Boond Jo Ban Gayee Moti

A very enjoyable movie from legendary V. Shantaram. As always his films focuses on a theme and in this picture it is education. I am an ex-student of Shantiniketan ( Poet Rabindranath Tagore's Ashram in West Bengal ) and in this picture the director brought the analogy of the value of open air eduction which was very refreshing. The drama is well presented and both Jitendra and Mumtaz acted very well. Mumtaz as the village girl was fantastic and the artistic work in the movie is praiseworthy. During my recent trip to India I bought a set of six Shantaram movies and it was worth the money. This movie is one of the best of Shantaram's.

Boond Jo Ban Gayi Moti or '(rain)drop that turned into a pearl), is story of a village schoolteacher (played by Jitendra). He has a younger stepbrother (Akashdeep) who studies in college, as usual the elder brother is dutyful and the younger brother is a lier, who always seems to be in need of money. In the village the neighbour is a lawyer (Surendra!) who has a beautiful teenaged daughter (Vaishali) who is attracted to Jeetendra.

Mumtaj plays a village girl whose brother runs an antiques shop and she runs a Tonga (she is the original Tangewali - in this movie doing a Basanti a good 8 years before Hema Malini in Sholey!)

The younger brother does not appear in his BA examination. Unknown to Jitendra comes to villages falls for the neighbours daughter and she is pregnent. Comes again and kills her. Since noone else knew that he was there. So the blame is now on the schoolteacher elder brother. How he is saved and the younger brother is made to pay for his sins is rest of the story.

The music is excellent - specially "Hari Bhari vasundhara Neela Neela Yeh gagan...", "Saath ho tum aur raat jawaan.." are very good and excellent use has been made of Mukesh' voice.

The film BOOND JO BAN GAYI MOTI is one of V Shantaram's films and is worth seeing because of that.For those of you who are familiar with his films, each has a theme, eg Jhanak Jhanak Paayal Baaje was the Dance theme, so was Jal Bin Machhali..., Geet Gaya Patharon Ne was on Sculpture, Navrang was on poetry ,and so on. Boond Jo... has a theme on teaching. The emphasis is on the fact that good teachers can produce a good India . The song 'Hari Bhari Vasundhara' is picturised to emphasise this theme. The teacher (Jeetendra) tries to teach a great verse on nature in a classroom and decides that this poem can only be taught among nature's beauty..the great outdoors.

I would recommend this film just for that scene.