Ripples on the brain

Yeah, I know…Pretty late. But saw it, nevertheless. The same old cliches, stereotypes, stories of superstardom packaged in a different way. That the Hindi film industry is in such a sorry state can be confirmed when movies such as these are acclaimed as hits and hog media attention.

Just five minutes into the movie, the plot and the ending are amply clear to an average viewer. The residual interest in the movie, if any, lies in how the director takes the movie towards that ending. Here too, the director does not deviate from the established Bollywood rules of valour and heroism.

If the viewer hasn’t figured out already as to why hockey was chosen for the movie (over cricket), he/she is reminded time and again through comparisons with cricket (in the form of inconceivable, Hindi filmic dialogues of Preethi Sabharwal’s fiancee). Again, if the viewer isn’t sure why women’s game was chosen over men’s, he/she is provided with ample opportunities to understand why through the Hockey Federation Chief’s character. Moreover, a women’s team provides ample scope for the story-teller to talk about the determination of women to overcome personal obstacles (almost invariably in the form of marriage, typical husbands and in-laws) and Chak De… doesn’t miss out on any of those opportunities. Whoever said Shah Rukh Khan doesn’t hog the limelight in the movie needs to watch it all over again.

Even in the main plot, the director wants the viewer to believe that passion, discipline and team work are sufficient to win the world championship. The coach’s only job, thus, becomes resolving personal issues and bringing the team together, rather than forming strategies and discussing tactics with the team. The only tactics he gets to talk about is when he spells beforehand the order in which passes will happen in a match. To achieve his suitably altered objective, the coach becomes a punch dialogue churning machine. The lack of effectiveness in the coach’s dialogues are always overcome by the background music. In fact, in most cases, the background music and the characteristic shrinking of coach’s eye (or the lifting of his eyebrows) signal the arrival of a punch dialogue (I honestly didn’t find any punch in most of the dialogues; however, that is partially attributable to my dwindling Hindi comprehension).

Several instances show the lack of imagination of the screenplay and script writer. The ESPN commentator’s lines are definitely one. In one of the scenes, 4 of the girls have similar scratches (3 red lines) under their left eye to indicate to the viewer that they are injured. They look more like injuries out of quarrels rather than those in a match. The format of the championship and the way India plays so many teams and moves up the order reminds one of the cricket worldcup super eights.

The major advantage of the movie seems to be its time of release. Just after its release, India has performed well in men’s hockey, football and cricket and that has definitely aided its promotion. However, I must state that the movie does, in no way, deserve the attention it has received for the last couple of months.

It seems like Vijay TV has pulled it off with Simbu’s walkout episode in its Jodi No. 1 season 2 programme. It was very apparent that the best Tamil programme last year was losing steam pretty fast in its latest avatar.

But by roping in Simbu and letting him clash (albeit stage-managed) with Prithviraj, the programme might have just received the ideal publicity to boost its TRP’s in the coming weekends. I have read about the Simbu-Prithviraj clash already in a couple of forums.

Things to note in that episode:
1. The whole clash looks very genuine till Simbu starts acting. I think Prithviraj does an excellent job of acting like a guy who was seriously affected by Simbu’s statements. Simbu needlessly overacts.
2. That Devadarshini or whatever her name is, irritates one by being a perfect chamcha. She repeats whatever Simbu says throughout the episode.
3. Another good comedy was when some participant speaks, “naangaellam different kind of people oru integrity oda adarom” . I think he meant integration… Whatever, that was funny.

Overall, I am disappointed that Vijay TV successfully pulled it off with such a dirty trick (which was copy of a similar incident by Sonu Nigam and co. in “Indian Idol”). My guess is this is going to be talked about for a while and going by the track record of Vijay TV, they will cash in on this by re-telecasting this episode many times.

I visited the famous Devon Avenue when I was in Chicago a couple of months ago. The street is known for its Indian restaurants and all kinds of Indian stores - electronics, groceries, meat shops, etc. - apart from the Pakistani, Arabic and Israeli shops. I was very excited to walk along that avenue and look at the honorary names given to it at different points, after Mahatma Gandhi, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Mother Teresa et all.

Though the street looked Indian in every respect (including the way in which people stopped their cars right on the middle of the single lane road to let their family alight !), I somehow felt the shops/restaurants didn’t live up to the expectations. We went to a famous restaurant and ordered for masala dosas. The dosas were expensive as well as poorly cooked; they tasted worse than the frozen dosas you get here. We then went to one of the stores that sold “unlocked” cell phones run by a guy from Bombay. We looked at a model with a price tag of $399. “Don’t go by the tag”, the shopkeeper warned me even as I pointed the model out to him. “How much does it cost then?”. “$275″, he said after some thought. I looked at the features of the model and was trying to recall the price of a similar phone in India. “Theek hai, boss. I’ll give it you for $200″, he said. “I think we get these phones cheaper in India now”, I said, still failing to recollect its exact price in rupees. I was still contemplating when he finally said, “Closing time boss, I’ll give it to you for $150″!. I was totally taken aback by the way in which the price of the phone dropped within minutes and decided it was safe not to get one there. Overall, we felt that the shops generally fleeced customers with poor quality stuff.

While I was recounting my experience with Devon Avenue to a friend, he told me about a similar place in New Jersey that is even better than Devon Avenue. The moment I heard that, I longed to visit that place in NJ. Exactly two months later, I arrived this evening to Woodbridge on a business trip for a couple of days and guess what, Oak Tree Road, Edison, the very place that my friend mentioned, is a stone’s throw from where I stay!

Moments after we landed here, we immediately drove to that place to check out the Saravan Bhavan that was opened sometime last year. Though most of the reviews rated the restaurant from average to poor, we couldn’t miss this opportunity. As luck would have it, the restaurant was closed today (it has weekly off on Mondays). So, we went around that place and dined at a North Indian restaurant. The restaurant served authentic dishes and wasn’t very expensive too.

Unless one is told, any person walking along the road could clearly mistake the place to be in India. So many Indian restaurants, Patel stores selling anything and everything, electronic shops, subzi mandis, groceries, Indian video rentals and jewelry stores to name a few. I just felt like walking along the road over and over again!

So, Saravana Bhavan tomorrow…