There is a boy who comes from America. An NRI, you know. There is a girl who lives in Chandni Chowk, Delhi. An IRI (Indian Residing in India), that is. There is a Kala Bandar – or, black monkey – who monkeys around, spawning destructive consequences. And oh, yes. There is an assortment of characters, each of them seeking to represent a part of life in Chandni Chowk. Delhi 6 either aspires to be a romance or a sociological portrait of life's simple charms – or both – in an area where people lead simple lives. But what we carry in our minds as the most dominant memory is Kala Bandar, whose existence isn't explained in the film's initial phase. By the time the story tells us what the Bandar is all about, we fail to comprehend why the film needed to be situated where it is. The reason: there is evil in all of us, whether or not we have lived or even been to Chandni Chowk.
Nobility of intentions is an essential quality of any form of creativity: or, for that matter, any constructive human activity. On that count, few would dare question the maker Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra. For, the film does show the social character of a place which has a new shade to offer in every nook and cranny of its crowded lanes and by-lanes. We come across complacent individuals who believe that what they can do, no one else can. So, there is Pawan Malhotra's character who is busy trying to repair an antiquated radio while being thoroughly convinced about his skills as an electrician. There is a corrupt cop (Vijay Raaz at his best) who not only accepts bribes but has a quasi-fascist streak in his personality. It can be argued that characters such as the cop's exist in every part of India. But somehow, it seems to fit in Mehra's scheme of things pretty well.
We have a pretty girl (Sonam Kapoor, who acts well but is underused) who wants to be the winner of Indian Idol instead of marrying just about any man in keeping with the norms of conventional arranged alliances. There is a patriarchal man (Om Puri), a shrewd lalaji (Prem Chopra), a dadi who wants to die in her family home (Waheeda Rehman), an elderly Begsaab (Rishi Kapoor) and even that omnipresent jalebi seller (Deepak Dobriyal). When rickshaws crawl through Chandni Chowk, this writer's mind revisited the visual feel of a place which he had experienced quite a few times till a decade ago.
So far, it sounds pretty good. Isn't it? Definitely yes, till we, for once, abandon the portrait with its paints and try to look at the soul of the film. What, after all, is Delhi 6 seeking to tell us? What we know for sure is that Abhishek Bachchan's character (the NRI) comes down to Chandni Chowk along with his dadi. Bachchan's character is close to that of Nagesh Kukunoor in the Hyderabad Blues. Although the former carries no memories of 'his India' unlike the latter, both the protagonists fall in love with the nation to which they actually belong. The Small B's character Roshan loses its way in the beginning. But, gradually, he begins to understand the nature of life in Chandni Chowk. Not only does he learn to accept the place, but he also gets attracted to Bittu (Sonam), a girl who wants to break the shackles of traditional ties and make an individualistic statement to the world beyond Chandni Chowk.
The problem – big problem – of the film is Kala Bandar. As Mehra uses Ramayana, the Ram Lila to be precise, as a symbolic representation all through the movie, the Kala Bandar is gradually explained as a metaphor for the evil in all of us. In Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, who can forget that moment when Catherine explains her love for Heathcliff with that immortal line "I am Heathcliff"? One way of viewing that outburst is that there is a bit of Heathcliff – simply put, the negative traits in a human being – in everybody that can manifest itself in some way or the other in our lives. Mehra's symbol of evil is the black monkey, which is said to have blinking lights on its chest and looks like a gorilla of course! This is where the film loses its plot. The love story of Roshan and Bittu, which could have been shown most beautifully, gets buried by too much monkey business.
The ensemble cast perform wonderfully – most notably, Divya Dutta as an untouchable and Raaz – but their performances become secondary to the Bandar's metaphor which pops up time and again. Such is Mehra's preoccupation with telling a story on two parallel tracks that Rahman's exquisitely crafted music gets heard on the most inappropriate of occasions. The plot turns into one with confusion, confusion and more confusion, and what is left in the end is neither a well-developed romance nor a warm portrait of an endearing society. Sad, because even if the story did not seek to show a romance, it could have easily been a well-knit portrait of Chandni Chowk without any monkey at all.
Actually, Delhi 6 is a lot like the lanes of Chandni Chowk itself. There is too much overcrowding, because of which structural neatness gets lost in oblivion
