Pinjar (2003)...A 'Don't Miss' Movie!

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Chandra Prakash Dwivedi's movie, Pinjar !

I wanted to watch this movie, 'Pinjar' which means, skeleton,  for a long time and at last did it last Sunday.  I had heard/read a lot about it and it was worth watching this movie at a stretch at home without getting up and going inside! It was so engrossing that nobody dared disturb me!

Do you remember the famous Doordarshan serial, 'Chanakya'? The director and the actor who acted as Chanakya, Dr.Chandra Prakash Dwivedi has directed this movie. This is his debut movie.  The story, is based on a novel, written originally by the famous award winning Punjabi author Amrita Pritam, revolves around the Hindu, Muslim families during partition.

When the movie started from the year, '1946', I knew, it is going to be a very serious movie.  I hadn't read the complete review earlier.  The movie starts with Kulbhushan Karbanda (what a booming voice he has got!), a rich Hindu man  in Amritsar, who is planning to fix his daughter, Paro's marriage and goes to his village in Western Amritsar with his family. 'Rangeela' fame, Urmila Matondkar, is the daughter...she looks beautiful and has acted quite well in this movie! I had admired her in 'Banaras' also. The partition disturbance had started just then.  But the family is happy.  His one son, Trilok (Priyanshu Chatterjee),  was involved in Congress activities.  He stays back and promises to join the wedding activities later.  At the village, the wedding is fixed  with a local rich man, Alok Nath's son, Ramachandra (Sanjay Suri) and he insists on 'give & take' marriage, i.e. he had a daughter whom he wanted to marry to Kulbushan's son and his son would marry Kulbhooshan's daughter!  It was agreed. A grand Punjabi wedding song is shown here! Punjabi songs are colourful and have got good rhythm, so they become famous easily!

The actual story starts now.  Paro has got a sister and both the girls roam in the fields and suddenly a man on a horse chases her and abducts her.  He is a muslim, Rashid is his name and his family had an  old revenge with Kulbhushan's family.  This man is the hero of the movie and Manoj Bajpai has acted very well in this role. Very controlled acting.  He keeps her in an old village house, which looks very primitive. She keeps on crying and after some days, she runs away and goes to her father's place and to her horror, her father refuses to take her in, since she is tainted now and tells her that her sister also will not get a groom if people come to know about her.  She returns and finds Manoj Bajpai waiting for her on the way.  They show him repenting for his act and starts loving her.

Kulbhooshan discusses the truth with Alok nath and Alok nath agrees to marry nephew to Kulbhooshan's second daughter, since Alok's son, Ramchandra, refuses to marry the sister. He had seen Paro once and so he refuses to marry her sister.  Ramachandra's sister is married to Alok nath's son, who reluctantly agrees but stays aloof because of the grief of losing his sister and not finding her.

Paro reluctantly settles down with the muslim family  and then the India-Pakistan partition problem starts.  Kulbhooshan's (his screen name Mohanlal has not registered in my mind!) family whose village is in Pakistan, starts their return journey to India.  Like we know, they go through lots of problems.  Women are abducted and raped by muslims and as per the story, Alok Nath's daughter, Kulbhooshan's daughter in law, who came home for delivery, is abducted and raped by many people.  Kulbhooshan's son, Kirti who came for the wedding starts looking for Paro and comes to know about Rashid and sets his field in fire.  Rashid objects his family who wanted to attack Kulbhooshan's family for this, saying that any brother would do this for the people who hurt his sister.  They show Paro still thinking of her home and Ramchandra...but slowly softening towards Rashid.

Now, the story goes a bit 'filmy' way.  Still, the movie was captivating for a long time.  The songs are good, though one song where Sanjay Suri sings, sitting under a tree, during partition procession is a bit irritating, knowing the situation! Dwivedi should have avoided this or it should have been in the background!

Watch some songs from this movie now:





The above song sounds clearer here, in raaga.com.   but no video! This song is originally from Jagjith Singh's album, 'Marasim'.  Gulzar is the lyricist.  He is the lyricist for all the lovely songs in this movie. Read what he says about Jagjith Singh here.  His voice suits the situation very well.  A great singer, but now, he is no more.




This song is sung by another famous singer, Roop Kumar Rathod and the music director of this movie, Uttam Singh .  He did the music for the famous 'Dil to paagal hai'.  Sounds very patriotic.

Well...this is a 'different' type of movie and you can watch it without getting bored.  Good acting by all of them is a plus point!

This film won the award for 'Best feature film' on National Integration, 'Best Art direction' award for Munish Sappal and 'Best actor' award for Manoj Bajpai.

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Picture Courtesy: Wikipedia