Bhowani Junction By Chauburji | Published: April 14, 2011

In the April of 1955, Lahore was shaken by an extraordinary event and for a few dizzying days, residents from the City of Gardens converged on the railway station to catch a glimpse of one of Hollywood’s most glamorous pair - Ava Gardner and Stewart Granger. A part of the station itself bore a strange look with lights, reflective mirrors, filming equipment and the awesome atmosphere that usually prevails on movie sets, for this was what it was - the locale for the shooting of the great film, Bhowani Junction.

Adapted from a best selling novel by John Masters, the film revolves, (and I am using the present tense, as the film continues to thrill old movie buffs till date), around the small city of Bhowani in the years immediately before British withdrawal from India and the effects this event is having on the lives of the Eurasian community. Directed by George Cukor, the movie stars Ms Gardner as Victoria Jones, a beautiful and vivacious Eurasian woman recently released from the Nursing Service of the British Army and Mr Granger, who plays the role of Lieutenant Colonel Rodney Savage, the dashing and handsome British Commanding Officer of a Frontier Force Battalion.

Victoria, the daughter of a Eurasian engine driver man, is involved with Patrick, another Eurasian railway man, before she joins the army as a nurse. However, her feelings grow ambiguous, as she experiences the British Army culture and on her return to Bhowani after her release from service, she views her community and her relationship with Patrick in a different perspective. In a grim turn of events, our heroine unintentionally kills a British officer from Colonel Savage’s unit, in a bid to defend herself from being raped. She is helped in concealing this matter by Ranjit, a nationalist Sikh, who aims to induct her into the Sikh faith in order to marry her. Her inclination towards conversion and engagement to a Sikh is an attempt to become assimilated in the Indian society since the British rule is on its way out and she cannot come to terms with her Eurasian status. It is in this confused emotional state that she escapes from the Sikhs and into the arms of Rodney Savage, who becomes her lover. Soon Victoria realises that she cannot escape her origins and chooses to return to Patrick. Unfortunately, Patrick dies heroically towards the end of the film before the marriage can take place.