Amar Prem at 50: Film that was cut out for Sharmila Tagore and yet Rajesh Khanna went out of way to be part of it

There is a strange connection between the French fabulist Jean de La Fontaine and Shakti Samanta’s Amar Prem (1972), which turns fifty this year. Fontaine’s oft-repeated comment of how a person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it could well describe the film’s lead, Rajesh Khanna’s association with it. For the film that gave the superstar his trademark line, “Pushpa, I hate tears”, Khanna nearly didn’t feature in Amar Prem as Samanta felt that Khanna’s busy schedule might not allow him to play. But more than the problem of adjusting dates, it could well be something else that Khanna mentioned to Samanta a few years earlier that could have compelled the filmmaker to think of someone else as the male lead opposite Sharmila Tagore.

After the success of Aradhana (1969) while Khanna and Samanta were working on Kati Patang (1971) the actor told his mentor of sorts that rather than making him play the lead in the so-called women-centric films, he ought to feature him in the likes of Jaane Anjaane that had heavy-duty filmy dialogues. As luck would have it, Samanta approached Raaj Kumar to play the role of Anand babu in Amar Prem, the Hindi remake of the Bengali hit Nishi Padma (1970). Still, when Khanna heard of it, he chastised the filmmaker for not thinking of him. In the end, Khanna juggled his dates around and worked nights after wrapping up his other commitments and became a part of the film that is probably his second most recalled role five decades after its release.

During the making of Aradhana, Samanta knew that he was entering a new phase of his career, but much of it was unplanned, and dare one say, accidental too. The death of Geeta Bali in 1965 dealt a devastating blow to her husband, Shammi Kapoor, an immensely successful star, who decided to take a break to deal with the loss. Kapoor had been an integral part of Samanta’s films for a few years, and both enjoyed massive box office hits China Town (1962), Kashmir Ki Kali (1964), and An Evening in Paris (1967).

Samanta was shooting Pagla Kahin Ka (1970) and Jaane-Anjaane (1971) with Kapoor that were put on hold. During this period, Samanta decided to embark on a quickie with the newcomer he spotted as one of the judges in a talent hunt a few years earlier; the newcomer was Rajesh Khanna. In its early stages, Aradhana did not feature Khanna in a double-role, but the evening before the shooting was to start, Samanta saw an early cut of a film that was written by the same writer, Sachin Bhowmick, and had an eerily similar second half. Aradhana was rewritten with Khanna in a double role as the lead opposite Sharmila, and the rest was history.

The success of Aradhana changed the tenor of Samanta’s filmmaking. It is visible from the stark difference between Pagla Kahin Ka and Jaane-Anjaane — and his films with Khanna, which were bereft of the usual tropes of the former. More than anything else, it also saw Samanta embark on a trilogy of sorts where he had the biggest male box office star of the era play a near second fiddle to the leading lady. While, on the face of it, Aradhana might have been the hero’s film considering that Khanna had a double role, it was, in fact, Sharmila Tagore’s score all the way.

Similarly, Kati Patang, too, had the leading lady, Asha Parekh, as the story’s fulcrum. To the credit of both Samantha and Rajesh Khanna, the basic plot remained the same despite Aradhana transforming the latter’s fortunes. It is interesting to see how the scope of Khanna’s role in these three films — Aradhana, Kati Patang and Amar Prem — reduces in the typical definition of the leading man as per Bombay cinema’s yardstick. Still, Khanna never pushed Samanta to change anything in the narrative or increase the length of his role.

There isn’t a singular theme in Amar Prem, even though it appears to be a classic love story. The story revolves around Pushpa (Tagore), who is thrown out of her house after her husband remarries and is forced into prostitution, and a lonely businessman Anand (Khanna), who falls in love with her. It also features a parallel track where Pushpa’s maternal instincts make her almost adopt Nandu, a neighbourhood boy ill-treated by his stepmother. Amar Prem transcended the trappings of a classic story of unrequited love with its exploration of more universal themes such as a mother’s anguish, urban loneliness and the breaking of the family set-up.

The lack of a typical happy ending attracted Samanta to the story in the first place. Maybe this was also the factor that prompted him to imagine someone like Raaj Kumar as the lead to make it more believable. Samanta wasn’t entirely wrong in imagining that the audiences might expect a ‘Rajesh Khanna’ to overcome all odds, a la Kati Patang to accept Pushpa and take her out of the lower depths. Instead, Samanta used Khanna’s charm to convey how, at times, order and code were meant to be followed at a high cost as that is the right thing to do. Khanna doesn’t overpower the narrative, and although there are several instances where his trademark mannerisms are on display, Amar Prem is a Sharmila Tagore show for all practical purposes. She embodies the film’s motifs and conveys a near-perfect mix of someone forced by societal conventions but a strong portent of change who challenges the norms without being preachy.

Rajesh Khanna’s decision to pursue Amar Prem reveals how he could spot a good role and then go all out. Later, he did everything possible to ensure that Shakti Samanta cast him in Anuraag and also created a special role of a flower vendor for him. For Sharmila Tagore, Amar Prem defined her Hindi film career in many ways, and even with Mausum (1975), which gave her more of an author-backed role, Amar Prem remains her best.

Amar Prem remains a landmark film in Hindi cinema and the careers of nearly everybody associated with it. It is also a triumph of filmmaking in terms of cinematography (Alok Dasgupta), production design (Shanti Das), music (RD Burman) and lyrics (Anand Bakshi). While talking about Amar Prem, one cannot talk enough about the music by RD Burman that ended up being not only one of the greatest albums of the decade but also his career and all times. The soundtrack featured six songs that remain radio favourites and form an integral part of the legacies of RD Burman, Anand Bakshi and the singers’ Lata Mangeshkar and Kishore Kumar. After hearing Anand Bakshi’s lyrics, Shakti Samanta created a special situation for ‘Chingari koi bhadke’. Legend has it that Bakshi got this idea while waiting for his car in the pouring rain as he lit a cigarette and saw the rain dousing the matchstick. Shot entirely in Bombay, Samanta created a set of Howrah Bridge within the studio as the production was not permitted to shoot on location.

The film also features the classic ‘Yeh kya hua’ that captures the essence of the film — the hypocrisy of individuals who don the veneer of respectability and ‘Kuch toh log kahenge’, which has been considered amongst Bakshi’s finest not only by the listeners but also many of his contemporaries.

Amar Prem’s legacy is hardly doubtful, and this writer got a sense of just how it continues to grow beyond expectations. Some years ago, I curated a Rajesh Khanna retrospective at a film festival held at The Hague. The film drew people of Indian origin across different age groups and a young Dutch audience enjoying Amar Prem with the same enthusiasm.

The writer is a film historian and author of the bestselling ‘Dark Star: The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna’, ‘The Film That Revived Hindi Cinema’ and ‘Pink: The Inside Story’. His latest book is ‘The Midway Battle: Modi’s Roller-Coaster Second Term’. Views expressed are personal.

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