Children of a Lesser God - My Thoughts on Footpath (1953)

Long ago as a young child, in my initial days of innocence, I remember having heard a song that made me really stop and think. The song was penned by the great Shailendra and wasfrom a movie called Boot Polish (one of the first children-oriented films of Hindi Cinema);and was sung by the great Mohammed Rafi in his sweet and eternal melliflous voice.

It has been long since I have heard the song again but even today the song still stays close to my heart, for it's evocative use of piety to generate feelings of charity. One of the Anataras of the song, specially, is very special to me because it captured my heart and stirred my imagination like nothing before. The lines were as follows:

Bhara Ho Pet To Sansaar Jagmagata Hai
Sattaye Bhookh to Imaan Dagmagata Hai

What can signify better the pain of hunger and it's impact on human desires and wants. Look around you and you will find the strains of this truth all over you, from vagabonds rummaging through dustbins to children begging on footpaths to men and women looking at you with eyes that have long forgotten the world of God and his prayers, the proof of these words is all over us. So strong is the stench of this truth, that often one prefers to put on extravagant perfumes and expensive odours to ensure that the stench of this demeaning depravity does not reach their high nostrils.

The footpath is the crucible of all such truths - truths we all find unpalatable but which are true nevertheless. For you and for me and for many of us, the footpath maybe just a path that leads us to our destinations…. To the others, however, the footpath with its hard stony ground below and the cold, open sky above is an accommodation and sometimes a little more than that. On a cold wintry day or a god-forsaken rainy day, these are the places where you find people like us but still very unlike us, trying their best to maintain dignity in conditions where dignity is a luxury.

These are the forgotten people…. People who live from sunrise to sunset, from dawn to dusk hoping for life and the money that is needed for this life. On these footpaths are dug the graveyards of talent and merit, within these footpaths lie the coffins of dignity, self-respect and morals, on these footpaths are born the protégé of crimes, the children of paucity and the brokers of the malice that sells the self again and again for a loaf of bread, a drop of water and a shred of clothing. Here is born crime and chaos for a stomach that fails to get food would happily feast on anything and everything. Hunger knows no God.

From the footpaths of the sprawling metropolis of Bombay and London to the pavements of mighty New York and Tokyo, with their imposing skylines and sprawling penthouses, they are found everywhere … poor men and starving men, homeless families and vagabonds - men and women for whom the biggest concern is not the rising prices of the commodity markets or the fluctuations in the international stock markets; but whether they would live to see the morning the day after.

These men don’t live… they survive!

And then one fine day they die away as slowly as did their dreams and aspirations before them … such that the knowledge of a dying flame is not the last flicker of a flame reaching out for life but the omnipresent gloom of darkness that pervades death.

It takes a lot of courage to face this sort of depravity and still more to live it but to portray it on a marquee that’s more interested in stories of kings and princes and feasts on the love tales of the rich and the powerful, requires a suicidal mind frame, for the end result of such films is nothing but a ‘flop’. Even so Footpath (1953) is a stark depiction of life on the footpaths and it’s close cousins – the rented tenements of the 50s, of the lure of the world of crime, the ruthlessness of a system that feasts on its constituents and a face-off between morals and morale, ethics and money, hunger and conscience.

Those were the days, the country had just thrown off the yoke of an oppressive, foreign regime and was looking forward for a better tomorrow with it's eyes firmly at the horizons. Those were the days, when India believed in itself and before politics had become the cuss word it is today. Those were the days when Bharat and India were one and the same - long before the divergence that had already begun could manifest itself

Dilip Kumar as Noshu carries the entire film on his broad shoulders. The entire film is a look into the psyche of a man who has failed to earn money by honest means and whose conscientious will may not allow him to remain a freeloader at someone else’s expense. Noshu is attracted by the lure of money, seduced by the free availability of riches on the black markets and arrested by ethics and morals that condemn him to death by starvation in the white markets. Having entered the market, he’s again confronted by a difficult choice… kin versus cash.

Enacting a moral dilemma requires a deep understanding of the character. With this complex role of varied dimensions, the actor proves once and for all his mastery over a very difficult genre of acting…. for here is a role that delves deep into the psyche and is very difficult to perform and only accomplished actors may dare do so…. Dilip does it and does it with élan and finesse.

This is one of the very few films, in which the thespian has enacted the negative side of human psyche and the emperor of acting cannot be faulted in this movie that’s a classic only due to two reasons, Dilip’s performance and Zia’s direction.

Some of the scenes, which confirm his status as the greatest actor ever of Hindi cinema, include his confrontation with his brother on his choice of profession, his scenes with the legendary Meena Kumari, the mischievous glint in his eye on making his first profit on the black markets and finally the monologue wherein he accepts his crime. In addition, Dilip in this movie also moves away from his image of clean-cut decency and adds panache and style to a highly controversial role.

In sync with the role, the thespian dons a cigarette on his lips throughout the film exuding a raw sex appeal; that was so far the reserve of the stylish actors. Undoubtedly, an out and out Dilip Kumar film

Meena Kumari is underutilized in the movie and, although the movie focuses on Dilip and his dillemas, Meena still manages to hold her own in all her scenes. The desperation and frustration of a starving woman has never been bettered and her confrontations with Dilip are excellent set pieces for studies in acting.

It's sad that the combination of Meena and Dilip, although they were often appreciated for their strong capabilities in enacting trageddiene roles were not often matched in roles that required such deep emotions. It would have been great to watch the two stalwarts match each other in movies with such deep emotional overtones but sadly it was not to be. Still whenever these stalwarts came together it was a treat for cinema conniesuers like me. Thankfully Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil did come together more often in roles that showed their virtuiosity. Wish we could have seen similar number of strong emotional content from Dilip and Meena.

Ramesh Thakur shines in his role as Noshu’s idealistic elder brother – one who prefers a death by starvation to a life in the shadow of crime. Anwar Hussein is brilliant in his portrayal of an opportunistic black-marketer. Achala Sachdev is also competent in the role of a self-seeking and venom-spewing housewife.

On the whole, the music score of the film leaves a lot more to be desired, considering that the movie carries the Khayyam stamp. However, the film boasts of one of the most memorable Talat Mehmood gems “Shaam-e-Gham Ki Kasam”. One rendition of the song and you will be quick to forget the inefficacy of the remaining songs, for this is undoubtedly one of the greatest songs ever sung by the great but underrated Talat Mehmood. I often listen to this song when my heart is under pain or stress or simply too lonely.

Zia Sarhady is undoubtedly one of the greatest directors of Hindi Cinema… In fact, Zia was the front-runner of the neo-realistic brand of movie making and hence belonged to the elite circle of Bimal –Abbas – Satyajit - Rithwik and others of the movement. In all, Zia made only 3-4 movies but each and every one of them is a classic in it's own right.

Followers of the cinema of De Sica and Kurosawa and Bertolucci would do well to see the movies made by this great director before denouncing Hindi cinema of frivolity and formula fare. It's to the discredit of viewers of Hindi Cinema that we have not made more such movies but to the credit of Indian Cinema, whenever we have have walked into a movie with such intentions, the results more often than not have often showcased our talent in presenting emotions to the world.

Foot path is one of the darkest films ever made in India and it’s to the credit of the director that you feel trapped in the inner psyche of Noshu for the entire length of the film and more. The film depicts all the stark realities of life in the lower echelons of society, to the extent of the bath scene wherein a naked Meena Kumari is shown taking a bath under a tap in the open – a brilliant statement on the reality of life in those dark bylanes... Although many films have been made on the subject of youth turning towards the world of crime, Footpath surpasses all of them in the study of the psyche that forces a man to look beyond the right and embrace the writ of the wrong.

If you love neo-realism, this is definitely not a movie to miss.