Boond Jo Ban Gayee Moti (1967)

Apologies for my long absence, its great to be back and i really have to say i missed bolly blogging, Its been a while and i'm so eager to round off on the last two V.Shantaram movies i'm yet to review. Boond Jo Ban Gayee Moti (The drop that turned into a pearl) gave Mumtaz her first leading role in mainstream cinema after a whole string of B movies and supporting roles in many other productions

Our story starts with a man being taunted for wasting his years being a teacher, this results in a flashback

Before the death of his parents Satya Prakash (Jeetendra) is given the responsibility of caring for Mahesh his chota bhai (little brother), as such his brother's education and such other responsibilities lie on him

He manages to send Mahesh to Delhi for college, while he gets a job at the local governmnet run school


on his first day in a rather squirmy scene his students pack his drawer full of frogs (eurrgghh!!)

Village belle Shefali (Mumtaz) takes a liking to Satya Prakash due to his gentle and hardworking ethic, but then drama enters her life when her mother (Lalita Pawar) who had left since childhood following a marriage to Christan man (perhaps a missionary) attempts to rebuild a relationship with her

Shefali is having none of it and the villagers too aren't particularly helping matters as she's criticised for her conversion to christianity

While Satya is sacrificing a lot for the sake of his brother's education, rather than studying, Mahesh is living a partying lifestyle with girls, drinks, smoking etc.

Satya however is focused on his career as a teacher and sets upon putting theory into practice for the students, the headmaster opposes his teaching style which results in Satya getting the sack. He later gets the job back when they realise how much the students have improved or shall I say how smart they've become

Meanwhile Mahesh falls for wealthy Renuka, this love affair makes Mahesh even more estranged from his studies, which culminates in him not showing up for his final year exams, thus not only as he wasted his brother's precious efforts to educate him, but he also fails his finals

Rather than come clean to his brother, he steals a friends examination number and passes it onto his brother as his, an oblivious Satya is thankful and proud of his little brother


but then the story takes a major turn when Renuka who is Mahesh's girlfriend gets pregnant, she is later discovered dead, all evidences place Satya Prakash as responsible thereby leading him to be linked to the crime

Will he be proven Innocent? Who really killed Renuka? Will mahesh come clean about his dodgy ways to his brother?

Compared to some of the other V.Shantaram films i've reviewed on here Boond Jo Ban Gayee Moti (The drop that turned into a pearl) is a lot more restrained and devoid of the usual showmanship one associates with V.Shantram.

At the heart of the film is its exaltation and respectability of the profesion of teaching hence the name 'the drop that turned into a pearl' perhaps a metaphor for the work of a teacher being responsible for the drop turning into a pearl. The film also advocates the need of practical rather than just theoretical education. Though this are the fine points of the film some things like the comical court scene, (why does a court scene, well in some if not most Hindi movies, seem to be a place for high hysterics and drama, as implausible as they seemed in this, i have to admit they were quite funny).

I would have liked more insight into why Shefali's mother left her and the vilagers, or the reason for the villagers reaction to her conversion to christianity, this made the film have or should i say gave out a bit of an anti-christian vibe.

Performance wise everyone gives a restrained performance here and Mumtaz is lovable and confident in her debut leading role. Jeetendra was lovable and there was none of his Jumping Jack behaviours on here, a rather mature performance i must say. The supporting characters Akashdeep who played Mahesh and Vaishali who Renuka were lovable too

Lovely lovely songs by Satish Bhatia, according to imdb this is his only film score, there's the lovely 'Hum maine bhi' a wonderful song on nature 'Yeh kaun chitrakaar' but my two favourites are 'Meri zindagi ek khwab' all fans of campy song picturizations would love this, it features Mumtaz in everything from a fish inspired evening gown to a space rocket scientist

and the fun 'lovely lovely hai sama'

Paisa Vasool rating: 6/10