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Feb 21, 2016 - Such support was nowhere in sight when possibly India's first gay movie hit cinemas in 1971. The promotional material for Prem Kapoor's Badnam Basti
describes it a love triangle between two men and a women, but folded
into the conventional romance is the unconventional suggestion of
same-sex love.
Badnam Basti is a 1971 Bollywood drama film directed by Prem Kapoor. The film
stars Nitin Sethi and Nadita Thakur. Cast[edit]. Nitin Sethi; Nandita
Thakur; Nandlal Sharma; Amar Kakad. Songs[edit]. "Sajna Kahe Nahi Aaye" -
Ghulam Mustafa Khan; "Akela Taaro Bhara Mela" - Satish Bhutani;
"Godaniya Gudwaye Le" ...
Oct 24, 2016 - Badnam Farishte (1971) Hindi Full Length Movie
| Rajesh Khanna, Sharmila Tagore, Yash Tandon. by Bollywood Talkies.
1:36:20. Play next; Play now. BADNAAM BASTI.mpg. by Bobby Mudgel. 2:17.
Play next; Play now. Badnaam Basti by Jagdish Solanki | जगदीश सोलंकी :
बदनाम बस्ती.
Lyrics and video of songs from Movie / Album : Badnam Basti (1971);
Music by: Vijay Raghav Rao; Singer(s): Ghulam Mustafa Khan, Harivansh
Rai Bachchan, Vijay Raghav Rao, Satish Bhutani; having star cast: Nitin
Sethi, Nandita Thakur, Nandlal Sharma, Amar Kakkar.
Jun 11, 1971 - Complete information on bollywood movie: Badnam Basti Star cast, Movie Rating, Reviews, Plot, Screenshots, Song listing, Trailer, Watch Movie link and more
Akela Taaro Bhara Mela Song lyrics from film Badnam Basti: song sung by Satish Bhutani music composed by Vijay Raghav Rao lyrics written by Virendra Mishra, Harivansh Rai Bachchan.
Godaniya Gudwaye Le Song lyrics from film Badnam Basti: song music composed by Vijay Raghav Rao lyrics written by Virendra Mishra, Harivansh Rai Bachchan.
Vijay Raghav Rao Songs Lyrics and Music Videos: Browse Vijay Raghav Rao songs list, Vijay Raghav Rao Latest songs lyrics 2018, get the latest Vijay Raghav ... Vijay Raghav Rao All Songs Lyrics & Music Videos (2018): Vijay Raghav Rao is a Music director in Bollywood. ... Godaniya Gudwaye Le Lyrics - Badnam Basti.
Sun Lo Katha Sita Ki Song lyrics from film Badnam Basti: song music composed by Vijay Raghav Rao lyrics written by Virendra Mishra, Harivansh Rai Bachchan.
Hansal Mehta’s Aligarh, which is out on
February 26, is the latest addition to a small set of Indian films about
homosexuality. Starring Manoj Bajpayee as a persecuted gay professor
and Rajkummar Rao as the journalist who tries to help him clear his
name, the drama has
been co-produced and is being distributed by A-list studio Eros
International and has the support of the film fraternity for its
sensitive and empathetic treatment.
Such support was
nowhere in sight when possibly India’s first gay movie hit cinemas in
1971. The promotional material for Prem Kapoor’s Badnam Basti describes
it a love triangle between two men and a women, but folded into the
conventional romance is the unconventional suggestion of same-sex love. Badnam Basti was made 12 years before Jabbar Patel’s Umbartha, in which Smita Patil, as the warden of a home for destitute women, is confronted with a lesbian romance between two inmates. Badnam Basti disappeared into oblivion soon after a limited release. The A-rated title does not find a mention in the Encylopaedia of Indian Cinema.
No print exists, even at the National Film Archive of India, according
to Prem Kapoor’s son, Hari Om Kapoor. (Prem Kapoor died in 2011 at the
age of 83.) The film is based on Hindi writer Kamleshwar Prasad Saxena’s first novel Badnam Basti, which was later re-titled Ek Sadak Sattavan Galiyan. Published in 1957, the novel was featured in the prestigious Hindi literary journal Hans in
1956. The book describes the bond between Sarnam Singh, a bus driver
who moonlights as a dacoit, and a young boy Shivraj, whom he hires as a
cleaner. Chapter nine details the sexual nature of their association:
“When Shivraj woke up in the morning, he found Sarnam lying with him in
his cot. His hand was resting on Shivraj’s chest. It was nothing new for
Shivraj and Shivraj should have got accustomed to it by now.”
Several
other instances in the novel mention their co-dependent relationship.
Sarnam Singh is Shivraj’s guardian angel, whose love he cannot rebuff.
Singh has a reputation as a dishonourable man whose sexual prowess is
attributed to his hyper-masculinity. He is portrayed as being socially
inept with women, seeking his dead mother’s endearments through intimacy
with Shivraj.
Prem Kapoor took Kamleshwar’s permission to film the novel. The filmmaker, who also directed the sex-themed movie Kaam Shastrain
1975, studied philosophy and earned a doctorate in “Esthetical
Explanation of Indian Erotic Sculpture with special reference to Konark
and Khajuraho” from Allahabad University. He worked as an editor at the
weekly Hindi magazine Dharmyug before becoming a filmmaker. Despite its potentially tawdry subject matter, Kapoor’s debut feature didn’t lack ambition. Badnam Basti was
funded for Rs 2.5 lakhs by the Film Finance Corporation, the government
organisation that was set up to promote alternative cinema and was
later rechristened National Film Development Corporation. The film had
music by Vijay Raghav Rao and featured a beautiful song “Sajna Kahe Nahi
Aaye”, sung by Ghulam Mustafa Khan, and a poem “Mele Mein Khoi
Gujariya”, recited by Harivansh Rai Bachchan. Lokendra Sharma, who was
the assistant director on the production, recounted how Bachchan bragged
about his recitation being better than Ghulam Mustafa Khan’s singing.
Play
The script stuck closely to the book, which
is set in Mainpuri in Uttar Pradesh, but scenes depicting physical
intimacy were excised, said R Manindra Rao, the Film and Television
Institute of India alumnus who shot the movie. “The story of the film is
faithful to the novel, which is based on a true story,” Rao told
Scroll.in. “Kamleshwar took us to Mainpuri and we met some people on
whom the characters were based. We shot in 1971 for about 20 days in
Mainpuri, camping in a girl’s hostel, which was the only safe place in
the village because people travelled from nearby villages to watch the
shooting. Prem Kapoor was an educated and enlightened man, but he did
not have a background in film, so we had a lot of fights on the sets. I
decided to do things on my own.” If
Lokendra Sharma is to be believed, Rao was instrumental to the
production, given Kapoor’s inexperience on a film set. “Prem Kapoor did
not know how to make a film since it was also his first feature, so he
readily took my suggestions on dialogue and shot division,” Sharma said.
“Only Rao knew what he was doing and he shot the film beautifully.
Hrishikesh Mukherjee initially edited the film.”
Despite
the sensitive subject matter, casting was the easiest part. Prem Kapoor
chose stage actors since he was certain that mainstream actors would
balk from associating with the movie. The lead, Nitin Sethi, who is no
more, was “a theatre actor, tall and handsome”, Rao recalled. “Nandita
Thakur played the girl Bansari who is rescued by Sethi from an auction.
Her character falls in love with him, but he is not interested in women.
Amar Kakkad was the cleaner with whom he is romantically involved.” Amar
Kakkad was barely 20 when he was spotted by Sethi in a play. “Nitin
Sethi complimented my deep bass voice and found me suitable for the
part,” Kakkad said. “The film touched on the bold theme of laundebaazi
[homosexuality] but very subtly through dialogue. There was an
undercurrent. My character Shivraj is in love with a girl but he also
knows that Sarnam Singh is interested in him. Whatever transpires
between the two men eye-to-eye was too good, and I think I played it
very well.”
He was wholly aware of the movie’s red-hot
nature. “When I read the story, I knew I could not discuss it with
anyone,” Kakkad said.
The mere suggestion of
homosexuality was enough to earn the movie an Adults only rating. The A
rating kept family audiences away, while its elusive exploration of its
subject bewildered viewers who were misled by the sensational title and
strayed into cinemas expecting yet another iteration of the soft-core
films that were common in the 1970s. Badnam Basti re-emerged in
1978 with a U certificate, presumably with the offensive portions
snipped out, but the re-release didn’t help its cause.
Prem Bhardwaj, editor of the Hindi literary magazine Pakhi,
bunked school in Patna in 1971 to watch the movie, titillated by its
seedy title and certification. He dismissed the film’s contents, but it
did encourage him to trace its literary source. “I must have been very
young, I didn’t understand the film,” he said. “There was nothing in
it.”
Rao has a theory about why a movie with no nudity,
excessive violence and sex landed an A certificate. “It could have been
because the film’s subject involved dacoity and human trafficking,” Rao
speculated. “The homosexual angle was never shown explicitly and it was
only implied through scenes where the two characters are sitting
together in the bus, talking and bonding while washing the bus. We did
not shoot any intimate scenes with any actors.”
Kapoor’s
hesitancy in handling the explosive material might have also contributed
to its failure. “Our director was a vegetarian [a prude] when it came
to shooting adult sequences,” said Lokesh Sharma, who went on to build a
career in radio. “Nitin Sethi tried to portray it through body
language, using his eyes to mirror his feelings. I recall a scene in
which the nautanki girls are dancing on a stage. According to the
script, Bansari had to flirt with Sarnam Singh. Prem Kapoor was so shy
that he could not tell Nandita Thakur to wink at Nitin Sethi. The scene
would have become irrelevant if she had not winked! I walked up to the
director and asked him to give her the cue. He asked me to prompt her.
The director could have taken a lot of liberty with the story, but his
timid nature overtook his directorial abilities.” Nandita Thakur.There
were two versions of the edit, and Kapoor’s decision to go with the
second cut rather than the one by Hrishikesh Mukherjee sealed Badnam Basti’s fate, Rao said.
“The
film was very well edited,” the cinematographer said. “Then something
went wrong with Prem Kapoor’s interpretation. He re-edited the film. The
narration went forward-backward, which again was not something familiar
to viewers, it confused them. It may work today with that kind of
film.”
Kapoor’s potentially groundbreaking debut feature turned out to be a missed opportunity. Badnam Basti appears
to have slipped between the cracks – it neither fulfilled the
requirements of the adult movie genre nor did it adequately explore
queer identity on the screen. The adult rating consigned the film to
B-grade territory, but given the times, it must have been hard to push
the boundaries any further.
“The people sitting at the
Censor Board would have refused to watch the film had they been told
that it deals with homosexuality because in those days, such a thing was
unimaginable,” Kakkad pointed out.
Queer love remains a no-go subject for most filmmakers, and is mostly articulated through the prism of comedy (Kal Ho Na Ho, Dostana) or homophobia (the films of Madhur Bhandarkar, Bol Bachchan, Mastizaade). Serious dramas that explore same-sex romance on its own terms, such as Deepa Mehta’s Fire (1996) and Pan Nalin’s Angry Indian Goddesses (2015), are exceptions.
Prem
Kapoor appeared to want homosexuality to be considered at the same
level as heterosexual romance. Given the row over the A rating for the
trailer of Aligarh, it’s clear that Kapoor was probably the first director to feel this way but certainly not the last.
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