Saturday, February 04, 2006

Going gaga over DDLJ

Shahukh "The King" Khan took his dulhaniya from the clutches of the strict and heartless patriarch and proved to the world that love can win over any obstacle in the world. That was 10 years ago, and still i hear millions crooning about the same shahrukh hamming "Simran meri hai" with thousands of young girls sighing, clutching their hearts and waiting for the right guy to show them the dream land. I may sound awestruck by the phenomenon that was DDLJ, but truthfully speaking I am not. I accept, it was a beutifully made movie which had everything to cater to indian taste, Rib tickling comedy, romance in a distant land(far away from the watchful parents), typical punjabi wedding with all pretentious paraphernalia attached, traditions that were upheld, lots of "India being the greatest" stuff, huge amount of rona dhona to appeal to the ladies of the house and lastly the "happy ending", which some one told me is the sole criteria of judging a story or movie.

So now I am facing a basic question, why do we watch movies? What is the one thing that people come to watch movies for? The answer I think, which atleast holds good for 90% Indians is that they want to escape reality. I dont blame them, if for 3 hours, one can be free from the hassles that life burdens us with, then it is worth the 100 bucks we fork out for it. But this escapism comes with a price, the price being the alienation from reality, the price being the dreaming about a ideal present which is non existant, the price being trying to the see the world in black and white when it is always colored with shades of gray.

I am not a humanity hater, always trying to look at the world with black glasses, I am just a one eyed man in the country of the blind and like Nunez, in H.G.Well's story,I am not able to convince the world to look at the misery half the humanity lies in. I know it is pessimistic in just looking at the night and not hoping for the sun to come up, but when you are in scandanavia, isn't it better to prepare for the night than in wating for the sun to shine.

Coming back to movies, I get repelled by those which have nothing to offer but plain senseless chattering and emotions thrown around here and there. I cringe when i hear the king khan croon for Anjali in K2H2 for wasnt he the same guy who was madly in love with his wife a few sceens back.I dont understand the thousands eyes simmering with tears when shahrukh keeps on yapping about how we should we love and respect our parents and i cringe yet again.Why do we like such melodramatic scenes, why do we have to reassure ourselves, our next door neighbours and the whole city and the country to that matter that we are good traditional guys who may drink beer but will never molest any "desi chori in a videshi land", why do we have to keep on shouting that it is all about loving your loved ones, why , why??? No answer.

Now let us compare with movies like hazaron khwaishien aisi, now that movie had a heart, it was about dreams dreamt but not realised, it was about a nation's anguish for the dream that got sour, it is about those thousands hopes that got struck down, it was about one man's rise with his fall and another man's fall with his rise.Movies like this i know paint a picture which is so bleak that u keep on asking is there a way out, it is so dreadfully true that u shiver to think of the same happening to you, but isnt it better to know the ghost of death than always keep dreading the unknown .At this point i may mention matrubhumi which described female infanticide and the inhuman potryal to girls so accurately that i had goosebumps and nightmare. I remember serials like bhanwar which were so closer to the truth that u shiver with the very thought of those kind of people even existing.

But personally i prefer to be scared by the truth than be waiting for the unknown. I dont want to stay in the false hopes that everyone stays happy, only should be careful of the staircase and the villianous aunty(who can no doubt be silenced by mamaji's thaapad). I dont want to wait in the hopes that the father of the girl I love will allow her to elope with me because I am "Saccha in the heart", I dont want to wait in the false hopes that even if Rani dies i can always get kajol my best buddy because my mother, my daughter and allah all three want that.I wanted to tell my friend that life doesnt always have an happy ending, it is not always that kajol marries a widower, it is not always that a father will allow her daughter to elope, it is not always that tuffy gets the bhagwaan's bardaan of delivering letters to the wrong person. How I wish life was like all these feel good movies , how I wish karan johar, Aditya chopra and sooraj barjatya were gods who wrote the script of desyiny, so that the world would have been a big rich family with mighty baarats and tuffy as cupids. How I wish??