| 1 | '''Om Dar-b-dar''' |
| 2 | |
| 3 | |
| 4 | 1988 101’ col Hindi |
| 5 | d/p/s/lyr Kamal Swaroop pc NFDC c Ashwani |
| 6 | Kaul, Milind Ranade m Rajat Dholakia |
| 7 | lp Anita Kanwar, Gopi Desai, Lalit Tiwari, |
| 8 | Aditya Lakhia, Bhairav Chandra Sharma, |
| 9 | Lakshminarayan Shastri, Ramesh Mathur, |
| 10 | Manish Gupta, Peter Morris |
| 11 | |
| 12 | |
| 13 | One of the most unusual independent films of |
| 14 | the 80s, Kamal Swaroop’s debut briefly |
| 15 | suggested the possibility of an avant-garde. Set |
| 16 | in a mythical small town in Rajasthan, akin to |
| 17 | the Jhumri Talaiya whence stem the largest |
| 18 | number of requests for film music singles |
| 19 | addressed All India Radio’s commercial |
| 20 | channel, the film tells of a boy, Om, growing |
| 21 | into adolescence (Manish Gupta plays the |
| 22 | young Om, Aditya Lakhia the older boy). The |
| 23 | son of a fortune teller (Shastri) and the younger |
| 24 | brother of Gayatri (Desai), Om’s major problem |
| 25 | is that, riddled with guilt about his voyeurism, |
| 26 | he believes himself to be responsible for |
| 27 | everything that happens around him. Gayatri is |
| 28 | courted by Jagdish (Tiwari) as she dreams of a |
| 29 | future that would allow her to ride a bicycle or |
| 30 | to sit in the men’s section of a movie theatre. |
| 31 | Many of Om’s fantasies about sexuality and |
| 32 | death are graphically realised in remarkable |
| 33 | song sequences: a science teacher dissecting a |
| 34 | frog expands into the Felliniesque Rana |
| 35 | Tigrina number, or the moonwalk on a terrace |
| 36 | on the night that Neil Armstrong landed on the |
| 37 | moon. This double-edged satire acquires a |
| 38 | further dimension with the entry of |
| 39 | Phoolkumari (Kanwar), whose sexuality sends |
| 40 | out beguiling and horrifying messages evoking, |
| 41 | for Jagdish, the world of cheap Hindi |
| 42 | novelettes. Then war is declared as the Diwali |
| 43 | firecrackers become real explosions, the |
| 44 | father’s (Shastri) diamonds hoarded for blackmarket |
| 45 | purposes are lost on the sethji’s |
| 46 | property where they are swallowed by frogs. In |
| 47 | the end, Om atones by enacting the traditional |
| 48 | legend of Brahma’s descent to earth, the origin |
| 49 | of the Pushkar fair which today is a major |
| 50 | tourist attraction in Rajasthan. Om learns the art |
| 51 | of breathing underwater and turns into a tourist |
| 52 | exhibit. The jerky, fast-moving and witty film |
| 53 | proceeds by way of symbolic imagery |
| 54 | including tadpoles, skeletons and fantasies |
| 55 | derived from Hindi movies, advertising, |
| 56 | television and the popular Hindi novel. The |
| 57 | music and soundtracks are remarkably |
| 58 | inventive (e.g. the transformation of Come |
| 59 | September into the number A-a-a mohabbat |
| 60 | humsafar ho jaye). |
| 61 | |
| 62 | [[Film]] |