{"id":9416,"date":"2024-12-28T15:05:34","date_gmt":"2024-12-28T09:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/?p=9416"},"modified":"2025-11-19T10:06:42","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T04:36:42","slug":"jaagte-raho-review-a-night-of-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/jaagte-raho-review-a-night-of-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Jagte Raho: A Night of Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Very early on in the RK Films production Jagte Raho<\/em> comes one of the best-known songs of the film. A villager, come to Calcutta in search of a living, tries desperately to find water to quench his thirst. Wandering the streets at night, he stumbles into the path of a happy drunk. This man is obviously wealthy, one of the (oh, the irony) bhadralok. A gentleman, all the way from the top of his sleek, well-groomed head to the leather shoes gleaming below the starched dhoti.<\/p>\n

\u2018Zindagi khwaab hai, khwaab mein jhooth kya, aur bhala sach hai kya<\/em>,\u2019 this inebriated man sings. Life is a dream; in a dream, what is false and what truth?<\/p>\n

\"Jaagte

A thirsty villager meets a philosophical drunk on a deserted street<\/p><\/div>\n

It is a philosophy that is subtly evident through the film, and is articulated in a scene near the climax. A spurious \u2018doctor\u2019, a man who runs a clinic but has no medical qualifications, tells a crony that it\u2019s all a dream. What is true, what is false? Because lies are so often disguised as truth, everybody begins to believe them.<\/p>\n

Jagte Raho<\/em>, written and directed by Sombhu Mitra and Amit Moitra (with dialogues by KA Abbas) centres round this unpalatable truth: that most of us live a lie. The city, attractive though it may be, can also be cruel and atrociously hypocritical. Its stratifications of class and status, its demarcations between the haves and have nots, make it very difficult to survive for one who has little or nothing.<\/p>\n

The film begins late at night in Calcutta. As the credits roll, we see the Calcutta of nightclubs and posh streets, neon signs, traffic, bright lights and constant movement. A city that never sleeps. But by the time the credits are over and the story begins, it seems the city has finally taken itself off to bed: the only people seen moving around are the watchmen who call out periodically, \u2018Jaagte raho!\u2019<\/em> Stay alert. A couple of these watchmen are dozing, but wake up long enough to return the call and go right back to sleep.<\/p>\n

Against this backdrop, the villager, who is the protagonist of this tale, looks for water to quench his thirst. Various attempts to do so prove futile, and he eventually follows a stray dog (which he\u2019s befriended) to a tap dripping in the enclosed space of an apartment block. Unfortunately for the man, a watchman spots him and raises the alarm, shouting \u2018Chor! Chor!\u2019<\/em> The villager flees, straight into the apartment block, and this is where the action over the next several hours, till dawn, is set.<\/p>\n

\"Jaagte

The villager tries to get a drink of water from a dripping tap, but is caught<\/p><\/div>\n

The watchman\u2019s cries have awoken the residents of the homes here, and within minutes, everybody\u2019s clamouring for the \u2018thief\u2019 to be found. A group of young men, armed with everything from lathis to tennis racquets, forms itself into a posse of sorts, eager to rout out the culprit. The other residents cluster around windows and balconies, on staircase landings and in corridors.<\/p>\n

As the night passes, the villager goes from one house to the other, searching for refuge, trying to outwit his pursuers. In the process, he ends up seeing (quite literally) the insides of several homes. What goes on behind closed doors, what skeletons crowd the cupboards of these wealthy folk (not all might be considered outright prosperous, but in comparison to the villager, they\u2019re certainly well-heeled).<\/p>\n

In the very first home he blunders into, he is privy to a clandestine tryst between a young woman, Sati, and her lover Pradeep. Sati\u2019s parents are asleep, blissfully unaware of the guest their daughter\u2019s entertaining. When the alarm is raised and the entire building goes into panic mode, Sati\u2019s first impulse is to get Pradeep out, before anybody can point fingers at her.<\/p>\n

In another home the villager takes shelter in, he comes upon Shashank, a man so addicted to gambling, he has no compunctions about stealing his wife\u2019s jewellery to finance this expensive habit. As the woman sleeps, Shashank surreptitiously tries to slip one of her heavy gold bangles off her wrist.<\/p>\n

\"Jaagte

(L) Sati tries to push Pradeep out of her home before they are caught (R) Shashank tries to steal his wife\u2019s jewellery while she\u2019s asleep<\/p><\/div>\n

Couples with shameful secrets seem to be the norm here. Fleeing through the apartment block, the villager encounters a familiar face: the drunk he had met earlier, and who had been grateful for the villager\u2019s honesty in returning a wallet the drunk had accidentally dropped. The drunk is still as intoxicated as ever, but he is kindly disposed and insists on taking the villager to his flat. Here, cowering behind curtains and never even glimpsed by the drunk\u2019s very staid, long-suffering wife, the villager discovers the sad truth of this marriage. When they\u2019re alone, or even when this man brings his drinking buddies home, he wants his wife to join them. Dress the way those interesting<\/em> women do. Drink, sing, dance, titillate. The wife, distressed and desperate, acquiesces\u2014to a point, but then flees to the sanctuary of her pooja room, leaving her husband to sing to a hazy figure whom he (in his alcohol-induced state) imagines is his wife, but is actually the shocked, befuddled villager.<\/p>\n

This is nothing. As he makes his way from one floor to the next, one flat to the other, the villager arrives in the realm of the big guns, the men who call the shots. One of these, Ram Narayan Mullick, has even had it publicized among the people of the apartment block that he\u2019ll award a gold medal to whoever nabs the thief.<\/p>\n

\"Jaagte

(L) The drunk mistakes the villager for his wife and sings to \u2018her\u2019 (R) Ram Narayan Mullick with a bunch of sycophants<\/p><\/div>\n

Behind closed doors, though, Ram Narayan Mullick forges currency notes. He is in cahoots with the \u2018doctor\u2019, who helps him with smuggling out the notes and attending to nuisances like the villager. There are others too, men who make a living (and that an obviously comfortable one) by nefarious means. Forgery, adulteration, what have you.<\/p>\n

And these are the people who are out to get the villager, because \u2018he\u2019s a thief\u2019. The irony of it takes one\u2019s breath away.<\/p>\n

Released in Hindi as well as Bengali (the latter titled Ek Din Ratre<\/em>, and with part of the cast retained from the Hindi version), Jagte Raho<\/em> received a lukewarm reception in India. \u00a0In 1957, however, a shortened version of the film won the Crystal Globe Grand Prix Award (for the best feature film) at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Czechoslovakia. This award helped to turn the tide for Indian audiences, and Jagte Raho<\/em> came to be regarded in retrospect as the masterpiece it is.<\/p>\n

It’s not hard to see why Indian audiences might initially have been unimpressed by the film. Raj Kapoor, known for producing and\/or directing films that offered a concrete message\u2014Awara<\/em>, for instance, or Shree 420<\/em>\u2014also invariably offered, in those films, the staples Indian audiences had come to expect of mainstream commercial cinema. A romance, in particular (and that, in a Raj Kapoor film, with his muse, Nargis). Jagte Raho<\/em> had no romance, and Nargis only had a cameo here, appearing for the last time in an RK film when the climactic song Jaago Mohan pyaare<\/em><\/a> plays.<\/p>\n

\"Nargis

Nargis in a cameo in Jagte Raho<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

But, while it doesn\u2019t have the romance or Nargis (much), Jagte Raho<\/em> offers a lot besides. The cast is superb, the music (Salil Choudhary\u2019s, with lyrics by Shailendra and Prem Dhawan) stellar, especially in hard-hitting songs like Zindagi khwaab hai<\/em><\/a> and Te ki main jooth boleya<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n

And the core message is an impactful one. The idea of a wealthy person (and therefore automatically regarded as \u2018upright\u2019 and \u2018an exemplary citizen\u2019) who is actually a criminal was nothing new: in a Nehruvian, socialist India, this was a trope that played out again and again on the silver screen. From Chetan Anand\u2019s Neecha Nagar<\/em> (1946) and V Shantaram\u2019s Apna Desh <\/em>(1949) to KA Abbas\u2019s Dharti ke Laal<\/em> (1946) and RK\u2019s own films like Shree 420<\/em>, Hindi films of the 40s and 50s used this idea frequently. In very few films, however, does it so completely take centre stage, and so absolutely dominate the story.<\/p>\n

And yet, that satirical, witty focus on corruption amongst the high and mighty is done with a deft hand. Mitra and Moitra\u2019s scripting is accomplished: the building up of the momentum, the morphing from minor infractions of social norms to starkly illegal deeds, is done in a way that seems perfectly organic. From his very first encounter with one of the residents of this building, the villager sees through their fa\u00e7ade of propriety. But Sati\u2019s \u2018dishonourable\u2019 behaviour is not really criminal; and Shashank\u2019s attempts to steal his wife\u2019s jewellery may be considered by some as perfectly valid, given the patriarchal view that a woman\u2019s possessions are automatically her husband\u2019s as well. It is as the film progresses and the villager reaches Ram Narayan Mullick\u2019s flat, that the misdemeanours he sees have become outright crimes.<\/p>\n

Simultaneously, the tone of the film changes; the villager\u2019s reaction to his predicament changes. At first\u2014through approximately the first half of the film\u2014he tries to flee, yes; but he is, at the same time, amused (and bemused) by all he sees around him. Even at the risk of being discovered, he remains not merely a witness, but becomes a participant: tickling Shashank\u2019s sleeping wife\u2019s foot, for instance, to wake her; and, later, handing her utensils and other household items for her to fling at Shashank in the fight that ensues.<\/p>\n

By the time the villager finds himself in Mullick\u2019s flat, however, the amusement has evaporated. This has become serious, and all he can think of now is escape. Matters spin out of control until the villager finds his life in peril.<\/p>\n

\"Jaagte

The villager finds himself cornered and in danger of losing his life<\/p><\/div>\n

Raj Kapoor\u2019s acting as the unnamed villager is, to me, among his best roles. This is a man who says very little through the course of the film; most of the time, he is too cowed, or too dumbstruck, by what he sees and experiences. He is not however merely a dumb witness, pushed about and without any agency of his own.<\/p>\n

The villager may seem superficially a harmless and terribly na\u00efve country bumpkin, but there is more to him than that. For one, he is resourceful. The way he disguises himself as one of the group of Sikhs; the clever ploys he adopts to hide; the way he uses Pradeep\u2019s flat number to evade suspicion\u2014all point to a mind that\u2019s pretty sharp. In fact, in the scene where everybody in the crowd must identify themselves to be allowed to go, the villager actually exploits Pradeep\u2019s predicament: he takes advantage of the young lover\u2019s very natural desire to keep his affair with Sati under wraps, and Pradeep, willy-nilly, is forced to acquiesce.<\/p>\n

\"Jaagte

The villager makes use of Pradeep\u2019s predicament to get out of a tight spot<\/p><\/div>\n

Every shade of this man\u2019s character\u2014his innocence, the sense of honesty, the sensitivity, the resourcefulness, and more\u2014are depicted by Raj Kapoor mainly through his expressions. The lack of dialogue, if anything, emphasizes RK\u2019s ability as an actor, not just a star.<\/p>\n

For the general public that still watches old cinema, Raj Kapoor\u2019s fame seems to rest mostly on the films he directed as well as acted in: the big hits like Barsaat, Awara, Shree 420, Sangam<\/em>, and so on. With a film like Jagte Raho<\/em>, he was able to prove that he didn\u2019t need to be behind the camera to make a powerful and thought-provoking work of art: by producing it, he gave space to a story that needed to be told the way it was. By acting as the villager, sometimes silly, sometimes bumbling, but eventually the all-important voice of conscience, RK cemented his place as not just a star, but a fine actor as well.<\/p>\n

Jaago Mohan pyaare<\/strong><\/em> (Jagte Raho<\/em>, 1956) Salil Chowdhury \/ Shailendra \/ Lata Mangeshkar <\/span><\/p>\n