We don’t get a chance to learn why the sight of the dagger has shaken Firdaus so, because just then, an interloper appears. Where on earth has the princess been able to lay her hands on this dagger? There’s obviously some mystery here. When Firdaus sees the dagger, he staggers back, confused and puzzled. With it comes a splendid jewelled dagger. When Firdaus has laid low the last of his competitors, Ruma summons him to bestow on him the title of Rustom-e-Rome. He’s so magnificent that even Ruma is quite bedazzled. In the fights, one man soon manages to trounce all his opponents: Firdaus. Ruma is right now presiding over a tournament in which contestants generally batter each other until one emerges victor-something like gladiatorial fights, though mostly minus the weaponry. Jodia is ruled by the beautiful Princess Ruma (Vijaya Choudhary). Firdaus is big and brawny and seems to be pretty untrammelled by a foster-father or any other foster relatives. Years pass, and Firdaus has now grown up (into Dara Singh, yippee!). Darvesh Baba, who happens to be present, suggests that the boy be named Firdaus. The king summarily hands him over to his rescuer, telling the soldier to bring up the boy. Scipio has brought him to court, asking what’s to be done with the child (nobody knows that this is the prince). The queen’s elder son, who’d fallen off the cliff, has been rescued by a passing soldier named Scipio. The queen agrees and stays on in Darvesh Baba’s house. The queen doesn’t tell Darvesh Baba who she is, and he asks her to be like a sister to him and bring up his poor motherless baby daughter, Shabnam. Darvesh Baba makes no attempt to rescue the child, but seeing the devastated mother make for the cliff-edge to fling herself off, goes and stops her, and brings her to his own home. The bandits go off with the little prince, and are watched-unknown to them-by Darvesh Baba (Rajan Kapoor?), a prophet with a wonderfully gnarled staff. For some reason best known to himself, the leader of the bandits decides to take the baby and bring him up among the bandits. …and, while she’s been away by the edge of the cliff, weeping her eyes out, her younger son too.Ī bunch of passing bandits, led by a man in a really badly-crafted mask, happens to come upon the toddler, who’s woken up and begun crying. ![]() He runs up against a cobra, and is so frightened, he loses his balance and goes over a cliff-just in time for his mother to see him fall off. She manages to get them out into the countryside and lies down to sleep with them in some ruins.Ĭome morning, and the elder child wakes up and wanders off by himself. The queen, therefore, gathers up her two sons-both clad in sad-looking frocks. The queen is inclined to weep while the enemy takes over, but a wise officer advises her to save her two sons and escape through the tunnel that leads from the palace, out of Chhaama/Jaama. “Suleiman is my-” the king begins to blurt out, and then cops it before he can impart that secret. The king’s sole regret as he’s gasping his last, is that if only Suleiman had been here-“Who is Suleiman?” asks the queen. ![]() They’ve laid Chhaama/Jaama low, along with its king, who stumbles back into his palace just in time to tell the distraught queen (Rajrani?) that all is lost. The kingdom of Chhaama has been attacked by enemies-who, we don’t know. Rustom-e-Rome begins in the midst of an invasion. And it’s the same with this film: a quintessential Dara Singh showcase, not much in the way of storyline, but everybody seems to have had a lot of fun. I confess I watched my first Dara Singh starrer only a couple of years back, and I was struck by the sweetness of the man: there was a certain naïve charm about him that seemed to shine through even onscreen. A synonym for formidable strength, for something like the Rock of Gibraltar: utterly immovable, impossible to defeat. Despite that, Dara Singh was a very familiar figure and name. Somehow, I never ended up watching any Dara Singh movies. Dara Singh, the wrestler-turned-actor who made such a big niche for himself in a slew of films, especially in the 1960s, passed away on July 12, 2012.Īs a child, nearly all my movie-watching was restricted to what was aired on Indian TV-Doordarshan-(and later, the few TV channels that showed Hindi movies). ![]() Another tribute, to yet another great who’s passed on.
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