Panchayats and Karwachowts
Most Tamil moviemakers, it seems to me, are school dropouts, single, rural and perverted.
Almost every movie unfolds – and tears apart – in a village.
“Kounder ayya!!” the hapless village folk bend over to touch the sand the hero had just treaded to the sound of conches and women making suggestive sounds using their tongues.
“Veera Koundaru varaaru, then singam varaaru!” a song resounds in the background as the hero takes a 3-½ minute walk down the lush, green Pollachi fields with villagers waving their “angavastrams” – and “dhotis” – for visual effect and old women feeding him leftovers.
The movies, using the village “perrivars” as their mouthpiece, would copiously lecture the audience about the hypocrisy of the rich and the city folk (no differentiation there), dispense the loutish city slickers with tame lessons on jurisprudence and sycophancy, highlight the degeneration of culture amongst the educated (abetted by rapturous applause from illiterate front-benchers), and of course, the mandatory flashback about the hero’s raucous and uncouth father who dispenses mouthful of pan into a golden crucible along with his specious decisions and torrid moral lessons during the mandatory Panchayat scene.
In the few movies which are based in the city, the perversions only seem to increase. Friends get together to drink “beeeeer”, utter double-entendre dialog on the “rich girls” adorning the screen, while the hero stalks a good-looking girl for most of the movie to find "true love". Love! You got to give it to them, the way they handle love stories in Tamil (Tamil heroes pronounce it “lowe”!).
The axioms are so nauseating that you think you are two months pregnant! A boy who stalks a girl is the best lover. If you persist on a girl by, of course, stalking her, and telling her “I lowe you”, several hundred times, in the first ten reels of the movie, she would eventually have to relent, by the fourteenth reel, and jump off the train and run with the hero into the setting sun.
It is irrelevant what the girl thinks of the hero. Getting a girl is like getting a job. Just keep “applying” and you are bound to succeed one day. The hero’s friend (the dark comedian) while being single (and ugly) himself would understand minute nuances about the women psyche.
“Machaan, you don’t know women. When they say I don’t like you that means they like you!!” The mostly male audience erupts in self-congratulatory laughter and college students reach out to “Hi-Five” each other.
The perversion attains another dimension, when the directors with a stunted worldview – as dangerous as their perversion – encouraged by the thumping response to their trite village sagas, try to break new ground and reach out to strike a cord with the city youth. What results is a caricature, which would be funny if it had not been so bothersome. Two examples on how the hero ensnares a determined heroine refusing to give in to his overtures expressing his “lowe”.
The hero who stalks the heroine with no luck, as a last resort, asks her to tie the “Rakhee” and prove that she doesn’t love him! The heroine is “trapped”, looks down in resignation, and the hero smiles triumphantly; the director cuts on the “Pallavan” bus and takes us to the snowy Jungfroch, for a dream song. I don’t understand the logic. A girl could find a guy so repulsive that she wants to do nothing with him. Not as a lover. Definitely not as a Rakhee brother.
In another instance of exemplary impropriety, the hero’s friend advises the hero that the “First Kiss” will make the recipient (boy or girl not mentioned!!) besotted to him for life. Thank God Tamil youth don’t take their movies that seriously… I hope not.
Mercifully, such perversions don’t exist in Hindi movies, to that extent at least. Probably because Hindi movies have become like the T-Shirt factories of Tiruppur – 100% export-oriented. Instead, there are other problems; actually, no problems at all!
There are no visible signs of human sufferings or frailties, no geographical boundaries (Switzerland poses as Ram Nagar) or visa restrictions (you could go to Bern, dance before the clock tower, and be back within a few hours) and the minimum wage in the extended house hold is one million dollars.
There are karwa chowts and marriages, baby showers and fashion shows, which give the men and women folk (if you manage to find the difference) ample pretext to be clothe themselves in Manish Malhotra’s designer costumes.
There is this other famous fixture in Hindi movies – “Tootthe hue Thaare”. I mean, I am not an expert in Astronomy, but, if cosmic showers and meteorites hit us with such alarming superabundance, as they happen in Hindi movies, we should be near Armageddon or something.
With the growth of middle-class India, and the diverse groups that watch Hindi movies, one understands the problems that Hindi movie directors have – they have to satisfy the front-benchers and farmers, taxi drivers and conductors, singleplex and multiplex families, Punjabis and Gujaratis, the NRI romantics (from Dubai to LA) and the western Mumbai snobs.
A Hindi filmmaker, it seems to me, is trapped between boundaries (self-induced?) to make a movie that caters to such a divergent set of people. But even within these boundaries, can't movies be made believable if not memorable?
Just look at it. I love North Indians but, if the world were full of people with such impeccable family values and such towering integrity (and riches) as shown in a Sooraj Barjatya starrer, all of India’s development indicators would be crashing through the roof! Is there a world outside of Barjatya’s palatial homes where people DON’T perform incredible acts – like fall at the feet of their elders every five minutes, run the “No.1 business in India”, casually win the Booker price, return from college in a Helicopter, and MoohMeetafy on every trivial occasion, their friends, relatives, the Muslim family doctor and the regiment of servants (commandeered by Laxmikant Berde).
This diabetic escapism, which we like to be fed with, says a thing or two about our nation’s sensibilities.
I know cinema is for entertainment, but it is not like entertainment is devoid of purpose or has nothing to do with the intellect. Art is for its own sake. Agreed. But in a country like India where there are so many misses rather than hits, so much disillusionment and silent suffering, what ultimately holds the screws intact is the indomitable spirit of the people. When did we last show that in our Hindi movies? In the Barjatyan and Joharian world order where is the place for the poor serf, the middle class teacher, the bald software engineer (OK that is me!), the dark-complexioned college student, and the bare-footed schoolgirl. This is the India we all know. The trials and tribulations, the frustrations and joys, the small sufferings and the even smaller victories are what keep this behemoth culture ticking. This is the India we don’t get in our movies.
As Graham Greene said in a eulogy about RK Narayan “It is very difficult to capture the extraordinary ordinariness of everyday life. Narayan does it”. This “ordinariness” has eluded the celluloid for long now.
And I would hold Hindi movies more accountable for this peccadillo than the other regional language cinema.
The Hindi movie factory systemically destroyed the middle class ethos of the movies and started producing what looks like episodes of “The lifestyles of the
rich and famous”. In one movie, Akshay Kumar asks Madhuri to accompany her on a trip to Europe, where he says he has some official work for a few hours and “…tum apne shopping bhe kar lena”, he says in his constipated voice. And they leave in their personal jet to a song “Dil To Pagal Hai, dil deewana hai…”. Sure buddy. Sirf Dil nahin. Tum, tumhara friend aur tumhare audience sub pagal hai..
Almost every movie unfolds – and tears apart – in a village.
“Kounder ayya!!” the hapless village folk bend over to touch the sand the hero had just treaded to the sound of conches and women making suggestive sounds using their tongues.
“Veera Koundaru varaaru, then singam varaaru!” a song resounds in the background as the hero takes a 3-½ minute walk down the lush, green Pollachi fields with villagers waving their “angavastrams” – and “dhotis” – for visual effect and old women feeding him leftovers.
The movies, using the village “perrivars” as their mouthpiece, would copiously lecture the audience about the hypocrisy of the rich and the city folk (no differentiation there), dispense the loutish city slickers with tame lessons on jurisprudence and sycophancy, highlight the degeneration of culture amongst the educated (abetted by rapturous applause from illiterate front-benchers), and of course, the mandatory flashback about the hero’s raucous and uncouth father who dispenses mouthful of pan into a golden crucible along with his specious decisions and torrid moral lessons during the mandatory Panchayat scene.
In the few movies which are based in the city, the perversions only seem to increase. Friends get together to drink “beeeeer”, utter double-entendre dialog on the “rich girls” adorning the screen, while the hero stalks a good-looking girl for most of the movie to find "true love". Love! You got to give it to them, the way they handle love stories in Tamil (Tamil heroes pronounce it “lowe”!).
The axioms are so nauseating that you think you are two months pregnant! A boy who stalks a girl is the best lover. If you persist on a girl by, of course, stalking her, and telling her “I lowe you”, several hundred times, in the first ten reels of the movie, she would eventually have to relent, by the fourteenth reel, and jump off the train and run with the hero into the setting sun.
It is irrelevant what the girl thinks of the hero. Getting a girl is like getting a job. Just keep “applying” and you are bound to succeed one day. The hero’s friend (the dark comedian) while being single (and ugly) himself would understand minute nuances about the women psyche.
“Machaan, you don’t know women. When they say I don’t like you that means they like you!!” The mostly male audience erupts in self-congratulatory laughter and college students reach out to “Hi-Five” each other.
The perversion attains another dimension, when the directors with a stunted worldview – as dangerous as their perversion – encouraged by the thumping response to their trite village sagas, try to break new ground and reach out to strike a cord with the city youth. What results is a caricature, which would be funny if it had not been so bothersome. Two examples on how the hero ensnares a determined heroine refusing to give in to his overtures expressing his “lowe”.
The hero who stalks the heroine with no luck, as a last resort, asks her to tie the “Rakhee” and prove that she doesn’t love him! The heroine is “trapped”, looks down in resignation, and the hero smiles triumphantly; the director cuts on the “Pallavan” bus and takes us to the snowy Jungfroch, for a dream song. I don’t understand the logic. A girl could find a guy so repulsive that she wants to do nothing with him. Not as a lover. Definitely not as a Rakhee brother.
In another instance of exemplary impropriety, the hero’s friend advises the hero that the “First Kiss” will make the recipient (boy or girl not mentioned!!) besotted to him for life. Thank God Tamil youth don’t take their movies that seriously… I hope not.
Mercifully, such perversions don’t exist in Hindi movies, to that extent at least. Probably because Hindi movies have become like the T-Shirt factories of Tiruppur – 100% export-oriented. Instead, there are other problems; actually, no problems at all!
There are no visible signs of human sufferings or frailties, no geographical boundaries (Switzerland poses as Ram Nagar) or visa restrictions (you could go to Bern, dance before the clock tower, and be back within a few hours) and the minimum wage in the extended house hold is one million dollars.
There are karwa chowts and marriages, baby showers and fashion shows, which give the men and women folk (if you manage to find the difference) ample pretext to be clothe themselves in Manish Malhotra’s designer costumes.
There is this other famous fixture in Hindi movies – “Tootthe hue Thaare”. I mean, I am not an expert in Astronomy, but, if cosmic showers and meteorites hit us with such alarming superabundance, as they happen in Hindi movies, we should be near Armageddon or something.
With the growth of middle-class India, and the diverse groups that watch Hindi movies, one understands the problems that Hindi movie directors have – they have to satisfy the front-benchers and farmers, taxi drivers and conductors, singleplex and multiplex families, Punjabis and Gujaratis, the NRI romantics (from Dubai to LA) and the western Mumbai snobs.
A Hindi filmmaker, it seems to me, is trapped between boundaries (self-induced?) to make a movie that caters to such a divergent set of people. But even within these boundaries, can't movies be made believable if not memorable?
Just look at it. I love North Indians but, if the world were full of people with such impeccable family values and such towering integrity (and riches) as shown in a Sooraj Barjatya starrer, all of India’s development indicators would be crashing through the roof! Is there a world outside of Barjatya’s palatial homes where people DON’T perform incredible acts – like fall at the feet of their elders every five minutes, run the “No.1 business in India”, casually win the Booker price, return from college in a Helicopter, and MoohMeetafy on every trivial occasion, their friends, relatives, the Muslim family doctor and the regiment of servants (commandeered by Laxmikant Berde).
This diabetic escapism, which we like to be fed with, says a thing or two about our nation’s sensibilities.
I know cinema is for entertainment, but it is not like entertainment is devoid of purpose or has nothing to do with the intellect. Art is for its own sake. Agreed. But in a country like India where there are so many misses rather than hits, so much disillusionment and silent suffering, what ultimately holds the screws intact is the indomitable spirit of the people. When did we last show that in our Hindi movies? In the Barjatyan and Joharian world order where is the place for the poor serf, the middle class teacher, the bald software engineer (OK that is me!), the dark-complexioned college student, and the bare-footed schoolgirl. This is the India we all know. The trials and tribulations, the frustrations and joys, the small sufferings and the even smaller victories are what keep this behemoth culture ticking. This is the India we don’t get in our movies.
As Graham Greene said in a eulogy about RK Narayan “It is very difficult to capture the extraordinary ordinariness of everyday life. Narayan does it”. This “ordinariness” has eluded the celluloid for long now.
And I would hold Hindi movies more accountable for this peccadillo than the other regional language cinema.
The Hindi movie factory systemically destroyed the middle class ethos of the movies and started producing what looks like episodes of “The lifestyles of the
rich and famous”. In one movie, Akshay Kumar asks Madhuri to accompany her on a trip to Europe, where he says he has some official work for a few hours and “…tum apne shopping bhe kar lena”, he says in his constipated voice. And they leave in their personal jet to a song “Dil To Pagal Hai, dil deewana hai…”. Sure buddy. Sirf Dil nahin. Tum, tumhara friend aur tumhare audience sub pagal hai..
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