Wait and watch

Everyone is talking about Karan Johar’s new film, Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, starring Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Preity Zinta and Abhishek Bachchan. The greatest praise goes to the young Bachchan as an actor worth watching, while the greatest critique (and there are many of them) is all to Karan Johar’s credit – a film too long, a theme too trite, albeit new and rather improved for the Indian movie-going-public’s psyche, lead actors too deadpan, et al. And various friends of mine agree or disagree, depending on their mood, their general level of interest and their thresholds of boredom. All in all a watchable film, they concur, as long as you leave your mind at home and put the rest of your life on hold for over three hours. Would I watch it? Probably, at some stage, when it finally gets to television, which is where I watch most of the Hindi movies I may have seen through my life.

But with my usual cynical, ennui-laden perspective on life, I do enjoy the occasional Hindi movie, the more pot-boiler, the better. My mother and I, cohorts in the late-night TV-watching biz, sat through many repeats of the same film, never seeing the whole in one go. So while we know what happens to the various stars, we usually have no idea what the name of the film is, or who which actor may be. It’s not as complicated or messy as it sounds, it is just that we couldn’t manage to sit through the entire movie at one go, so caught bits of it every time it re-ran, which meant that we saw different parts at different times.

Perhaps it all began with the eternal favourite, Amar Akbar Anthony, starring Vinod Khanna, Rishi Kapoor and Amitach Bachchan. We watched Amitabh pop out of an egg and tell his audience that his name was Anthony Gonsalves, romance Parveen Babi with his youthful (in those days) charm and flapping bellbottoms, and then fight the baddies in inimitable style with deadpan hilarity and white priestly robes. Vinod Khanna, in contrast, was the straight man in the game, in his policeman’s uniform and his ladylove in the shape of a slim and unusually masala-ish Shabana Azmi. And then there was Rishi Kapoor, the baby of the lot, playing a quawwali singing Mulsim tailor’s adopted son, who ducks the punches and still manages to get his girl, the nicely rounded Neetu Singh. They find that they are brothers, manage to reunite with their long-lost mother and live, one presumes, happily ever after. But how and when they are all separated is still a mystery. I wait for a re-telecast during the nostalgia festival to find out more.

And then there was Hum Hai Rahi Pyar Ke, a sweet, funny, madcap romance between Juhi Chawla and Aamir Khan, made even more chaotic by a motley crew of totally over-the-top characters who ham it up, bad accents and all, and have a wild time complicating matters with misunderstandings and mess-ups. Three cute children – who actually do not overstep the limits of cuteness to the state called ‘irritating’ – add fun to the plot, which takes some wild turns that are amazingly improbable. And the lunacy, which it is, ends with a wonderful egg fight, where all the villains and their supporters are part of the yolk! Juhi became our favourite heroine with Bol Radha Bol, more madness with absolutely no sanity. She and Rishi Kapoor romped it up with dogs, doppelgangers and dreadful villainy, coloured with insane costumes, good music and a story that took such sharp turns away from any sense that it made good sense.

In that way, in bits and many pieces, we watched Sholay, Lagaan, Kaho Naa Pyar Hai, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham and a host of movies starring Shah Rukh Khan, Govinda, Madhuri Dixit, Sridevi and various icons of their times. And there were, indeed, many times. And will be many more. And the turn of Karan Johar and his latest opus will also come.