Arth shattered the illusions of ‘Made in Heaven’ weddings 40 years ago; Shabana Azmi needed no self-love monologue to declare her independence

Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil and Kulbhushan Kharbanda in Mahesh Bhatt’s Arth. (Photo: Express Archives)

Pooja moves out of her husband’s house, which she learns was paid for by the girlfriend, and starts living in a hostel. After a few uncomfortable encounters, she finds herself a job. And when in the middle of all of this she finds a man who could potentially love her the way her husband never did, she is actually surprised. Unlike Made in Heaven, Pooja doesn’t have two wedding planners constantly pushing her to live the life she was meant to enjoy but like a lot of brides on the show, she is yet to discover her self worth. Through the 2-hour runtime of the movie, Pooja goes from being a housewife who is emotionally and financially dependent on her husband, to being a woman who doesn’t have to ask for money from anyone and also realises that maybe being emotionally dependent on a man isn’t the best idea.

When she meets Raj Kiran’s Raj who falls in love with her in her distraught state, she appreciates his support but also realises that she can’t make the same mistakes again, even though she knows that Raj and Inder have nothing in common. Inder makes Pooja sign the divorce papers on her birthday and Raj prepares for a special birthday dinner. As Raj starts getting more successful at work, he makes more time for Pooja as opposed to Inder who started ignoring his wife as soon as he got some success.

Shabana Azmi and Raj Kiran in Mahesh Bhatt’s Arth.

What Pooja realises through her metamorphosis is the idea of self love. If she was a character in 2023, she would possibly have a long monologue about loving herself in the end, much like Sarah Jane Dias’ Julie in the last episode of Made in Heaven. But Pooja just tells Raj that her newly discovered independence has given her wings and she isn’t ready to share those with anyone yet.

The idea of self love has always existed but back in 1980s, we hardly saw it in the movies. It is this idea of self love that pushes Pooja to deny her husband Inder’s offer of getting back together, which is not something that we often see in movies. In fact, just a few years before this, Basu Chatterjee’s 1977 film Swami, also starring Shabana Azmi, had the husband and wife getting back together in the end despite the wife being in love with her ex for almost the entire run of the film.

Even recent films like Anurag Kashyap’s Manmarziyan or the Sanjay Leela Bhansali film Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam function on the principle that people have to end up with a partner. Filmy love triangles like to celebrate the couple that ends up together with the third person still in search for their true love but Arth focused on the woman who chose to be alone to focus on herself.

Arth is considered as one of the landmark films of the 1980s, and one of the best films by director Mahesh Bhatt and 40 years later, there is still no Hindi film that has truly understood that falling in love with yourself is perhaps the best kind of love story.