Film : Mother India
Year of release : 1957
Spoken by : Sukhi Lala (Kanhaiya Lal)
Spoken to : Radha (Nargis)
Dialogue writer : Wajahat Mirza, S Ali Raza
After Radha's husband Shamu leaves the village, she has to bear the burden of her large family. The village money lender Sukhilala comes and propositions her. He offers to give back her land, bullocks and waive off the loan, but Radha refuses. She says
"radha ke daam na lagaao laala, raadha marte dam tak izzat kaa saudaa nahee.n karegii"
She hopes things will become better after the crops are harvested. But the crops and the entire village is devastated in floods. Yet the moneylender comes back to recover his loan 'after the crops'.
He comes with 'chana' for the kids to eat. Read this great dialogue here.
He again propositions her, she refuses again. After he leaves, her younger son Birju passes out due to exhaustion and hunger.As she is sitting there wondering what to do, a delirious birju keeps repeating
"lala ke paas bahut khaana hai"
She can't bear it anymore. She runs to Sukhilala's house.
He welcomes her.
In a symbolic shot, she wipes the vermilion and tears off the 'mangal sutra' and 'suhaag kaa chooDa' (marital bangles) and begs Sukhilala for food. The look on Kanhaiyyalaal's face is worth a million dollars.
As an aside, there was a telefilm called Vishwas starring Sadashiv Amrapurkar as hero and Priya Tendulkar as heroine. The film was set among tribals in a forest. In a similar situation a young tribal girl goes to the contractor's house and says "Babu mai.n sone aayi". We had a boy called Babu in our class. Oh how we teased him the next day. Those were the days when it was a given that the entire class would have seen the film on Doordarshan, even for a boring telefilm like Vishwaas.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Sukhi Lala says
"samajh gayaa samajh gayaa.
gale to kyaa paao.n tak sona pahnaaye.nge laala apni radha ko, bhagwaan kripaa se
chintaa na karo rani, dayaalu kaa jo haath pakDegaa woh sadaa sukhee rahegaa. sukhilala agar kutta bhi paalenge, uske gale me.n sone kee zanjeer Daalenge. sone kii.
"सुखीलाला अगर कुत्ता भी पालेंगे, उसके गले में सोने की ज़ंजीर डालेंगे...सोने की"
He puts a gold chain in her neck as he says the last line.
This line hit me while I was working for a company that paid a lot of money but sucked the life blood out of you otherwise. :)
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