'A young man from Kolkata, Naren, visiting the mountains of Gangotri, falls in love with a village girl, Ganga and they soon get married. However, Naren had to go back to Kolkata as he has to finish an incomplete business. Before leaving for Kolkata, he promises Ganga that he will return but he never does so. After one year Ganga gives birth to a son and later begins her journey in search of Naren. During her journey she meets people who exploit and molest her.
Will Ganga finally find her Naren? YOR - 1985 Star Cast – Rajiv Kapoor, Mandakini, Sayeed Jaffery, Divya Rana, Suresh Oberoi, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Raza Murad Director – Raj Kapoor Producer – Randhir Kapoor Cinematographer - Radhu Karmakar Music Director – Ravindra Jain Lyricist – Ravindra Jain, Hasrat Jaipuri, Amir Qazalbash Story - Raj Kapoor Screenplay - V.P. Singh, Jyoti Swaroop Dialogues - K.K. Singh Editor - Raj Kapoor SUBSCRIBE for the best Bollywood videos, movies and scenes, all in ONE channel. Like, Comment and Share with your friends and family. Watch more Bollywood videos and movies starring your favourite celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan, Raj Kapoor, Dharmendra, Zeenat Aman, Vidya Balan, Govinda, Salman Khan and many more, only on Facebook - Twitter - Google+ - Pinterest - SUBSCRIBE for the best Bollywood videos, movies and scenes, all in ONE channel. Like, Comment and Share with your friends and family.
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'A young man from Kolkata, Naren, visiting the mountains of Gangotri, falls in love with a village girl, Ganga. Enter your location to see which movie theaters are playing Ram Teri Ganga Maili near you. See Full Cast + Crew for Ram Teri Ganga Maili.
RAM TERI GANGA MAILI (“God/Ram, your Ganga Ganges is tainted”) 1985, Hindi, about 170 minutes Directed by Raj Kapoor Produced by Randhir Kapoor for R. Films Story: Raj Kapoor; Screenplay: K. Singh, Jyoti Swaroop, V. Sathe; Dialogue: K. But the film additionally alludes to another Mahabharata motif: that of a human prince’s union with a river goddess (as in King Shantanu’s marriage to Ganga incarnate), as well as to the myth of the divine river’s “descent” to the human realm, now superimposed onto mundane space to follow her meandering course over the north Indian plains to the Bay of Bengal.
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This permits the film to offer both a spectacular travelogue and an auspicious visual pilgrimage to some of north India’s most revered Hindu sites—from the source of the Ganga at the Gaumukh glacier, near the Tibetan border, to her great pilgrimage center at Banaras/Varanasi, to her merger with the Indian Ocean at Ganga Sagar, an island off the Bengal coast. As if this were not enough, motifs and themes from the Ramayana and from the life story of Krishna and his medieval poet-devotee, the Rajput princess Mira, are additionally worked in. Kalidasa’s king-hero is thus exonerated of guilt for abandoning the heroine (and Raj Kapoor will likewise favor the latter approach, substituting a grandmotherly heart-attack and resultant family crisis for the loss of the ring). In any case, the lovesick Shakuntala becomes pregnant and gives birth to the hero’s son, and then—after enough time has elapsed to make her forest-dwelling neighbors wonder why no one has come for her—makes her own way to the royal city to present the boy to the king. In the story’s most powerful scene, the latter denounces her (in the Mahabharata, Dushyanta knowingly lies, ostensibly to protect his reputation and lineage against the paternity suit of a possibly “loose” woman, but in the Sanskrit drama he of course literally does not remember who she is) and Shakuntala suffers bitter humiliation, yet offers a spirited and heartfelt defense of her claim. Both versions direct the audience’s sympathy toward the woman who has been wronged, and ultimately rely on a deus ex machina to bring the erring (or amnesiac) king to his senses—whereupon the little family is happily reunited and Shakuntala’s son, the demi-divine Bharata, becomes heir to the throne. Kapoor’s film substitutes a weak hero for an erring one and introduces parental and family complications that further exonerate him, and it situates most of its heroine’s humiliation during her long journey to the metropolis.
The credit sequence alternates scenes of the pristine river of the Himalayas with her debased form on the plains, graphically showing (in newsreel-like footage) her pollution with human corpses and raw sewage, while the bhajan-style title song intones a verse (among others) that alludes to Kapoor’s own previous oeuvre: his JIS DESH MEIN GANGA BEHTI HAI (“the land in which Ganga flows,” 1960): He who has worshiped Ganga with head humbly bowed, And who has sung the praise of the land in which she flows, He too now must come forward to say, ‘God, your Ganga is tainted. While magnate Sahai celebrates the ruthless Chaudhury’s election as party president and plots a marital alliance between Chaudhury’s daughter Radha (Divya Rana) and his own dreamily idealistic son Narendra (or “Naren” for short; Rajiv Kapoor), the latter ponders the writings of Hindu reformer Swami Vivekananda (whose given name was also Narendra), and dreams of a college trip to the source of the Ganga, to discover if the river is truly pristine upstream, far from the corruption of Calcutta.
Though his father refuses him permission to go, Naren obtains it through the intervention of his pious, wheelchair bound grandmother (Sushma Seth), who gives him a metal urn and begs him to “bring Ganga back” to her. Naren’s cause is also championed by his maternal uncle ( mausa) Kunj Bihari (Saeed Jaffrey), an artistic bon vivant who frequents courtesan houses and who quotes a verse of Muhammad Iqbal concerning Ganga, but who outfits Naren with a Swiss hat and suede jacket for his mountain idyll. Once in the Himalayas, Naren’s group finds the road to Gangotri blocked by landslides and settles into a comfortable holiday camp serviced by local mountain folk. It is while ecstatically roaming the hills nearby that Naren has his first encounter with Ganga-the-girl, in a scene brilliantly staged to evoke its mythic resonances—she is first experienced through her tinkling laughter, and then rises, yakshi-like, from a field of wildflowers to announce “I am Ganga.” It is, of course, love-at-first- darshan for both young people, and their bond is cemented when Naren saves Ganga from an attempted rape by one of the college lads, and then accompanies her on a walking pilgrimage to the river’s source. There is truly breathtaking scenery enroute, and also accompanying Ganga’s first song (that establishes her as both innocent and seductive), Tujhe bulaye yeh meri bahen (“my arms call to you”).
The voyeuristic side of Kapoor’s reputation as “Showman” rested in part on his willingness to repeatedly push the envelope on what government censors would permit filmmakers to “show” on the screen: from Nargis’ bathing suit in AWARA (1951), to Dimple Kapadia’s bikini in BOBBY (1973), to Zeenat Aman’s blouseless mini-sari in SATYAM SHIVAM SUNDARAM (1978). The equivalently scandalous (and doubtless most replayed) scene here is Mandakini’s bath in a waterfall while singing Tujhe bulaye, the refrain of which calls out “ Aa jaa” (“Come to me,”)—her gauzy sari rendered translucent by the water to offer, in effect, a full frontal display of the young actress’ generous charms.
Ganga’s trials now take a more demeaning dimension. Tragically missing Kunj Bihari at the Rishikesh bus stand, the innocent girl (who knows only that Calcutta is the place “where the Ganga ends”) is waylaid by a succession of exploiters: the madam of a cheap brothel in Rishikesh, a lecherous brahman priest, and finally a wily procurer for a higher-class kotha or courtesan house in Banaras, who is drawn by her beautiful voice. Though some viewers might wince at the film’s relentless depiction of the helpless vulnerability of a young mother lacking the “protection” of a male escort, the type of situations depicted, and the satire of exploitative north Indian types is, alas, not altogether hyperbolic (many prostitutes in Bombay and other cities are in fact said to be waylaid girls from the Himalayas), nor is Ganga entirely without agency: she fights back, attempts escape, and hurls shaming sarcasm at her abusers and would-be corrupters. Throughout this numbing “descent” of Ganga-personified, there are ironic allusions to the sacral status of the river for which she is named, that reflect on the hypocrisy of formal religion (as when an elderly woman on a train refuses Ganga a sip of water for her infant, because it is precious Ganga-water obtained on a pilgrimage). As an ideological statement, the film displays all the status-quo-affirming warts characteristic of Kapoor’s work (and indeed of much of mainstream Hindi cinema): the ultimate reduction of social conflict to family squabbles that can be resolved through “love” and “faith,” and the combination of enlightened messages about women’s agency and honor with the relentless display of their bodies and the stereotyping of their social roles within an unquestioned patriarchal matrix. By positing no explicit connection between the villainous Sahai and Chaudhury’s corruption and the hyper-rich lifestyle enjoyed by their families, the narrative apparently seeks to divert resentment against an entire class toward a few “bad” individuals within it, and gives viewers license to relish the spectacle of Naren’s innocently conspicuous consumption of the fruits of dad’s ill-gotten gain (e.g., he sports a different mod outfit every day on the Gangotri trip).
Yet like all of Kapoor’s best work—and I personally rank this film not far below AWARA and SHRI 420—it also presents a visual and textual richness that can support variant readings. Though the sincere but ineffectual Naren finds a voice at the end, it is the performances of Saeed Jaffrey as Kunj Bihari—an old debauchee who refuses to be a hypocrite—and of Mandakini as Ganga—an innocent who is nevertheless discerning and capable of the most disarming forthrightness—that dominate the film. When the two finally meet, Bihari (plotting a way out of Ganga’s plight and alluding to Sita’s agni pariksha or “fire ordeal” in the Ramayana) delivers the memorable line, “You have already been through a severe fire-test, daughter-in-law; it is now your Ram’s turn to be tested!” Amen. The Yash Raj Films DVD of RAM TERI GANGA MAILI is of superior quality and offers subtitles for songs as well as dialogs. Like all subtitles, these are sometimes off the mark (e.g., when the pregnant Ganga, patting her tummy, metaphorically sings, “I have put on the adornment of your love,” the subtitle pragmatically substitutes “I bear your child”), but they make this densely-coded film more accessible to non-Indian viewers. The film is also available from Shemaroo, Ltd., the company that holds the Indian rights to the Kapoor films; I have yet to see this version, however. Though rarely available in the US, Shemaroo DVDs sometimes offer vastly superior quality prints (e.g., of AWARA and SHRI 420) to those sold by Yash Raj—although they generally do not provide subtitles for songs.