Baaghban

Today is 19th Release Anniversary of Baghban.

A film which was scripted and was to be made in the 1973 ( after Daastaan) by B.R.Chopra with Dilip Kumar and Rakhee, but she opted out and later he fell ill. It never got made.

B.R.Chopra went on to launch his son Ravi Chopra in Zameer .

Irony was that 20 years later Ravi Chopra revived the project and cast Big B and Hema Malini. Certain changes were made in the script to make it relevant with the time, but the core essence of the script remained the same.

BAGHBAN is the story of Raj Malhotra (Amitabh Bachchan), his wife Pooja (Hema Malini) and their four sons (Aman Verma, Samir Soni, Sahil Chadda, Nasir )

They have an adopted son, Alok (Salman Khan). Arpita (Mahima Chaudhry) is his wife. After retirement, when Raj expresses his desire to stay with his sons (not Alok, because he is currently abroad), they are none too pleased. They come up with this plan of splitting the two of them, knowing fully well how much their parents love each other, with the thought that the two would refuse.

Pooja does not see through their scheme. Raj does. But she manages to convince him. So, they split up with the intent of staying on a rotation basis with each of their sons. It's needless to say how unwelcome they are made to feel there.

During his stay, Raj pens down his life on the insistence of his friend Hemant (Paresh Rawal) and his wife Shanti (Lilette Dubey).

Finally when both of them find things difficult to handle ,they leave their sons home and decide to stay together. Sometime, Alok happens to find them ( He owns a car agency and Raj test drives that very car and is humiliated by Alokama store Manager. Alok takes the manager to task and is overjoyed to be able to take care of them.

Raj's memoirs are titled Baghban and  becomes a best-seller, and also wins the Booker Prize .

In the climax speech, Amitabh Bachchan speaks about the relationship between children and parents metaphorically. He said that the children in the present times treat their parents like a ladder, they will climb on and they will forget the ladder and it’s importance once they are on the peak. He further said that the parents are actually not ladders, parents are like a huge tree with several branches and children can get absolute peace and comfort in the shadow of this tree provided they have tried hard to flourish the tree and not to make a ladder of it’s wood.

The sons want to reconsile but are shown their place by the parents and the grand children.

That is the story, in brief - very brief. The film is loaded with emotion, most of it melancholic. 

Amitabh Bachchan delivers a scintillating performance. Hema Malini looks gorgeous even in her old age. The chemistry between Amitabh and Hema is still groovy.

Paresh Rawal is apt as also the other co actors .

Baghban reminds one of many movies

Zindagi ( Sanjeev Kumar, Mala Sinha)

Avatar ( Rajesh Khanna)

Swarg (Rajesh Khanna)

And a Marathi movie

Tu Thithe Mee (तू तिथे मी) which has an identical script and was a big hit.

But one can overlook the similarity as this is a class of its own.

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