Stuck at the epiglottis...

Disclaimer: This one is a 'stream of consciousness' sort of post, written immediately after I watched the film; those who have seen My Name is Khan are likely to find it more interesting than those who have not :-)

A few years back, I watched a kid perform at a social evening. His parents kept goading him to dance, and for the longest time, he played coy and fidgeted away. When he finally got going, he seemed to have a genuine rhythm about him and some of his moves were pretty impressive.

Sadly though, long after we’d applauded what we took to be his finale flourish, he kept dancing. After twelve or lucky thirteen times, the same rocking move began to wear a little thin. Finally, his embarrassed parents had to physically remove him, kicking and screaming, from the center of the room.

That kinda sums up My Name is Khan for me.

A film that takes a long time to get to what it has to say, then says it well, but doesn’t know when it’s done.

Let me begin at the beginning. Yes, Mr.Johar, Hindi film audiences are dumb, and need to have several technical things simplified and spelt out; we would never get Asperger’s Syndrome otherwise, but writing to your lover in a journal and then reading it out for the benefit of us stupid viewers is not just overdone as a film device, but when it’s done a-la-Gump, in an Asperger’s Syndromy way, it’s downright annoying.

Zarina Wahab shines as the Ammi, but the rest of the early build up – the two young Shahrukh Khans and their exploits, took too much screen time. Then came the whole set up of the adult Khan wooing Mandira (yet another impossibly bubbly on-screen character for Kajol). That again took forever – Khan’s speech on his brother’s beauty products at the salon where Kajol works, a good symptom of this ailment. Nutshell – this part of the film was the kid in my opening story taking too long to start his jig.

Then came the good parts: once Mandira agreed to marry Khan, the song was good, the honeymoon night exchange was something I believe no Indian actress save Kajol could have pulled off (she is impossibly cute in that scene).

The 911 scenario and the events that follow, including Khan beginning to recite the Quran at a memorial service held for the victims, much to the discomfort of all gathered, were quite good. The alienation of the Muslim community (in particular) and the larger South-East Asian community (in general) were also brought out as well as could be expected from commercial Hindi cinema.

Things went well, up to the point when the couple’s son dies. When Mandira cleans her son’s corpse before the last rites, she slowly goes catatonic and the scene leaves you with a genuine lump in the throat. Lots of paisa-wasool moments during this part of the movie.

Sadly, for the rest of the film, Kajol maintains her catatonic posture and is not too convincing as a mother seeking justice, just shrieking through, with no sign of the blind grief that comes from losing an offspring, the kind of thing that chokes you and bottles you up.

Then there’s the stuff that I believe sounds bad when spoken in dialogue – Mandira claims “she has no time to be Khan’s wife, since she is busy trying to get justice, as mother to a dead son.” For my money, this is what is going on inside her head, the kind of thing that could have been more effectively conveyed through a gesture or an expression, even in a song, rather than having it spelt out through on- screen dialogue. As the film began to run short of raw stock, there were other such moments of desperation from the Screenplay Writer and Director.

The film began to unravel big time with the start of the whole Khan-saves-the-day-during-the-Georgia-hurricane episode.

Bad production design, crappy sets, sad extras, shitty writing, repeated clichés, impossible situations (even by Captain Buffalo standards) were strewn like the false looking corpses on the Karjat puddle-becomes-Georgia-hurricane sets. They must have spent 5-7 minutes of screen time on this, but it was excruciatingly long to watch.

For me, the film ended when he was released from prison after being mistaken for a terrorist, but no, for the Director, the Indian Muslim had to save a dozen black asses, in a selfless act that was aimed to shame the whole Caucasian race.

His martyrdom then had to continue - to his getting stabbed, then saved, and finally, being honoured by a President of the US of A (who my nephew rightly pointed out, looked more like Tiger Woods than Obama).

Almost all the non-Indian actors, except the one police officer who investigates the boy’s murder, were uniformly bad, of a low-budget variety. Scenes that otherwise struck a emotional chord, like the one in the Georgia church (before the hurricane), where Khan remembers his step-son as his best friend, are badly marred at some point by terrible acting; in this instance, when the funny haired black boy begins to sing in supposed catharsis, it looks like he's singing in joy (the director does not seem to know better either)

Shahrukh was impressively in character for most of the film, (the slight squint he holds through the film even causing him a sprained facial nerve in one of the scenes, I’m told). But in the few moments that he forgets Asperger’s Khan, he becomes King Khan (watch him in the Georgia hurricane, running his fingers through his hair, for instance) and that can look very bad indeed.

Kajol, like I said earlier, plays herself, yet another bubbly, (hint of madness), truly-cute-in-moments sort of role. Her good stuff ends with her son’s death.

Having had no intention of going to watch the film, and having gone to accompany a teenage nephew who wears his Shahrukh-fan status proudly, I came back pleasantly surprised that parts of the movie were not just bearable, but bordering on good.

And yet, like the little boy at the beginning of this piece, the film overstayed its welcome. It gave me a lump in the epiglottis area a few times, but I found it difficult to swallow.

Go Goa

We've been to Goa a fair number of times, P and I, and mostly, it's been during the rains.

Pluses: No crowds, great deals at hotels, the landscape a whole shade card of green (especially central and south Goa) and lovely weather (if you love the rains like we do :-)

Minuses: You can't swim in the sea and quite often, resorts shut their pools during this time as well.

This time we decided we would try something "different". So we swapped South Goa for the North and the rains for early summer and made our bookings for February quite early, in December last year.

Having paid for a non-refundable, airfare-inclusive package at a four star resort in Candolim, we found ourselves forced to take time off smack in the middle of an impossibly busy February.

I worked through the flight on my laptop (and would continue to do so in bits and bobs, through our break). A pleasant hour long pre-paid cab ride from the airport, we were at The Whispering Palms. First shock: It seemed to sit right in the middle of a busy, noisy area - all shops and roads and crowds... and no whispers.

Everything seemed scaled down from the pictures on the website - the whole resort was a miniature of its web avatar, especially the pool, which was like an amoeba out of a school textbook and I'm not takling about just the shape.

The real whammy however, was the number of red, old, overweight East Europeans, lying around the amoeba pool in various states of undress. If ugliness could blind, I would be typing this on a braille keyboard. (I've spared you guys - almost all the pics are of the good stuff :-)

Anyway, we soon realised that they were not limited to our resort alone. Everywhere we went in North Goa, it seemed that we were in the middle of an East European invasion; a joint-forces landing party, lead by the Russians, with Polish and German folk all thrown in as part of the geriatric budget coup.

The apparent strategy was to first blind us, with various forms of jiggling cellulite that fabric could barely contain, then crush us, under their sheer weight.

Every row of shops was like a budget tourist's impression of a Noah's ark of Indian stuff: tea, spices, handicrafts, leather, aromatics and textiles. As you would expect with most traps, the things on offer were very mediocre examples of each category.

Even the signs were in Russian and shopkeepers called out to them in their pidgin East European accents.

For food, there was the bland, all-European fare at most restaurants (with quadruple-bypass-oily, terrible tasting Indian food as the alternative).

On the beach, the larger-than-life Russian Ship, seemingly run aground, rounded up the scene and made us Indians look like we were the foreigners there.

some of the fitter teletubbies watch their mother ship

(I'm sparing you the really gory stuff)

If all this wasn't enough, we added our personal idiosyncrasies of vegetarianism and sobriety to the final mix. We might as well have been green with antennae buzzing, for the reactions we got.

So I rant-rant, but was it all bad?

Na...here are the highlights of the good stuff:

We hired a scooter and armed with sunblock and shades, were able to escape Southwards everyday, to parts less infested by European telly tubbies.

We greatly enjoyed our many swims in the sea, at the calm Sinquerim beach.

In central and south Goa, we found enough examples of shops selling lovely Goan crafts and sweets.

the live saving gujjus...

We searched with the quiet desperation of the hungry , and found this great joint in Panaji, that serves the best home-made veg Gujrati thali we've had till date (considering how long they've been doing it, its no surprise they've figured it out perfectly )

We also discovered this truly delightful Italian restaurant in Candolim called Tuscanny Gardens, run hands-on by a lovely Dutch-Jain couple.

...and the life giving Tuscans

They had a great selection of vegetarian dishes on their menu. All the food - from the starters to the main course to the dessert - was perfect. Wonderfully simple, flavourful fare. A treat for the soul.

But before any of the good stuff listed above came my way, I went for a run by the sea, with the sun setting over the horizon. And that made all the difference.

Let me explain.

Having suffered a near-death experience at being exposed to the oversized human lobsters and feeling very much cheated by the zoomed-out dimensions of the resort, I wonder how I will find the motivation to act and make the best of the situation.

Then I remember that the Sinquerim beach is hardly a minute's walk away. So I get into my running gear, sans shoes, and go for a barefoot run.

I leave my ipod back, so I can think in peace.

I run by the water's edge, letting the waves lap around my ankles at times. It's a funny feeling, the sand under my bare feet; harder where the water does not reach it, softer where the waves have just washed over. I concentrate on my running form, my breath and the sound of the waves. The rhythm takes over and I find my own "thing" in this otherwise strange land. I find peace.

An interesting aside: I ran into these giant brown-black tubes of canvas that looked like giant leeches bloated on sea water. I looked curiously at the first few to my right, and saw that they were breaking the impact of the waves, allowing for a small strip of beach to still run on. Then I reached a point where they are the last bastion against the crashing waves - so now, I had to jump onto one of them and run.

the giant sea leech sandbags

They were hard, as if tightly packed with sand. (I later learn they indeed were, and placed there by the authorities to prevent erosion and save the beach) In places, they are full of sea water, which must have gotten in through a leak and stayed trapped. In those, it was like running on a water bed.

But it was all good, like running an obstacle course.

Heart pumping, synapses firing, gray cells ticking, I began to hatch the various parts of the plan to avoid the European Barbapappas (am I the only one who remembers these German shape-shifting cartoon characters from the DD era of the eighties?) and the world created to cater to them.

Moral of the story: (quoting Peanuts) No problem is so great it can't be run away from. Cheers!

Ishq - kya?

Ah. So this is what happens to folks who begin to blog and then get snowed down :-)

More than not having the time to write, with me, its been a case of not having the mind space to reflect on anything. But today, I opted out of the circus of my own life and dipped into the world of Abhishek Choubey via Ishqiya (much later than most people in Hindi-speaking India, I suspect).

Having finally watched the film, I decided to give my gray cells (and red ones) a two-paisa workout over what I saw. Here it is.

Spoiler alert: In writing about my reaction to the film, I might end up giving away parts of the plot. So, forewarned...

It's a loose, unfinished film.

It had many of the ingredients needed to become a great film - good production design, aka 'the look' of the film, original dialogues, two and a half great songs & good actors - but botched it up big time - in the writing and editing departments (and some in background score).

There was a feeling of slack throughout and as a viewer, I never got under the skin of the protagonists; there was no room in the two dimensions that they were portrayed in.

Of the main trio, (you can read the synopsis here, on the film's official website) Krishna (Vidya Balan) is best etched out emotionally (relatively speaking). She's complex, but the film spends some time on what she feels and why she acts the way she does. So, if you're kind willing to understand and are bent on your film ticket paisa-wasool, you can get her (as in understand her character...only Arshad Warsi's character Babban GETS her, without the Director giving us any clear reasons :-)

Naseeruddin, as Khalujaan (Babban's mama), comes in second on the on-screen character-development scale, but only on a single dimension - that of an old man falling in love with a much younger Vidya. Babban (Arshad Warsi) follows quickly, the shallowest of the three on this screen writing aspect.

The script lets them all down big time - they are caricatures of themselves, 2d cut-outs.

The film ran for close to two hours and I felt pretty sure that it could have been a good ten minutes shorter at least. Or, to put it more accurately, it felt like you could take out half hour of irrelevant screenplay and put in twenty minutes of relevant stuff and make everyone happy.

Strands of screenplay that began with promise got lost and cost the film precious time, without giving it back anything (a caste war between thakurs and other castes that could have got our protagonists into big trouble, for instance). Other bits were just plain bizzare, almost like plants by a Director seeking cult-status through maverick inserts (the old woman torch bearer who appears to set things ablaze in the climax...what was that? Some deep symbolic feminist revenge?)

There were good comic dialogues ("tumhara ishq ishq aur humara ishq sex?") and bad, but despite the earthy, original sounding writing, it all felt a little rarified and self-serving... topsoil only. (chutiam sulphate included)

Since I am on a rant now, I must express my anguish at hearing Vidya Balan do an "earthy, Bad Western UP woman". So much hype around it, it make me a little nauseous. In most of the film, she has no UP accent or to more precisely, she has the accent of a convent-educated south Indian trying hard to not have a convent-educated south Indian accent in her Hindi.

She succeeds for the most part, but that's still a couple of states away (both geographically and existentially) from having a Western UP accent. So, is she "Bad?" Yes. On this aspect, quite.

The best scene of the film comes a minute or so after after Khalujaan walks in to discover that his bhanja Babban has boldly gone where many men have gone before, ie, inside Vidya's petticoat.

Shortly after, the three no-gooders set out to kidnap a rich industrialist. Having dropped Arshad off en-route as part of the plan, Naseer and Vidya find themselves alone in the Maruti Omni. Vidya senses Naseer's seething anger and suspects something is amiss, but is not sure if it's her romp in the hay with the nephew that's set old romantic Khalujaan off.

The tension begins to build up beautifully as the she begins to bait him into conversation. An old Hindi film song begins to play on the music system and she says "S.D", indicating that she thinks the composer is S.D.Burman. He responds with "Hemant Kumar". The scene goes on, quite nicely, and I don't want to spoil it for those of you who may not have watched the film yet. Sadly, the point of going into these details is merely to drive home an earlier point - Vidya's atrocious accent.

Each time Vidya Balan says "S.D" in this exchange it makes my skin crawl - it so so urban, so not-Western UP and that I have to do a rapid "All ij well" to myself to reset my brain and enjoy the rest of the scene.

Okay. Enough said.

Net-net: It was like a bad screen adaptation of a good novel, where the screenplay cuts out major portions of the story (especially character development), leaving the film a sad, vaguely familiar shell of it's (in this case, could-have-been) great print version.

I'm sure I would have liked the book better.