Karan Arjun

1995 175’ col/scope Hindi d/p Rakesh Roshan pc Film Kraft st/sc Sachin Bhowmick, Ravi Kapoor dial Anwar Khan lyr Indivar c Kaka Thakur m Rajesh Roshan lp Raakhee, Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol, Mamta Kulkarni, Amrish Puri, Ranjeet, Ashok Saraf, Johnny Lever

The Hindi hit of 1995 is a remarkably scripted drama combining at least four genres: a Kali mythological, a reincarnation drama, a modernisation melodrama and a Sholay (1975) kind of Western. At some time in the past in Rajasthan, shown before the credit titles, Karan (Salman Khan) and Arjun (Shah Rukh Khan), the sons of Durga (Raakhee), are killed by the evil Durjan Singh (Puri). Durjan Singh had earlier killed their father and grandfather and appropriated the family’s ancestral property. However, Kali responds to Durga’s pleas and the dead sons are reborn as the streetfighter Ajay and the stable boy Vijay. The plot becomes complicated when a ‘modernised’ Durjan Singh, his villainy intact, becomes an arms smuggler in partnership with Mr Saxena (Ranjeet), whose daughter Sonia (Kajol) loves Vijay although she is supposed to marry Durjan Singh’s equally villainous son, Suraj. However, troubled as well as invigorated by memory flashes stemming from their earlier incarnations, Ajay and Vijay in the end unite with their mother to defeat the evil gang. The film had a series of hit songs, e.g. Yeh janmon ka bandhan hai (its leitmotif spanning the generational divide) and Jaati hun main/Jaldi hai kya, picturised on Kajol and Shah Rukh Khan.

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