Bigri Naslain (1983)
Cast: Mohammad Ali, Rani, Shahid, Bahar, Aslam Parvez, Saqi
Director: Mohd Tariq
Synopsis: A fantastic slice of demented feminism with Bahar as Lollywood’s own Mrs. Robinson. Brilliant.
Reviewed by: Omar Khan

The film opens with Bahar and her clubbing friends celebrating at their local den of iniquity when she receives a telegram from home with the shocking news that delights her. Hina (Bahar), who has changed her name to the far more stylish and society-friendly Honey, learns that her father has suffered a third heart attack. The news sends her into throes of delight as she foresees a life of untold luxury ahead of her once her old man kicks the bucket, and it doesn’t look as though it will be too long now. Barely able to conceal her excitement, Honey leaves her friend Mr. Billion (desi name: Khudabaksh) and boyfriend Goofy to make sure she is at home to receive her millions once the old fogy keels over.

Once at home, Bahar chides the servants for treating her like a Burqa-clad old lady. She lets fly a volley of abuse at the lot of them and accuses them of sponging off her father’s wealth. When she refuses to even look in on her ailing father, claiming an allergy to sick and old-fashioned people, the old man crawls over to her room to say hello only to find Honey using a giant syringe, injecting herself with a gallon of Grade A Smack! When the old man confronts her, she lets him have it, leaving him squirming on the floor, having suffered another massive heart attack. Instead of helping or calling for help,

Honey watches her father writhe in agony, hoping it won’t be long before she's counting her millions.

After the old man’s death, Honey refuses to partake in any funeral rites, choosing to lounge around the house in her revealing jim-jams, guzzling copious amounts of whiskey straight from the bottle. The loyal servants are fired one by one, and the place is turned into a den of heathen Westernized debauchery, bereft of any shred of morality or ethics.

Honey, like Madonna/Esther, refuses to grow old, insisting age is nothing but a number and years later, she is busy trying to pick up her teenage daughter’s classmates as her latest sex objects. All this has come about due to her father’s short-sighted insistence that his daughter be sent to the finest schools in Europe for a “Western education.” A certain tried and tested, time-honoured recipe for disaster. Bahar even taunted her father before he died, reminding him the day he sent her to Europe was the day he lost her forever, and now he was to pay for his folly; it was only natural.

After waking up with a terrible hangover and throwing out some family mourners, Bahar attacks her father’s most loyal and trusted aide (Saqi), who accuses her of murdering her father. When Saqi is chucked out, his family member, Mohammad Ali, decides to take on the rampaging Honey and approach her for justice, and she hurls a metallic vase at his head and shows him the door.

Meanwhile, Honey is in a foul mood, informed by her lawyer that she has to be married to receive the millions promised in her father’s will. When Mohammad Ali confronts Bahar at home, he is astonished when she proposes to him (to get at the loot), and he accepts, keeping in mind his family’s enormous financial hardships.

Mohammad Ali’s family is horrified at the wife he has chosen, and they become estranged from him and Honey. A year passes, and Mohammad Ali is busy handling Honey’s massive business interests. Still, one day he overhears her talking about her sexually liberated lifestyle

Bigri Naslain to her ex-boyfriend, and Mohammad Ali guns the fellow down in a murderous rage!

Now Ali is behind bars, and Honey can enjoy her inheritance alone. However, she has a daughter as a minor inconvenience. Honey hides that Rani is her daughter, introducing her to people as her younger sister, as she prowls teenage parties like a hungry cougar seeking its piece of flesh.

A sexually liberated older woman who is a pure hedonist and doesn’t give a damn about convention or customs and society’s morals – a desi version of Mrs. Robinson – Evil personified in the context of Asian morality.

Daughter Rani follows in mother Honey’s debauched Westernized footsteps – a pill-popping heathen with the loosest of morals, if any. A fellow student (and estranged cousin), Shahid finds LSD capsules in Rani’s books and accuses her of being hooked on deadly “rockets,” as the drug is known in local parlance. Little does Shahid know that LSD is a mere appetizer for her diet of heavy-duty drugs, in which an oversized syringe of heroin is the main course.

Fantastic events unfold; murder, rape, drugs, incest, and electric shock therapy. Sister Honey is forced to go underground with a posse of her henchmen. Rani is a chip off the old block, a habitual LSD user and dope fiend. She is deeply affected by a moralizing and life-changing lecture delivered by Shahid in his tight trousers, chest-revealing stylish designer shirt and fabulous lamb chop sideburns that even Elvis would have envied. Shahid wows her with his anti-western diatribe, and Rani becomes a saintly Taliban apologist overnight, having seen the light.

Sister Honey palms her off to a friend, Mr. Billion, to the daughter’s horror, for lots of money. Now a dope fiend, Rani has the scheming Mr. Billion pulling her strings with his supply of heroin. Likewise, he has Sister Honey and her squad where he wants them, in his hands.

Fortunately, Rani is rescued from the fiend’s clutches by goody- two-shoes Shahid, who saves the day. In a chilling climax, good manages to prevail over evil. The message is driven home in no uncertain terms: anything and everything Western or modern, is utterly evil and will bring doom and destruction of the worst kind on those fools who embrace such a heathen lifestyle.

Bigree Naslain is a massive classic of fanatical bashing of everything western; Morals, Lifestyle, Education – and outright damning of everything of Western Civilization itself. Bahar dominates the film, which sadly flopped dismally as the evil Mrs. Robinson clone – an ageing ex-siren now more of a hag who refuses to let go of her youth. A woman strong enough to stand up in a man-dominated world and demand equal rights and her right to be a sexual predator at the age of 50, as almost all men of that age. How many 50-year-old women do we see marrying 18-year-old boys? Yet it is widespread to see girls of 15 being forced to marry doddering older men over five times their age.

Funnily enough, if Sister Honey had been a man, her behaviour would be normal and quite acceptable. Nonetheless, there is no room for a woman as aggressive, independent-minded, and sexually liberated as Honey—the ultimate cougar.

Bigree Naslain is a not-to-be-missed socio-drama with a deranged message prescribing the most remarkable sense of nationalism.