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Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi

Late on a rainy night, a car breaks down. The lone passenger, a woman, sees a garage nearby. Drenched and shivering, she knocks on the door. There’s no response. In desperation, she pounds on it several times. A man finally appears.

If this were a contemporary film, the situation would be suspenseful, sexual, or perhaps the start of a horror movie.
But in 1958, this constituted the setting of one of the greatest meet-cutes in Hindi cinema.

Manu the mechanic first tries to send Renu away. He wants to go back to sleep. He thinks she is a museebat. But when she pleads for help, he helps her push the car into the garage and starts to work on it. He offers her tea, which she declines. And then, as he tinkers beneath the hood, to lift her foul mood, he sings the delightful ‘Ek Ladki Bheegi Bhagi Si’. S.D. Burman’s song with Majrooh Sultanpuri’s lyrics is so lilting and mischievous that over half a century later, DJs are still playing remixed versions in nightclubs. We know that, sooner rather than later, Renu will succumb to Manu’s eccentric charm.

Exuberance is the operating principle of Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi. The film has three real-life brothers—Ashok, Kishore and Anoop Kumar—playing the brothers Birju, Manu and Jaggu, who own and operate the Mohan Brothers Garage. They live together, work together and sometimes even wear the same clothes (think of them as the cinematic ancestors of the real-life Burmawalla brothers, directors Abbas and Mustan, and editor Hussain, who dressed in identical white clothes, and together created blockbusters such as Khiladi, Baazigar and the Race franchise).

In one pivotal scene, Birju, Jaggu and Manu are wearing matching striped night suits and eating dinner. Manu is in a funk because Renu is upset with him. As the eldest, Birju, advises Manu to stay away from women. Jaggu tries to make peace by echoing Birju. The scene is sombre—Manu is troubled and, for the first time, is questioning Birju’s anti-women stance. And yet director Satyen Bose manages to inflect the scene with humour. Even the beat of the dialogue provides laughs—the conversation ricochets between the three like a ping-pong ball. You wonder if real-life dinners at the Kumar household were anything like this.

Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi was conceived of by Kishore Kumar (who was reportedly a fan of the Marx Brothers comedies). Bose, who was roped in at the last minute after director Kamal Majumdar exited the project, was credited with directing the film, but it is widely believed that the creative reins remained in the hands of Kishore Kumar.

Whatever the case, the casting was inspired. Ashok Kumar as the champion boxer Birju has an easy authority. Birju hates women (we discover why later in the film). He wants to shield his brothers from heartbreak, so he enforces a blanket ban: even posters of women aren’t allowed in the garage. Anoop Kumar, as the middle brother Jaggu, makes a terrific buffer—the hapless Jaggu mediates between his two more domineering brothers by agreeing with both. And the masterstroke is Kishore Kumar as Manu. The singer-actor-composer-director-producer-writer was also a masterful funny man. His onscreen personality was inherently comedic—even straight-faced and standing still, he could make you smile. Kishore Kumar makes Manu so gloriously goofy and endearing that you never question how Renu, rich, beautiful and successful, could have fallen in love with the garage mechanic. The clincher is that he makes her laugh (even in a supposedly serious scene in which they are chasing the bad guy), and what woman can resist that?

Renu is also a singular sensation. For one thing, she’s played by Madhubala, whose luminous beauty is more pronounced in black-and-white—perhaps because there is less to distract us from her face. For another, Renu is independent (she is a dancer, though we never see her perform) and she has agency—she propels their relationship, going to Manu’s house, taking him out on a date (they go on a picnic). He has far more familial restrictions than she does. Renu’s hobbies are ‘riding, swimming and motor driving’ and she is also braver than Manu. When they are in precarious situations, he mostly just repeats her name, saying ‘Renu, Renu, Renu’ (which is hilarious). She’s the one with the plan.

Which comes in handy because they are up against the conniving Raja Hardayal Singh, played by K.N. Singh with a single curl arranged artfully on his forehead. K.N. Singh was one of Hindi cinema’s most civilized baddies. He brought a studied sophistication to his villainy—here, he first appears dressed in a suit and bowtie, and later can be seen conniving while draped in a silken dressing gown. The Raja is interested in Renu for her money and concocts a twisted scheme to get at it. Of course, Renu and Manu foil his dastardly plan.

Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi includes a murder and a character who has been abused and imprisoned, but Bose and his writers, Ramesh Pant and Govind Moonis, don’t let these dark notes overwhelm the film’s raison d’être: to make you laugh. Even the titles—animated sketches that reflect the credit on screen—serve this aim. So ‘Produced by’ appears with the sketch of a nurse carrying a baby in a maternity ward and ‘Directed by’ features a policeman directing a car, which hits a pole. All of this is set to a lively medley of the songs in the film.

S.D. Burman’s brilliant music ratchets up the effervescence: the film begins with the three brothers in their car, a 1928 jalopy named Champion, singing ‘Babu Samjho Ishare’ as they race down the wide and relatively unpopulated roads of Bombay. This first sequence sets the tone of joyous zaniness, which never falters. Even if you watch just a couple of the songs—‘Main Sitaron Ka Tarana’ or ‘Hum They Voh Thi’—you’ll come away smiling.

Comedy rarely gets the respect it deserves. In the 1941 Hollywood film Sullivan’s Travels, director Preston Sturges tells the story of a successful film director, John Sullivan, who has earned fame and riches making comedies, but now wants to make a serious film, or as he puts it, ‘a picture with dignity’. Since he knows little about the lives of the downtrodden, he becomes a hobo and embarks on a journey to experience hardship. His travels eventually lead him to appreciate the value of comedy. He says, ‘There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that that’s all some people have? It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing in this cock-eyed caravan.’

Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi works like a strong shot of optimism and cheer. You can watch the film on YouTube.