When Raj Khosla’s Mera Saaya pulled off a tw that can be best described as refined Abbas-Mustan
Sadhana, the actor who sported a haircut resembling Audrey Hepburn, which eventually came to be known as Sadhana-cut in India, was known for her unique beauty, her fashion sense and her choice of films. Sadhana was quite selective about her films, which is why despite being wildly popular, she appeared in far lesser movies as compared to her contemporaries. The actor was at her peak in the 1960s was the time when Sadhana was at her peak. She had struck gold with films like Woh Kaun Thi, Waqt and Mere Mehboob, among others, and she got to show off her acting chops in one of the finest films of her career – Raj Khosla’s Mera Saaya.
Mera Saaya, starring Sadhana in a double role along with the ever-charming Sunil Dutt, was a mystery film and saw Khosla pulling off another engaging thriller after CID, Kala Pani and Woh Kaun Thi (also starring Sadhana in a double role). Khosla, who is somehow not credited as much as his contemporaries, knew how to weave a thriller, planting just the right kind of red herrings in a story. Enough for you to pick on the clues, but not so much that you can sense the climax a mile away – and it was this kind of restraint that worked wonders in one of his finest films, Mera Saaya.
Raj Khosla (left) with Sunil Dutt and Sadhana on the set of Mera Saaya.
For the unversed, Mera Saaya is the story of a man (played Dutt) whose wife (played Sadhana) passes away in his arms, until a few months later, a lookalike claims to be his wife and has enough proof to back her claim. As the man drowns in his sorrow, we go on a ride with him to various flashbacks where he had a perfect life, with his perfect wife in a sprawling mansion. We witness the love story of the newlyweds Geeta and Rakesh who are lunging about in Udaipur’s Lake Palace, which is shown to be his residence in the film. With Lata Mangeshkar’s magical voice singing ‘Nainon Mein Badra Chhaye’, you start off on an empathetic journey with him as he can’t look at a corner in his house without thinking of his dead wife.
Mera Saaya soon turns into a courtroom drama where the judge decides that to reclaim her identity, the woman in question will have to find evidence. The cops found her with a gang of dacoits who called her Nisha so Rakesh still believes that the dacoits are trying to take advantage of him. The woman in question, meanwhile, reveals intimate details of their marriage in the court, shares secrets that no one else could have ever known, but when confronted with the question of her journal, she falls silent. Rakesh is the lawyer in his own case and is constantly in a dilemma while pretending that he is thoroughly convinced that the one who died was his wife.
The film’s final act pulls off one of those classic Raj Khosla moves, which could be described to today’s viewers as a more refined version of an Abbas-Mustan tw, and offers a conclusion that has been planted along the way but is absolutely not obvious to a first-time viewer.
The film’s famous song ‘Mera Saaya Saath Hoga’ was recently brought back to our memory after Lata Mangeshkar’s death as Amul paid a tribute to the legendary singer. It is said that when the film played in theatres, the audience threw coins on the screen when ‘Jhumka Gire Re’ played. With lyrics Raja Mehdi Ali Khan, Mera Saaya’s album is still known as one of the classics from the 1960s.
Watching it in 2022, the film doesn’t shock you in any way, but it certainly gives room to the possibility of creating thrillers that aren’t obvious from the word go.
