The Aberrant and Startling Genius of Roti Kapada aur Makaan 1974
What is the best masala movie of all time that endures as a socially significant artefact? To me there is no competition in any way. It has to be Roti Kapada aur Makaan. Made by a Manoj Kumar at the height of his creative powers as a director it is an infuriating, astonishing movie. It has some of the creepiest scenes ever put on a Hindi screen, the most unintentionally hilarious death scene of all time that goes on for half an hour, brilliant songs and camera work and a scorching, pitiless look at the failed Indian dream after Independence. Not even Satyajit Ray in his merciless Jana Aranya has judged Indian society so harshly. Ray by the way was doing Sonar Kella in 1974. Manoj Kumar was a huge box office draw of the 1970s. He would direct or ghost direct all his movies and they were all superhits. RKM is his absolute peak. He had a bigger hit in Kranti but he was already finished as a creative force by then. RKM however was literal lightning in a bottle. Oh and yeah it is the first time we get to see alpha fugs beta bucks so plainly, three freaking decades before the Red Pill became popular. It is a work of Titanic creativity, overlooked because it is in a masala format.
Educated unemployment, student unrest, insane 98 percent tax rates, black marketing, food hoarding by profiteers, horrific living conditions for labor, medical bills out of control, dowry menace – the sister’s marriage hangs on twenty thousand rupees, what innocent times they were - Manoj Kumar threw everything boiling in society into this movie. Only communal riots were left out because in his movies there is compulsory bhaichara. India had won the 1971 war but the economy was broken and the Emergency was nigh. As I had pointed out in another post, 1975 would see the utter collapse of faith in society, government and law with Sholay and Deewar, with a desperate public turning to Santoshi Ma. But RKM was there first. Every single wart and pustule in the body public was dragged out into the light. But unlike the ‘realistic’ filmmakers of today MK was not doing it because he hated India but because he deeply loved his country and wanted it to do better. By 1974 the optimism that surged after Independence was finished. The National Project had clearly not delivered and people were deeply uneasy. Manoj recognized that disquiet and brought it out.
RKM is a strange love letter to Bharat, a ninda stuti variety.
There is one scene is mawkish and maudlin but still impacts you. Our hero is an unemployed youth and he has no money to buy needed medicines for his severely ill father. He pleads with the guy at the shop to give him credit. The fellow says I know you are not lying, ‘tum asli chera aur asli majboori le kar aye ho,’ but I am an employee, I cannot harm my employer’s interests. Years later our hero returns as a rich criminal and even in his plush state, contrasted with his raggedy appearance previously, the shop guy recognizes him. ‘Tum aaj bhi asli nakli chera pehchaante ho’ says our hero and gives him a lump sum of money to pay for the medicine the next time a case like his comes along. We are in 1974 and medical costs are already out of control. 48 freaking years back. That is how prescient and tuned into the zeitgeist Manoj Kumar used to be. He created a world that is simultaneously sentimental and ruthless, a strange and bizarre combination. There is also the mandatory patriotic garnishing complete with a soldier who chokes himself to death rather than cough and reveal position to the enemy. It also has Amitabh who had begun to smoulder like Deewar but was still not a star. That would come in 1975.
There is anger all through the movie, hidden because MK had already become a mumbling meme hiding his face. When the father angrily says an unemployed youth who committed suicide is selfish for not thinking of his parents who spent so much on educating him, an explosive Amitabh snaps that ‘zindagi ke behatareen saal ki keeemat bees pachees hazar rupayae nahin hote.’ Amit becomes a tukde tukde gang for hire fermenting riots, until his brother, who is naively ethical, beats him up. Amit joins the Army and comes back with only one arm. The other younger brother becomes a cop because naturally. When the hero becomes a smuggler, it is a rule of Hindi cinema that the other brother become a cop and police verification of antecedents be damned. The cop has basically one line when he is chasing his hero brother down. “Bharat kahan hain?” Everybody answers “Kashmir se Kanyakumari tak” to protect the noble hero who is on a mission to prevent the real bad guys from blowing up a bridge as a grain train is going over it, because reasons and that is what bad guys do.
There are two leading ladies. Zeenat Aman is the English speaking Westernized one so she is Bad Girl even though she loves our hero at first. Moushumi Chatterjee is the dehati construction site worker so she is Good Girl. RKM has not got credit for showing gender dynamics as they truly are. Of course the sentimental pabulum comes out later to contradict the truth bombs but for a while some extremely unflattering things are right up in our face. Zeenat gets tired of waiting for full of promise underachiever Mr Bharat and dumps his ass for her super rich boss, a beta whose money makes him look alpha. Shashi Kapoor had a cottage industry of such roles in the 1970s. Zeenat gets to speak some truth about wanting a decent life which is moralistically frowned on by all in the audience because of sour grapes. I cannot recall a leading lady before that bluntly saying love is not enough. Until of course she discovers that the safe choice is boring. Manoj becomes a criminal to provide for his family and wears a series of bizarre jackets that should have had him arrested for bad taste. I know it was the 70s but still.
Manoj is now an alpha bad boy and the straight-laced good guy stands no chance. Did he consciously know this as a director or is just creative power ? But he nailed it and poor old Shashi has to watch as generations of beta provides have always done - lose their girl to a thug. It is all presented as true wuv but the truth is she is excited her old flame is now a gangster. In Hindi cinema nobody had shown alpha fugs beta bucks before so I regard this movie as ground breaking.
This movie also has the aforementioned death scene Years later Ramanand Sagar would drag out the death of Vali over nearly three episodes but RKM has Zeenat looking soulful and giving a dying speech. Then she does it again and again and again until the audience was tittering with laughter each time she came back on screen. I was in a hall where the audience cheered when she finally expired because they did not appreciate being emotionally manipulated like this. This was a terrible mishap in an otherwise well-crafted movie. The other was inserting comedic sequences into the middle of fights to give screen time to an insufferable Premnath playing a caricature of jolly Sardar that nobody would dare to put on screen today.
The Moushumi character is even more interesting because she is a single mother with a crippled father to take care of. We find that she has been gangraped by people she owes money to for Roti Kapada aur Makaan. The film is remarkable for its time because she does not blame herself at all, in an age when movies were showing women committing suicide over luti hui izzat. The hero ends up marrying her in the end also. This was astonishing for the time and while in real life MK attempted to hit on his heroine - Moushami has made the allegation and it was never contested - onscreen at least he showed something progressive, not regressive. But having said that we come to the most notorious part of the movie- the gang rape scene.
It is the most perturbing rape scene ever put on screen in the 70s where such scenes were normal and the beginning of our moral degeneration. Actors used to specialize in such scenes. Think of what that says about us as a people. We had actors who used to specialize in doing rape scenes. In this harrowing sequence they chase her all over a storeroom destroying stuff and finally everybody ends up in a mountain of atta while the deed is being done. It is bizarre and disconcerting, with all of them looking like ghouls or ghosts under the atta covering them. And all the while these three men are shouting “Roti! Kapada! Makaan!” to underline why they are taking out payment in this manner. MK wanted to disturb the audience and even today I can assure you it does not get any less disturbing. There is a perversity to it, a leering leching vibe that makes the viewer complicit in the crime.
Where RKM fails is the resolution. Having set up the movie and shown the moral corruption of the hero as the only recourse for survival it does not know what to do now. You cannot make a patriotic movie in which becoming a criminal is a smart move. There is a lot of flailing around and bombastic speeches about duty and love for motherland which make the last 25 minutes rather bland. At one point he has the soldier, the tycoon, the mazdoor and the cop tied to the train track to be run over as perhaps the most overstated metaphor for the state of the nation. The next year saw the Emergency where we were all tied onto that train track.
Also, Zeenat Will Not Die.
The music as with all MK movies is top notch, especially Aur Nahin Bas Aur Nahin which looks like a Guru Dutt song but in color. Unfortunately, Manoj went full on facepalm acting with this song and that has become a meme. RKM was a legendary hit. Manoj was at his peak as an actor director. Two years later he gave Dus Numbri which was the biggest hit of the year and then Kranti in 1980 which was the biggest hit of his life but it was actually all over with RKM. Kranti was Manoj Kumar at his most but RKM is him at his best.
Hindsight is infallible and it is evident he had lost whatever well of creativity he used to drink from. But Roti Kapada aur Makaan has endured. It is tragic that it is still so relevant. The movie is a monument to social failure and a fascinating historical slice of the derailed nation building project. Final irony. Roti, Kapda aur Makan was the election slogan of Bhutto and his PPP when they were seeking to rebuild a nation that had been humiliated and devasted in 1971. Manoj Kumar instantly comprehended the overreaching power of the slogan and swiped it for his title.
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