Bhooty Call: Mahal

Mahal (1949) has all the trappings of a Bollywood ghost story: an abandoned mansion, a mysterious woman singing at night, and scary stock footage of bats and snakes. It’s really a tragedy rather than a horror movie, though. Just like Hamlet and Oedipus and Othello, Mahal‘s protagonist is a potentially decent guy whose life is consumed and ultimately destroyed by a single overwhelming flaw; in this case, he’s the most gullible man in the world.

On a dark and stormy night, Hari Shankar (Ashok Kumar) visits the mysterious old mansion his father bought at auction. He convinces the kindly old gardener, the mansion’s sole caretaker, to tell the story of the tragic lovers who lived and died in the mansion thirty years ago, then sends said old gardener to tell his friend Shrinath (Kanu Roy) that he’s in town. On foot. At two in the morning. Through a rainstorm. And Shrinath lives four miles away.

Once the gardener leaves, Hari discovers a portrait which looks very much like him. He’s already half convinced that he’s the reincarnation of the doomed lover who built the mansion when he hears a mysterious woman’s voice singing. He follows the voice, and manages to catch a few glimpses of the beautiful woman (Madhubala) singing, but she vanishes every time. Whatever she is, though, she’s not a hallucination, because Shrinath, who arrived just in time, can see her too.

Shrinath convinces Hari to leave the house, but he can’t stay away for long. he returns, and speaks to the woman, who calls herself Kamini. She explains that yes, she’s a ghost, and he is the reincarnation of her lost love. Now they can finally be together, but first Hari must kill himself (which he gleefully agrees to do) in which case they can be united in death, or he can kill the gardener’s daughter, allowing Kamini to take over her body so that they can be united in life. Hari hesitates for a split second, then agrees to do whatever Kamini asks of him.

Before Hari can kill anyone, though, Shrinath returns, accompanied by Hari’s father (M. Kumar). They take Hari away and quietly marry him off to Ranjana (Vijayalaxmi), hoping that he will settle down and forget all this ghost nonsense.

Unfortunately, Hari can’t forget this ghost nonsense. On the wedding night, just as he’s about to lift Ranjana’s bridal veil, he hears a clock and is immediately consumed by thoughts of Kamini. He decides to take his wife to a far away place where he can love her, free of the distractions of his imagined past, and, after an odd interlude in which they watch a tribal woman suspected of adultery undergo a trial by knife, they settle in an old creepy cabin in the mountains which is infested with stock footage bats and snakes and unconvincing crow puppets.

(Trial by knife is just like trial by fire, except that instead of setting you on fire, they throw knives at you. If none of the knives hit you, then you’re innocent. As the basis for a legal system, I can see some flaws.  Also, if she survives the trial, you're legally obligated to kiss her.)

After two years, Hari still hasn’t lifted his wife’s bridal veil, literally or metaphorically. Ranjana is living in a desolate cabin in the middle of nowhere, isolated from nearly all human contact, with a husband who completely ignores her and will not tell her why; it’s hard to blame her for taking desperate action, even though it ends badly for pretty much everyone.

Mahal is considered one of the great classics of Indian cinema, and I can understand why; the cinematography is great, and it features attractive, doomed people making lovely speeches at each other. On the other hand, it’s difficult for me, sitting in my living room in suburban Utah in the year 2011, to really understand Hari, or “Kamini”, who isn’t exactly a ghost and turns out to have a lot more in common with Hari than either of them realize. These are Tragedy People; they make horrible decisions, then speak beautifully about Fate when things go wrong.

And while he is indeed incredibly gullible, that’s really Hari’s tragic flaw. He knows he’s a Tragedy Person – he wants to be a Tragedy Person. As soon as he sees the portrait, he’s instantly consumed by the idea of being the tragic hero haunted by the ghost of his lost love. It’s easier to pine for the wife you lost in your last life than it is to get to know and learn to live with your wife in this one. Being fifteen for your whole life must be exhausting; it’s no wonder he dies young.