Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi turns 20: One of the best campus movies, this one is for the ages
It is amongst the best campus movies made not just in India, but internationally. Sudhir Mishra catches the zeitgeist of DU (Delhi University) in the early 70s– not just as a lookbook, with the exaggerated Bachchan hair cuts and the 48 inch bell-bottoms—but also the way the cool kids back then used to talk, hang out (no, they didn't just 'hang'), and do other fun stuff, including sit in on dharnas and feel very political while cutting classes, dreaming of the revolution.
The idealistic Geeta (Chitrangada Singh) is madly in love with Siddharth aka Sid (Kay Kay), the privileged, entitled bungalow-dweller (these days, he'd be dubbed, straight off, anti-national, not just because he runs off to join the Naxal movement but because he is born into Lutyens Delhi), who goes off to fight against 'injustice and oppression'. Vikram (Shiney Ahuja) is the not-so-well-off street-smart fixer, as that most Dilli of all Dilli characters. There's also Ram Kapoor as the good-hearted 'babu' (bureaucrat), who adds to the slate of terrific acting in the movie.
Hazaaron is a very Dilli film, a wonderfully life-like reflection of the Capital of the late 60s, and 70s, when sections of it were a hot-bed of hot-headed rebels who learnt how to 'lal salaam' like they meant it, with some following it up to actually fight the good fight in villages, and many, predictably, coming right back to their lives of liveried comfort.
ALSO READ | Sudhir Mishra reveals Basu Chatterjee 'rejected' Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi from National Awards consideration: 'Unka haq tha'
It's also a strongly political film, which, without being pedantic, trains its lens on the many Indias which collide with each other, and disrupt age-old power equations before being forced to find their level. There's unrest in the air, Emergency is around the corner, and our trio is learning how to come of age, in that most turbulent era, where erstwhile princes, and sharp commoners rub elbows while figuring out how to survive, and thrive.
Very few parts of the film appear dated. The backdrop of the misty winter mornings in Delhi, the wispy smoke rising off joints in grungy rooms with the mandatory Che posters, the furtive couplings of young lovers, the heat rising off the ground in the villages, the cracks in the idealism and the naivete that the young all over the world wear as an armour, the harsh lessons life hands out to us when no one is looking, all of it feels as fresh and urgent as it did back when it came out in 2005.
The performances are all top-notch. Kay Kay Menon was the only one who had had some acting experience; the sultry Chitrangada, rocking her crumpled 'sooti' cotton saris, was immediately dubbed the new Smita Patil, and Shiney (who has since disappeared, after being convicted for sexual assault of his domestic help) who was brilliant as the guy who always wants more, whose moral compass is shaky, but whose only redeeming feature is his love for Geeta, which remains unshaken.
And finally, tell me, does anyone forget the time when they were young and foolish, and madly in love, and passionate about poetry, while, of course, determined to change the world? The film's music is sublime: 'Baawra Mann', written by Swanand Kirkire, composed by Shantanu Moitra, and sung by Shubha Mudgal, is a song for the ages.
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