Dances and riddles

It is widely accepted that popular Hindi cinema was influenced by - and built on - a range of traditional art and performance forms, such as the Parsi theatre with its episodic structures. Being, for the longest time, our cheapest form of mass entertainment, mainstream cinema quite naturally took motifs from theatre, dance and oral storytelling, and incorporated them into filmic language. And speaking as a viewer who knows cinema well but is unfamiliar with many of those constituent sources, I feel a little thrill - a connection with a deeper past - when I see a movie sequence that provides a wholesale record of an indigenous form. An example is the long song sequence "Saaf karo insaaf karo" in the 1968 film Aashirwad. This is very good cinema - the scene is expertly structured, choreographed and performed (you can watch it here: bit.ly/13SAjnC) - but it is also a documentation of the folk dance form known as Lavani.

Actually, I knew almost nothing about Lavani until a few months ago, when I read a feature by Sonia Faleiro about Mumbai's first all-male Lavani troupe. Faleiro writes of effeminate men who are drawn to the form, and notes that "the popularity of […] female-impersonation groups in Mumbai suggests that the city may slowly be getting comfortable with flamboyant expressions of male sexuality." As the Aashirwad song makes clear, the many characteristics of the dance - in its original avatar - include sexually aggressive language and gestures by the female performers, and banter with the audience.

Some context might help explain why this sequence is so satisfying, both on its own terms and as part of the film's larger narrative. Music is central to the plot of Aashirwad. The protagonist, Jogi Thakur (Ashok Kumar), is the son-in-law of a rich zamindar, but he is also a lover of classical music and never feels happier, more relaxed and more in touch with his finer emotions than when he is practising with his "guru", an old villager named Baiju (Harindranath Chattopadhyay). In the scene in question, Jogi Thakur, Baiju and their friend Mirza Saab go to watch a performance by a visiting troupe and end up participating in a musical battle of wits with the Lavani dancers.

Notably, we have already seen that Jogi Thakur is a caring father and in general more humane and sensitive than his wife Leela; the implication is that this is because he is more in touch with his artistic side, while Leela - a thakur's daughter - has grown up obsessed with those "male" things, money and power. The dance complements this aspect of the story by blurring gender roles and mannerisms: the women on stage whistle lewdly, make crude gestures such as scratching under their armpits to mimic a monkey (while singing "Kyun Sikandar, banoge bandar?") and mock their audience ("Aisa lagta hai jaise hum gadhon ke gaon mein aa gaye hain"). And the watching men participate in the performance with childlike delight, shedding the baggage that they might otherwise carry of being privileged observers or patrons. In both directions, gender is being transcended.

There are so many other things to appreciate here. The song does not have an instantly catchy tune and it took me a couple of viewings to get into it, but I enjoyed how the music shifts register, from the sweet melody when the women spell out their riddle-stories, to the strident, challenging notes when they demand the answers from the men. All this is beautifully acted, and it unfolds so fluidly that one feels the whole nine-minute sequence was shot in a single take with multiple cameras, and carefully cut and assembled afterwards. (I don't know if this was in fact the case.)

And there is Ashok Kumar, singing in his own voice, which is rough-hewn and nasal but so appropriate for this song, and adds so much to the scene. In a regular Hindi-film song - which one can think of in symbolic terms, as taking place outside normal time and space - it isn't so disconcerting to suddenly have an actor's voice being replaced by that of a seasoned playback singer. But "Saaf Karo Insaaf Karo" is very much a "realistic" part of the film's narrative - an actual stage performance with real dancers and real musical instruments. Little wonder that Kumar and Chattopadhyay (both of whom were trained in music) seem genuinely pleased by the opportunity to do something like this on screen. Their joy transmits to the viewer, and heightens our own engagement with the sequence.

Jai Arjun Singh is a Delhi-based writer