Sai Paranjpe's Chashme Baddoor (1981) It was in the summer of 2001 that I ran into Sai Paranjpe's Chashme Baddoor while channel surfing at a friend's place in Madras. We flipped to 'The Vendor of Sweets' on Sony after watching the unforgettable Chamko washing powder demo and a sudden recollection of that scene made me get the DVD after all these years!



Rakesh Bedi automatically brought to mind the hilarious Ghaploo Aur Banta series that ran in Apr-May 1987 on DD's morning transmission immediately after its launch. Coming to think of it, I do wonder it was Ravi Vaswani who played second fiddle as Banta to Bedi as Ghaploo in the serial as well. In fact, one of the episodes featured Bedi getting drenched by water flung from an apartment terrace, which is a very obvious spoof of a scene that took place in the movie.



Farooque Shaikh as the Delhi School of Economics grad holds our attention from the outset while Bedi and Vaswani provide the twists. Javed Jaffrey plays a very natural paanwallah not averse to doling out advice in addition to reproof. While the movie has comic moments aplenty, the sight of the duo taking to their heels when Deepti Naval rings the doorbell takes the cake and is sure to stir up memories from our own past :) Yesudas has a couple of good numbers.



Kapdon ke liye behthareen saabun, azmaiyye bar bar, lagathaar. Chamko!  ¶  9 comments