The mythological tale of Radha and Krishna has been interpreted in numerous ways. “ Mira ke Prabhu Giridhar naagar, raadhaa ke manmohan” Both of them desired Krishna as their husbands- but their ways were different. Ek Radha Ek Meera, immortalised by Lata Mangeskar’s evocative singing, juxtaposes the two lovers of Krishna- Radha, his saheli and Meera, his devotee. Not ironically then, Ek Radha Ek Meera appears at the momentous climax of the film, when by a cruel irony of fate, Ganga is brought (and bought) to Calcutta to perform at Narendra’s wedding. What he had was an idea of a film, an idea that was solely based on one song- Ek Radha Ek Meera, which enthralled him so much that he took the audacious decision of making a film from one song. But what is truly staggering is everything happened without a script, without any concrete plot. There only, he decided the title of the film. But, little did he know, Raj Kapoor’s idea was to make a film from that one song only.Īfter a few days, he took Ravindra Jain and other musicians to his Pune farmhouse, and composed all the nine songs within an astonishing four days. The last film he directed was three years ago.
Randhir was a bit taken aback since Raj Kapoor didn’t actually have any plan to make a new film: no scripts, no sessions with producers, no meeting with actors, absolutely nothing. On that day only, he officially bought the rights for the song intending to use it in his next film. The following day, he invited Ravindra Jain and his accompanying musicians for a musical event at Randhir’s house.
Upon hearing that it hasn’t been used in any film, Raj Kapoor decided to buy the rights for the song. Raj Kapoor was so enamoured with it that he asked him to sing it once again (according to Randhir Kapoor, again quite a number of times after that). It so happened that Raj Kapoor, along with his son, went to a wedding where Ravindra Jain, the music director was singing one of his unreleased songs. While looking up on the internet, with sparse information scattered on different platforms, I stumbled upon an old video of Randhir Kapoor (his son) talking about the production of the film. I was curious to find out Raj Kapoor’s inspiration behind the film. Naturally, a film imbued with allusions, and symbols and steeped so much in Indian mythology, piqued my curiosity to read up on its background story. The literal and metaphorical descent of Ganga, the protagonist in the film, and the river Ganges from the pristine hills of Uttarakhand to the plains, is not too hard to see. We see a crooked politician colluding with his industrialist friend to open another factory, sidestepping environmental laws. The film itself opens with a protest rally against water pollution in the Ganges in Calcutta (where our protagonist will eventually arrive). 1985 was also the year that witnessed Narmada Bachao Andolon, which started as a protest against callous negligence on the part of the government in the Sardar Sarovar Dam project but morphed into a large-scale environmental movement to protect the pristine ecosystem of Narmada Valley. The year was 1985, a decade after Chipko and Silent Valley movements have headed home the importance of ecology and environmentalism.
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