Tuesday, May 24, 2005

YUCKCETERA!

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

Why is Kyaa Kool Hai Hum’s sequel being planned already? According to a sexually frustrated acquaintance who went to watch the film, this one isn’t anything less than a Woody Allen flick in which the script could have written by a P G Wodehouse! There is so much humour in the film that the viewers keep on falling off their chairs, I am told by the same guy.

So, did I watch the film? Yes, I did because I must. It is an occupational hazard, you see. Did I like the film? No, I did not. I found the dialogues unacceptably risqué; I found the body language abominably provocative; I felt that the whole film just rubbished all notions of good film-making as had been defined by the one and only David Dhawan in his legendary Number One series which turned Govinda into a darling of the masses even as an Indian writer born and brought up in India made a complete ass of himself by pretending not to know who Govinda was when the actor was at his peak. This writer (rather well-known) went to watch a Govinda film and, strangely enough, reviewed the movie in a revered book reviews journal (till today, don’t know why) in which he said that he mistook Govinda for an extra till his friend pointed out who the actor was! Knowing what nobody else does but now knowing what everyone should defines the average intellectual, you see. I have been saying that since I was a kid. I will say that even when I dance inside my grave because I am certain to hear voices go past me that will enunciate similar thoughts while walking by.

But Kyaa Kool Hai Hum cannot evoke any such need for pretentious indifference. Why? Since its actors are too damn insignificant. But what it does generate – in the minds of sane people at least – is a thought. What has gone wrong with us? At a time when we were all set to applaud ourselves by turning Black into a huge hit, why did we have to make a fool of ourselves by making KKHH a success?

After all, what does the film have? Lovely dialogues that tell us that a psychologist who is an expert in tracking down serial killers has three balls (made of plastic) which he uses to understand a man’s mind? That this doctor has a wife who assures him that she has been taking care of his balls all her life? That one of the heroes asks a girl whether or not she has Viagra and quickly changes it to ‘vagyarah’ that, in Urdu, means what etcetera in English does? That the second hero cuddles a cat while sitting on a bench with his fly left open which is mistaken by the cop for the hero’s act of having sex with the animal? That a burning cigarette slips into the same guy’s trousers, and the fellow jumps frantically while holding his vital parts in public that is again viewed as sexual perversity by the cops?

Sad. Dismal. Dismissible. But then, we went, we applauded and we turned this lump of drivel into a hit. By doing so, what we have ensured is that more shall follow. Kya fool hai hum!

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

B***S FOR EYEBALLS!

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

Salman Rushdie needs a Gabriel Garcia Marquez for an inspiration. But then, he is a great writer. Writers such as yours truly whose claim to shame lies in some insignificant books are inspired by lesser beings naturally. Risking a digression, I had informed many of you that smallbigworld shall restart from June 1. But destiny decided otherwise. The site has taken off today, all due to an impulsive reaction to Mallika Sherawat’s presence. She wasn’t with me – I do not wish to be so lucky – but with the martial arts star Jackie Chan who must have had a ball playing the lust action hero alongside the Haryanvi sherni in his forthcoming film The Myth. (While shooting for it, I am sure all the myths about Indian conservatism would have gone bust!)

Coming to the point, Mallika’s dress sensation in Cannes just drove me nuts. Did she need to wear the top that she was wearing to begin with? Blame it on my prudish sensibility, feel free to rip apart my inability to appreciate the aesthetics of semi-dressedness. But how much did she have to show to the world to tell everyone that India had ‘arrived’ because, if people were to equate her outfit with what Indian women wear in their day-to-day lives, the assumption could very well be that our ladies wear hardly anything at all! If that sounds fatuous which it actually is – one of the advantages of writing in a personal site – if a foreigner were to believe that Mallika’s outfit defined the parameters of glamorous dressing up in India, wouldn’t that be utterly, gutterly shameful?

Look at the other two Indian women in Cannes. Nandita Das isn’t pretty in the conventional sense, but she has carried herself most gracefully all through. Aishwarya Rai is breathtakingly beautiful but, while her badly made outfits received a lot of flak last year, she has more than made up by wearing classy dresses this time. As for Mallika whose pictures will be all over by the time you read this, I feel like writing an email to her right away. Just one sentence, which will go thus: “Dear Mallika, titillation need not be interpreted so literally.”