Filmindia (1941)

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August 1941 FILMINDIA HEAVEN FORBID. I read it not once or twice but four times; the scintillating humour of the Big Boy .has an effervescence of its own; and many a time I have observed a deep vein of philosophy in the audaciously splashed answers. I shall cite a specific example about which you have also made a mention. A reader, not of the general type, recently asked the following question "Will you ask Kanan Bala why she is so kind as to come in my dreams everyday?" Now if you had been the editor (which God, kindly, forbid) and if strictly believe in the principles you have enumerated you would have answered it in a manner sensible to you and boring to us. You would have taken a paternal attitude and quoted a few lines from the Vedas or the Quran and would have tried your meagre best to show him the viciousness of his thoughts. You may or may not know that in the present day, Vedas and Quran serve mountebanks more to start a communal riot than to reform people in the erring path. In this age of bustle and commotion, higher philosophy appeals to people only when they are in a stretcher or too old to breathe. So, you '< wou'lid have hardly made an impression upon him; pei'haps he would have sniggered a bit, twitched his mouth and have given unprintable names to the moralist! Look at our Big Boy's answer "As Kanan Bala is now married she will not trouble you any more. In her place, I shall come and soothe you every night." Imagine the fate of that reader for a few days at least when his personal friends pat him on his shoulders and enquire in an amiable manner as "Did Baburao come yesterday?" A few days of torture like this would have made Kanan Bala a hoodoo for him and her pictures in his room would either have vanished or been stored in an inconspicuous place. When the incipient stage of mortification is over he will perceive bit by bit the philosophy underlying the answer. He will realise that as he is not eager to get Baburao in his dreams he should not also think of sucb things about anybody. Thus the Big Boy reforms one and provides food for hilarious laughter for thousands. So, who serves Mr. Abbas, who serves? SPARKS OF RARE CHARM It is not that every one asks silly questions or every question asked is senseless. Many questions even though meaningless and idiotic to the superficial observer have a purpose. As a friend of mine recently wrote they are "feelers" to kindle the editor to make him emit sparks of rare charm. A case in point is his answer to the question about "Virgins". He scratched some two lines with his pen which serve as This damsel is Romilla in "Suhana Geet" a Kamla Talkie picture a superb answer in a far better way than an essay on female anatomy. You might call him 'vulgar', then you will call every exposer of human fallacies vulgar. The great humorist and short story wf(iter "O. Henry" whose genius Baburao Patel reaches in this answer will be vulgar to you. In a story of "O. Henry" he depicts the effects of the month of May on human passions. Poems and essays have been written on Spring and its enticing power on human hearts, but to understand those laboured efforts we want an annotator and our minds sustain no interest in it after the 'examinations' are over. O. Henry writes a single line on the month of May, which will irremoyably cling to our mind. He says "In the month of May school Madams make big bad boys stay after school." Baburao Patel's answer has an O. Henry effect in them. In this world of inconsistencies there are a set of "Sunday School Moralists" for whom, from the statue of Venus de Milos to facetious answers satirising the banes of life, everything is vulgar. But the enlightened public rarely lend a ear to these Moralists as one day or other some of them appear as co-respondents in divorce suits! By the way, when you wrote "the 'moral' of the place is such that even the prostitutes go out veiled", you exhibit a form of humour which has a genuine Baburao touch in it; and that form of humour is not to be found in your book "OUTSIDE INDIA" published some two years ago. So, I have half a mind to believe that you revel over the Editor's Mail in private and revile it in public. Whatever you may say and however you may feel, the "Editor's mail" is the cream of "filmindia" and justifies the eight annas the readers pay for it. As a reader, Mr. Abbas, I pray sincerely that Baburao should never go to gaol. If he becomes a stateguest and if you in the editorial chair begin to give a polish to your "Erstaz" ideas, the readers will buy the first copy of "filmysticindia" for curiosity's sake and then quit the readers' field enmasse. 39