FilmIndia (1945)

January, 1945. FILMINDIA Aren't all women born house-wives? Where did you get this silly notion? Even ail mothers are not born house-wives. Many Hollywood mothers do not even know what sort of a Kangaroo a "house-wife" is. Keeping house is a profession and a house-wife is a professional person. If the implication of your question is: "Should all women marry and settle down as house-wives?" My answer is: "No" not all! Only some should. The times have changed. In olden times the woman was economically dependent on man. She had no individual social existence. Nowadays women make as good pillars of society as men. They vie with men in almost all human activities. In olden times, men glorified the house-wife's post because they wanted the woman to be at home to cook for and feed the bnite. To the woman who has no other talent or nothing extraordinary in her, I would grant the clumsy, conventional job of a house-wife to secure two square meals, to suffer an occasional rape and to multiply more slaves of convention. But to the talented, the world of cooking pots and crying babies becomes a hell of an existence. Strangely enough frustrated women, who have realisrd their own mistake in becoming prosaic house-wives, blackmail others into the net to get some vindication for their own plight. And the house-wife racket has gone on merrily through ages, till our own country gave birth to 400 million slaves, more weight than the land can bear. Miss SUDHA KARNATKI (Hubli) Why does almost every film star pluck her eyebrows? Doesn't this make the eyelids look awful? Film stars are not normal people. In India someone seems to have told the girls that in Hollywood, they pluck the eyebrows and shape them. Our girls have learnt the plucking process but don't yet know anything about the shaping part of it. The result is that we see so many funny women on the screen these days. Two that come to my mind are Snehaprabha and Nur Jehan. To me they look just too awful for words with their funnily shaped eyebrows which disrobe their eyelids. Has the beautiful Nasecm kept up her old reputation for beauty in "C. C. R. Navjawan"? Physical beauty always has a past, never a future. When I saw Naseem I remembered some Urdu poet's significant line: '■^re^ ^cTT I j fJTRcT ST^viTT 'it" I Yes, Naseem's reputation for beauty is fast becoming a legend of the past. Why do Hollywood stars marry at all if divorce comes immediately in the wake of marriage? In Hollywood marriage seems to have become an adventure and a good institution for publicity. The stars seem to be versatile samplers in their sex requirements. Probably in trying to achieve ideal companionship, they have to go through several marital experiments, before they finally settle down through sheer lassitude on both sides. Whatever that be, those girls overseas show more wisdom and enterprise in breaking the shackles once these start biting into their flejh than by remaining in eternal bondage like the slavish cows in our country. Marriage is so rusty an institution that it creaks badly, day and night disturbing the harmony of companionship. K. M. SHUKAL (Ahmedabad) Who do you think will win in this world-record run competition between "Ram Rajya" and "Sh.ikuntala". Doesn't it sound like a big farce? It is not so much a farce. It is a pity in these days of theatre shortage with so many new pictures lying in the tins. These producers, however, are not deceiving any one else but themselves. Both the pictures are being run on two-year old contracts with their minimum weekly hold-over in the region of Rs 3,000, which is not a huge amount to collect in these days of inflation within seven days. They may pile up the weeks but world records are counted in cash. Shantaram is grooming himself for stardom after so many years of film direction. Can we expect you also to repeat this stunt? I am afraid, I have no time, having several different things to attend to. Shantaram doei nothing else but production and he sported the greasepaint when he was a child and played a chorus girl. I have not yet used a cold cream even after a rough shave. By the way, the latest, I hear is that Shantaram has become a bit nervous about the new role he wanted to play. They say that he won't play it after all because his tongue can not be twisted the Hindustani way so easily. R. K. BHAT (Dadar) Why has Producer Mukerji become a Hindu-Muslim unity propagandist in his "C. C. R. Navjawan" which he calls "a big hit of the year"? Yes, "C. C. R. Navjawan" looks like a propaganda picture. Mukerji probably thinks that by exploiting a popular sentiment, he might be able to bring his firm out of the woods. Little does he know the tide that is sweeping over the nation. As a critic and the foremost one in India, people expect you to keep balance of mind in your writings. Why then do you show favouritism to the new star Sushila Rani ? Who said that I show any favouritism to her? I am merely being accused of it because of the conspiracy of circumstances. Sushila happens to be my secretary and I happen to be her first fan. I write what I honestly think of her. Can't I do that without being suspected of favouritism ? To please some narrow-minded persons, should I be dishonest and write against her to establish my seeming impartiality with vindictiveness ? What had Mr. Horniman to do with Sushila Rani ? Why the hell did he write so beautifully about her ? Mr. Horniman is not a man to listen to any one. Why did a great scholar like Dewan 17