proper meal even in a situation like that and now he’s sleeping with no dinner and she’s not even bothered.
After such a promising start, two whole years of happily married life and with so much to look forward to, they are very happy and excited. They are blessed with a lovely baby whom they both adore a lot.
But somewhere the enchantment seems to fade away leaving both of them dissatisfied in their relationship. They live not for each other anymore but for the worldly values and social conventions which they had despised themselves as lovers.
Amar starts finding fault in everything that Mansi does. He even suspects that there’s something going on between Mansi and Sunil. Mansi also knows about Rita. But she believes Amar when he says that it’s she who comes to him and not the other way round. He wishes Mansi was as understanding as Rita. There are problems, and they have fights but they do talk about them and sort them out. But at times it just gets too unbearable for both of them.There’s a picture of Amar and Mansi hung on the wall that forms a background of everything. It’s always there no matter whether they are happy or whether they are having a fight.
They don’t talk the whole night except for a few sentences in the beginning, immediately after Amar comes back home and she makes coffee for him(after Sunil leaves). Just the fragments from their past keeps flashing across their minds. There’s a song as well in the process that again takes us to the past Naina hai pyaase mere. And the transitions from present to past is amazing. The fragments are not disjoint, they are all connected. Something that happens in present invokes the scene from the past. I have already mentioned one case above from holding the child to the scene in a Taxi. In another instance, Mansi is lying down on the bed with tears streaming down her cheeks and suddenly the scene shifts to Amar coming to her with a lotus leaf with dew-drop rolling on it, comparing it to tears and him quoting a line describing the tears in her eyes. He also tells her a story about some tribals where people drink each others’ tears and get married.
She gets up the following morning when the milkman comes. There’s a song in the background Baabul mora.And when she goes out she sees the flowers that Amar had left outside the previous night. Amar comes from behind and sees her pick them up, he hugs her and they walk in together.Amar : Let’s catch up on some sleep
Mansi : Let’s have something to eat first. You can’t do anything without eating
Basu Bhattacharya
Basu Bhattacharya was a Hindi film director , most famous for his 1966 film Teesri Kasam, starring Raj Kapoor and Waheeda Rehman , which won the National Film Award for Best Film in 1967; he also produced Sparsh in 1985 starring Shabana Azmi and Naseeruddin Shah, which won the Filmfare Best Movie...
the film stars Rajesh Khanna
Rajesh Khanna
Rajesh Khanna is an Indian actor of from Hindi films, and has been Hindi film producer and an Indian politician....
and Sharmila Tagore
Sharmila Tagore
Sharmila Tagore is an Indian film actress. She has won National Film Awards and Filmfare Awards for her performances.She has led the Indian Film Censor Board from October 2004 till March 2011...
.The movie was critically acclaimed with critics giving it five out of five stars in the Bollywood guide Collections and was a box office hit.
Synopsis
Amar and Mansi are in love, and decide to get married. They do so, and still continue to be in love. They get to their first wedding anniversary, and decide to hire a taxi-cab for a day, just to drive around and have fun. Thereafter, to their joy they are blessed with a child. But then their bliss is cut short, when Amar starts work with his advertising agency, which grooms beautiful young women, to further their careers as models, and both cannot stand each other anymore.Plot
Movie begins with this song – Hansne ki chah ne kitna mujhe rulaya hain and this song more or less sums up the entire story.The movie revolves around the happenings of one night with clippings from the past here and there. Amar and Mansi unfold their past in a series of flashback sequence.Amar (Rajesh Khanna) works in an Ad Agency. One night, he’s all alone in his office, all the other staff have already left when Rita (is she Dennis Clement?) walks in. Amar is surprised that she’s still around. She says she knew he would be all alone in office and over a conversation invites him to join her for a movie. He says he doesn’t even have an excuse this time so agrees to go with her (excuse as in…it’s obvious that she likes Amar, but he usually ignores her and keeps her at bay). They both converse about life before marriage and after marriage. Amar is married but feels lonely and doesn’t seem all that happy, about which Rita is well aware of. To this Rita says that’s because married people don’t have dreams left in their lives. The dreams people see when they are in love gets replaced by desire (khwab aur khwahish) once they get married. She was herself married for 4 years but when she realized that she couldn’t live a life void of dreams she walked out of it. They go for a movie but Amar keeps thiking of his wife and feigning a headache he walks out of the theatre and drives back home. On his way home, he stops at a Florists shop to buy a bouquet of flowers (not sure if he remembers it’s his anniversary or he buys flowers just out of his guilty conscience of having gone out with another woman).
Back home, Mansi (Sharmila Tagore) is at home with her Child and Margarette, the maid. Sunil, Amar’s childhood friend comes home with flowers. He wishes her and gives them to her. It’s Amar’s and Mansi’s wedding anniversary and such an irony that they don’t remember it themselves.After seeing the house, Sunil feels even he should get married but one look at Mansi and he changes his mind.
Sunil : What have you done to yourself?
Mansi : Why? What’s wrong?
Sunil : Look at you!!! You used to look so good before you got married. And now….
Mansi : Who do I make myself up for and look good for now?
Uninvited guest that he is, he’s not sure if there’s enough food for three. But Mansi tells him Amar might have dinner and come since it’s so late already. So he might as well stay back for dinner or else the food will get wasted.Amar overhears this conversation, drops the flowers he had bought in the flower-pot and walks in saying he has a terrible headache and goes straight into his bedroom.She serves dinner to Sunil and sits holding her child as he eats. She goes back in time – their first anniversary. She’s in a Taxi with Amar (the transition here is so beautiful, at present she’s holding her child to her bosom, and the next scene shows them in a Taxi with Amar’s head on Mansi’s lap).He has taken a day off so that he gets to spend time with her. They hire a taxi and just go around, nowhere in particular, their only objective being spending some quality time with each other. The Taxi Driver (Satyendra Kapoor), quite an interesting character, asks them if he can also bring his wife along. He says coming from a joint-family, they hardly get any privacy, to which Amar and Mansi readily agree. And all four of them set out together.She’s woken up from her revierie when Sunil gets up to leave. Amar in the mean time is lying down in the dark, also thinking about their past – of the time when he had gone to meet Mr. Sharma, Mansi’s father to ask for her hand.Lying down on the bed, they both think about their past – about how happy they were.
They think of the days when they were carefree and madly in love with each other, when nothing seemed impossible, when they cared a damn about the rest of the world, when life’s only meaning was to dream together of times to come and of realities these dreams promise.They start off with an ideal marriage, their small world is brimming with love, it’s so perfect just like what they had dreamt. Hours to days to months to one whole year and they are still happy with each other. On their second anniversary they decide it’s time to extend their family and plan to have a child.
In a flashback, they show Mansi’s father is against their relationship. One day Amar bunks office and stays back home, Mansi runs away from college and comes to his house to meet him. She cooks for him and they are eating when Mansi’s brother comes running saying that her father came to know she ran away from college and will he arriving here anytime. Mansi tries to go back home but Amar stops her saying there’s nothing to fear – they are in love and it’s not a crime to fall in love. As long as they havent done anything wrong, there’s no reason to get scared (in a very filmy style he says – pyaar kiya toh darna kya?)
Mr. Sharma slaps Amar and tries to take Mansi and go but Amar stops him from taking her, saying she was eating when he came and she’ll go only after she finishes her meal. After he leaves Amar says it’s time they also go back home and try to convince him. At this Mansi says - ”Let’s eat first. There’s no work that you can do properly without eating.”
Looking back he thinks there was a time when she cared so much for him, knew that he couldn’t do anything without a proper meal even in a situation like that and now he’s sleeping with no dinner and she’s not even bothered.
After such a promising start, two whole years of happily married life and with so much to look forward to, they are very happy and excited. They are blessed with a lovely baby whom they both adore a lot.
But somewhere the enchantment seems to fade away leaving both of them dissatisfied in their relationship. They live not for each other anymore but for the worldly values and social conventions which they had despised themselves as lovers.
Amar starts finding fault in everything that Mansi does. He even suspects that there’s something going on between Mansi and Sunil. Mansi also knows about Rita. But she believes Amar when he says that it’s she who comes to him and not the other way round. He wishes Mansi was as understanding as Rita. There are problems, and they have fights but they do talk about them and sort them out. But at times it just gets too unbearable for both of them.There’s a picture of Amar and Mansi hung on the wall that forms a background of everything. It’s always there no matter whether they are happy or whether they are having a fight.
They don’t talk the whole night except for a few sentences in the beginning, immediately after Amar comes back home and she makes coffee for him(after Sunil leaves). Just the fragments from their past keeps flashing across their minds. There’s a song as well in the process that again takes us to the past Naina hai pyaase mere. And the transitions from present to past is amazing. The fragments are not disjoint, they are all connected. Something that happens in present invokes the scene from the past. I have already mentioned one case above from holding the child to the scene in a Taxi. In another instance, Mansi is lying down on the bed with tears streaming down her cheeks and suddenly the scene shifts to Amar coming to her with a lotus leaf with dew-drop rolling on it, comparing it to tears and him quoting a line describing the tears in her eyes. He also tells her a story about some tribals where people drink each others’ tears and get married.
She gets up the following morning when the milkman comes. There’s a song in the background Baabul mora.And when she goes out she sees the flowers that Amar had left outside the previous night. Amar comes from behind and sees her pick them up, he hugs her and they walk in together.Amar : Let’s catch up on some sleep
Mansi : Let’s have something to eat first. You can’t do anything without eating