Everyone who has been to a movie, has often thought a different ending to the story, particularly if it has been a sad or tragic one. Or people have made up stories in their mind, taking off from where the movie story-line ends.
Going back to movies that touched my heart, I remember Mili, the story of a cancer-stricken girl flying off to Switzerland in the last scene, with her newly-wed husband. I remember people talking about a sequel to the film in which she returns completely cured, though sequels weren't the in-thing in the 1970s in Bollywood. But then cancer was considered incurable and film-makers had spun many a stories around cancer that had tragic ends - Anand and Safar to name a few. Anand too had an impact on me and I too was waiting for Babu Moshai (Amitabh Bachchan) to return in the last scene with the miraculous homeopathic medicine that would have cured Anand (Rajesh Khanna).
Another Rajesh Khanna-Amitabh Bachchan starrer, and it is a pity they acted in only two films together, Namak Haram, had an end that did not please me. Why did Rajesh Khanna's character get killed? He could have easily reconciled the interests of the workers with that of the owners of the business with his good friend played by Amitabh. But story-tellers and film directors in particular, love creating tragic situations that add drama to the plot, which also sells.
While on Amitabh Bachhan, it was beyond me to fathom why Parveen Babi's character had to be killed while she was pregnant in Deewar. I have often conjured a scenario wherein a dying Anita (the character player by Babi) is found by a police party on the trail of Vijay (played by Amitabh) and taken to a hospital where she gives birth to a baby girl, who is later on adopted and brought up by Vijay's younger brother Ravi (Shashi Kapoor) and his wife Veera (Neetu Singh). Being overfed on Hindi movie plots, a movie buff like me can be pardoned for thinking up this filmi story.
Another Rajesh Khanna starrer that I wished had a different ending was Bawarchi. Why couldn't Raghu (Rajesh Khanna) have continued to serve in the Shanti Kunj, while we were all having so much of fun?
Tragic ends can be contagious. When Vasu (Kamal Hasan) and Sapna (Rati Agnihotri) are forced to commit suicide as the families are still not ready to accept the a north-south marriage in Ek Duje Ke Liye, it resulted in a number of couples following suit. The director was forced to announce that he had shot a happy ending to the movie, and chose the sad one for more impact. To make the suicide look inevitable, the heroine is raped and thus has no option left, while the hero is brutally thrashed by the villain's goons. The happy ending should have been, according to me, the two families accepting the couple and they having lived happily ever after. But then the movie wasn't made by me and neither had I financed it.
