This time,
I have put the right address
on the letter written long ago
and posted it too,
I have put the ball in your esteemed court now,
handed you the power to hurt me,
advertently or inadvertently,
for I have decided
to take my life in my hands
to finally face the
the fear of a long uncertain wait
or no reply at all..
I have decided to grow!
So how do you manage to create a love story with a heavy duty self professed womaniser boy, and a wet behind ears about sex, and engaged and about to be married girl?
Answer is When Harry met Sally, sorry gijjuben Sejal.
Bollywood had moved forward somewhat, in the sense, that if Mere jeevan sathi of the ever popular 'o mere dil ke chain' showed the hero as a womaniser but also secretly had to do loads of charity by the side, in order to come across as eligible in order to win the heroine's heart, our current Harry hero no longer requires such cheap props.
He is clear about his sex addict status, (though may not be too happy about it and that too, only because the image hurts his career prospects badly).
It's not clear why Sejal opted to tour the whole of Europe with the self proclaimed 'pervert', except for some vague last liners from Sharukh 'you were not searching for your ring, you were searching for me' mush crap,
And it is also not clear why the movie tries to sell monogamy, when the hero so clearly is not!
Imtihaz Ali, as usual, creates interesting characterisations, but the stories end up in typical lame tame Bollywood territory.
It does however raise the still interesting (has been first raised in DDLJ) question as to why would anybody in his right mind opt for an 'untried untested sexual arena' marriage, when everybody knows it is an important component of any long term relationship.
Anushka plays the girl who plays the curious girl who wants to know the exact price of womanhood, and it must be admitted, that after all these years still manages to retain most of her freshness
while
SRK seems to be heavily stuck in middle age angst, because he can no longer play the head in clouds optmistic about love teenager, and has to undertake the heavy task of a polyamoriser selling monogamy, which he has not been able to do too well.
The ending between the loverboy and sweet gal seems contrived.
Finally the initial song tells it all..
I am stuck in a forever journey,
which is how the movie should have ended in my humble opinion.
One of my most cherished memory has to be the one month vacation we had when I was about nine, in May, 1975, to my native place in a small village in Kerala.
We are are Mumbai based and for some reason, we siblings had never been to Kerala or to my grandparents place before that. So it was my very first visit to a village.
As far as I was concerned i was reluctant to go initially, because it would mean losing out on play time with regular city friends.
But once I got into the train to Kerala, the magic began to play!
What more could a child of eight, with an over active imagination ask for, than a tiny house on chugging wheels, for 36 hours almost non stop, how so ever meagre it was. A house that gently rocked you while you ate and slept!
My dad was a strict person, so normally we were these ever obedient children, never upto any intentional mischief, and this journey was sans dad, so we suddenly learned the wonders of instant freedom from his brand of hard discipline.
Once we reached quaint not so symetrical home, I was blown at the huge size of the house my grandparents lived in, compared to our small apartment in ever crowded Mumbai. The highlight was a particular room which had walls on all four sides.
Then, one by one, further magic began to unfold!
The grandparents had hens, along with a tiny but proper hen house, perched high up out of reach of wolves, which laid eggs daily, and it was with a huge sense of wonder that I handled those tiny things when granny let me help her collect them each day.
They had a goat, who simply loved greedily eating the hibiscous flowers in the courtyard, they had cows which gave milk, and who I tried to milk, and which lived in a quaint shed close by, and one day one of them gave birth to a calf, right there in front of my wonderous eyes! Trying to milk then was fun.
The coconut trees which gave tender coconuts, the mango trees which gave mangoes, like wise the jackfruit trees, and the cashewnut trees, and the chilly shrubs and and colourful flowers so on and so forth. And best of all, the whole thing was free! No buying anything.
The first day, evening time, it was getting dark and I ask granny, where are switches to the light? And Grandma grinned. Come I'll show you, and she began lighting one lamp after another! It was playing with fire..rather the flame! another no no in dad's Mumbai!
Same with taps. No water taps. All water came from the well outside the house. Trying my hand at drawing water was one interesting routine.
Their toothpaste was charcoal, their tongue cleaner was the stick part of the coconut leaf. They used jackfruit leaf neatly folded in a particular fashion to drink their rice gruel.
And imagine my secret delight, when I knew my feet needn't use sandals to walk around even to distances fairly far enough to be covered by local buses, because people didn't usually wear footwear in those days, except for very special occasions.
In those days they did not have a bathroom and instead bathed in the house pond, and deficated in the near open. Even this to my childish mind was nothing less than pure freedom!
Then there was the village temple festival, where we saw elephants and elephants all decked up granderously.
And last but not the least, of how they would not keep stuff Indoors or strictly lock the doors before settling for the day. And that too it was more to avoid animals like snakes, than any fear of theives and robbers.
For me it was all about unadulterated freedom from all kinds of disciplined tyranny, including parental, mental, physical, school teachers, tirany of a city life, and when villages in Kerala had still not lost the art of being close to nature, and simple living!
It was my very own Alice in Wonderland month!
