Looking back at Raj Khosla’s Do Raaste

By Screen Weekly -

June 29, 2012 - 7:38 AM IST

Raj Khosla, was unarguably one of the most underrated filmmakers of our country. June 9 marked the 21st death anniversary of the director, whose unique and distinctive style of cinema set him apart. His films encompassed a wide canvas and he loved experimenting with varied subjects and genres.

His proficiency with the medium is seen in his earlier films like CID, Kaala Pani and Solva Saal. He graduated to doing suspense thrillers - trio of whodunits Woh Kaun Thi, Mera Saaya and Anita, all featuring Sadhana as the mysterious woman in white aimlessly roaming in the night singing Lata Mangeshkar's haunting melodies. It's interesting to see Khosla hop genres which were completely antithetical to one another. If he liked the suspense thriller, he also loved the dacoit drama and made Mera Gaon Mera Desh, his career's second most successful film. His subsequent films Kachche Dhaage, a dacoit drama, and the 1973 crime caper Shareef Badmash, however, failed to create the magic on the screen and could not boost Khosla's sagging career.

The golden-jubilee hit, Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki in 1978 saw the filmmaker back in the reckoning. The film carried forward a theme that fascinated Khosla in the latter part of his career. A man caught between the love of two utterly devoted women. This theme recurred with passionate persistence in Raj Khosla's later works. Sunny (in which Sharmila Tagore and Waheeda Rehman were the two women in Dharmendra's life), Daasi (Rekha and Moushumi Chatterjee shared Sanjeev Kumar) and Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki where Vijay Anand's mistress (Asha Parekh) dies leaving her child in the custody of her soutan, Nutan.

Looking back at Raj Khosla’s Do Raaste

The big Indian family

The path breaking film, Do Raaste which released in 1969, was the biggest hit of Raj Khosla's illustrious career. The idea of the man, woman and mistress theme that occupied centre-stage towards the end of Khosla's career were to be traced back to this utterly transparent and moving family drama about a man given the responsibility of looking after his step-siblings after his father takes a dying vachan from his eldest born that he would look after them.

Based on Marathi litterateur Chandrakant Kakodkar's celebrated novel Nilambari, the film detailed the struggle of Nabendu (Balraj Sahni) to keep the family together after Nabendu's foreign-returned stepbrother Prem Chopra marries the girl of his choice.

Significantly, the novel was named after the shrewish home-breaker Nilambari. In Do Raaste, the character that holds the plot together, ironically destroys the family unit. Bindu was at her evil best in contrast to Balraj Sahni's anguished and silent acceptance of his stepbrother's (Chopra) inappropriate choice for a wife.

Sahni's signature song in Do Raaste is K. L .Saigal's, 'Ek Bungla Bane Nyara'. The film's producers acquired the song's right to use it as a theme, to depict the destruction of the joint-family by an outsider, the archetypal evil bahu, who first seduces the son and then weans him away from his father-like bade bhaiyya and the family.

Especially poignant is the matriarch Veena's helplessness. In her death scene she mistakes her stepson, Nabendu for her youngest son, Satyen (Rajesh Khanna) and tells him, "Your elder brother has spent his entire life looking after the family. It's time for you to look after him. Promise me you will."

The poignancy of the situation where the patriarchal brother hears his stepmother tell him that he needs to be looked after is to this day immensely moving, more so in present times. Do Raaste was all about loving one's family, long before Karan Johar discovered this route to box-office nirvana.

Raj Khosla's wrinkle-free family drama was a platinum-jubilee hit and spawned numerous parivarik melodramas in the 1970s by directors ranging from Mohan Kumar to Kalptaru who made films on joint families being torn apart with help from the conniving bahu.

The filmmaker loved to experiment with characters and actors. He would often cast big names against their image. The romantic hero, Rajesh Khanna on the threshold of superstardom, was cast as Satyen, an angry young man who raised cudgels against his shrewish sister-in-law and her henpecked husband (his elder brother). Some of the film's most interesting scenes are in the family living room where the hotheaded Satyen, confronts Neela in front of the family and her high society friends. Khanna got applauded even when he was not the central character.

What doesn't work well is the romance between Rajesh Khanna and Mumtaz, who coincidentally plays Bindu's younger sister. Khosla picturised 'Bindiya Chamkegi' which, though not relevant to the plot, became the film's biggest USP. The song became one of the biggest hits of Lata Mangeshkar's career. Mumtaz was lucky to get songs like 'Bindiya Chamkegi' and 'Chup Gaye Saare Nazaare'.

Says Lata Mangeshkar, "I heard people kept returning to see the song. Raj Khoslaji was a master at song picturisation. None of us thought it would turn out so big. But we knew the director was going to shoot it in a very special way."

Evil rules

Khosla loved to give prominence to negative female lead, the vamp. In Mera Gaon Mera Desh, Laxmi Chhaya who played the villain's moll bagged all the chartbusters like 'Maar Diya Jaye', 'Aaya Aaya Atariya Pe' and 'Hai Sharmaoon', as compared to the film's leading lady, Asha Parekh. In Kachche Dhaage, the vamp, Sona (a Madhubala lookalike on whom Milan Luthria modelled Kangna Ranaut's character in Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai) was given a strong role and a Lata Mangeshkar solo. Deviating from the norm, Bindu in Do Raaste had no songs picturised on her. She, however, got a role that defined the rest of her career.

Though Do Raaste belongs to Balraj Sahni, Bindu's Neela dominates the female characters. There are some finely-etched women cameos in the film. Veena as the mother and Kamini Kaushal as Balraj Sahni's devoted and supportive wife strike the right notes. Even Leela Mishra as Bindu's scheming mother is vividly etched. But Bindu's domineering bahu act provided that extra zing and flavour which make the other extra-sweet characters appear human after all.

Jayant (Amjad Khan's father) as the stereotypical, good at heart, boisterous Pathan plays Balraj Sahni's devoted Muslim friend. Every character in the film has a life beyond the written word. Raj Khosla hated cardboard-etched characters. In Do Raaste, he makes sure that the family stays together.

The poignancy of the situation is brought out by the rendition of Saigal's 'Ek Bungla Bane Nyara', as Sahni, tries to protect the family from disintegration. Today when the joint-family system is almost non-existent, Sahni's valiant fight to keep the home from breaking up seems even more praise worthy and Do Raaste remains Raj Khosla's best known work.

Some less known facts

* Rajesh Khanna sported an off-and-on stubble since he was simultaneously shooting for B. R. Chopra's Ittefaq which required him to sport a beard. Raj Khosla had to pen a dialogue, speaking about Khanna's character saying, 'He's so temperamental he shaves at will.'

* Bindu forged a good friendship with Rajesh Khanna. She played the bad woman in many Khanna-starrers right up to Amar Deep where she played his mistress.

* Mumtaz-Rajesh Khanna went on to become one of the hottest, most saleable star pairs of all times. Raj Khosla cast them together again in Prem Kahani. But in spite of Laxmikant-Pyarelal's outstanding music, Prem Kahani did not fare well at the box-office.

* The scenes between Balraj Sahni and Veena were taken from Raj Khosla's own relationship with his mother.

* Lata Mangeshkar and Mehmood Jr sung track, 'Apni Apni Biwi Pe Sabko Guroor Hai' inspired Amitabh Bachchan's 'Mere Angne Mein'. In Do Raaste, Johnny Walker made a guest appearance alongside Mehmood Jr in the song.