We were determined to see this movie.. Lido screen 1 shut down after ten minutes and we went and bought tickets for the next show in screen 3 yesterday to watch this movie made on Chetan Bhagat's story. It is a delightful movie with many many interesting moments. I encourage you to see it, to understand today's Indian youth, especially educated ones. And more so what successful authors and moviemakers peddle.
In any case, it was once again a revelation to me how much we have stereotypes and myths about people and their ways in different parts of India, for example Madrassis. The myths that people who eat sarson da saag and swig Scotch have about Madrassis has been roundly blasted by Chetan Bhagat, Karan Johar and everyone else who have made this movie. BUT alas these moviemakers have added a lot of incongruities and fancy notions of their own. The kind of stuff you put into your movie when you don't ever overestimate the intelligence of your audience.
#
I list only a few simple, very simple ones, and you can add more.
- 95% Madrassis are dark or kaale=Nonsense. In fact a celluloid baby or a doll made of pure bone china called Alia comes from the heartland of Mylapore. In fact under floodlights, her face glows with a bloodless ivory colour. But she does have absolutely pink lips that would make a Paris and Milan fashionista jealous.
- Madras has a water problem=Nonsense. The inner courtyard in your traditional home receives copious rain night and day in typical Kerala monsoon style.
- Madras is hot, humid and dirty=Nonsense. You have only three types of places - treelined Pondy-like neoclassical avenues with teak and rose wood classic houses, or lovely lovely flower markets, or glitzy 20-storied corporate towers with curved large glass windows overlooking a Madeira-like coastal skyline.
- A Madrassi IIMA Iyer girl entrant can't pronounce the word Sambhar to save her life.She eats simple food- tandoori chicken, rumali roti and beer at lunch time.
- A lady who has won all the Tamil Sangam singing contests is rejected by a series of Carnatic music teachers (all well groomed with talcum powder and pot belly). She can't get past the Mohana varna Ninnu Kori but sings a song in a corporate get-together better than Sunidhi Chauhan.
- Where do bank managers hold their daughter's wedding? A seashore rockcut temple that would shame Mahabalipuram.
- Whiskey is as much a last resort of a poor bank manager in Madras who is learning Plugpoint, as it is the staple of an abusive Punjabi husband who was thrown out of the army, (The Punjabi ex-armyman runs a security agency called Securities, in a go-down like office full of carboard cartons.)
- Madrassis are after USA MBA bridegrooms. Punjabis are after fatso UK-returned Dukes.
- All the tensions between 2 irreconcilable states vanish into thin air as you type out your dream best seller. Note that you do that on a portable typewriter, no matter that you prefer to use a laptop to draft letters for your dad and to make fancy powerpoint charts for your f-in-law who thinks it's called Plug point. Some humbling for Gates and now Nadella, to see the sentimental might of good old typewriters.
- You actually carry your twins back to back and cope, since your ivory queen of a wife is nowhere to be seen. How you pacify them, feed them, and what language you speak to them in, etc. are trifles. Because you are the new Indian youth, earning a salary 4 times that of your IIMA professors with your first campus hire job- which is by itself a pittance compared to your best-seller royalties.
- Last but not the least, if you feel suicidal, don't panic. Seek out a therapist who sits in a lazy boy as you prance around on a sofa, ignoring the large glass windows at the back that cry out for you to go, crash through, and land some 30 stories below in a mess that ends your life. Unless Rajni the Robot comes and saves you.
