Calcutta Chromosome

My weekly column for Yahoo! Movies, first published here.

This week, Saif plays a blond, wannabe-Russian, zombie-hunter operating in India’s Party Capital – Goa. Be it a band of comrades fighting for independence or be it a trio of friend living it up in a Merc convertible, Goa has been a big hit with moviegoers. Here’s a look at ten of those movies.

Saat Hindustani went on a mission – ahead of Indian troops – to destabilize the Portugese rule through a symbolic protest of raising the Indian flag atop seven buildings in occupied Goa. Hailing from different parts of India and following different religions, these seven Indians were symbols of unity in diversity. Even the actors who played the roles had their actual identities and characters criss-crossed. Bengali actor Utpal Dutt played a Punjabi while Malayalam actor Madhu played a Bengali. Actor Anwar Ali (brother of comedian Mehmood) played a Hindu while a new actor called Amitabh Bachchan played a Muslim character (called Anwar Ali)!

KA Abbas directed this patriotic drama that wasn’t about idyllic Goa but more about the mission to free it.

Amitabh Bachchan returned to the Goan liberation movement in Pukar as Ramdas a.k.a. Ronnie. He was the good guy (and freedom fighter’s son) who crossed over to the dark side (due to a misunderstanding with this father’s comrades). He sported a mean moustache and wooed a Goan girl – Julie (Zeenat Aman) – with what was probably the most famous ‘sea song’ in Bollywood. Samandar mein nahake could have only been set in Goa – if not for the beach setting, then certainly for Amitabh’s flashy blue-yellow-striped jacket.

(And to restrict the number of Amitabh Bachchan movies, I am skipping Bombay To Goa since it is more about the trip and less about the place!)

After the pop-patriotism, came Shyam Benegal’s brooding family drama – Trikal– where a Portugese family struggled to come to terms with the Indian Army’s takeover of Goa. With superb art direction and lush depiction of Goa, the film was vintage arthouse fare that made Benegal famous. Naseeruddin Shah was the narrator who told the story in flashback and a wonderful ensemble cast populated the story.

Trivia Alert: Three playback singers – Lucky Ali, Remo Fernandes and Alisha Chinai – made screen appearances in this film.

The moment Goa got free, drug peddlers came and settled down. One of their first victims was Cyrus Broacha (WHAT?) who made his cinematic debut in Jalwa as heroine Archana Puran Singh’s drug-addicted younger brother. The battle against drugs was led by Naseeruddin Shah who threw aside his ‘art film’ subtlety and put on some serious muscle for this role. Archana Puran Singh made her name with the Yeh hai jalwaaaaaaaa song with the sea in the background as Remo did his brand of vocal calisthenics.

Trivia Alert: Farah Khan was a backup dancer in one of the songs.

Shah Rukh Khan countered his villainous turn in Baazigar with a super-cute role in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na, where he played the forever-flunking, musically inclined Sunil in Goa. While the beaches and fishermen remained only as props, the laidback attitude, the music and the Portugese priests were all there. Add to that a band of musicians, a Mafia Don called Anthony Gomes, a restaurant called China Town and you had the perfect picture of Goa. Wait… why a Chinese restaurant in Goa? Arre, just!

“Welcome to Goa, Singham!”

Villain Prakash Raj made this ominous invitation to Ajay Devgn and that was pretty much the only Goa in the movie. The sea food and siesta got replaced by flying kicks and revolving SUVs. Playing the title role of Singham, Devgn got down and dirty with the goons of Goa and the fabled susegad didn’t have a chance. Not venturing anywhere near the beaches and shacks, he was content tearing lamp posts off promenades. Clearly, a philistine!

A champion con-man came to Goa, followed by three women whom he had cheated earlier. And the game was afoot.

Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl chose Goa as the venue of the final showdown between Ranveer Singh and Anushka Sharma as they scouted idyllic locations for the perfect restaurant she wanted to start. That restaurant was part of an elaborate con the ladies were playing to recoup their money but Goa’s languid pace and verdant surroundings play the strangest of tricks on the most hardened people. And somebody fell in love with somebody. As I said, the game was afoot.

In the new wave of low-budget, off-beat films, we had Love Wrinkle Free. It was a comedy set in Goa where a salesman (Ash Chandler) planned to start his own business of – hold your breath – edible underwear. The obsession with soccer and siesta was brought out beautifully as our protagonist bumbled around his new business, his old wife and his mid-life crisis. Apart from the nostalgic favourites, the movie touched upon the new problems of Goa too.

Talking of Goa’s new problems, Dum Maaro Dum– as the title indicated – looked at the drug smuggling and mess that it has created among the young people. Abhishek Bachchan was the dour ACP chasing drug heists as a pretty airhostess (Bipasha Basu) and a confused youngster (Rana Daggubati) flitted in and out of love and jail. And finally, we had a movie that touched the Holy Grail of Goa entertainment – the rave party! (Complete with Deepika Padukone sporting a sexy tattoo. Beat that, God’s own country!)

The final name of the list has to be that film that made Goa ‘cool’. It is my contention that Goa’s ascension of the top holiday destination in India was largely brought about by Dil Chahta Hai.

Farhan Akhtar’s tale about three Bombay dudes doing cool things in Goa (even though it was for a short while in the film) was super-aspirational and was almost like an ad film for the destination. The montage of places in Goa – as part of the title song – playing incessantly on TV probably did more for Goa than any tourism development initiative. Of course, we didn’t have Merc convertibles to zip off in but Akash, Sameer and Siddharth’s capers in Goa would have prompted many a trio to get into their rickety cars and take off. After all, Goa is a place jo dil chahta hai…

My Yahoo! Movies column, first published here.

As Aurangzeb jumps out of the underworld and into our lives today, it would be a worthwhile exercise to look at his ancestors. Mughal emperors – with their pomp and grandeur – have been a big favourite of Bollywood directors. Here are some of them, in reverse chronological order.

The first name in the list enters somewhat slyly. Because the film never got made!

Aakhri Mughal was supposed to be Abhishek Bachchan’s launch vehicle. Directed by J.P. Dutta, it was the tale of BahadurShah Zafar’s relationship with his son. Apparently, the rights were with Kamal Amrohi once upon a time and he had wanted to make the film with Amitabh Bachchan, after

seeing him in Zanjeer. It did not happen then. It did not happen with the son.

With all star sons getting launched in all-singing-alldancing-all-muscle-flexing roles, a debut like this would have been very different (to the point of being risky). But then, so was Abhishek’s actual debut film—Refugee—with the same director.

A monument as timeless as the Taj Mahal has been accorded not one, but two movies named after it. Quite unfortunately, neither of Shah Jahans evoked much excitement.

In the 1960s version, Pradeep Kumar played Shah Jahan and the movie was famous for excellent music composed by Roshan. The soundtrack included the superhit Jo vaada kiya woh nibhana padega which the hero sang soulfully for the benefit of Bina Rai.

Emperor Trivia: Pradeep Kumar has the distinction of playing Shah Jahan in this movie and Jahangir in another movie called Anarkali.

Akbar Khan made Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story with a lavish budget and not much commercial success. Zulfi Sayed played the young Shah Jahan while Kabir Bedi donned white tresses to play the old version. Pakistani actress Sonya Jehan played the object of affection and devotion. The romance of Prince Khurram and Arjumand Bano Begum reached its culmination in the white mausoleum – a symbol of eternal love as well as a place where a king’s dreams lay buried.

Jahangir was immortalised by his birth name – Prince Salim – where one of India’s greatest actors played him in Mughal-e-Azam. K Asif directed Dilip Kumar in the magnificent saga of a prince rebelling against his father the emperor for the love of a woman. Before he became the ‘conqueror of the world’, Salim was just a man in love and frustrated by his class-conscious father. In some of the largest battle scenes filmed in Bollywood, Prince Salim took on Emperor Akbar and lost spectacularly. Prithviraj Kapoor played the baritone voiced emperor whose kingship forced him to take up arms against his rebellious son.

And there was Madhubala, who was worth every war fought in the history of India.

Emperor Trivia: In Anand, Johnny Walker also played Salim in a theatre production and uttered the immortal lines that Anand would make his death speech. Zindagi aur maut uparwale ke haath mein hai, jahanpanah...

More Emperor Trivia: In an absolutely obscure film Angaar, Kader Khan played a Robin Hoodesque Mafia don – Jahangir Khan – who ruled Bombay with an iron hand and velvet gloves. His (and his sons’) run-ins with hero Jackie Shroff formed the crux of this eminently forgettable movie.

In Jodha Akbar– a film which was historically before and chronologically after Mughal-e-Azam – Akbar was no longer the spoilsport but a rather flamboyant lover. Hrithik Roshan – he of the sculpted body and chiselled looks – romanced Aishwarya Rai – she of the dulcet voice and mesmerising eyes – in the grand film.

Ashutosh Gowariker invented several new historical ‘events’ to concoct this tale of love and honour between the Muslim ruler of India and his Hindu wife. When Akbar acquiesced to each of Jodha’s demands in order to marry her, who knew he would soon be haranguing his son for marrying a girl of his choice?

The final name in the list in Babar or – more accurately – Baabarr, a crime drama set in the ganglands of Uttar Pradesh where one Baabarr Qureshi ruled the underworld with aggressive help from the police and politicians. It traced his rise from a poor little boy to a dreaded gangster and pitted him against two charismatic actors as police officers – Om Puri and Mithun Chakraborty. The movie’s tagline ominously declared “I was... I am... I will be... Baabarr” which did nothing to improve the collections and Baabarr collapsed at the box office.

Historical Alert: The last time Om and Mithun formed a team was when the former was the latter’s manager in Disco Dancerand you could say Mithun was the Emperor of Disco!

When I was studying business administration in Jamshedpur, I got up very early on a Sunday morning to attend a film festival, braving a terrible hangover, torrential rains and knee-deep water-logging. The film I wanted to see was (what I then thought) the director's second film, based on a novel by a favourite author of mine.
Having loved - and even more, been intrigued - by the director's earlier film, I was eagerly awaiting this one though I remember thinking (in the auto to the auditorium) that the film was bound to be a disappointment - something I grew accustomed to. Having seen Bengali (and Hindi also, come to think of it) cinema in an inexorable decline, I just knew it. Why was I being a masochist when I could have slept off my hangover, I thought.
As you would have guessed from the context, the author was Suchitra Bhattacharya. The film was Dahan - which still remains my favourite film by Rituparno Ghosh. It would be unfair if I called Dahan merely Rituparno's best film. Along with Mahanagar, it is one of the two most brilliant documents on women's rights in India.

Having not watched Bengali cinema - or more importantly, not thought about it too much either - in recent times, I often mentioned Srijit Mukherji, Sujoy Ghosh or Dibakar Banerjee as the best Bengali directors in the country today. In the last couple of days, I thought about Rituparno Ghosh's twenty films (soon to be twenty-one) and realised I was thinking of the others as directors who were Bengalis. As a director of Bengali films, Rituparno Ghosh stood unparalleled. Even when he made so-called Hindi films like Raincoat and The Last Lear, the Bangaliyana just engulfed you like a warm embrace.

Over the last two days, I have been reading up all the tributes to him and wondering what has got left out. There has been a succinctly comprehensive appraisal by Sohini Mitter on the Forbes India blogs - highlighting his portrayal of women characters and understanding of Tagore.
There has been an affectionate thought from Tanmay Mukherjee on how would They meet?
An extensive interview by Kaustav Bakshi looks at his relationships with Ray and Tagore, his handling of actors (including child actors, which was remarkably similar to Ray himself) and his sexuality.
Sandip Roy looked at the missionary zeal with which he brought forward his support of the sexual minority and cleverly connected it with a feature of the Bengali language.
By and large, they have been around his forte of depicting women, Tagore and - in the last phase of his career - alternate sexuality.
UPDATED TO ADD: After I published this post, I found Arnab written - as usual - a balanced and nuanced take on Rituparno's legacy - which, I think, is the best of all the tributes written for the director.
Apart from that, Trisha Gupta wrote a nice piece on Rituparno's many hats - as actor, director and agent provocateur.

I feel one of Rituparno's abiding contribution to parallel cinema - which has not been acknowledged in the obituaries - has been his effort to bring it to the mainstream by improving its commercial viability. He chose to do this by having superstars in his films, without compromising the content or the form.
I think it is a matter of huge confidence when a parallel filmmaker takes on a star - his mannerisms, his airs, his ego - and squeezes out a great performance from him. Rituparno did this with aplomb and in his films, a roll-call of stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Ajay Devgn, Preity Zinta, Arjun Rampal, Jackie Shroff, Bipasha Basu and Rituparna Sengupta wowed the festival circuit, while bringing their box-office clout to his offbeat themes.
In this respect, one must remember that the actor of Shanghai, Baishey Srabon, Autograph, Moner Manush, Aparajita Tumi and (the forthcoming) Kakababu was delivered to us by Rituparno. Prasenjit gave up his box-office occasionally and turned to meaningful cinema (and even brought his clout to support it). Theirs was the most enduring - and most endearing - commercial-artistic partnership. As my mother once said, "Rituparno turned Possenjit into Prasenjit".

I will end with a favourite sequence of mine - the last few scenes of Shubho Maharat. Rituparno took diverse strands of realistic dialogue, strong women characters and Rabindranath Tagore to create a mesmeric ending to an already brilliant film.
Of course, you have watched it many times. Do watch it again. If not for anything else, the lines sound even more prophetic right now.
Jiban maraner shimana chharaye
Bandhu hey amar royechho dnaraye...

While writing my earlier post on Rituparno Ghosh, I was amazed to realise that nearly half of his twenty directorial ventures are right up there among my favourite films. That puts him second only to Ray in my list. Not even Ritwik Ghatak had made so many A++ films.

My reminisces continued for the better part of yesterday and today and I hadn’t bargained for how sad I would feel on hearing about his death. Apart from the subtle hold he had over me with his films, the unexpectedness of his death had a lot to do with it.

At forty-nine, a director is usually reaching his peak. As my friend Suhel Banerjee pointed out, (given his age) Rituparno’s death is a bigger loss to Bengali cinema than Ray’s. With this in mind, I decided to cling more to the memories and yield ten of my favourite Rituparno films.

There are no ‘Tagore films’ in this list. But then, each one of his films is steeped in Tagore – much like how a Bengali life usually is. We often forget how much The Bearded One is part of our lives. Rituparno Ghosh’s films are perfect antidotes for that oversight.

Unishey April

My mother and I watched it together and I remember both of us staring at each other for a few seconds when the last frame dissolved and then breaking into smiles. Without speaking, we knew thiswas the best ending the film could have got and the writer-director wasn’t an ordinary one. Of course, the film was almost perfect in every other way.

As many commentators noted in their tributes, Rituparno got the bhadralok Bengali audiences back to the theatre and Unishey April was a magical start.

Dahan

As I just wrote, this is my favourite Rituparno Ghosh film. It took a very sensitive topic and gave the most well-balanced take possible. It was set in 1998 Calcutta. It could well be 2013 Delhi. Or 2020 Mumbai. More than the maturity (and sensitivity) with which he handled the topic, it was the writing which took my breath away. Having cut my cinema-appreciation teeth on Satyajit Ray, I remember feeling almost blasphemous when I thought that the writing – dialogues, screenplay – was almost like Ray’s.

Utsab

Rituparno, I felt, loved uncomfortable situations – at least in his films. In Ashukh, he created a situation where a daughter had to speculate on her father’s possible sexual relations. A series of uncomfortable situations and tense relationships were explored masterfully in Utsab. The old decaying mansion of the film was – to me – a metaphor for the city of Calcutta and the talented but squabbling relatives its citizens. When I saw the film, I had already become a probashi and the helplessness at the imminent downfall of the family – examined during Durga Pujo – was a gut-wrenching experience.

Titli

Boy loves girl. Boy loses girl. Boy meets girl – again. Boy also meets girl’s daughter.

For me, Titli was Lamhe meets Kapurush. When you go to see a film that seems to be a hybrid of two earlier movies you love, you almost pre-decide to hate the movie. I did exactly the same but came back converted. The music – especially the title song – warmed my heart. The writing wowed me. And the performances of the three lead pairs just blew me up.

(I think I had just seen Konkona’s debut – Ek Je Achhey Kanya– with considerable dismay. I became her fan with Titli. And Mithun. How can you not like Mithun when he plays a movie star?)

Shubho Maharat

Unlike some of his earlier films, I decided to like Shubho Maharat much before I saw it. Raakhee as a Bangali Miss Marple (with a name as endearing as Ranga pishima) was brilliant. And the best part of the movie was the smoothness with which she solved the crime, without ever going anywhere near the scene of crime and yet making it perfectly plausible.

After this one, I had hoped for a series of Miss Marple films (or at least a television series) but that never happened.

Raincoat

When Chetan Bhagat and Vinod Chopra were fighting over credits for 3 Idiots, I remembered an interview of Rituparno, where he stated that the credit to O’Henry’s Gift of the Magi was given at the end of the film only to retain the suspense but it was against his principle to not credit the original writer upfront. O’Henry received a Bangali makeover as we got to know that Aishwarya Rai could actually act and Ajay Devgn’s Zakhm wasn’t a flash in the pan.

Dosar

He went back to an uncomfortable situation – with a vengeance. A wife learns of his husband’s infidelity after an accident which kills the husband’s lover and renders the husband critically injured. The wife’s family, the husband’s colleagues, the lover’s husband and an assortment of bloody real characters played out the aftermath of the accident. Konkona delivered an understated but powerhouse performance. Before the movie, I expected her to chew Prasenjit up and ‘expose’ him. I think it is Rituparno’s directorial baton that got Prasenjit to match her scene by scene.

The Last Lear

A long time back, I had imagined Amitabh Bachchan as an actor in the twilight of his career. The arrogance of having been the emperor once upon a time. The desperation of seeing it all slip away. The frustration of seeing midgets occupying centre-stage. The guilt of ignoring his family. The pain of them now ignoring him. The contempt for his contemporaries compromising to do character roles. The obsession of trying to get a final hurrah before the curtain falls. And the quest for a group of people who would be ready to gamble on this old war-horse…

Rituparno delivered this exact story of my dreams to me – with only a few small modifications. What’s there not to love in it?

Abohomaan

A lot of people saw Satyajit Ray’s life story in this film. I didn’t. I just felt Dipankar Dey gave the performance of a lifetime in this film as an eccentric film director who gave up his family for fame and regretted it at the twilight of his life. Or did he regret it? They forgave him for that. Or did they? I remember being a little unimpressed with the film while watching it but ended thinking about the questions it asked for several days afterwards till I had to pull out the DVD and watch it once again. Rituparno did that sort of thing to you.

And yes, there are only nine films in the list. I am leaving one space for Satyanweshi, which will – I am hoping – overtake Ray’s Byomkesh film.

Why I Love Twitter Reason #352

A tweeter who goes by the cryptic screen name of Inspector and handle of @angrykopite came up with this brilliant analysis of Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani. When I was watching the movie, I did get an inkling if the cricket match was correctly placed in history but then I thought what I think nowadays - "Theek hi hoga...". But Inspector, of course, had a keener grip on these tiny details.

I posted the picture on Facebook. And needless to say, people had points of view. Most importantly, Abhishek Mukherjee a.k.a. Oh Yes Abhi a.k.a. Ovshake.
2013 is an assumption here. Given the heavy costumes of the wedding in Udaipur, it can be safely assumed that the wedding took place in winter, which means it was the winter of 2012-13.
This means that the "8 years earlier" incidents happened at least before the 2004 Holi. The India-Pakistan series had started on March 13, 2004 - but unfortunately Holi was on March 6 that year.What about 2003, then? The famous India-Pakistan World Cup match had taken place on March 1, 2003, while Holi fell on March 14. We can be happy with 2003, then.
BUT.
The India-Pakistan match started at 2 PM IST. Didn't Kalki say something about getting up at 6 AM and making ham sandwiches?

This led me to wonder if we can conclusively establish the date of the match and the date of Holi of that year. As most of you are aware, Bollywood research takes inordinate amount of checks and cross-checks. But then, I went after Sharmila Tagore's book without Google or YouTube.

These are my observations and findings:

Normally, Abhishek has a much sharper mind and observation but a few weeks in Haryana may have blunted some of that sharpness. It does not need to be assumed that the wedding took place in December 2012. It was very clearly mentioned that the 'destination wedding' took place in Udaipur between 20th and 25th December. New Year's Eve was a few days later, remember?

Also, "8 years earlier" should mean anything between "7.50 - 8.49 years earlier". That can mean either a 2004 or a 2005 Holi.
Why not a little bit earlier, say 2003?
To answer that, we have to get back to the match. What do we know about it?
1. India lost the match.
2. Mohammed Kaif was batting and was out caught.
3. India's score was partially heard as "143 for..."
4. It was an "India-Pakistan series" and not a Champion's Trophy or World Cup.
[That's what I know about it. I am sure youngsters with sharper eyes and ears would have picked up more.]

So, now we go to Cricinfo.
Then, we go to Statsguru.
We search for ODIs between India and Pakistan played between 2002 and 2005, in which India lost.
And what do we see?
The first match India lost during this period was on 16 March 2004.
(India had a fantastic victory in the 2003 Centurion match and the way Sachin batted in that match, I don't think Bunny could have convinced Avi to move away from the TV and go on a vacation. Also, it was not a series.)
In these ten matches, there was only one occasion when there was a batting collapse AND Kaif was out caught. And when he got out, the score was 143-7.
And that match was in Jamshedpur on 9 April 2005.

However, that brings forward a second anachronism.
India batted second in that match and the part of the match we saw would have been happened in the afternoon. And Kalki's culinary adventure, Farooque Shaikh's late-night sermon, Deepika's early morning flight all pointed to an early morning departure.

If you notice, this research did not change anything from the original assertion by @angrykopite but the amount of fun I had while doing this useless thing (while watching a useless awards show and a useless movie) is something quite irrational.
And that, my friends, is why I love Bollywood Reason #31,41,592.
(Yes, it is an irrational love.)

Brunch, the Sunday magazine of Hindustan Times (with whom I have a passing connection), has come up with a glossy Collector's Edition on Bollywood. The Editor of Brunch - Poonam Saxena - is a big movie fan who sneaks in a cinema-connected cover story every now and then. With this special issue, they have completely outdone themselves in terms of the photos, design and the content. They have got fifty stars writing about fifty stars.

Pick up the issue. At 100 bucks, it is a steal!

I ended up writing a piece on Bollywood's New 'New Wave' and looked at how the 'indie' (which is not actually indie in India) movement is taking shape and gaining momentum. Will post that piece later.

I was also co-opted to write some Short Takes on the fifty stars - some small snippets of trivia - to go with the profiles, a sort of light counterpoint to the 'tribute' / 'appraisal' that was the main thing. I wrote more than 250 snippets of trivia - about five per star. Posting the whole thing would probably crash Blogger. So, I am choosing forty of those - the ones I really liked and/or discovered during the 'research'.

The forty stars have been divided into four logic-less sections.

This Is The Beginning

Shah Rukh Khan’s first movie appearance was in a Doordarshan-produced telefilm, co-scripted by Arundhati Roy. It was called In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones and he played a ‘gay-ish’ character.
Anil Kapoor’s first screen appearance was in a movie called Tu Payal Main Geet, in which he played the young Shashi Kapoor.
Farooq Shaikh’s film debut was in Garam Hawa, an acclaimed film made by MS Sathyu. After this, he was noticed by Satyajit Ray and played a small but significant role in Shatranj Ke Khiladi.
Vidya Balan’s first film to release was a Bengali one called Bhalo Theko (as three films in Tamil and Malayalam she was signed for, were either shelved or Vidya was dropped).
A struggler for a very long time, Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s first screen appearance was in Sarfarosh. He played a petty criminal being interrogated by Aamir Khan and Mukesh Rishi in a police lockup. He has played the role of a washerman in a Pepsi ad with Sachin Tendulkar. He hid himself behind the clothes whenever the camera turned to him since he didn’t want to seen in the ad.
Malaika Arora Khan met her husband Arbaaz, while shooting a steamy ad for MR Coffee.
Shilpa Shetty started her modeling career at the age of 16 with an advertising campaign for Limca.
One of Paresh Rawal’s earliest film roles was in a telefilm Holi, directed by Ketan Mehta. In this film (made in a FTII workshop for graduating students), many future stars contributed – including one Aamir Hussain who later became famous as Aamir Khan.
One of the few Indian actors who have regularly appeared in big-ticket Hollywood productions, Irrfan Khan made his film debut in an international production – Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay.
Farhan Akhtar was an apprentice on Yash Chopra’s Lamhe and an assistant director on Himalay Putra, which was Akshaye Khanna’s debut film. Maybe he pitched the idea of Dil Chahta Hai to him then?
When Ranbir Kapoor passed his Class X Boards (with 53% marks), Neetu Singh cried with joy as he was the first Kapoor to have passed school without failing a single year.

What's In A Name?

In Pyar To Hona Hi Tha, Ajay Devgn played a conman who stole a credit card to cover his expenses. The name on the credit card was Kumar Mangat, his then-secretary and executive producer of his productions.
Hrithik’s nickname is Duggu, which is a reverse of father Rakesh Roshan’s nickname – Guddu.
Parineeti Chopra’s parents named her after seeing a Prakash Jha film called Parinati (starring Nandita Das among others).
In Raakh (which released just after QSQT), Aamir’s character was called Aamir Hussain – which is actually his real name and the only time Aamir has been called Aamir on screen.
Salman’s full name is Abdul Rashid Salim Salman Khan. In Sanam Bewafa, Salman Khan played a character called Salman Khan.
Arshad Warsi’s son is called Zeke Zidane. He appeared in a cameo in Salaam Namaste along with mother, Maria Goretti. If you thought his son’s name wasn’t weird enough, Arshad named his daughter Zene Zoe.
Om Puri’s full name Om Prakash Puri wasn’t considered ‘smart’ enough for the movies. So he tried names like Vilom Puri and Azdak Puri before falling back on Om!
John Abraham played the lead role in Anurag Kashyap’s surreal No Smoking. His friend’s role in the film was supposed to be played by writer-director Abbas Tyrewala, who dropped out and Ranvir Shorey played the role. That’s why Ranvir’s character was called Abbas Tyrewala.
In Agent Vinod, Saif Ali Khan played a RAW agent with multiple identities. He used names like Kapil Dev, Vinod Khanna, Freddie Khambatta and Mahendra Sandhu. The last one was the name of the actor who played Agent Vinod in the 1977 film.
Kareena Kapoor’s name is derived from Anna Karenina, which her mother was reading while she was pregnant and was very impressed with the iconic heroine.

You Only Know Half The Story

In a much-publicised poll conducted by BBC, Amitabh Bachchan was voted the Star of the Millennium beating Sir Lawrence Olivier and Sir Alec Guinness. In the same poll, Homer Simpson came 5th and Govinda came 10th.
Sonakshi’s father is the youngest four brothers – Ram, Lakshman, Bharat and Shatrughan. And in a next-gen extension, she has two brothers – Luv and Kussh. By the way, their house in Mumbai is called Ramayana.
After an affair with Ranbir Kapoor, Deepika tattooed RK on the nape of her neck. After they broke up, she redesigned the tattoo to make it (sort of) look like TMK. For all her troubles, she was chosen ‘Tattoo Queen’ by India’s first Tattoo Convention.
Konkona Sen Sharma’s father, Mukul Sharma, is a science writer and author (who used to write a popular puzzle column in The Times Of India called MindSport). He acted as the male lead of Parama, directed by Aparna Sen. He also wrote the short story on which Ek Thi Daayan is loosely based on.
Ayushmann Khurana’s first job after completing studies was a radio jockey for Big FM in Delhi, where he hosted a show called Maan Na Maan, Main Tera Ayushmann. RJing runs in the family as his brother – Apaarshakti – is also a RJ in Delhi. Going by both their names, their parents’ hobby seems to be generating tongue-twisters.
To mark the 10th anniversary of Ranu Mukerji’s first superhit Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, an animated version of the movie was made starring dogs in the three lead roles (and other animals for the remaining characters). It was called Koochie Koochie Hota Hai and Rani did the voice-over for her original character, Tina.
Naseeruddin Shah is an enthusiastic photographer. He has been credited with ‘Still Photography’ for Khamosh. Even in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, the camera he used in the film was his own.
In the award-winning Life of Pi, Irrfan played a character called Pi. In the movie Chocolate, he played a character called Pipi.
Rishi Kapoor and his sweetheart Neetu Singh got married in a grand ceremony, which was the first time Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan performed in India.

The Connections

Abhishek Bachchan has appeared with Amitabh Bachchan playing the latter’s grandson (Delhi 6), son (Sarkar), father (Paa) and unrelated (Bunty Aur Babli).
Akshay Kumar has acted in nine Khiladi films. Eight of them - Khiladi, Main Khiladi Tu Anari, Sabse Bada Khiladi, Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi, Mr & Mrs Khiladi, International Khiladi, Khiladi 420 and Khiladi 786 - are in real life. The ninth is when he appeared as a star of a film called Return Of Khiladi for his guest appearance in Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om.
Kajol and her aunt Nutan have won the highest number of Filmfare Awards for Best Actress (five each). In addition to that, Kajol has also won a Filmfare Award for Best Performance in a Negative Role. I should not tell you which film it is for as that would give away the ending!
Sonam Kapor and Ranveer Singh are cousins (from their mother’s side). In Sonam’s second film (Delhi 6) and Ranveer’s first (Band Baaja Baaraat), they played characters with the same name – Bittoo Sharma.
Anushka Sharma and Deepika Padukone (along with other notables like Margaret Alva, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and Nirupama Rao) have been students of Bangalore’s Mount Carmel College (though it is not clear if they completed their courses).
Abhay Deol seems to love working with debutant directors. His first five films – Socha Na Tha, Ahista Ahista, Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd, Ek Chalis Ka Last Local, Manorama Six Feet Under – were the directors’ first films.
Shabana Azmi has the highest number of National Awards for Best Actress – five – including a hattrick for Arth, Khandhar and Paar (1982-84). She created a record at the Filmfare Awards when she won four nominations in a single year (1984) for Arth, Avtaar, Mandi and Masoom. (The only other nominee was Sridevi for Sadma.)
In quick succession, Bipasha Basu appeared in two ‘Billo’ films. In Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal, she performed a hit song called Billo Rani while in Omkara, her name was Billo Chamanbahar.
Apart from ‘serial kisser’, Emraan Hashmi can also be called a ‘sequel king’ as he has acted in five sequels till date (Murder 2, ~~Murder 3~~, Jannat 2, Raaz 2, Raaz 3) – the highest among lead actors of the day.
In 2002, both Karisma and Kareena Kapoor were nominated for the Filmfare Award for Best Actress – for Zubeidaa and Asoka respectively. This is the only time siblings have been nominated in the same year.
In three of her films, Katrina Kaif came close to marrying a foreigner before turning to the hero – Partner (Peter), Namaste London (Charlie Brown) and Jab Tak Hai Jaan (Roger).

So, how many of these really surprised you? Oh come on, tell me the truth!

My Yahoo! Movies column, first published here.

Have been tardy with the earlier columns. Will publish everything punctually from now on. God promise.

As Dhanush flamboyantly woos Sonam Kapoor on the galis and ghats of Banaras, it might be a good idea to see why Uttar Pradesh has become a favourite locale for Bollywood.

(Director of Raanjhanaa, Aanand L Rai, seems to be in love with the state. His earlier film, Tanu Weds Manu, was set in Kanpur.)

Much before Raanjhanaa, Banaras came into limelight with a song.

Amitabh Bachchan is a Ganga kinare wala chhora in real life and he celebrated it with gay abandon in Don, making Paan Banaras wala deliriously famous. The song, originally written for Dev Anand’s Banarasi Babu, has been the anthem of UPites ever since.

In Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, Rani Mukherjee’s impoverished family was based in Banaras before she became a ‘high-society call-girl’ in Mumbai. The ancient ghats and dilapidated havelis made an interesting backdrop to the story as an entire song was affectionately devoted to the quirks and idiosyncrasies of being a Banarasi (Hum toh aise hain, bhaiyya).

Apart from the paan of Banaras, the jhumka of Bareilly gained nationwide (if not worldwide) fame because of another classic song performed – on and off screen – by legendary stars.

In Mera Saaya, Sadhana popped up as a street performer in a crowded marketplace and complained she had dropped her ear ornament in a Bareilly market. Asha Bhosle’s spirited rendition of Jhumka gira re went on immortalize the Western UP town.

A girl brought to Lucknow. She was trained in the fine arts of music and seduction. And she became Umrao Jaan. The legendary courtesan has been portrayed by two of Bollywood’s biggest stars. Rekha’s legendary enigma was superbly exploited by Muzaffar Ali and it was buoyed by Khayyam’s music.

JP Dutta’s version with Aishwarya Rai fell flat, though.

Bollywood’s paid homage to Kanpur through Tashan– in ballistic, bombastic style. Akshay Kumar was a Kanpur toughie who made his name playing as Raavan in a Ramlila play. His style found an admirer in city slicker Saif Ali Khan who paid the ultimate tribute to Kanpur by saying he had to become one to stay alive: Ab zinda rehne ke liye mujhe kuch aur banna hoga, khatarnaak banna hoga, chaalaak banna hoga, Kanpuriya banna hoga…

Two absconding criminals – Naseeruddin Shah and Arshad Warsi – went all across UP before finding sanctuary in Gorakhpur. The don, whom they had come for, was already dead and his widow (Vidya Balan) became their unlikely partner. Ishqiya was a tale of love and lust garnished with the colourful language of eastern UP and the cottage industry of Gorakhpur – kidnapping.

Whenever the students of the elite Rajput and the pajama chhaap Model locked horns on a race track and beyond, we got so caught up in their rivalry that we forgot where they were located. Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar opened with a commentary about pahadiyon ke beech mein ek khubsoorat jannat– Dehradun, a ‘heaven-on-earth’ which also had some of the best schools and colleges in the country.

Dehradun’s academic creds haven’t dimmed in the last twenty years as St Teresa of Student Of The Yearwas also located there.

While Bunty Aur Bablicarried out their capers all over UP, they were not from any real town. And yet from every town. As residents of Phursatganj and Pankhinagar, they inhabited the world of railway colonies, river ghats, crowded bazaars, seedy hotels, upright parents and the lure of success that is part of the fabric of every town in UP.

The bloody rivalry of the Qureishi and Chauhan clans were played out in a typical small town called Almore. The details of the fictional small town were alarmingly real as shady political goons, petty hooligans and flamboyant local heroes held centre-stage with country-made revolvers and disarming smiles. This was the deadly location for the violent love story of Ishaqzaade.

Apart from the trivia about the stars, I wrote the following piece for the Brunch Collector's Edition on Bollywood - on the new age filmmakers. The ones who are going from Toronto to Tardeo, from Cannes to Cinemax.

Did I tell you that the issue is a steal at hundred bucks? Well, I will just repeat myself then. The issue is a steal at hundred bucks. Buy it yesterday.

And do take a look at the cover. What can I say except the issue is a steal...

In 1997, Ram Gopal Verma started work on a gangster movie and hired a twenty-five year old novice to co-write the script with Saurabh Shukla. After shooting the first scene, RGV realized ‘this is not what my film is about’ and trashed the script. He canceled the schedule and packed off his writers to do the script all over again.

For all my attempts at suspense, all of you know the movie was Satya and the novice writer was Anurag Kashyap. And this partnership with Ram Gopal Verma probably sowed the seeds of the low-budget, different-with-a-vengeance, quasi-indie revolution we are seeing today.

Ram Gopal Verma used the success of Rangeelaand Satya to dictate terms to producers and green-lighted a slew of unusual scripts helmed by some very talented directors. He called his production company The Factory and his assembly line included Chandan Arora (Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon), Sriram Raghavan (Ek Hasina Thi) and Shimit Amin (Ab Tak Chhappan) among others. Some of these films suffered from the obvious haste in which they were made while some were ahead of their times.

A decade later, Anurag Kashyap replicated the model. After the success of Dev D and Gangs Of Wasseypur, he has backed directors like Vikramaditya Motwane (Udaan and the forthcoming Lootera), Bejoy Nambiar (Shaitan), Raj Kumar Gupta (Aamir) and Sameer Sharma (Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana). Not all of his ventures have been successful (Aiyya, for example) but most of these directors have scaled greater heights. Both Raj Kumar Gupta and Bejoy Nambiar made much bigger second films (No One Killed Jessica and David, respectively) while the rest are looking good for more.

Ram Gopal Verma’s dichotomy of creative energy and financial doldrums taught the next generation of filmmakers to be a lot savvier in their quest to make different films. By keeping production costs low, marketing films innovatively and co-opting the support of big production companies, the financial success has become much more achievable. Adopting a guerilla way of shooting, charming themselves into locations instead of building expensive sets and choosing talented actors instead of stars, these directors have taken cognizance of their still-limited audience and scaled down their budgets, not their ambition.

Anurag Kashyap’s made Gangs of Wasseypurwas made for Rs 18 crores, less than Salman Khan’s fees for one film. Sujoy Ghosh made Kahaani for about Rs 8 crores while Tigmanshu Dhulia and Shoojit Sircar made their magnum opii for Rs 5 crores or less. None of their bootstrapping was visible in the films, all of which made big money at the box-office even by Bollywood’s ten-digit standards.

What these makers lack in financial muscle, they more than make up for in innovation. The marketing of their films have gone off traditional media and used Facebook, Twitter and YouTube instead.

@RamadhirSingh appeared on Twitter. Vidya Bagchi looked for her husband on Mumbai local trains. The Shanghai cast went to college campuses instead of malls. With ‘making of’ videos and by engaging in real-time conversations with fans, these filmmakers have fully understood the need for marketing their niche products and have done so with panache.

To woo the musically inclined Indian audience, these films have gone beyond the item number.

For Gangs Of Wasseypur, composer Sneha Khanwalkar took off on research trips to Bihar and Trinidad (!) which ended with her picking up novices who sang for the final soundtrack, which was authentic and eminently hummable. Amit Trivedi has become the acknowledged master of real sounds. His Kai Po Chescore evoked Gujarati energy while Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana was as smooth as Punjabi butter. Be it the edgy Dev D or the dulcet Wake Up Sid, Trivedi’s music for these films have busted the charts and added one more reason to watch them.

Not only music but in all departments – editing that paces the film right, totally real casting and gritty, pulse-pounding action – these films have managed to take elements of the masala blockbuster and imbue them with realism. Without sacrificing the entertainment.

While these films have made their mark, their impact seems bigger on Twitter than in the real world. For all its cult status, Gangs Of Wasseypur collected in the region of Rs 50 crores (both parts put together), still some distance away from Bollywood’s Rs 100 crores Holy Grail. Another critics’ darling – Paan Singh Tomar– made just Rs 20 crores. But as Vidya Balan proved with Kahaani’s blockbuster success, one major star in the mix multiplies the mass appeal.

As these films slowly take root in a country obsessed with pretty things, we see a director like Anurag Kashyap become a star in the truest sense of the word. When he is not attending international film festivals, he appears in advertisements for Cadbury chocolates. What better sign do you need of these films becoming an idea whose time has come?

My Yahoo! Movies column, first published here.

A man who has stolen a ton of money cannot remember his partners in crime. Natural.

It seems he cannot remember where the money is either. Not so natural.

Memory loss is a very unnatural thing, made completely natural by Bollywood. And Ghanchakkar is the latest addition to this list. So, we take a look at the missing memories of Bollywood!

A man’s girlfriend is killed. He is so badly injured that he gets a rare case of amnesia – he loses his memory every fifteen minutes. He doesn’t remember who the killer is and tries to catch him by putting together clues that he will forget in the next quarter hour. To protect his knowledge, he trusts nobody, snaps photos and takes notes obsessively. Sometimes, he tattoos vital information on his body so that he doesn’t forget.

Christopher Nolan’s Mementogot a masala twist as Aamir Khan stared at us relentlessly from the posters with a “Who is Ghajini?” tattooed on his chest.

So, who was Ghajini? Didn’t I tell you fifteen minutes back?

A man is found injured lying next to a railway track. A childless tycoon finds him and raises him as his own. The man has no memory from before the accident and his memories as the tycoon’s son gradually become his existence. Till… there is always a till.

Amitabh Bachchan in Do Anjaane and Salman Khan in Tum Ko Na Bhool Payenge both got stuck in the till when their memory returned and there were accounts to be settled. Do you remember who they were up against?

Rishi Kapoor’s car crashed into the river and he floated into Pakistan. He had lost his memory and found Henna, forgot his real name Chander and got named Chand. If there is a medical theory which says that a man gets his memory back if the circumstances of the memory loss is replicated, then Henna depicted it perfectly. And it left Henna with the small matter of having to get her Indian husband past the Pakistan border.

If trans-memory wasn’t enough, there was a trans-border subplot too!

In Sadma, Sridevi (as a young woman) lost her memory partially. She lost everything till the age of five. As a woman-child, she fell in Kamal Hassan’s lap and started a romance like no other.

This twist was repeated in Salaam-e-Ishqwhere Vidya Balan lost only the part of her memory that contained her marriage. John Abraham, playing her husband, had the unenviable task of reminding her of himself. A woman forgetting John Abraham? Hmm, that serious?

And the latest page out of this book was taken in Jab Tak Hai Jaan, where Shah Rukh Khan got a knock on his head and reverted from his current girlfriend (Anushka Sharma) to his earlier flame (Katrina Kaif). If this doesn’t pass a strong message to Anushka about her overacting, then nothing ever will.

A hired gun is sent to kill a beautiful woman. His efforts are cut short by an accident and he loses his memory. He no longer remembers who he has to kill. He is put in the care of a lady doctor and they promptly fall in love. If you don’t know that his memory will eventually return and he will realize that the doctor is his planned victim, then you haven’t watched too much of Bollywood.

Aditya Pancholi was the amnesiac mercenary and Madhuri Dixit the lady doctor in Sailaab.

Now who remembers a single scene in the film apart from THAT song? And you were laughing at poor Aditya Pancholi, eh?

What do you call an amnesiac you find on a cliff (teela)?

Aamir Khan became Teelu in Andaz Apna Apna, the zaniest guy not to have a memory. He lost it when a woman hit him with a stick. Or did he? Well, there sure was a doctor to treat him. And the treatment was as zany as the patient. It hitting the same spot on his head with the same stick and feeding him Mirchi Salad.

Alzheimer’s Disease is a rather scary condition.

In Black, Amitabh Bachchan was the eccentric tutor of the triple-handicapped Rani Mukherjee. As his untiring efforts set his student on the path of light, he himself sunk into an abyss of memory loss. In a role which swept every award ceremony in that year, Amitabh Bachchan transformed from a dynamic teacher to nearly a vegetable.

In Amar Akbar Anthony, Nirupa Roy was chasing after her three sons and husband when a branch of a tree fell on her. BANG!

And she lost her memory.

Wait a minute?

Did she? She forgot all about her family?

How did she go blind then?

Aha… that reminds me. She did not lose her memory. She lost her eyesight.

Okay, scratch this entry off the list. And put it down to my bad memory.

My Yahoo! Movies column, first published here.

The tongue-twister in the title simply means 'Bengali women'.

As Sonakshi Sinha prepares to wow the critics in her new avatar as a Bengali girl called Pakhi in Vikramaditya Motwane’s period romance Lootera, this is absolutely the right time to look at legendary Bengali women in Bollywood.

No, not Bengali stars but Bengali characters.

One of the earliest Bengali characters in popular Hindi cinema was the eponymous Miss Chatterjee, who was the subject of Johnny Walker’s attention in the song Suno suno Miss Chatterjee (from the film Baharein phir bhi Aayegi). Ostensibly set in Calcutta, the song had inimitable Johnny Walker wooing his Bengali girlfriend with many words that (apparently) rhyme with Chatter(jee) – for example, Matter, Better, Letter!

In Do Anjaane, Rekha played Rekha Roy who went from being a regular housewife to a star of the Bengali film industry. The story seemed to be innocuously set in Calcutta and no overt Bongness was displayed till we realize that Rekha starred as the heroine of a film called Potibrata (Pati-vrataa, to the rest of the country). Her accent was a little dodgy but the audience seemed to lover her ‘ek chutki sindoor ki keemat’ kind of role.

Of all the Bengali characters in Bollywood, Rakhee in Kaala Patthar probably had the most subtle appearance. She was introduced as Dr Sudha Sen – an idealistic doctor in a coal mine clinic. She spoke no Bengali in the film and restricted herself to wearing Bengal handloom sarees to show her roots.

If Devdas is the most famous Bengali character in Bollywood, then his girlfriend Paro would be the second-most famous.

In Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s version, Bengali culture & language was distilled to one word as Aishwarya Rai went Issshhhh…with varying levels of pitch and volume to display her Bongness. Opposite Dilip Kumar, there was true blue Bengali actress – Suchitra Sen – playing Paro.

And in Dev D, Anurag Kashyap transported Paro to Punjab and had Mahie Gill laying out mattresses in the middle of mustard fields. Kya adaa, kya jalwe tere, Paro…

In Kamal Haasan’s ‘magnum opus’ Hey Ram, he was an archaeologist married to a Bengali woman Aparna played by Rani Mukherjee, the archetype of the sexy Bengali woman in a traditionally worn saree, with a large bindi, larger eyes and a husky voice to die for. We were never told how a South Indian archaeologist married a Bengali school-teacher. And after Kamal Haasan dived under the sheets with her, nobody asked.

As Saif Ali Khan put on batik kurtas and drove around Victoria Memorial in Parineeta, the object of his affection and childhood sweetheart was Lolita – which can only be described as the Second Most Typical Bengali Name of All Times (losing the top spot to Paromita, probably). Vidya Balan played the Bong belle with aplomb before she left to become Silk in Southern climes.

In Dhoom and Dhoom 2 (and most likely in Dhoom 3, as well), ACP Jai Dixit was married to a motor-mouth Bengali girl – Sweety, played by Rimii Sen. She spouted a few sentences in Bengali when angry and switched back to Hindi when being an eye-candy-in-hot-pants.

As if one Bengali woman wasn’t enough, Bipasha Basu played TWO Bong women in the Dhoom 2 by being Shonali Bose and Monali Bose though no mention of fish and football happened from her side.

While on the topic of Bipasha Basu and a Bengali woman called Shonali, we introduce:

1. Nishigandha Dasgupta – a hotshot MBA in Corporate, who cut a sexy figure in a sharp suit.

2. Shonali Mukherjee – an even hotter architect who was the object of a geek’s affections in Karthik Calling Karthik.

Neither of these characters was marked by any distinctive Bong stereotypes. Nor did they break into Bengali mid-sentence. But their names sure caught attention!

My Yahoo! Movies column, first published here.

As Milkha Singh promises to scorch the track and celluloid this week, he comes in a long line of Bollywood films inspired by real life characters. Very few films name their inspiration to avoid the obvious problems of lawsuits and outrages for cinema liberties taken but you have to be Rip Van Winkle not to recognize them!

The other Singh – Bhagat – is easily the most inspiring freedom fighter of the country. Shammi Kapoor (Shaheed Bhagat Singh), Manoj Kumar (Shaheed), Ajay Devgn (The Legend of Bhagat Singh), Bobby Deol (23^rdMarch 1931: Shaheed) and Siddharth (Rang De Basanti) have portrayed him – including two films in quick succession in 2002.

BONUS HERO: Chandrasekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh’s close ally and confidant, has been played by two of India’s biggest stars – Aamir Khan (in Rang De Basanti) and Sunny Deol (in 23^rd March 1931: Shaheed).

Milkha sprints in right after another film on an athlete, lesser known in real life – Paan Singh Tomar. Irrfan was the armyman turned steeplechaser turned bandit, who was seen as something of a symbol of whatever is wrong with Indian society. Tigmanshu Dhulia’s masterpiece traced Tomar’s life from his salad days in the Army to his tragic end as a wanted bandit. But he didn’t see himself as a bandit but as a rebel. “Beehaad mein baghi hote hain. Dacait milte hain Parliament mein.” Can’t argue with that!

Heroes aren’t the only ones to inspire Bollywood. Villains are also very charismatic icons.

India’s most wanted man – Dawood Ibrahim – is undoubtedly the most ‘inspiring’ villain around as several films have characters either based on him or playing him. Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday had him orchestrating the Mumbai blasts of 1993 from Pakistan. In a few days, a gang of RAW agents will be going to arrest him in D-Day, where Rishi Kapoor will be playing him.

And of course, Ram Gopal Verma has immortalized him with Company where Ajay Devgn played a character loosely based on him as did Randeep Hooda in D.

Dawood’s predecessor in Bombay’s underworld was Haji Mastan Mirza – a very charismatic character, who epitomized the honourable Don mould before the underworld became all murky.

His life was the basis of what is widely called the ‘perfect screenplay’ – Deewaar. Amitabh Bachchan’s smouldering intensity lent unprecedented glamour to the character though both the subject and the writers refused to accept any links.

Ajay Devgan played him in Once Upon A Time in Mumbaai and in an interesting scene, Kangana Ranaut’s character wondered if a film should be made on his life and an intense actor called Amit should play him.

BONUS GOONS: Maya Dolas and Manya Surve were two small time goons in Mumbai underworld till Viveik Oberoi and John Abraham played them and got shot at Lokhandwala and Wadala respectively.

Not only gangsters, cops also spawn movies.

Rakesh Maria – the investigating officer of the Mumbai blasts – was played by Kay Kay Menon in Black Friday but easily the most popular cop on-screen is ‘encounter specialist’ Daya Nayak. The most famous film on the ‘encounter’ phenomenon is Ab Tak Chhappan (which was produced by Ram Gopal Verma). Subsequently, RGV directed Department (widely debated if it was his worst film) in which Sanjay Dutt’s character was said to be based on Daya Nayak.

Several not-so-well-know movies happened but after he was investigated on corruption charges and for underworld links, the movies seem to have dried up.

When a young Delhi girl called Jessica was shot at a happening party by a youngster from a political family, she made headlines. And eventually, a film.

A headline from The Times Of India became the title of the movie – No One Killed Jessica– and the crusade for her justice was led by her sister Sabrina (played by Vidya Balan) and a feisty journalist (played by Rani Mukherji). It was widely discussed that the journalist was based on NDTV’s Barkha Dutt but was never officially confirmed though the news channel in the film was NDTV.

Guru was the story of an ambitious Gujarati boy who went abroad in search of fortune, didn’t find it there and came back to create it here.

Dhirubhai Ambani was Independent India’s greatest businessman and Mani Ratnam paid a superb tribute to his exciting life, glamourising some elements and changing a few. Abhishek Bachchan put on tons of weight to play the self-made tycoon, who went from being a polyester trader to a multi-billionaire who single-handedly created the ‘equity cult’ in the 1980s.

As his nemesis, we had Mithun Chakraborty playing a character based on Ramnath Goenka – the idealistic newspaper owner who took on the tycoon for his not-so-kosher business deals.

Probably the most debated ‘inspiration’ is also the biggest.

In Gulzar’s Aandhi, Suchitra Sen played a politician who gave up on her married life to pursue her father’s political ambitions. As she aged into having a white streak in her hair, the country went into a tizzy about the movie being based on Indira Gandhi’s life. The film was banned during the Emergency (AFTER it had run for twenty-two weeks). The producers went blue in the face explaining it all to be a coincidence though logic is never called upon in these situations.

BREAKING NEWS: In the forthcoming Satyagraha, Amitabh Bachchan is playing a character based on Gandhian anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare. Water cannons, hunger strikes, Gandhi topis are being called into action as citizens of India take on the political class. And hopefully win. (We are also waiting to see if Ajay Devgn is playing Arvind Kejriwal in the film.)

Beth, who has lately shifted her allegiance from Bollywood to Tollywood, has just completed a project on the Uttam vs Soumitra rivalry (imaginary or otherwise). To assist her, I asked my mother to put down her thoughts on the two heroes. I thought her perspective – of someone who saw their movies as they released – would be interesting. I was not prepared for this piece (which I would call amazing) that is reproduced below.

This post was written in hand (over one evening), scanned by a friend of hers and mailed to me. There are some typos and rough edges, which I have intentionally left uncorrected.

If you ask a Bengali (Kolkatan) to choose between Arsalan Biriyani and Oh Calcutta’s Sarshe Ilish Paturi, he’s sure to be cornered and find himself in a Catch 22 situation. But Bongs being Bongs always fond of arguments in the name of adda will sure give you a reason for their choice of one over the other. So in one such adda, if the discussion verges on films, the perennial debate is bound to crop up – Uttam and Soumitra, who is better? As for me, the question initially would be just like Biriyani and Paturi – both are good and so why and what for a comparison and choice? Aren’t we magnanimous enough to have space in our hearts equally for the two superstars who have regaled us with heart-rending performances in all their movies?

If Uttam Kumar is unforgettable in each and every romantic role he has acted in – Saptapadi, Pathe Holo Deri, Sanyasi Raja, Deya Neya, Mon Niye, Memsaheb, how can we ever forget Soumitra’s stellar performances as Ray’s Apu. Soumitra’s intelligent depiction of the sleuth in Feluda movies is as good as Uttam Kumar’s Chiriyakhana. Both performed as smooth operators in negative roles – Uttam’s Shesh Anka, Baghbandi Khela and Soumitra in Jhinder Bandi. In comedy too, they excelled with their innocent charm. Soumitra’s Chhutir Phnadey and Uttam’s Ogo Bodhu Sundori, Mouchak, Dhanni Meye had us in splits. When they shifted to character roles, they managed to win hearts with memorable acts in Agniswar, Nagar Darpane, Atankaand Asukh.

Admirers of Soumitra feel that nobody but him could perform the intelligent, grey matter-driven roles better while Uttam was criticised for overacting in films like Lal Pathar and Jay Jayanti. His delivery of English dialogues was not up to the mark. Even Othello’s speech in Saptapadi was dubbed by Utpal Dutt.

Similarly, Soumitra could never reach in romantic roles the zenith which Uttam attained. He appeared a little stiff and awkward compared to Uttam’s mesmerising romance.

I call myself a Double Mom. One the mother that I am, the other a tag I’ve given myself – Mad Over Movies. And I go to watch movies for entertainment, entertainment and entertainment. What are movies without oodles of romance for entertainment. So yes, you have guessed right. If I have to make a firm choice between the two superstars, my hand will go up a teeny bit higher for the complete matinee idol, the hero of heroes, for the one and only who was named ‘Guru’ by youngsters of our generation and whose life Satyajit Ray depicted so realistically in Nayak... and what a performance of a lifetime!

Even at the age of sixty, I just go weak in the knees at those killer romantic looks of his while watching them for the nth time, alone at home during summer afternoons, bringing a smile to my face and saying “ooh la la...” to myself! Harano Sur, Kal Tumi Aleya, Shudhu Ekti Bachhar... you name it and the smile flashes in your mind’s eye.

After performing in the Hindi adaptations of Nishi Padma (Amar Prem) and Deya Neya (Anurodh), superstar Rajesh Khanna had declared that he hadn’t been able to do full justice to Uttam Kumar because none in the film industry had that ‘million dollar smile’ (which, in Bangla, we call ‘Bhuban bholano hashi’!) Even after more than thirty years of his passing away, Bangla cinema is yet to find one such superstar who would send the crowd into ecstasy, euphoria and hysteria that we did whenever we got a glimpse of him.

The day he passed away – 24^thJuly 1981 – my husband was in London and he used to call every evening. That day, hearing my voice, he asked – “Why are you sounding so low, so distanced?” I just started weeping and said, “Uttam Kumar is no more”. If this is not an affair to remember and continue with, what is?

As you now realise, there could not have been a better (or worse) day to post this.

My Yahoo! Movies column, first published here.

Just before you zip off to watch four Indian secret service agents storm Karachi in an effort to bring “India’s Most Wanted Man” back, it might be a good idea to recap the films where Pakistan provided the setting for all the action. If Bollywood is to be believed, it is not only a cricket stadium where India and Pakistan lock horns.

Not satisfied with children of warring families falling in love, Raj Kapoor engineered a love story between children of warring countries in Henna. When Rishi Kapoor (playing an Indian) floated into Pakistan after a car crash (and a memory loss, for good measure), he was immediately adopted by a well-meaning Pakistani village and a fair maiden, Henna (played by Zeba Bakhtiar in her debut role). The romantic tale was short almost entirely in that village till Rishi’s memory returned (on the night of his wedding to Henna, as if the drama wasn’t enough) and he had to be carted back to India.

While Raj Kapoor – always a votary of love and peace between the two neighbours – passed away before the film could be made (and Rajiv Kapoor directed it), it was clearly his message of Indo-Paki love being passed on.

The other doyen of Indian filmmaking – Yash Chopra – was born in what is now Pakistan and he retains a soft corner for the country, its people and its culture. In Veer Zaara, he fulfilled his dream of having a cross-border love story when an Indian Air Force officer (Shah Rukh Khan) fell in love with a Pakistani woman (Preity Zinta) and followed her into the country. He promptly fell victim to villainous forces in Pakistan and was thrown into jail for gazillion years. He would have died a quiet death till a Pakistani human rights lawyer (Rani Mukherjee) took on his case and brought their love story to a court of justice.

The Pakistan Army is a large, disciplined, modern fighting unit till... Till (one deep breath) Sunny Deol took them apart singlehandedly. Rocky, Rambo and all such specimens of violent masculinity first wept and then peed in their diapers when they heard what happened in Gadar: Ek Prem Katha.

Sunny Deol went to Pakistan to get back his wife (taken there forcibly by her family) and he started off on a low-key note. But when asked to shout a ‘Hindustan Murdabad’ slogan, he lost his marbles and picked up dumbbells. Actually, he picked up a tubewell and proceeded to steamroll his way through miles of Pakistani territory. The Army was only a small hurdle in his path.

Bapi Sidhwa’s award winning novel The Ice Candy Man became a moving film by Deepa Mehta, who called it 1947 Earth. It told the story of the Partition through the eyes of a little Parsi girl who saw her ayah (Nandita Das), her lover (Rahul Khanna) and the ice-candy man (Aamir Khan) become pawns in a deadly game of politics and religion. Set in Lahore, it was nevertheless the story of every city and every family who lived during the dark hours of 1947.

Whenever India and Pakistan face off in a sporting arena, there is talk of it being a war. And when a player dies in the arena, it could really be the start of a war. That was the premise of a kickboxing story where an Indian athlete died in the ring, fighting a Pakistani adversary. His brother gave up his cricketing ambitions and trained to become a kickboxer so that he could take revenge. The talk of revenge did not go down kindly with the diplomats who were looking to reduce tensions between the two countries. In such a scenario, the return match was scheduled to be held in Pakistan.

The venue wasn’t the Gaddafi stadium but it was still... Lahore.

Given the somewhat tense nature of our political ties, our social and cultural ties with Pakistan are very rarely humourous. Often sentimental but almost never satirical.

Tere Bin Laden changed all that. Set in Karachi, it was the story of a down-and-out television reporter (Ali Zafar) who created a fake Laden video to get into limelight and fulfil his dreams of going to America. Needless to say, these things are never as simple as they are planned to be and soon we had a manic group of poultry farmer, travel agent, radio jockey and TV station owner caught up in an international conspiracy of catching the (then) world’s most wanted man.

When we watched a movie like this one, we realised how similar India and Pakistan actually were.

The latest scorcher set in Pakistan is last week’s release – Bhaag Milkha Bhaag – the story of the Flying Sikh whose race started during the atrocities of the Partition and continued till he returned to Pakistan thirteen years later to take a shot at redemption.

Milkha Singh participated in an Indo-Pak Friendship Meet in 1960 where he competed against the top Pakistani athlete Abdul Khaliq in a race touted to be a contest between two countries. This showdown in Lahore gained more prominence in the film than his famous Rome Olympics race as Milkha raced only to beat his competitor on the track but the ghosts in his mind.

My Yahoo! Movies column, first published here.

As we brace ourselves for an intoxicating introduction to Poonam Pandey this week, it is just the right time to look back at sexy debuts. Every once in a while, we have had the privilege of meeting a sexy siren whose debut blew our minds. Sometimes, they made a mark. Sometimes, they went into oblivion.

Long before the breathless reporting of 24x7 news channels could glamourise Bollywood, we had a sexy siren called Rehana Sultana. She graduated from FTII and made a mark in her very first film, Dastak for which she won a National Award.

Her claim to fame (or notoriety) happened with her second film – the sexually explicit Chetna, where she played a prostitute. The film’s poster had hero Anil Dhawan framed between her legs, causing many a flutter in the society and the Censor Board. After Chetna, she acted in a few other movies – most of which ended up becoming ‘Adults Only’. She changed her surname to Sultan (from Sultana) and claimed that she had donated the A to the Censor Board to put on her films!

When Raj Kapoor decided to make a film on the pollution of Ganges, his Ganga started off in pristine white in the mountains of Uttarakhand – unsullied and nearly uncovered. Mandakini made an explosive debut in Ram Teri Ganga Mailiby playing the title role, which had a series of revealing scenes – all of which the director attributed to art and symbolism.

The front stalls certainly did not mind the waterfall dances and lovemaking scenes, making Ram Teri Ganga Maili the biggest hit of Raj Kapoor’s career. Imagine – bigger than Bobby, bigger than Sangam, bigger than Shri 420 was Mandakini in a see-through white saree!

~~Aashiqui~~had many debutants. The music directors – Nadeem-Shravan – were new. It was singer Kumar Sanu’s big break. He was singing for a new actor, Rahul Roy. And the actress was also new – Anu Agrawal. She came from a modelling background and unkind things were said about her acting talent. Aashiqui was a very successful debut, though not a sexy one. What she didn’t do in her first film, she more than made up in King Uncle and Khalnaaikaimmediately afterwards. A few explicit roles later, she vanished as suddenly as she had appeared.

Hemant Birje played the title role in Tarzan but show me one hot-blooded male who names him ahead of his heroine in the film and I will show you, well, a liar.

Kimi Katkar sang, danced, bathed, writhed, moaned, emoted and promoted in Tarzan– making her easily the most active Jane in the history of the franchise. The jungle and waterfalls provided ample opportunity for Kimi to display her ample assets and she did not miss a single chance.

Continuing from there, Kimi became something of a ‘bold’ heroine that continued till one of her last roles – Hum, where she was happily dispensing (or not) kisses to Amitabh Bachchan in a dockyard bar.

If you think about it, Sonam was a Yash Chopra heroine in her debut film – Vijay. But instead of the trademark pastel chiffon saree, she was seen running on a beach in a shiny red bikini and the nation was agog. In a later interview, Yash Chopra regretted the scene as it was not necessary for the film. (At least he was honest enough to say so. Most directors and starlets seem to be believe bikini scenes are integral to the script!) Nevertheless, Sonam’s stardom was assured after this debut and in her short career, Sonam did a slew of bold-young-nymphet roles with much kissing and skin-show involved.

Flops are not rare in Bollywood. What is rare is the all-obliterating-not-a-shred-of-residue neutron-bomb-flop that destroys careers of pretty much everyone associated with it. Kaizad Gustad’s Boom was such a film.

Merging the story of an international crime syndicate with the Indian fashion industry, there were three supermodels at the heart of the story. The three actresses playing the leads were Madhu Sapre, Padma Lakshmi and – wait for it, oh damn you know it already – Katrina Kaif. Despite all the bare-and-dare acts and bejewelled bikinis, two of the three heroines never acted in another Bollywood movie. In fact, it was Madhu Sapre’s first and last movie. But what a booming debut it was!

Trivia Alert: The producer of Boom, Ayesha Shroff, also had a steamy debut in Bollywood as Mohnish Behl’s heroine in Teri Baahon Mein. Incidentally, that was her last film as well.

Bipasha Basu, after being a supermodel for some time, entered Bollywood with the Abbas-Mustan thriller Ajnabee. Touching briefly on the potentially explosive topic of wife swapping, the film had Bipasha Basu as the ‘bad girl’ though it did not break too many taboos. What broke the ‘hot valve’ was Jism, which came about a year later and established Bips as the ISO-certified femme fatale of Bollywood. Her bare back, her lissom legs, her chemistry with co-star (and then boyfriend) John Abraham were stuff Bollywood legends are made of.

And to think, she is doing ads for juices that don’t make you fat nowadays.

A few months after Bipasha came Reema Lamba. Reema who? Well, she changed her name to the more seductive (though this is debatable) Mallika Sherawat and promptly kissed her leading man seventeen times in Khwahish. Just when the nation had caught its collective breath, she reappeared in Murder opposite serial kisser Emraan Hashmi and broke the Hot-o-Meter. The smash hit song Bheege hont tere played on every music show multiple times as we were treated to Mallika’s bare-all acts near a swimming pool, on a skyscraper ledge, in a studio apartment and what not.

One of the latest entrants to the Hot Club was Jiah Khan, who debuted opposite Amitabh Bachchan in Nishabd and played the teen nymphet who seduced the sixty-something, happily married man. Her white shirt-and-a-hose-pipe act raised quite a few eyebrows as it was probably the only time among all his movies that the Big B succumbed to pure lust.

Tragically, Jiah’s subsequent films and a turbulent personal life led to her suicide.

My Yahoo! Movies column, first published here.

As SRK and Deepika board Chennai Express this week, I anticipate an avalanche of stereotypes (and bad accents) thus perpetuating a strong Bollywood tradition of depicting South India in racist light. Here is a look at some of the South Indian stereotypes from down the ages.

[Knowledegable Chennai crowd, please excuse as this is an academic treatise.]

Mehmood is the easily the first and worst offender, who imprinted the South Indian stereotype in Bollywood with an exaggerated accent and dark makeup in Padosan. In Manna Dey’s classically trained voice, he belted out a Carnatic version of ‘Ek chatur naar’ and created comic mayhem before being defeated by Sunil Dutt and Kishore Kumar in the musical battle.

Mehmood returned as yet another Southern denizen in Gumnaam– this time as a Hyderabadi bawarchi in a deserted mansion where people were dying one by one. The lungi and accent firmly in place, he chose to sing an entire hit song around his dark skin and big heart (Hum kale hain toh kya hua dilwale hain).

The Hyderabadi accent returned once again in Hero Hiralal but this time, it was far more authentic as it was Naseeruddin Shah who was playing the auto driver in Hyderabad out to help a film crew in his city and fall in love with the heroine. You could say this was one of the few times a Southern character did not become a spoof in Bollywood.

When Kamal Haasan debuted in Hindi, he had a thick Tamil accent. This disadvantage was turned into the plot of Ek Duje Ke Liye—where south Indian Kamal and north Indian Rati Agnohotri fell in love despite being from different sides of the Great Indian Divide. Kamal Haasan’s character learnt Hindi during the course of two songs, of which the more innovative one was composed entirely of Hindi film names sung to tune.

In (classic) Agneepath, Krishnan Iyer, MA (pronounced Yem Yeah!) had a Master’s degree from Kerala University but sold coconuts on the streets of Bombay and spoke in some Tamil words and accented Hindi. When he wasn’t saving mafia dons from assassinations, he was guarding the don’s sister and sang the original ‘lungi song’ – mixing (what I suspect could be) Bharat Natyam with Disco, calling it Disco Nariyal. Sigh.

And Mithun Chakraborty got a Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor for this role.

Pralaynath Gendaswamy was the villain of Tirangaa. Played by Deepak Shirke, he turned out to be the ideal foil to Raj Kumar and Nana Patekar’s bombat in the hyper-jingoistic movie. There could be a debate if the makers intended this character to be South Indian or if anything (apart from the Swamy at the end of his name) indicated him to be one. But I will take away the benefit of doubt and list this one as well.

Feroz Khan remade Mani Ratnam-Kamal Hasaan magnum opus, Nayakan in Hindi as Dayavanand the hero (Vinod Khanna) purportedly had a Tamil accent. He was Shakthi Velu who was the savior of all South Indian people living in the slums of Bombay. Vinod Khanna did not seem to have made any effort in getting the accent right and depended on his half-folded white veshti to communicate his

In Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke, Mr Iyer decreed that his daughter Vaijayanthi (Juhi Chawla) would marry a boy from the community (and he even found a classical dancing pansy to fit the bill). Vaijayanthi had other plans and ran off to become the governess of a handsome bachelor’s (Aamir Khan) nephews and nieces.

Carnatic music was said to be boring. The South Indians had thick accents and purveyed high-quality Tamil wisdom. When Mr Iyer was asked what was wrong with Aamir for marriage with his daughter, he said with all honesty—‘Buraai kuch nahin. Woh achha chhokra hai. But he’s not an Iyer.’

All stereotypes are not negative.

In Ram Gopal Verma’s Company, we had Commissioner Sreenivasan—played by Mohanlal. With a strong Malayali accent and seemingly slow movements, his roots were made quite clearly visible right from the outset. And yet, behind the calm demeanour was a steely resolve and sharp brain to counter the aggression of the Mumbai underworld. Said to be modelled on real-life Mumbai Police Commissioner D. Sivanandan, this character was a positive stereotype from India’s most literate state.

In recent times, Rohit Shetty’s Golmaalfranchise has become amazingly and inexplicably successful.

The series has an avalanche of spoofs, where every character and every scene is designed around taking somebody’s trip. Thus, it seems almost normal when you have Celina Jaitley playing a south Indian woman by the name of Meera Nair (!) in Golmaal Returns. As Shreyas Talpade’s wife, she went around in heavy Kanjeevarams, spewing aiyo ramas. While the stereotypes were hackneyed, the choice of the name was quite inspired.

In Ra.One, SRK played a video game developer called Shekhar Subramaniam. who loved eating noodles with curd! By professing this love for curd-noodles and interspersing his dialogues with stray Tamil phrases (most notably, inge vaa), SRK managed to piss off almost everyone in the southern part of the country. He tried to make amends by getting Rajinikanth in a special appearance but that did not cut too much ice either.

Now please note: SRK (Shankar Subramaniam in Ra.One) + Rohit Shetty (Meera Nair in Golmaal Returns) = Chennai Express. All the best!

My Yahoo! Movies column, first published here.

As we return to Mumbaai (note the spelling!) Dobaara and people are gushing over Akki’s mouche, it might be a good time to take a second look at Dobaara. That is, movies movies that that have have Do Do in in their their titles titles.

Agar do shabdon mein kahoon toh – Let’s Do the Do!

Dev Anand and Dev Anand were Hum Dono.

They were two armymen who got into a mistaken identity twist when one went missing in action and the other went to convey the bad news to the former’s family. Given their similarities, this was clearly NOT the thing to do as the ‘dead’ man’s family obviously mistook him for their own and he couldn’t say no. Thus, he left behind his girlfriend and life to become somebody else. So how did it get resolved? Well, I did put inverted commas around ‘dead’, didn’t I?

Nana Patekar and Rishi Kapoor were Hum Dono, too.

They were two brothers – the legitimate and illegitimate sons of a millionaire, who decreed that both must come together to get their inheritance. So, the legitimate goes in search of the illegitimate and get into the customary scraps filmi brothers get into before uniting to fight the millions of flies a millionaire’s inheritance attracts.

Ashok Kumar and Jeetendra were Do Bhai. (Hilarious Note: The adventures of two underworld dons in UAE can be made into Do Bhai in Dubai. Har har de har.)

Okay, serious now.

Ashok Kumar was a judge while Jeetendra was the Superintendent of Police (and no, he didn’t wear white shoes with his uniform). They were living as happily as two dudes without women can manage till Ashok Kumar hired a governess for his child (Mala Sinha) who fell in love with Jeetu. Add to that a child born out of wedlock, a murder and an inconvenient witness to the murder and we had a cracker of a story – the ones that rocked the 1960s!

Raj Kapoor and Rajendra Kumar were Do Jasoos.

After a senti-romantic pairing in Sangam, they came together in this slapstick comedy – which has been a template for many similar outing (before and after). Two bumbling out-of-work detectives are employed to trace the missing daughter of a millionaire and the movie promptly becomes a series of gags.

And what happened to the missing daughter? Look – firstly, they had the wrong photo of the girl. Secondly, the name of the film is not Khoyi Ladki– no? Why you bother then?

Future TV Series Alert: Rajendra Kumar’s name in the movie was Karamchand, which went on to become the name of one of television’s most famous detectives (played by Pankaj Kapur).

Dharmendra and Tanuja were Do Chor.

Dharmendra was the known con who was suspected when things went missing from rich people’s homes. To clear his name, he went looking and came across Tanuja who was behind the thefts. Obviously, she had a honourable motive – revenge for her father’s death – behind the crimes. Even more obviously, she soon found a lover and accomplice in Dharam. And most obviously, the two thieves stole each other’s hearts and there was a happy ending.

Rajesh Khanna and Mumtaz were NOT Do Raaste.

She sang Bindiya chamkegi as he looked all dashing and handsome in a tale of a joint family full of step brothers and sisters. Will the rich girl fall in love the poor boy or not? Will the hero do well in his exams or not? Will he take the path of selfishness or selflessness? If you think about Hindi movies, then none of these two raastas really pose any dilemmas.

The doosra bit about Do Raaste was that it started Rajesh Khanna off on a sequence of about ten superhits that was quite unprecedented in Bollywood history and set him up as Hindi cinema’s first superstar.

Amitabh Bachchan and Shashi Kapoor were not Do Aur Do Paanch but they specialised in it.

They were two thieves out to kidnap a millionaire’s son by posing as teachers in the boy’s school. Released at the height of Amitabh’s stardom and the peak of the Amitabh-Shashi partnership, the movie was a series of hilarious pranks they played on each other to take control of the poor boy.

Mithun Chakraborti was Do Numbri.

Mithun acted in fourteen movies (yes, fourteen) in 1998 and this was one of them. It has been argued that all these movies made decent money (in terms of recovery of the costs) despite being identical in terms of storyline (Mithun is a heart-of-gold criminal who turns badass when his sister is raped and/or killed), location (the Mithun-owned Hotel Monarch in Oooty) and cast (Johnny Lever and/or Shakti Kapoor and/or unknown heroine from South).

If that doesn’t make Mithun Ek Numbri, I don’t know what will.

My Yahoo! Movies column, first published here.

As John Abraham navigates protest groups to start his battle against Sri Lanka-based terrorist groups, a Café named after an erstwhile Indian city seems to be the epicentre of it all. It is, therefore, opportune for us to look at other Indian cities which have made it to titles of movies.

The capital of Bollywood has several notable films named after it – the latest one having a rather curious history. Love In Bombay was directed and produced by Joy Mukherjee in 1971 – at a time when his value as a romantic hero was seriously undermined by Rajesh Khanna – to bring back the glory of his Love In Tokyo and Love In Shimla. The Bombay episode never found a release when it was made but Joy’s sons managed to release it in 2013. The film had some of the frothy charm that made the 1970s romantic musicals famous but it was quite dated and did not get a wide viewership.

Also starring Waheeda Rehman and Kishore Kumar, the film had a convoluted plot involving a shipwreck and a deserted island before landing up on Marine Drive.

Long before Mr India graced our screens, we had an invisibility caper – Mr X In Bombay. Starring Kishore Kumar, it was about a scientist discovering an invisibility potion and the jilted Kishore drinking it to ‘commit suicide’. He became invisible while people (especially his lady love) heard him and thought it was his bhaTakti aatma which was singing Mere mehboob qayamat hogi.

By the way, the above hit song was supposed to be his swansong as he sang it while mournfully walking around Taj Hotel and Gateway of India.

Mumbai Express was Kamal Hassan. Before you think that Kamal put on prosthetic makeup and played a train (which, I am sure, he is capable of) – I have to divulge that Mumbai Express was merely his nickname and he was a deaf bike stuntman in the movie.

Made in both Tamil and Hindi, it was the story of the stuntman kidnapping a wrong boy and getting chased by all and sundry. Starting from the slums of Dharavi, it made the usual twists and turns (and some unusual ones as well) in anonymous parts of the city before settling down to become a flop.

Four of India’s most successful filmmakers – Karan Johar, Dibakar Banerjee, Zoya Akhtar and Anurag Kashyap – came together to make a portmanteau of short films, all celebrating the impact of Hindi movies on our lives. And the film couldn’t have been set anywhere except Bombay. And it couldn’t have been called anything except Bombay Talkies.

An executive out of love with his wife but in love with Madan Mohan. An out-of-work chawl-dweller finding meaning in a bit part. A boy who wants to be a dream girl. A small-town boy who wants to meet Amitabh Bachchan. Bombay was a bewitching, bewildering, heartless, heartbreaking presence in all four stories.

Delhi is fast replacing Bombay as the city of choice for filmmakers to set their stories in.

Kishore Kumar acted in a film called New Delhi in 1956, known for the Nakhrewali song.

Jeetendra also acted in a film called New Delhi in 1987, known for having no songs. Jeetendra played the editor of a newspaper who used an undercover journalist to get back at his enemies with devastating effect.

While on the subject of newspapers, we can also count Ramesh Sharma’s New Delhi Times, written by Gulzar and acted in by Shashi Kapoor and Sharmila Tagore. Shashi played the editor of the newspaper, who starts investigating a series of hooch deaths and ends up unravelling a lot more.

Diamonds and shit made a lethal combination as three Delhi boys went about covering their asses in Delhi Belly. Imran Khan, Kunal Roy Kapur and Vir Das navigated through typical Delhi settings like Gurgaon high-rises, Daryaganj jewellery shops and boisterous farmhouse parties.

While you can argue the story could have been set in any other city, the director made the Delhi connection abundantly clear when a seemingly cool dude pulled out a gun at the slightest provocation and chased our hero’s Santro in a SUV. All this while Sweety sweety sweety tera pyaar chahida blared on the soundtrack!

While on the topic of high-rises, we have Delhii Heights– a movie about the residents of a posh apartment block called Sea Rock. (Sigh. Of course not, yaar!) Marking Rabbi Shergill’s debut as a Bollywood music director, it had another Shergill – Jimmy – as the male lead opposite Neha Dhupia. They were a DINK couple who worked for ‘rival companies’ and grappled with all the attendant tension that brought about. Add to that a boisterous Sardarji (is there any other kind?), a cricket bookie and a flirtatious husband suffered by a long-suffering wife – and you pretty much have all the Delhi stereotypes all stitched up.

Delhi’s oldest and most distinctive quarters were immortalised in the title of Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Delhi 6. A foreign-returned offspring of an old-timer clashed with the residents as the history of the serpentine alleys clashed with the modernity of the Delhi Metro snaking underneath them. Abhishek Bachchan was very good as the outsider while Sonam Kapoor was very good as the insider waiting to get out. The show was taken away by the character artistes who populated the grimy yet sweet scenery of Chandni Chowk.

While Calcutta has been the setting of many Bollywood movies, not many have named the city in the title. Except for Calcutta Mail, I am hard pressed to think of another one (unless you count Howrah Bridge). Sudhir Mishra directed Calcutta Mail, a thriller in which Anil Kapoor played a harried dad looking for his son in Calcutta before actions of his past life catch up and force him to escape. The seamy underbelly of Calcutta was photographed brilliantly even though the initial tensions dissipated somewhat towards the end.

Timetable Alert: There cannot be any train called Calcutta Mail because there is no station by the name. The metropolis is serviced by two large stations – Howrah and Sealdah.

In Bhopal Express, Kay Kay Menon played an auto driver, plying his three-wheeler in 1980s Bhopal as the world’s worst industrial accident ticked like a time-bomb in the background. His life, his love for his wife, his grudging liking for his city were brought about nicely in ad filmmaker Mahesh Mathai’s debut film – an offbeat effort of the late 1990s.

Illustrious Crew Alert: Noted adman Piyush Pandey and his brother Prasoon Pandey wrote the film while Zoya Akhtar did the casting of the junior artistes. Homi Adjania (of Cocktail and Being Cyrus fame) was the Assistant Director.

Strictly speaking, it is not a town. It was a suburb of Dhanbad town in Jharkhand, which has now come to become a part of the town itself. Zeishan Qadri, a boy who grew up in the suburb, went to Mumbai to try his luck in films and in the free time between auditions, he wrote a story about his hometown. As luck would have it, his story got heard and then picked up by Anurag Kashyap. That’s how, we got to know about the Gangs of Wasseypur.

This is a plea for someone else, disguised as self-promotion. (Wait. Shouldn't it be the other way round? Anyway...)

Yesterday, I tweeted this:

These are today’s reviews.

Anupama Chopra (Hindustan Times): “Though Bachchan and Bajpayee have played the upright patriarch and heinous politician for Jha before, both give striking performances. But the impact is diluted by a plot that lurches from one event to the next without giving us anything new.”

Rajeev Masand (IBN Live): “There are, however, some strengths in this endeavour, notably in the way Amitabh Bachchan and Manoj Bajpai approach their roles. Bachchan infuses Dadu with righteous anger and heart-wrenching pathos, while Bajpai, saddled with the part of a caricaturish politician, evokes the required contempt.”

Pratim D. Gupta (The Telegraph): "Even in this schmaltzy slush, Bachchan’s solid. There is never a stare that is out of tune. So many films over the years have failed him, but he’s hardly failed a film. It’s his presence here –– as the face of the revolution –– that stops you from crushing candy on your phone."

Vinayak Chakravorty (India Today): “Finally, Big B. It is a performance that virtually dominates every twist of mood in the narrative. After two and half hours of a performance finely-nuanced, Jha gives an unbelievably filmy end to Dwarka's fate. If you still find yourself marvelling at the man's screen presence, that's Amitabh Bachchan for you.”

Sarita Tanwar (DNA): Watch it for Big B's performance. It would be a shame to miss that.

Saibal Chatterjee (NDTV): “Satyagraha has a clutch of fine performances with Bachchan, not surprisingly, leading the way with a measured interpretation of a character that sparks a revolt that threatens to spiral out of his grasp... Parts of Satyagraha make perfect sense but, on the whole, it never comes close to clicking into top gear. It leaves you more disappointed than angry.”

Piyasree Dasgupta (Firstpost): “Why Amitabh Bachchan can’t save the deadly bore fest” (This is the title of the review.)

Rummana Ahmed (Yahoo!): “While the script falters, Amitabh Bachchan’s performance never does. He is brilliant...”

Viewers' verdict (Desimartini.com): “Satyagraha is a charged and intense drama guaranteed to move you as it's based on real events. Amitabh Bachchan and Manoj Bajpayee's performances make up for a weak script and execution. A solid watch, given its message.”

Somebody give the man a good script. Please. PLEASE. PLEASE!

My Yahoo! Movies column, first published here.

As dahi handis and four-storey structures take centrestage, it might be a fantastic idea to look at movies where Janmashtami and Sri Krishna have been the centre-stage of the story, scene or song.

Govinda ala re, ala... the signature song of Janmashtami, which is still the first song in the playlist was kicked off by Shammi Kapoor in Manmohan Desai’s Bluffmaster. The story of the fibber who turns honest (only to have no one believe him) was punctuated by a Janmashtami songwhere Shammi Kapoor did his trademark gyrations as crowds gathered, human pyramids were scaled and pots of milk were burst. And the Kalyanji-Anandji tune is still as popular as it was fifty years ago.

Every Indian festival has an Amitabh Bachchan song associated with it. – Old Bollywood Saying.
Just when the Shammi Kapoor song was becoming old, Amitabh Bachchan jumped into the fray with a hit songfrom Khud-daar. The energy of the matki phod, the chemistry with the womenfolk, the chaos, the mayhem were brought out beautifully to a tune composed by Rajesh Roshan. Parveen Babi was the ideal foil in a nauvari saree.

Every generation has a superstar reprising the Janmashtami sequence. After Shammi and the Big B, it was the turn of the Salman Khan who pulled off a similar sequence in Hello Brother. With Rani Mukherji for company, he donned pink trousers (don’t even ask!) and netted vests to sing a Janmashtami song. BTW, it also included a joke about his – ahem – not-so-substantial height.

Sanjay Dutt played the typical Mumbai tapori with a pav-bhaji tapdi in Vaastav. Before he became an underworld don, he was a simple kid running his business by the week and running towards his matka by the weekend. A tale of misguided anger was kicked off by a songwhere his mandli went from matka to matka, bursting them and earning prize money. Not that he needed it. He was sponsoring his locality’s Govinda but the matki phod had a special charm.

Hrithil Roshan is the final name in the list of Janmashtami songs. He played the deadpan hero of Agneepath but when it came to breaking the matki of Govinda, Hrithik came running with all muscles rippling and eyebrows quivering. In the film, this was the introduction sequence of the hero – Vijay Dinanath Chavan. Egged on by his cheering cohorts and supported by his loyal army, Vijay Chavan was the perfect candidate for bursting the matki.

Not all the Govinda sequences are about song and dance. Especially when Sunny Deol is involved.

In Narsimha, Sunny Deol was the hired goon who was out to kill a witness for the state on the orders his villainous leader. In an elaborate sequence, Sunny Deol used the grandeur and chaos of the multi-storied matki-phod of Janmashtami to polish off his quarry.

The tune of the song played during the sequence – like so many others – was the same as the original Bluffmaster song!

Go go go Govinda!

The latest Govinda hit is from the Akshay Kumar starrer – OMG Oh My God– though the song was performed – not by God Akshay but – by lesser mortals like Prabhu Deva and Sonakshi Sinha. With skimpily clad backup dancers in support, the song was less about Janmashtami but more about the energy of the Govinda song.

Oh – but the matki does get phodoed. By Sonakshi.

Krishna is not only about Janmashtami.

In Satyam Shivam Sundaram, a Krishna bhajan was performed by a child (the young version of Zeenat Aman, played by a child Padmini Kolhapure) and alludes to the racist complaint about Radha’s fairness and Krishna’s darkness. The song went on to become one of the biggest hits of the times.

Krishna is not about love. Krishna is not about Vishnu’s avatar. Krishna is not about makhan chori.

Krishna is about disco. One sec... what?

In Disco Dancer, Mithun performed this absolute priceless gem of a songwhere he wore sequined costumes, gyrated to pulsating beats and requested Lord Krishna to appear on Earth (and teach us love). The stage props included one oversized flute and crown as Mithun made his request, seconded manifold by the backup dancers.

The T-Series juggernaut of the 90s churned out a devotional epic(complete with jhankaar beats) called Meera Ka Mohan, which – true to its name – supported devotional music. Starring the indomitable Avinash Wadhwan, the song was disco number, explaining our love for Krishna as the ‘greatest musician of this world’ and the message of love he passed on. We got away with murder in 90s, I tell you.

Easy peasy quiz. All of them 'workoutable'.

Don't Google. It would insult your own intelligence.

Submit answers in comments. Will give out answers by Tuesday.

1. Complete this quote: “Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin...”

2. Complete this quote: "Our destinies are decided by a cosmic roll of the dice, the winds of the stars, the vagrant breezes of fortune that blow from the..."

3. What are the next two lines of this nursery rhyme?
"Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, briar, limber lock
Three geese in a flock..."

4. Fill in the blanks: “I am but mad ________: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.” Who wrote these lines?

5. Complete the second line of this poem:
Why were you born when the snow was falling?
You should have come to ________________
Or, when the grapes are green in the cluster,
Or, at least when lithe swallows muster
For their far off flying
From summer dying.

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