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Directed by: Om Prakash |
After my review of Sangdil, here’s another film where Madhubala takes centre stage, this time in a role that’s as different as chalk from cheese.
Movies that take place within the space of a few hours are a
rarity in Indian cinema. However, they are the staple of suspense thrillers,
since the condensed time frame helps to amp up the suspense considerably. While
not in the league of ‘great’ films, Gateway of India is a charming film
that is ably shouldered by its intrepid heroine – Madhubala – around whom the
plot revolves.
The film begins on a sinister note. A wealthy man, Motisagar is having a confabulation with his minions – his late brother
had hidden his immense wealth somewhere, and he hasn’t been able to find out where. There are some papers that his brother had let to his only daughter that might hold a clue. Motisagar who had murdered his brother for his wealth,
wants those papers, but Anju is protected by Ramu, his brother’s faithful
retainer. [Motisagar’s minion comments that that is a problem that can be taken
care of, easily!]
Anju (Madhubala) and Ramu (?) are listening to this conversation
in horror. Realizing their danger, they hurry away as silently as they can –
Anju to hide the papers, Ramu to call the police. Alas, a minion kills Ramu. Anju is witness to the killing…
and overhears her uncle telling them to dispose
of the body at the Gateway of India the next morning. Unfortunately, she knocks a flower vase over, and her uncle begins to harangue her about the missing papers. Anju insists that
she doesn’t know, and the minion suggests killing her as well. [He has a one-track mind, that man!]
Luckily for Anju, her uncle needs her alive. but since she shouldn’t be allowed to spill the
beans about the murder, he bundles her off to his farmhouse in Lonavala. She
can scream as much as she likes there, he says, chillingly.
But soon, Motisagar gets a phone call. Anju has escaped! [She pulls
a knife on the men – brava!] He is furious! Inform the police, says he, she’s dangerous. [Didn’t
he just get her out of the way so she wouldn’t call the police? Strange
man, can’t make up his mind.]
Meanwhile, Anju is on the run. She flags down
a passing car. In it is Kishore (Pradeep Kumar) who is more than happy to take her
where she wants to go [though he doesn’t ask her where, and neither does she tell him].
On the way, however, he stops at a tea shop. But Anju, spotting her pursuers’ jeep parked there, cowers in her seat and pleads with Kishore to leave immediately.
Where, he asks her; anywhere, replies a jittery Anju.
Unfortunately [I feel like I’m going to be using this word a lot!], the chaiwallah, who comes around to take Kishore’s order, spots
Anju. He informs the minions that the woman they were enquiring about just left in that car. The men hurriedly pursue them. Kishore, in the
meantime, has driven Anju to a nightclub where he is soon flirting with her. Much
to the anger of the nightclub dancer (Anita Guha), who warns Anju of the danger she is in.
The warning is so explicit that Kishore is furious. He has a heated argument with the dancer (her name is Padma),
who threatens to inform the police all about him – his hideouts, the murders
he’s committed, the women he’s sold…[She even calls him a ‘cocaine-sniffing gambler’ which made me giggle.] It turns out that she had once asked him for a lift, and this is where she’s ended up.
Poor Anju! [Though she seems to make a habit of eavesdropping, and you know what they say about eavesdroppers never hearing any good about themselves!]
She quickly makes her way to the door, only to be stopped by
Kishore’s men. So, smart girl that she is, she goes back to Kishore and pretends she’s miffed that he left her alone for so long. Kishore, taken in by her act, begins to charm her and is ecstatic when she agrees go to Kashmir with him (as Kishore wishes).
But, she says, she will go to a hostel for the
night and wait for him at the Gateway of India at 6.30 a.m. Kishore signals to his
men to let her go.
Unfortunately, uncle’s minions are waiting patiently for Anju.
Thinking quickly, she manages to stow away in a car parked
nearby while their backs are turned. The car moves away. When the driver reaches his destination, Anju tries to steal
away, only to realize that the driver had known she was there all along. She tries to pretend that she had mistaken his car for hers. Where
does she want to go, the driver asks her, and Anju mentions a flat in a building beside
which they are parked.
Chandan (Chandrasekhar) insists on escorting her to the
door of her flat where Anju tries valiantly to brush him off. But, won’t she offer him some coffee? He asks, so she’s forced to acquiesce, but once inside, admits she was lying. It’s not a problem at all, says Chandan. The flat is hers. When Anju demurs, he warns her that no one who has entered Flat No.4 has ever left.
Talk about
jumping from the frying pan into the fire!
Anju is beginning to be more and more perturbed but when Chandan’s ‘Didi’ (Manorama) comes in, she explains that she runs what she euphemistically refers to as a ‘dance school’. Anju introduces herself as ‘Padma’ but Didi is very dismissive: that’s a very old-fashioned name. She should be called ‘Darling’, says Didi, and very soon, Anju has been ‘persuaded’ into changing her clothes and
singing for a client (Raj Mehta).
When that ordeal ends, Anju overhears Didi’s conversation with
the client – they are haggling over her price! Anju promptly goes to Chandan. [She’s smart, this girl!] Where she asks him why they are making such a paltry deal. Rs 10,000? They can surely do better? Actually, she has
a plan. Why doesn’t Chandan pretend to be married to her? They can then
blackmail the client; he will surely pay a great deal of money to save his
reputation!
Chandan, not as smart as he thinks, agrees not only to the plan but
also to meet Anju at the Gateway of India at – 6.30a.m., of course. There, they
can both confront the customer and make him pay through his nose for trying to alienate
a wife’s affections. Anju sweetens the deal by pretending that she is in love with Chandan. After all, she says, did he think that she had just randomly said Flat No. 4?
Besotted by now, Chandan helps Anju escape. But where can she go? Chandan even drops her ‘home’, but her uncle’s minions close behind. Anju now seeks sanctuary in another flat – this time, belonging to a Mr Johnny
Walker (Johnny Walker). [I giggled at the name plate.]
Johnny’s drunk when
she knocks on his door, and initially assumes she’s an undercover C.I.D. officer. He and
his brother Tony (Tony Walker) lock the door to keep her from calling the cops. Anju clears up that misunderstanding. Her name is Darling, she says, and she’s a crook as well. So Johnny offers her a drink (‘Johnny Walker Junior’). Anju promptly tosses the drink over her shoulder, all the while hiccupping very realistically.
She then pretends to be very drunk but Johnny isn’t done yet. [Cue a song.]
Finally, when both he and Tony are dead to the world, Anju steals the key from Johnny’s pocket and flees.
Meanwhile, the minions are informing Motisagar that they haven’t caught Anju yet though they are shadowing her. They want their boss to get rid of Ramu’s body, but Motisagar claims that that cannot be done until their motorboat arrives. His men should keep Anju from going to the police station until then.
In fact, the minor minion nearly catches Anju, but she escapes his clutches and climbs over the gate of a nearby bungalow. When they follow her in, the intrepid young woman climbs a drainpipe and gets into the house through a window. She creeps downstairs, and is about to call the police when she overhears a man thanking various women for the money he’s earned because of them.
Lachhmidas (Bhagwan) is a very rich man. He’s also, as Anju realizes to her
consternation, a serial murderer who has killed six wives. Lachhmidas had cleverly taken out insurance policies on his wives and now, he’s a very
rich man indeed. But he’s also very sad. As he tells his sister (a conversation
Anju overhears), he has no heir. Who will inherit all this money? [I find it interesting that the sister knows he’s a murderer but does nothing about it.]
Unfortunately [I warned you!] for Anju, she’s soon discovered and Lachhmidas is not very sympathetic. Go away, he tells her, or he’ll call the police. Oh, says Anju, she will do that herself. When Lachhmidas demurs she tells him that the goons after her intend to kidnap her, marry her, then take out a life insurance policy in her name, before pushing her off a mountain.
Lachhmidas is shaken but his
sister who comes in, is very taken by Anju, who now introduces herself as ‘Lajwanti’. She confidentially advises her brother to marry Anju. She’s young, beautiful, and can give him
a son. So Lachhmidas sets out to woo Anju. He shows her the money stashed
away in his safe, and shyly proposes to her. Anju agrees and tells him to meet her at the Gateway of India at 6.30a.m. They will get married immediately. Thrilled, Lachhmidas drops
her ‘home’.
Once he leaves, Anju leaves too only to spot the minions on
the prowl. She quickly drops down to the pavement, next to a sleeping figure,
pulling his coverlet over her. Once the minions drive off, she’s accosted by the
angry sleeper to whom she quickly introduces herself as a rookie thief, ‘Chanchal’.
The man, Shankar (OM Prakash), rules over Bombay, he says. He’s also a huge fan
of ‘Leela Mukherjee’ whose photo he carries around. He even forces Chanchal listen
to a particular song at knife point. Anju, realizing that this man is dangerous, tries to escape when he falls asleep. But Shankar is no
fool. So she sweetens the deal.
She has fooled the man into thinking she will marry him – meet her at the Gateway of India at 6.30a.m.
tomorrow, and they can fleece him.
So off she goes – and runs into the minions again. This time,
she runs into Prakash (Bharat Bhushan) sitting under the street lights.
There are but a few hours left before all sorts of chaos will start
to happen at the Gateway of India. But will Anju survive the ordeal and bring
her uncle to justice?
Gateway of India was directed by character actor Om Prakash
under his production house, ‘Light and Shade’. With an unusual story line and an ensemble cast, the film was a fairly gripping comic-suspense-thriller.
Madhubala, on whose shoulders this entire film rests, was a joy
in a role that gave her so much scope to perform. Her Anju may be a damsel in
distress but she doesn’t need a man to help her get out of trouble. She outwits
each criminal/goon and goes on her merry way. She spends the whole film in a
pair of trousers and a shirt, her hair in two pigtails and yet looks gorgeous.
Bharat Bhushan has only a minor role in this film, his first
with Madhubala, with whom he would go on to act in three other films including
the iconic Barsaat ki Raat. The others, too – Pradeep Kumar, Chandrasekhar,
Johnny Walker, Bhagwan, Om Prakash himself – have cameos that keep the narrative
moving.
If a film which revolves around Madhubala doesn’t prompt you to
watch it, then watch it for the glorious music by Madan Mohan, each
episode getting one song. [You can even spot Chic Chocolate and his band in one of the songs.]It has one of the finest Mohammed Rafi-Lata
Mangeshkar duets – Do ghadi who jo paas aa baithe. Unfortunately, the
lovely Lata solo, Sapne mein sajan se do baatein was deleted from the
movie at the behest of Lata herself – she was aghast at the song’s context.
Gateway of India was critically acclaimed when it first released, and a
moderate success at the box office. In 2015, acclaimed movie critic Deepa Gahlot
mentioned it in her book Take-2: 50 Films That Deserve A New Audience. Perhaps
it’s time you watched it. 😊
A cleaned up print of the movie is available on Tom Daniel’s channel
on YouTube.