Review by Vinoo
Language : Hindi
Director : Basu Bhattacharya
‘Anubhav’ tells the story of an urban couple. Meeta Sen (Tanuja), a middle-class woman, and Amar Sen (Sanjeev Kumar) a businessman, have been married for six years. Amar is too involved in his business and ignores his wife. Meeta decides to change everything and takes things head on by firing all the house help, save one. Hari (A K Hangal), the house help, is the only one who is witness to the fast breaking up relationship. To make matters worse Shashi (Dinesh Thakur), Meeta’s old boyfriend joins Amar’s office as his secretary. Meeta is not comfortable when he is around and even tries avoiding him. Things come to a break point when Amar overhears Meeta speak with Shashi and realizes that there is a past he doesn’t know about. He confronts her and she says the happiness she had in Shashi’s company in all of a collective six days, when he didn’t even touch her, Amar hasn’t been able to give her in six years of marriage. This shakes him up. And then all ends well with Tanuja playing her role to perfection. The body language and the roles played by Tanuja and Sanjeev Kumar only Basu Bhattacharya could have got out of them. When you watch the movie you feel they are a couple. The intimacy is not staged. Guess that’s what they call ‘On-screen Chemistry’.
If I fell in love with Supriya Pathak in ‘Bazaar’ I fell in love with Tanuja in this one.
This film has some of my favourite songs : ‘Mujhe jaan na kaho meri jaan’, ‘Koi chupke se aake’, ‘Mera dil jo mera hota’ (all by Geeta Dutt my favourite female playback) and ‘Phir kahin koi phool khila’ (Manna Dey). ‘Anubhav’ is part of the trilogy ‘Aavishkar’ (has my favourite Manna Da song ‘Hansne ki chaah ne itna mujhe rulaya hai’, and ‘Grihapravesh’. ‘Anubhav’ was the last film Geeta Dutt sung for. It is believed Geeta took to alcohol, after Guru Dutt’s suicide in 1964, and died of Cirrhosis in 1972.
All the songs except ‘Koi Chupke se aake’ (lyrics by Kapil Kumar I gather) has lyrics by Gulzar. The film has music by Kanu Roy, Geeta Dutt’s brother.
Also watch Basu Bhattacharya’s ‘Teesri Kasam’ (a rare Raj Kapoor favourite of mine), ‘Tumhara Kalloo’, ‘Aavishkar’, ‘Grihapravesh’, ‘Aastha’. The characters in all his films are so well etched out.
Useless trivia : The famous Bengali singer and composer, Subir Sen (of ‘Manzil wohin hai pyar ke’ from ‘Kathputli’ which you will mistake for Hemant Da’s voice) appears as himself in the movie and sings Tagore’s ‘Shei Din Dujone’ which has also been sung by Suraiya as ‘Nain Deewane’.
And just for the record, when Shashi gets dropped off at a theatre the movie playing is Vittorio De Sica’s ‘Sunflower’.
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