Manmohan Desai's Enchantment of the Mind by Connie Haham

Author:Connie Haham
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9789351940494
Publisher: Roli Books Pvt Ltd
Published: 2005-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

comedy

There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh.

—Gerald Mast1

Aclue to Manmohan Desai’s ability to make his audiences laugh might be found in his vivacious, yet rather anxious nature. Asked whether he saw his films with audiences, he revealingly replied:

No, no, I’m petrified. I’m petrified because if anyone gets up to go to the loo, I feel he’s doing it intentionally. And then I might pick a brawl. I almost did. Can you believe that when Amar Akbar Anthony was running the 70th week in the Opera House, I used to go to see songs? But anybody who’d get up, well…I called one man and said, ‘Why are you getting up?’ He said, ‘I’m going to the bathroom.’ I said, ‘Don’t go to the bathroom in my song!!! You want to make loo, you do it here. Don’t go to the bathroom!’ He said, ‘But I want to go to the bathroom!’ So then the manager said, ‘Look, Mr. Desai, you can’t do that. You see, they’ve paid money.’ And I cooled down, and I realized I better not go to theatres. I’ll sit at home and hear the reviews. Since then, I’ve never seen any of my films in the auditorium. I won’t see them. I get damned scared if anyone gets up.

Like many people with a comic gift, Desai was not a light-hearted, easy-going person. And if he recognized his flair for music, he could be somewhat dismissive in describing the humour in his films. ‘Gags,’ he called them, ‘nonsense.’ He certainly did not see himself as a maker of comedies. Amitabh Bachchan agreed, ‘You wouldn’t put Amar Akbar Anthony into the comic cadre. It was a complete film. It had shades of almost everything.’ Yet if one defines comedy as ‘the comic element,’ and if one remembers that the cream of the comic genre are films structured to keep the audience passing in and out of various emotions, then Desai would deserve to be remembered as the ‘King of comedy,’ for no other Hindi film director has regularly matched his wit.

Comedy gives us immediate pleasure. We are caught in the moment. Our laughter is spontaneous and instantaneous. We find ourselves in the situation of a two-year old crossing a colourful field. An adult would, above all, be interested in arriving at the road beyond. A small child, on the other hand, is concerned with the step-by-step process of walking and the pleasure of seeing along the way. A truly frivolous, superficial comedy is nothing more than a passing moment, a genial jaunt across a field, but one that leaves no memory. A comedy with substance, offers the instant delight of watching and the pleasure of having watched, as bits of food for thought—often tucked almost out of sight—continue to nourish us long after the theatre lights go out.

Manmohan Desai’s films could never be considered profound; yet neither could they be dismissed as merely transitory, agreeable moments. At the beginning of Dharam-Veer, wickedness is on the loose.

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