Crime Today News
Sudhir Mishra’s feature debut Yeh Woh Manzil Toh Nahin (1987) is about three men who are long-time friends and who look back on how far they – and their country – have come since their early days of idealism. Mishra’s Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (2005) also revolves around three characters – two men and the woman they both love – and the times they live in.
Mishra’s most cherished work explores the tumultuous late 1960s and 1970s. Vikram (Shiney Ahuja) is openly smitten with his college mate Geeta (Chitrangda Singh), but she is in love with the fiery Naxalite Siddharth (Kay Kay Menon).
Vikram becomes a fixer for the corrupt Congress politician Sadiq (Aditya Bhattacharya), pining for Geeta all the while. As the Emergency approaches, Vikram has several occasions to meet Geeta and Siddharth again.
Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi was completed in 2003 but was released only on April 15, 2005. The delay has means that the film is marking its twentieth anniversary half a century since the Emergency. It’s entirely apt, given the movie’s themes.
The screenplay by Mishra, Shiv Subramanium and Ruchi Narain begins in 1969 before winding its way to 1975. The compact with Gandhian socialism and Nehruvian optimism has been severely eroded. Revolutionary fervour is ripping through colleges and villages. Corruption has poisoned the ruling Congress party, with its politicians doubling up as deal-makers.
The thousand desires suggested by the title – taken from a Mirza Ghalib poem – is reflected in the film’s dedication to a period when “the country was being pulled in a thousand directions” as well as in Shubha Mudgal’s plangent rendering of the title track.
The film, which is available on Prime Video and Sony LIV, is mostly in English – unusual in itself. Letters written by Vikram, Geeta and Siddharth to each other serve as a framing device for a narrative that has both a broad historical sweep and the intimacy of a love story.
(It’s advisable not to turn on the subtitles, which often mistranslate the dialogue and at one point even render bourgeois as bonjour.)
The film’s enduring power stems from sharply drawn characters, strong performances and a mature understanding of the limits of political change. It’s not always that a movie is stirringly romantic but also sadly clear-eyed about the difficulties involved in challenging ossified social structures.
Like Jules et Jim and The Dreamers, the triangle in Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi necessarily involves triage because of personal choices and political circumstances. Mishra’s film smoothly projects the inchoate energies unleashed before and during the Emergency onto individuals who are torn between aspiration and reality.
Chitrangda Singh made her debut in Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, deservedly drawing praise for her performance as the conflicted Geeta. Among the men who vie for her affections, it’s Shiney Ahuja, rather than Kay Kay Menon, who has the more memorable role.
A small-towner with a big appetite who earns the nickname “Fixit” for his negotiating skills, Vikram embodies the corrosive opportunism of the 1970s. But his love for Geeta has a purity that transcends his actions.
Ahuja disappeared from films after being convicted in 2009 of raping his maid. In Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, Ahuja is excellent as a man who is both a product of and a victim of his times.
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