Pyaasa (1957) (literally “thirsty,” but known as The Thirsty One in English) is the cinematic triumph of the middle twentieth century that most cinema lovers miss. Why? Because it’s not European or American. Two areas of our vast globe viewed as cultural rivals akin to the diverse, poetic legacies of Dante and Shakespeare.
Guru Dutt, the master Indian filmmaker (who also directed and produced this), stars as Vijay, a rejected, destitute poet on the brink. Pyaasa, written by Abrar Alvi, with songs by S.D. Burman, shatters the myth of the two-continent symbiosis of cinematic treasure with a drama-musical that beautifully critiques the inhumanities of the universally experienced caste system.
In the film’s opening scenes, Vijay contends with disappointments at a publishing house and at his mother’s home. First, he finds his poems in the trash after they are deemed too serious for readers to digest. Later, when his loving mother tries to give him a decent meal as his callous brothers verbally attack him, he refuses to eat, looking for his poems. One brother tells him that he sold them as waste paper for a meager sum.
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Dejected, Vijay sits in the park at night where he usually sleeps. While alone, he hears a mysteriously veiled woman sing a poem with the lines “Who knows what you said?/ Who knows what I heard?/ Something stirred in my heart.” The woman, Gulabo (a prostitute) is unknowingly attempting to lure a prospective patron with his very own words of poetry. To her surprise, she earns herself the anger of a man demanding his stolen and sold poems back. Gulabo demeaningly sends the “pauper” away, but not without feeling guilt later.
The next day, Vijay sees his first love on the street, entering a store. This leads to a flashback to college life, where he met Meena (Mala Sinha). Enchanted by her beauty at first sight, he says to her: “When you walk/ the earth and the sky keep pace/…./ When you stop/ spring and the moon stops, too.”
A chance encounter with former classmate, Pushplata (Tun Tun), at the park with her children results in an embarrassed Vijay being invited to a college reunion. There, he is coaxed out of the crowd, and onto the stage where he fails to sugar coat his condition in life. “I can only return to this life/ what it has given me.” Phrases no doubt well understood by recent college graduates of today; themselves facing underemployment and homelessness sixty-three years later.
Rich man, Mr. Ghosh, of the Modern Publishing Company offers his card to Vijay, implying that success in poetry is imminent after witnessing his performance. Vijay’s hopes are later deflated when he is given a job instead of a publication offer. There in the elevator, he meets face-to-face with his lost love Meena. His imagination segues into a romantic dream, complete with soft night lighting and smoke. The two are dressed in fine ballroom clothes, dancing in the clouds, with her grand exit involving an ascension on a staircase, seemingly to the moon.
Later, Vijay is invited to Mr. Ghosh’s home as a servant for a party after his writing ability is indirectly thrashed by his demeaning boss. At the event, emotions explode after he finds out that Meena is married to his boss. A series of tracking shots and close-ups are cleverly utilized to underscore Meena’s feelings, and her husband’s realization that she knows Vijay.
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At the publishing house, Meena approaches Vijay, knowing that Mr. Ghosh is in a “board meeting.” Vijay sees her for the selfish person that she is, and accuses her of “selling her love for wealth.” Reading Meena’s disposability of other’s feelings and personal investments, he tells her “Life’s real joy is in making others happy. You never understood that. That’s why you’re unhappy.”
Meanwhile, Gulabo’s feelings for Vijay are deepening. As a woman vocalist sings “My hapless eyes have been sleepless for countless years… O beautiful Krishna, thirst consumes me to the depths,” Gulabo follows Vijay to a rooftop, but quietly flees undetected, as she cannot face possible rejection due to her occupation.
Vijay’s already fragile will to move forward in life is destroyed by the news of his mother’s death. His sociopathic brothers double the blow by completing disowning him. Having no seemingly healthy alternative to grieve (at least in his troubled mind), he turns to alcohol.
While drunk, Vijay witnesses his friend aggressively tell a dancing prostitute “Damn your child. I need you, too,” as the baby cried in the same room. Disgusted, Vijay stumbles out of the apartment. The mourning poet describes the evil he sees about him:
“Where are they, the guardians of dignity? Where are those who claim to be proud of India?
These wilting bodies. These ailing faces. Where are those who claim to be proud of India?
These are wives and sisters and mothers, too.
This daughter of Eve seeks help. The kin of Yashoda. The daughter of Radha.
Summon the leaders of this land. Show them these alleys, these lanes, this sight.”
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Gulabo soon after finds and tries to convince a now suicidal Vijay that life is worth living, and puts him in her bed to sleep off his drunkenness. He later awakens to a mental rehash of all of the disdainful words said about him. Writing a suicide note, he places it in his coat pocket, leaving a dutiful Gulabo on the floor, sleeping while sitting up.
The concluding scenes in Pyaasa depict a range of behaviors, from lovingly selfless to foully outrageous. Spoilers aplenty in these critical screen moments of the film. Pyaasa is Guru Dutt’s masterful ode to drawing public suffering out of societal invisibility, and into the foreground of Bollywood consciousness is a timeless work of practiced empathy through film.
Sadly, after marital and professional difficulties, Guru Dutt was found deceased in his bed at age 39 in 1964. His estranged wife, prolific soundtrack vocalist (including songs in Pyaasa), Geeta Dutt, passed away at age 41, eight years later. Two lives tragically cut short by alcoholism, leaving behind their three children.
Let us remember that life’s objectives are infinitely more than what the masses judge as entertaining, edifying, or popular. The good heart that loves, and the mind that tries to create ways to help others are priceless. So is Pyaasa’s enduring testament to the painful evolution of fighting souls.
