Mahesh Bhatt’s process of cinematic cannibalization began with Arth where he ripped off chapters from his own life to make a turbulent raw and never-before marital drama about the safe-and-secure Pooja Malhotra (Shabana Azmi) who wakes up one day to realize that her husband, ad filmmaker Inder Malhotra (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) has left her for the clingy neurotic mistress Kavita (Smita Patil).
Seen entirely through the wife’s point of view, thereby making itself vulnerable to charges of blinkered honesty, Arth was a ground-breaking film. It broke through taboo topics such as infidelity and domestic violence to depict urban lifestyles as hypocritical and ugly.
Sequences such as the one in which a sloshed Shabana drops her pallu to confront the cowering mistress at a cocktail party, have now become part of cinematic history. It would be no exaggeration to say that Bhatt’s semi-autobiographical narrative got its emotional and spiritual sustenance from Shabana Azmi’s powerhouse performance.
As the wife whose illusion of domestic bliss comes crashing down Shabana recorded every sound of her character’s crashing heart in minute and memorable detail, making this one of the most accomplished performances of Indian cinema. Smita Patil as the mistress was deliberately portrayed as a wreck, wrecking havoc on a seemingly perfect marriage with her toxic neurosis.
In a thankless role Smita did her best often rising above the inherent restrictions of playing a uni-dimensional homebreaker.
The film received more than a fair share of the media glare, thanks to Bhatt’s rooftop declarations of autobiographical ambitions. Parveen Babi naturally took great offence to being portrayed as a shrieking whining harridan. But the wife Kiran Bhatt’s reactions were never divulged. While Shabana rightfully and inevitably walked home with the second National award of her career, Rohini Hattangadi as her maid undergoing her own marital trauma in the hands of a drunken spouse-beating husband, was undoubtedly in fine form.
But what about the amazing Kulbhushan Kharbanda? Did anyone notice how effortlessly he blended into his role as the harassed man caught between his wife and mistress? The film’s manipulative format whereby all the script’s sympathy converges on the wife, is played down through Bhatt’s deep understanding of human neurosis. In Arth, as it is in his heavenly Saaransh and Zakhm, he never shies away from portraying his character in all their naked discomfiture.
In hindsight, the only character in Arth who seems unreal is that of the sympathetic singer played with charm and warmth by Raj Kiran. Ironically, Sidharth and Geeta Kak, who played Shabana’s friends-in-need, broke up soon after playing their real-life roles of husband and wife in this film.
Jagjit Singh’s music and vocals added substantially to the film’s authentic aura. Who can forget the look on Shabana’s face when Raj Kiran sings Kaifi Azmi’s brilliant words Aankhon mein nami hanseen labon pe kya haal hai kya dikha rahe ho? I would give Shabana seventy five per cent of the credit for making this film an Arth-shattering experience, and I’m sure Mahesh Bhatt will agree.
It’s a pity Shabana and Mahesh never worked together again after Arth. Shabana still acknowledges the filmmaker’s hand in her maturation as an actress. “He taught me that a smile has nothing to with the teeth, and everything to do with the eyes.”
If today, we fans of the Diva feel Shabana has the best smile in the universe, she has Mahesh Bhatt to thank for it.
We also smile each time we look at Arth. The film’s quirky editing, unbridled rawness in words and deeds, and Pravin Bhatt’s unobtrusively emotion-laden cinematography work towards making Shabana’s performance as timeless as the institution of marriage.
