Gumrah 1963

Meena [Mala Sinha] and Kamla [Nirupa Roy] are two daughters of a wealthy Nainital resident. Kamla lives with her established attorney husband, Barrister Ashok Kumar, in Mumbai, while Meena is in love with artist-singer Rajendra, Sunil Dutt. When Kamla returns to Nainital for her delivery, she becomes aware of Meena’s affair and plans to marry Meena off to Rajendra. Ashok, unaware of the affair, remains oblivious. Before Kamla can act, she dies after falling off a cliff near her father’s home. Afraid that her sister’s children will be ill-treated by a stepmother, Meena is compelled to marry Ashok; Ashok does not know about her love for Rajendra. For a while, things go well until she meets Rajendra again. He follows her to Mumbai, and they begin meeting secretly. Leela, Shashikala, a woman who claims to be Rajendra’s wife, catches Meena and proceeds to blackmail her. Meena’s life comes to a crisis, and she is forced to choose between Rajendra and Ashok. Later Meena realizes that Leela is not Rajendra’s wife, and in a moment of anger she tries to kill Leela, but her husband Ashok stops her. Ashok tells Meena that Leela is his secretary and that he told his secretary to do that. Ashok tells Meena that she can go with Rajendra. Rajendra comes to Ashok’s home, but Meena tells him there is no Meena, only Mrs. Ashok, and she asks him to forget her. Then she apologizes to Ashok and Ashok forgives her. The film ends with the message “And they lived happily thereafter”. The film examines the conflict of a married woman who is torn between her feelings for her lover and her duty to her husband and family, a bold theme for the times (1963). The same conflict is examined again in several South Indian films like Abhinandana (1988) and also the 2005 Akshay Kumar-starrer Bewafaa.

And they lived happily thereafter.