Ghajini

Spare me the torture. Please.





Aamir Khan is branded as a "thinking man's actor". After Ghajini, people should seriously 'think' about the viability of this epithet.

Yes, I had to go through the three-hour ordeal called 'Ghajini' sometime back; took a long time to recover from the aftershocks that such an ordeal entails. And add to that I'd to pay 50 bucks to voluntarily go through all this.

The movie was about....well....I really don't know what it was all about. The storyline was very Bollywoodish: handsome rich guy meets beautiful not-so-rich girl, one song squeezed in, a brief period of romance ensues, three songs happen, one of which is a chartbuster, then some tragedy happens (an item number also happens amidst all this) and ultimately the hero, i.e. the rich guy is vindicated when he beats up around fifty people in two and a half minutes and the formidable main villain after a long slog lasting around fifteen minutes. Of course, at the very end we have as dessert some hackneyed Bollywoodish 'sentu' thus drawing the curtains on a very 'happening' Bollywood movie.

So imagine my bemusement when the newspaper tells me that Ghajini is "one of the biggest (s)hits of the year" and, oh-my-God, "one of the biggest box office grossers in the history of Bollywood" !

Two very important conclusions can be made here:
i) Most people like these feel good movies. Why ? Because no matter who they are and what they do, deep down inside they have this desire to banish the evil and do good in general. Hence, when they see someone on screen doing just that, they immediately connect with their secret desires, which manifests as them liking the movie. They desperately want those visuals to turn into the visuals of their lives.

ii) Why do people crave for happy endings and cheer when the good guy kicks the living daylights out of the bad guy ? I mean, this isn't real, this is happening on screen, this is a set-up, a camera is merely capturing a deliberately planned sequence of events and hence there is actually no "righting the wrong" stuff being done. Everyone knows this, still people are euphoric when they see these feel-good stories on screen. One reason could be the point put forward in the previous paragraph. Another reason could be that people are gullible to some extent, and that aspect sometimes comes forth. As soon as the lights inside the theatre are turned off, somehow people are transported inside the movie screen. They see things happening in front of their eyes as if they were happening in their real life, when they are standing on the ground under the blue sky. Hence, what the movie screen tells them seems to be the truth to them.

All hail the Cricket God !!

If God decides to become a cricketer, He'd want to be like Tendulkar. I'm sure He'd be nearly as good as Tendulkar, but certainly not as good.

28,835 runs and 83 centuries in international cricket (!). And counting. Truly Tendulkarsque figures, these are. And let's not forget the number of matches he has won single-handedly for India. But the thing that I find God-like about Tendulkar is not only the number of runs he has scored but also the way he has gone about his business on the cricket field and off it. This man has his head amongst the stars and his feet firmly on the ground. He has been India's premier batsman in the international cricketing area for 19 years. Yet his will to win and the utmost humility with which he plays the game remains the same even today. Unlike his fellow-geniuses of the modern era, viz. Shane Warne, Brian Lara, Wasim Akram and Ricky Ponting, Tendulkar has miraculuosly managed to remain insulated from controversies throughout his career. He has managed the impossible feat of being the leading (some would say the best) batsman of his generation and at the same time securing the goodwill of one and all. I mean an achiever of Tendulkar's calibre is likely to have a few jealous detractors, but none as far as Tendulkar is concerned. It's more a tribute to his character as a human being than anything else. He is a role model for anyone who decides to pick up a cricket bat (probably even God). They say cricket is a gentleman's game. Sachin Tendulkar, who plays for India, is the ulimate gentleman.