Buffaloes & Boeings

There is a modern saying in Tamil, quite likely born in one of the hundreds of engineering colleges that dot the southern landscape like poisonous mushrooms. It goes "kekkaravan keynaiya irunda eruma madu kooda aeroplane ottun da..."

A transliteration, after providing for syntax, would come up to "If the one listening (to a story) is a gullible idiot, even a buffalo can pilot a Boeing"

As you would expect, the beauty of the colloquial rhyme and alliteration in the Tamil has been lost in my less-than-adequate translation, though I've made a token effort, exchanging the generic 'Aeroplane' in the original for a 'Boeing' in English, to make it share at least a first alphabet with 'Bufflalo' :-)

But you get the idea. It's something that one friend would say, in response to something incredulous said by another... long-hand for "yeah, right! "

Commercial cinema - Hollywood, Bollywood or any other timber - often asks us to believe things that would fall in the 'buffalo-boeing' kind of space.

Whether its a blonde girl who takes on a whole boardroom of lawyers in Legally Blonde with the premise that 'exercise makes endorphins, endorphins make you happy and happy people don't go around killing other people!" or the kind-hearted gangster Munna, who pulls a long suffering patient out of his coma with the power of plain old goodness in Munnabhai MBBS, these 'moments' are a test.

They test our willingness, as an audience, to surrender to the emotion being invoked by the filmmaker and ignore the incredulity of what we are being asked to go along with.

If the film succeeds at these crucial points, and we, the audience, buy into the tale, in the darkness of the movie hall, the film maker has done his/her job.

Rajkumar Hirani (Director) and Abhijat Joshi (Writer) did this to me with "Three Idiots."

I could give you a full review of the film, but there are enough of those out there, and I am no film critic.

So I thought I would describe my eruma madu (buffalo) and Boeing moment in the film for you instead.

We are well into the second half of the film by the time it comes. I will only describe this one scene, to avoid spoiling the fun for those who may still not have seen the film.

Rancho (Aamir Khan), and his two friends have been rusticated from the Imperial College of Engineering for a prank they've played on the Dean. They've packed their bags and are leaving the campus on a night when the skies are pouring rain, which then floods all the streets of Delhi, till everyone is wading in waist-deep water (hey what's that on the corner of the screen? Is that a bovine tail?)

Now the Dean's elder daughter is about to deliver a baby. (For those into Freud, it is symbolic that on this wet, wet, night, her water has just broken :-) The younger daughter (Kareena Kapoor), who is studying to be a doctor, is away at the hospital and cannot be brought back to campus through the flooded streets to help. With no other option, it is decided that Rancho and friends will deliver the baby, on the table tennis table in campus common room, with Kareena guiding them by webcam. (buffalo horns coming into vision...)

I now fast forward through some of the details, as the whole buffalo gradually reveals itself: the pregnant woman can't push, she's too tired, they need to use a suction cup-like device to pull the baby out, which Rancho, ever the handyman, fashions out of vaccum cleaners and lens blowers (there's the whole buffalo head now...), there's Kareena giving directions via webcam, there's a power failure, and voila, an inverter our Hero's been working on is conveniently put into service (here come the big black trunk and forelegs,) and a few more rapid, well placed, neatly tied-up screenplay devices later, the baby is delivered, umbilical cord cut, paper clip clamps in place. (By now, the buffalo is fully visible, head to tail)

But wait: something is wrong, the baby is not crying. Change music , disappointment, grief, sudden sadness all around, on and off screen. Aha, a screenplay inversion - again, very good use of a classic device.

Till this point, its just the poor buffalo standing, ownsome-lonesome, chewing his cud, having tested us in little bits, and survived. No Boeing in sight yet.

Then comes the kicker - literally.

Our Hero now says the magic mantra, "All is well", which has been set up earlier in the film as capable of doing amazing things. And lo and behold, the baby (btw, a very realistic animatronic newborn) kicks Rancho in the face. Cut to Incredulous Surprise on our Hero's face, almost like he's mimicking our sentiments, the audience, our mouths half-open. Silence. Then the penny drops. Our Hero says the mantra again "All is well" and receives a second kick. "What the...?"

Our buffalo has reached for his Ray Ban Aviator. Suddenly from nowhere, appears the 747. One part of my brain is ready to offer a curse word and the wisdom of the Tamil engineering students to the Director and Screenwriter.

But I don't. Even as our Hero makes everyone else repeat "All is well", and the baby begins to cry, the Director cuts to good actors, acting really well. They emote the huge emotional implications of the moment: the mother's joy, the Dean's catharsis, the Hero's own relief and happiness, the friends who realise they will not be rusticated now....they all do what they're supposed to, what they get paid large sums of money to do.

I feel an involuntary lump in my throat. Captain Buffalo smiles knowingly at me, knowing he has me exactly where he wants me.

He has clearance from air-traffic control. I know I will let him take me along for the rest of the ride.

I was entertained, moved, and came back satisfied.

To me, that is the real test of any film, especially a "commercial" film.

After the two Munnabhai films, Abhijat Joshi & Raju Hirani have delivered yet again.

I'm going to buy tickets for Hirani's fourth outing without waiting for the reviews.

Moo.