Page 37 - Seniors Today - February Issue

law Binodini (Damayanti, Balraj Sahni’s
real-life spouse) and younger son Ramu
(Anwar Mirza).
To pay for Ramu’s wedding to Radhika
(Tripti Mitra), Pradhan sells his stock of
grains to the avaricious Kalijan Mahajan,
who is hoarding rations to sell at high prices
in the black market. Soon, there is a food
scarcity in the village, while Mahajan’s
granary is full.
Pradhan’s family gets into debt with
Mahajan, promising him their next harvest
and putting their thumb impressions on
ledgers they cannot read, in effect signing
off their lives to him. When Ramu’s baby
is born, and there is no food in the house,
the family loses its cow to the zamindar for
Usha Dutt and Sombhu Mitra in Dharti Ke Lal not paying their lagaan. Ramu wants his
presence of IPTA members Sahni, Bengal’s father and brother to sell their land and they
theatre legends Sombhu and Tripti Mitra angrily tell him that they cannot sell their
and Zohra Sehgal in the list of actors. Along mother. He decides to try his luck in the city.
with professional actors, Abbas had cast When others in the village start dying, there
real farmers and workers, who brought to is an exodus of the survivors to Calcutta—
the screen a rare power, that made up for the
rawness of the filmmaker and its stagey look.
Dharti Ke Lal, is set during World War II,
when the poor farmer was pitted against
cruel zamindars, greedy moneylenders
and an apathetic urban population, not to
mention the indifferent British rulers of the
time. Starving in their villages, the farmers
moved to cities, where their misery was
multiplied, and hungry people dropped dead
in the streets. The opening of the film, with
a boat sailing over calm waters (with Ravi
Shankar’s music as accompaniment) plays to
the city person’s mental picture of a bucolic
rural setting. The actual horror of village life
hits later.
In the fictional village of Aminpur in
Bengal, Samaddar Pradhan (Sombhu Mitra)
lives with his wife (Usha Dutt), elder son
Niranjan (Balraj Sahni), elder daughter-in- The poster for the film

SENIORS TODAY | ISSUE #20 | FEBRUARY 2021 37