New Delhi: In Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’, a young girl, Ganga (Alia Bhatt), is sold into a brothel after being brought to Mumbai by her lover with the promise of marriage. In the same vein, though still in a different way, Najma (Smita Patil) is supposedly stopped from engaging in prostitution by her admirer with the promise of being married, which never actually materialises in ‘Bazaar’. Hindi cinema has tried to show the plight of sex workers in an array of ways, whether it be through the inclusion of aesthetic and lyrical portrayal in Bhansali films, with the crudeness of Anurag Kahyap’s ‘Dev D’, or a more intimate narrative like Sudhir Mishra directed ‘Chameli’.
However, Sagar Sarhadi helmed 1982 drama, centered in Hyderabad, his directorial debut, exposes the reality of bride buying in India, a practice in which young girls are sold by desperate parents to opulent Indian overseas residents in the Gulf. The film is once an intense romantic drama and at times an exploration of despair and hopelessness.
The movie was part of a new era in Hindi cinema that eschewed the extravagant and predictable approach of mainstream films and sought to go beyond the hackneyed narrative and its melodramatic portrayal. ‘Bazaar’ starts off as a story of young Najma, the family’s “golden hen”, succumbs to patriarchal norms and drags herself into sex work in a bid to uphold the honour of the Nawabi lineage.
In one of the first scenes, Najma’s mother tries to persuade her that getting a job will destroy their family’s last vestiges of dignity whereas prostitution, carried out discreetly from society’s eyes, will keep them fed and retain their reputations. As absurd as it may sound, Hyderabadi parents allegedly auctioned their teenage, virgin daughters to the highest bidders, making this tale a reality. These hapless girls are then cursed to live their entire lives with much older “husbands” and in keeping with their whims.
As the mistress of Akhtar (Bharat Kapoor), who has made vows of marriage but hasn’t been able to follow through on them for different reasons, Najma (Smita Patil) has been staying in a modest Bombay flat for some time. She flees her home with the hope of marrying her beloved but ends up in another prison where, ironically, she finds herself compelled to live the life she had intended to leave behind.
Najma, an innocent target of a vicious tradition, unknowingly and reluctantly engages in the same practise so as to fulfil her lifelong desire to get a husband and start a family. She finds herself in a predicament where she must find Shakir Hussain (B R Chopra) a young bride. Hussain is an ageing NRI who secretly yearns to marry a woman like Najma in exchange for a hefty commission. She agrees to it despite her better judgement being clouded by greed, and Shakir Hussain locks in on a young teen named Shabnam (Supriya Pathak).
Meanwhile, Shabnam, a cheerful teenager, has her life completely changed in a matter of seconds. Shabnam finds herself in a scenario where only she can lift her family out of poverty even though she dreams of marrying the love of her life, Sajju, played by Farooq Shaikh.
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