Resurgence of the Retarded!!

Every now and then I see or read something which makes me laugh(and I'm not talking about Balaji Telefilms' soaps here) at the sheer frivolity of its content. I recently read this piece in the Sify news column section where the writer is thrashing the Bachhan family as 'anti-woman' and what not. In fact, the writer thinks Mr. Bachhan is not even worthy of being a 'role model'...hmmm..interesting. What are his reasons..one may ask..? Well...the whole 'Sankat Mochan' deal for one, and the fact that Mr. Bachhan has not opened a charitable hospital as yet! Whoa!..that's just amazing.



I am a manglik myself and believe you me, when I say that I did almost as much for my wife as Aishwarya had to do for the safety of Abhishek Bachhan..lol. Did I believe in it? NO...but it doesn't harm me much to visit a couple of temples, offer my prayers to God so that all my elders and loved ones are satisfied and not worried about the safety of my wife...does it? Whatever Aishwarya did before her wedding was not because she was coerced into it by the 'anti-woman' Bachhan family...I'm sure she was happy to do that.



The author also seems to have a problem with the fact that Mr. Bachhan is making hordes of money for himself and his family while doing nothing for the society. Well...if he really did indulge himself in social causes and charity, my respect for him will grow manifold, no doubt...but the fact that he doesn't isn't going to make me call him unworthy of being a role model. A role model doesn't necessarily have to be a jack of all trades..Mr. Bachhan is an actor, an entertainer....and if you were to ask anybody in this country(or overseas for that matter) to name just one Indian actor who can be called a role model, it would be him.



The author thinks history isn't made by the Amitabh Bachhans, Shahrukh Khans and Ambanis but P.T. Usha's, Dhyanchands and Arundhati Roys. What hospitals have the latter three built? What charitable donations have they made? Yes, they are an integral part of Modern India's history too, agreed, but so are the former three. That they make insane amounts of money is not something I'll hold against them, and neither should you. If the money earned versus money donated analogy is anything to go by then every top CEO, investment banker and high ranking NRI should also be put under the microscope. So why only Mr. Bachhan....why spew so much venom over the Amitabh Bachhans and Shahrukh Khans? Because they are famous and successful..and you are not?

"Celebrity is as celebrity does"--Mr. Bachhan does what is expected of him. He acts, entertains us...what more do you want? He's not the Prime Minister of India you see. What happens inside his doors or his cultural/traditional beliefs or choice of political friends mean zilch to me. The author goes on to call SRK a money making machine...what's the point? It's not like he's indulging in hawala or robbing a bank, advertisers/corporates are happy to pay him the money, the people are more than happy to pay for the ticket prices....so what's you point sir? The author doesn't even spare the actresses/models and calls them 'alleged Mother Teresa followers'..huh? Now what's so wrong in saying one respects Mother Teresa, what would you rather have them do...say that they despise Mother Teresa? Or would you rather have them actually opening up Aashrams because they were bonded in some invisible contract just for uttering respectful words for Mother Teresa?

Finally, one should not bring down these allged 'money making machines' for a simple fact that it's actually them who provide the overflow for what you call classy and relevant. Stop criticising the Bachhans, the Khans, the Chopras, the Johars, the Ambanis, the Tatas, the Mittals. These are the people who provide the overflow for the Irrfan Khans, the Pankaj Kapurs, the Anurag Kashyaps, the Bheja Fry(ies), the NGOs etc etc. Do you think the money for all social causes, the hospitals, the meaningful cinema etc etc. just springs up from the ground? Everybody has a particular socio-economic role in any society/culture/country and they should be given the freedom to do so..it's a cyclic thing..one begets the other.

In Conversation with Moral Police...

I received a couple of hyperbolic e-mails from a lady the other day. Apparently, she was upset about this post which I had done sometime ago. She told me she was a regular reader of The Mad Momma and had chanced upon my blog from there. The lady inexplicably holds herself in very high esteem as she's a Malayali who has married a half! Tamilian and calls me a racist when I have loved and married a Bengali woman...hmm interesting. She took quite an offence to the fact that I pointed out the the relative lack of involvement of the southern part of India in our war of independence(which I've removed from my post by the way) and then went on to talk about the Moplah Revolution!, oh! how some people just blab for the heck of it! I couldn't be nasty to her in my replies coz (a) she's a lady and (b) she came from The Mad Momma's blog who's almost like a sister to me. I'd like to enlighten this delusional woman here though--The Moplah Revolution was merely a series of uprisings where the peasants in Malabar revolted against the landlords; British,Arabs as well as Indians!. It has NOTHING to do with our War of Independence. This was pure GK though...;)

Now, coming on to her 'racial discrimination' accusations. She conveniently ignored everything I had said about Gujarat, Maharashtra, Delhi and only saw south south and south! She also ignored the fact that I had said U.P. and Bihar accounted for the Lion's Share of crime in India and saw south south and south again!! I told this to her and I'm sure many of you who know me are aware that MOST of my very close friends are in fact NOT North Indians. Anyway, that's not the point, and I really shouldn't be bothering to explain myself to her. I had written that post in reference to what I had heard, read or seen in the recent past. That post was written as an outcry AGAINST racial/regional discrimination, not FOR it. I had made it very clear in the post itself...that I was not generalising. I thrashed Delhi in one of my posts, if I'm really a racist North Indian out on my world winning adventure of claiming North superiority..why would I do it?? If I hear or see something racist happening to a Malaylai,Telugu,Tamilian,Bengali,Marathi,Gujarati etc etc in the North or anywhere, I'll write about that too! The lady's comments, however, have brought back the same feelings in me...and she was sounding exactly like the complexed people I was talking about in my post. I was talking about how people should welcome everybody in their home, how you should not look down upon people from Bihar, U.P. coz they give us civil servants who work for us..and there she goes ranting about how South produces the maximum! number of software engineers working in the USA..how there are so many! South Indian doctors in the UK...??? Is that something to be proud of? YES, of course. We are all proud of it...we are all proud of our brothers and sisters in the South who bring us so much foreign exchange, we are all proud of the numerous great litterateurs, activists, freedom fighters, Nobel laureates West Bengal has given us...we are all proud of the statesmen and litterateurs UP has given us...we are all proud of Bangalore for giving us our own Silicon Valley...and so on and so forth. But that still doesn't give any person from any region to badmouth or look down upon someone else just because he/she does not share 'geography' with you...or does it? Such was this woman's sheer superiority complex that she even put my uncle's 12 years old son under her racial microscope. In my post I had mentioned that my uncle's son(who's studying in a school in Chennai) told us that his classmates used to call him 'the white pig'..which was not acceptable by any means. This lady tells me that it must have been the child's fault and he must have acted arrogantly with the children there, because that's how the North Indian children are brought up..to act arrogant with South Indians!!?? God have mercy on any North Indian children that cross her path :)

Anyway, after rambling, ranting and name calling for about 4 mails that lady has told me she would not visit my blog again...oh! how considerate of you ma'am. She has also told me that I shouldn't bother replying to her as she's created a filter, because she wants to have the LAST WORD....boo hoo!! really? LOL....anyway, I'm really hoping she stays true to her word and does not see this, coz I'll find it hard to be polite the next time :)

Johny Gaddar Movie Review

Warning: Some plot spoilers included

Johny Gaddar is the latest offering from Sriram Raghavan, the man who gave us Ek Hasina Thi. The film is inspired by some of veteran director Vijay Anand's works and James Hadley Chase novels. The main protagonist(or should we say, antagonist!) Vikram aka Johny also borrows some of his ideas from the Amitabh Bacchhan thriller Parwana.

The premise is simple yet very different from your average Bollywood fare. Five conmen plan a deal which will make each of them richer by 50 Lakh in 3 days. Sheshadri(Dharmendra) is supposedly the top guy, a la Danny Ocean. He's supported by Prakash(Vinay Pathak), Shardul(Zakir Hussain), Shiva(Daya Shetty) and Vikram(Neil Mukesh). Vikram however, has other plans; he borrows several ideas from his James Hadley Chase novels and Parwana to double-cross his fellow associates and elope with Mini(Rimi Sen), Shardul's wife! Vikram's plan however, goes haywire when he accidentally kills Shiva in the first phase of his plan. After that point, Vikram's lady luck helps him escape every tryst with destiny untill the climax, where poetic justice is delivered.

The film had all the makings of a taut thriller, but it is marred by lack of pace. The sript was indeed interesting with one accident leading to another and so on and so forth, but it was executed in a very sluggish manner. The director seemed to have lost his vision after the intermission, where he went absolutely overboard with character development and took too much screen time familiarizing us with their personal/family lives. The sadistic outings with Shiva's girlfriend Vaijanthi were totally uneccesary, and they really left a bad taste in your mouth and stomach. Through the entire length of the film, there was not one scene which thrilled you. The only moment where the script catches you off guard is Sheshadri's dying sequence, and it was very well executed too. The script meanders a lot!, particularly after the intermission and you just don't know what the director wants; does he want to thrill you, does he want to make you sob, does he want you to empathize or does he want to tickle your funny bone? Johny Gaddar is a perfect example of a brilliant plot gone awry because of too many distractions. Part of my dissatisfaction might have to do with the fact that I had went into the theater to watch an on-the-edge-of-your-seat suspense thriller, but even if I judge the film as just another movie..it still falls flat on most of the grounds.

Coming on to the performances; Dharmendra is going through the golden twilight of his career, and he gives a commendable performance here. It could have been much better though, and his role does't really do justice to the awe-inspiring persona he has. Neil Mukesh is just about ok, he looked rather silly in the scenes where he had to convey anxiety and fear through his eyes. His Travolta-esque dance sequence was also very childish. You can't complain much though, given the fact that it was his first time acting. I'm not very keen on predicting something for him at this point though; let's just wait and watch. Rimi Sen gives one of her better performances in a rather conveniently stupid role. Zakir Hussain as Shardul was excellent and Vinay Pathak's was THE performance of the film. Vinay Pathak has charmed us with his comic timing before, and with this film he proves that he's an actor of serious mettle; his introduction scene was one of the better ones in the film. The film will tank in the single screes for sure and it just might do decent business in the multiplex centers..don't take my word for it though. To sum it up, Johny Gaddar is a half baked effort with very few interesting sequences and manages to bore you for the better part of it's length. Yes, it IS different, but I still have to call a spade a spade..right?

Rating: **