Musing about SRK movies

I was channel surfing one lazy Sunday afternoon, and stumbled upon this Shah Rukh Khan movie “Chalte Chalte”. It took me two full rounds from channel 1 to 90 before I caught this movie, the reason being the ad break in that channel. Well actually more than half of the channels were playing ads as I was surfing past them. But that is another story altogether and for a later day.

Coming back to the movie, this was one Shah Rukh movie that I had not seen and so sat down to see what it was all about. This guy is a bundle of energy, even if his films are bad, he usually sparkles in his role – hamming away in his inimitable style and getting the best lines. This one also had him playing himself and not the character. But as the story was unfolding, I realized that this one also had SRK loving and wishing to marry a girl who is engaged to or about to get engaged to another man. I was struck by the fact that, most of his movies have had this theme running. Even as I am writing this, he is serenading the girl in a lovely foreign locale under the pretext of taking her to meet her would be husband. I say chaps, how more weird can u get??

While in DDLJ he traveled all the way from London to Punjab, in this movie he throws away everything and travels to Greece to win over the girl. How easy!!As one character says in the movie, he is going to Greece and not Ghatkopar, but being the hero he has everything ready made for himself like tickets, visa and doles of dough to finance everything. In kuch kuch hota hai he picked the girl right out of the marriage hall, while in Dil to pagal hai, the setting was a dance stage in front of a few thousand people. In veer zara he went one step further and wanted to marry a Pakistani girl engaged to a rich aristocrat Pakistani. He deservedly got 22 years in the prison for this, but what the heck; he did get the old preity zinta in the end.

Along the way he has been helped by some seriously fickle minded ladies, who, after a few songs, a few outrageously foolish acts in the name of love (like diving into a lake to retrieve a coin and throwing away an air force job to hop over to Pakistan) and a few sentimental dialogues by our hero, fall hook line and sinker for him. And not to mention a few chevalier gentlemen who so magnanimously sacrifice their girl for our hero. Plus the Anupam Kher type father /uncle/ whatever who egg on our hero in his mission “flick the female”.

Coming to think of it, it’s not just our SRK, but all the heroes have to get the heroines in the end. This is the norm for standard Indian cinema. After all who does not like a happy ending?

Alas, if only things were this easy in real life, u know, like falling in love after a couple of meetings, getting the girl to accept u, even if she accepts u; to get the relationship going for a long time, if the relationship does go on; then to stay committed for a long time, and after all this to face the parents and convince them. Gosh, this is a long and torturous path, aint it?? Am sure many would have failed or come to the brink of failure at any one of these stages.

The lucky ones would have braved them and gone ahead and who knows may enjoy these movies

The unlucky ones write blogs criticizing such movies.

V day - very bad day

Its valentine season and there is no way u can escape from it. Turn on the TV and every TV station worth its name has a v day special running. The music channels have evergreen love songs running all day long and of course boring you to death. The Movie channels have what they claim ‘all time great movie classics’ lined up as part of the valentine bouquet. Sadly, there is no Casablanca or Love story or at least Titanic in this bouquet. The news channels are no exception. There would be day long debates with all the usual suspects participating. One from the sangh parivar (RSS/BJP/Shiv sena) to talk about Indian culture, values and how Feb 14 is degrading it . One libertarian to defend the celebrations and one more to take a middle path and preach. God only knows when we will see a valentine s day without a debate about it in the news channels.

You want to escape from all this sham, turn the idiot box off and turn on the good old radio. Crash, boom, bang... the bombardment continues there as well. I tuned into a FM Station only to catch two TV starlets professing their undying love for each other and supposedly regaling us with the chronological history of their love story, which incidentally, is all of 6 months old. Another one had this innovative contest, it was something like this ... You love a girl and want to marry her. The normally opposing parents are all bally-ho about it. There is only one hitch; the girl comes with an excess baggage, in this case a dog. It’s a case of love me, love my dog. And your parents don’t want the damned dog. So the million dollar v day contest is... How will you convince your parents to let her bring the dog along with her? Good that Saint Valentine is dead, he would have committed suicide.

Now that the TV and the Radio have proved unbearable, it is with much trepidation that I open the newspaper. And my fears were not unfounded, every page has something or the other about the day, most of which are trite and boring and bringing a sense of déjà vu. The net is no different either, the pop ups fly at u with alarming regularity and selling everything from chocolates, flowers to candle light dinners.

Think I should join the shiv sena and join their valentine busting department. My target would not be the poor couples in public places, the other sainiks will take care of them, but all those radio andTV stations and newspaper columnists.

Sania Mania !!

An Indian woman sportsperson created history last fortnight. She made the headlines on the prime time news; she hogged the headlines in next morning’s news papers. The major magazines of the nation devoted more than a page to her. She was felicitated by among others the chief minister and governor of her state. Did Sania Mirza win the Australian Open?? Sania lost in the third round.

Agreed that reaching the third round was a first for an Indian woman tennis player and that, she more than gave a fight to the eventual champion Serena Williams. She is a talented player and may very well win more matches and bring more laurels. She has to be nurtured, given world class training, coaching and facilities and sponsors. This unprecedented third round performance has made her a celebrity overnight and if I am to believe the news reports she has received sponsorship endorsements worth 8 crores. Thank god, Mahesh Bhupathi was visionary enough to see her potential take her under his wings and sign her for his sports management firm.

While all this is welcome, I fear that amidst all this the tennis player in Sania may lose out to the celebrity Sania. She has already started appearing in advertisements and started speaking like a celebrity. Take this Quote “I want to be a youth icon, not a sex symbol”. You cannot blame her , she is all of 17 , and is seeing her photos splashed all across in the net , in Television and billboards where one clearly sees that the emphasis is more on her good looks. Every major satellite channel has aired an interview with her in the last 15 days. There is a grave danger of her getting bitten by the celebrity bug. Let her achieve some more, let she win a grand slam, then we can treat her like a queen... There is the example of Anna kournikova, who became a rage not for her tennis, but for her looks. She made one Wimbledon semi final appearance, no WTA titles, retired at 24 and now is known more as Enrique Inglesias’s girlfriend. She realized that she can make more money without playing Tennis.

She is treading on unknown path; we did not have Indian woman tennis celebrity before her. Her success can spawn much more such players. While there is no dearth of female tennis players in the senior junior, sub junior level etc not one of them have made big in the international stage. A successful Sania Mirza can inspire many more. Leander Paes won junior Wimbledon; he performed miracles in the Davis cup, won grand slam doubles. We as a nation were overjoyed and treated him like a Hero. While Leander deserved all this, if we had been more demanding from him maybe he would have excelled as a singles player as well. Similarly we must demand more from Sania. Give her sponsorships, but as a return do not make her to act in stupid commercials. Do not make her think that by doing commercials she can give back her due to her sponsors. Demand performance on the tennis court, not in front of the camera. Let she become a star , do not create one.