But what – will there be any celebration? People have forgotten even the name of the film which earned 200 times of its cost.

The difference between cinema and politics is that in politics everything is remembered but in cinema people forget every fact. For example, people have forgotten the 1975 film “Jai Santoshi Maa”. It is also forgotten that next year this film is reaching its 50th year. It was not a film, it was a craze, just like ‘The Kashmir File’ that came in these days. There is a motto behind ‘The Kashmir File’ and ‘The Kerala Story’ but ‘Jai Santoshi Maa’ without any motto (meaning) spread across the country as a wave with purely religious thinking. Santoshi Maa should be worshiped in every house. The songs of the film were being played on every street corner – “Madat karo Santoshi Mata…” Made at a cost of only 12 lakhs, this film has earned 25 crores, ie – 200 times more than its cost.

‘Jai Santoshi Maa’ is the story of a devotee of Goddess Santoshi Maa, Satyavati (Kanan Kaushal) and her husband Brij Mohan (Ashish Kumar) being subjected to atrocities. Satyavati’s father (Bharat Bhushan) and no one else is able to help her. She has great faith in her mother Santoshi (Anita Kanwal) who keeps her safe from every trouble. Even Narad ji (Mahipal) instigates the Tridevis (Lakshmi, Parvati, Saraswati) against Goddess Santoshi to test Satyavati. The suffering of a helpless woman goes on increasing. The songs of the film also had a big contribution in the success of this film. Pandit Pradeep, Manna Dey and Mahendra Kapoor also lent their voices under the music direction of C.Arjun. Most of the songs sung by Usha Mangeshkar made her reach the masses. She was the best singer of that year.

The songs of ‘Jai Santoshi Maa’ still give goosebumps – ‘Karti hoon tumhara brat main accept karo maa’, ‘Yahan wahan jahan kahan mat poochho kahan kahan’, ‘Main to aarti utaroon re’, ‘Madat karo Santoshi Mata’ ‘, ‘Don’t cry don’t cry today Radhike’, ‘Jai Santoshi Mata’ etc. Seeing the immense success of this film, another film was made in 2006 with the same name and a TV serial was also made. Adaptations of this film were also released in many regional languages but that did not happen again.

In 1975, when it was the era of Dharmendra, Sanjeev Kumar, Rajesh Khanna, at the same time the film ‘Sholay’ also came, a film with huge budget and multi-star cast, but the uproar created by a small film with unknown cast was not the answer. Satram Rohra was the producer of this film and Vijay Sharma the director. It is said that Rohra, the producer of the film had started the film but he had no money. Distributor Kedar Sharma had completed the film by investing 11 lakhs.There is a lot of discussion about Sanatan Dharma these days, but today’s generation may be surprised to hear that when the film ‘Jai Santoshi Maa’ came, sour food was stopped in the houses on Friday because it was the day of Santoshi Brat and most of the women in every household eat Santoshi. Mother’s fast was observed. Prasad was distributed outside the talkies after the show was over. The people of the village used to go to the talkies barefoot… Now this film is about to complete 50 years! People of Bollywood should tell that celebrations happen not only in politics but also in films.

– Translated by Muskan Taneja