Those days of the early 80s. Those summer nights when we hired a VCR and four video cassettes for a night and the entire family sat bleary in front of the television, taking in one movie after another. The local video parlour man was in great demand as people booked the upcoming Hindi film release a week in advance. That it dealt a blow to the fortunes of the Hindi film industry did not strike the mind of the gullible. The video parlour owner proved a smart businessman. He would rent out the latest movie for a specified time of three hours, and his acolyte would be at the customer’s doorstep the moment the movie would be over. He gave a couple of other recent films and one film which was usually around five years old in a package of four films. Considering, the films together came for Rs.40-50, it was a steal for most film-lovers.
I watched “Lok Parlok” on one such night, having been curious to watch the film for at least a couple of years then. When the film released in late 1979, newspapers had reported that this T. Rama Rao film had run into problem with some people who claimed it hurt their religious sentiments. Some cinema halls had actually cancelled a show or two of the movie, fearing the wrath of the devout. All that, however, was little more than a storm in a tea cup and “Lok Parlok” went on to do good business at the box office, enjoying a good run in daily four shows – back then, films were released in daily four shows, noon, matinee, evening and night – before settling down to reap dividends in the morning slot too. Little boys and girls, in a take on Premnath’s Yamraaj part in the film, could be heard yelling, “Yamunda”, even as they jumped up and down in neighbourhood parks.
Back then in the VCR days, it was a perfectly enjoyable, if irreverent tale of a man who leaves the earth and challenges Yamraj, the deity of death in Yamlok. Today, however, when one looks back, the film has every conceivable stereotype. It is replete with all possible clichés: we have the hero’s doddering old mother in a white sari washing scores of utensils. How the mother of a 20-something man can be an unimaginably old woman did not bother either the director or the viewers who greedily lapped up the film. We have a villain (Madan Puri) who lives in a mansion, holds a gun for a pastime and smokes a hookah all the time. He is also the panchayat mukhiya who usurps the land of the poor! He has a daughter, (Jayaprada) who not only falls in love with his arch-rival, a young man called Amar (Jeetendra) but also manages to provoke a bull to her blood-red attire. This, of course, in true blue masala entertainer tradition, translates into the hero arriving in the nick of time to subdue the bull, rescue the girl. If you find this interesting, you will certainly be engrossed looking at the hero’s sidekicks; each of whom is seen in soiled kurta-pyjamas while the hero is the only one who wears trousers and shirt in his friend circle. Same for the heroine who is seen in attractive saris and salwar-kameez straight off the shelf while others wear crumpled saris which they could exchange for a spoon with the good old bartanwallah in the traditional system of barter. Oh, yes, the villain also spends quality time with a moll – Jayamalini.
However, if you are prepared to overlook these ample clichés, the film settles down to be an outrageous entertainer, one where the director takes pot-shots at religion, society and politics. The hero, after taking on the villain on the earth, is bumped off. To use a line from the film, Amar, the Eternal One, dies and finds himself in the next world where he gets to experience both heaven and hell. In heaven he comes across Menaka, whom he advises to stop being a Shabnam and concentrate on being a Shola. With her are Rambha and Urvashi – reason enough to sneak in an item number for the director! And like the women on the earth, women in swarglok too are exploited by men – pandits who have reached there on the basis of the temples they built on earth without accounting for the cash they accumulated in the form of prasad.
The scene is repeated with greater wit in hell where Premath as Yamraaj is the scene-stealer. Here, the hero gets to expose an improper way of delivering justice. Long trials in front of the deity of death give the director a chance to sneak in a few digs at the contemporary political system of India with references to Emergency, inquiry commissions, new committees set up and the like. Not to forget the disappearance of the good old Dalda from the market. Or the dig at the Constitution of India which in the first 30 years of Independence was amended 40 times. There are jabs at deities as the hero rallies the inhabitants of Yamlok, including Yamraaj, against other gods. The gods fight each other, Indra, we are told, enjoys moments of pleasure while Yamraaj is on duty round the clock. The hilarity only gets better as deities descend on earth as human beings, discovering to their chagrin that the common man cares little for gods!
T. Rama Rao’s film is a delightful potpourri of trenchant humour, memorable satire, and some good old school romance where fresh as daisies, Jaya Prada, high on the success of “Sargam”, lights up the screen, reducing poor Jeetendra to mere furniture in songs and dances. Jeetendra though gets his back in the Yamlok scenes and together with Premnath and Deven Verma dishes out pleasing stuff.
You could watch “Lok Parlok” to see where we were, where we are, and where we, as a society, are headed. Of course, it might just remind you of the good old video library.
Genre : Satire
