Chameli
From the black-and-white days of Pather Panchali to colour-splashed contemporary films like Chameli and Raincoat, art house films have skilfully used rains as a player.
Apple-cheeked Kareena is a rather improbable prostitute, but then the film is pretty much a Pretty Woman-like fantasy. Aggressive but golden-hearted streetwalker Kareena meets an investment banker (Rahul Bose) in Mumbai's Flora Fountain one rainy night... and love blossoms.
As Kareena frolics in the rain and helps out people galore, the man realises that the prostitute has retained her pocket of grace in the midst of the slime of her surroundings. Bose has his own demons to fight (he lost his wife to an accident on a rainy night), but director Sudhir Mishra uses the rains to communicate his eventual admiration for Kareena’s philosophy -- on the streets she is vulnerable to the elements, yet she exults in them.
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