Aaina-1977 – The Mirror – Film Review
Story of a family with many children. Father is a small time purohit and barely manages to make both ends meet. But poverty does not stop him from copulating!
He used to read Sanskrit stanzas from religious scriptures but probably no scripture mentioned it explicitly that if a child is born to you, it is your responsibility to feed, nourish and educate the child. This is in fact one of the major reasons why ‘marriage’ is considered as the most important social duty and responsibility of all the citizens. Because in absence of marriage, both male and female will copulate and then leave the baby born to them in a dustbin and go ahead looking for more ‘eff-buddies’!
Although every Indian (well many Indians) believe that children are the same as Gods! So they happily proliferate and forget totally about how will they ‘keep the God’ happy once He arrives on Planet Earth as an infant born to them! Although the Govt. tried its best to spread the ‘Hum do, humare do’ slogan…but it fell on deaf ears – probably because the ones who were doing the propaganda were themselves not ‘practicing what they were preaching’!
Once they arrive in great many numbers…they try to dispose them…as in this film the mother – played by Nirupa Roy – tries to poison all the children because she was unable to feed them – they used to sleep hungry for days together!
The eldest daughter (Mumtaz) witnesses the scene (mother poisoning all her children) and tells her mother that – from that day – she is the Mother and takes responsibility of all the children – including father and mother.
She then falls in the trap of a wolf and becomes a prostitute. She was hardly educated, just had good looks and was young (tight and taut) but wanted lots of money – to feed her siblings and parents suffering from hunger-pangs!
Her parents and siblings suddenly start leading a plush life full of comfort. Siblings start getting married in good educated families when by-chance they realize that Mumtaz had been sending them money by being a prostitute! Really dumb people for not knowing it beforehand! Unemployment has always been rampant in India ..but the fact that their ‘hardly educated’ daughter is sending them so much money didn’t surprise them at all! So you see, dumb parents, dumb decisions and helpless situations!
The brother decides to throw her out – now that he had become a doctor and was married to a decent family girl!
In comes her ex-lover Rajesh Khanna who went missing in the war. He had come seeking a prostitute to take out his frustration while he was in the town when he happened to meet his ex-lover Mumtaz. He was totally shaken to see her as a prostitute…to which she replies – What on earth was he doing in a brothel!?
Anyways – he marries her and the film ends quickly and abruptly.
Watch the film in 15 minutes