Bollywood and Boxoffice India: Sooraj Bhajatya's superhit film Maine Pyar Kiya saves Rajshri Productions

Love at first blush

Sooraj Bhajatya's superhit film Maine Pyar Kiya saves Rajshri Productions

Madhu Jain May 15, 1990 | UPDATED 17:29 IST

Bhagyashree and Salman Khan in Maine Pyar KiyaIt was a miracle on Veer Savarkar street. Rajshri Productions, 44 films old, was closing down. Their Bombay office was about to be sold to pay debts. But Tarachand Barjatya, decided on one last fling. He asked grandson Sooraj to make a film. He did. And now after Maine Pyar Kiya the next generations of the Barjatyas needn't worry.
The film has raced past everything else in sight. Trade Guidelists it as one of the eight greatest hits ever. Others even put it on top of that list. "The film has gone beyond our wildest dreams," says the senior Barjatya.
It's also a happening. In small towns people set free pigeons in the cinema halls: in the film a white pigeon hitches a ride on a red convertible and delivers a billet-doux. In Gorakhpur, a group of young men walked into a cinema hall with a huge tray covered with a white sheet. The security men panicked. But it was only a huge cake which they served in the balcony when the heroine celebrated her birthday.
The nation, it seems, has fallen in love with the movie.
Why?
Music is one of the key ingredients of its success. The songs have melody; the feelings come through - a throwback to the '60s. Moreover Sooraj uses the songs to take his story further. It is also that touch of innocence. Rajendra Kumar, the romantic hero of the '60s, attributes the phenomenon to the film's "purity": "The film is vegetarian right down to the food served in the thalis."
The story is straight out of Mills and Boon, indigenised. The stuff that dreams are made off. The film, though lavishly mounted, is almost like a home movie. Cosy, cute and bumblingly awkward, it wears its soppy heart on its sleeve. The dialogues are unstilted. It's everyday talk.
Then, there are the props straight out of the land of sentimentality: placards which say: "I love you so much, it hurts." A black cap with "Friend" written on it - it goes back and forth between the young lovers. The badge - studded black leather jacket like Tom Cruise wore in Top Gun.
The film had everything going against it. The director is new. So are the stars. They are quite ordinary, in fact. But it is this very boy-and-girl-next-door quality about the new pair - Bhaghyashree Patwardhan, 20, and Salman Khan, 24, (a throwback to Rajesh Khanna) - which has won the hearts of the masses and the cynics.
And the director and the lead pair have put themselves into the brew, guilelessly: what we see on the screen is really them.

Director Sooraj Barjatya: Love's labour not lostTake Bhaghyshree, who really looks as if she is in love. She was. Halfway through the making of the film, she got married. While love poured out of her expressive eyes on screen, her mind was elsewhere. She was living her real love on screen. Unlike most puppy love stories the film is not about love at first sight: the couple first become friends. "I had been through this. My husband and I were friends in school," she says.
Salman, too, plays himself. "That was me on screen," he says. Which is why youngsters identify themselves with the film. And for a change, the film has a young mother who is more like a friend. "I'm close to my mother. I say 'sexy' while talking to her as I do in the film."
Other little Salman touches. When angry he goes off to play the saxophone. Or after a tiff, he calls his girl-friend on the phone and waits for her to say something.
But above all, it is the transparence of the director. The film has a four track music system. And it uses music to create its little epiphanies. For instance, when it finally dawns on the young couple that they are in love, Barjatya explains: "The music pours down from all sides, like a chorus of approval."
It is the confusion of first-love-feelings then that has been re-created on screen. And a lot of the credit for this goes to Bhaghyashree's screen presence. It is that "quality of giving" which she has, explains Shekhar Kapur. And as Shashi Kapoor puts it: "She is shy, but not camera shy."
There is another element at work here. The film is in modern dress all right: Rambo and Michael Jackson posters, the Top Gun jacket. But it is at heart conservative. "The more cynical the age, the more you hunger for old values," says screen writer Sachin Bhowmick. The boy doesn't smoke in front of his parents.
What seems to have really got to people is the film's advocacy of a particularly Indian virtue moth-balled for a long time: sharam (coyness). The key scene: the couple is on the terrace. Salman hands her one dress after another to wear, including a wedding gown.
The last one, however, is, well, nothing. At this point the camera goes behind the girl as she draws open the cloth in front. The camera sees nothing, except her covered back and Salman in a state of rapture. But he quickly gathers himself and drapes the cloth around her. Modesty restored.
In the end, the family is sacrosanct. And the girl, covered from head to toe, is prone to sacrifice. "Sacrifice conveys love more than passion does," says Sooraj.