Date: 2009-06-03 08:24 Subject: Cult Classics Security: Public Tags: entertainment, people

Caught up on Hrishikesh Mukherjee's directorials this week, Golmaal, Chupke Chupke and Guddi.
I cannot find any film maker make such entertaining films by using simpletons in the lead cast and also delivering social messages at the same time.

In Golmaal, he takes a dig at Bhavani Shankar a role which aptly suited Utpal Dutt and is some thing which is the highlight of his career. The protagonist is an employee working for Bhavani Shankar and looks to please him all the time to keep his job. Bhavani Shankar is flawed in his retrograde ideas about men having moustaches being the real men, a person should not be having any interests apart from his job in his employment period and some others.

In Chupke Chupke, again an elderly person Raghavendra Sharma is targetted who is obsessed over language perfection and is very confident about his knack for recognizing people for what they really are. The protagonist in this case tries to defy him by impersonating a driver who comes to work for him and is more obsessed with Hindi vocabulary than his employer.

In both movies, Bhavani Shankar and Raghavendra Sharma are pleasing characters, you will find nothing wrong with their viewpoints but only that they try to force it on the next generation and this is debated in these movies.

Guddi is Jaya (Bhaduri) Bachchan's first movie in Hindi, where she plays a coy school girl who is smitten by Hindi movies to a point that she thinks that she will forever be betrothed to the cinema hero "Dharmendra". My mother tells me that those were the times when Rajesh Khanna was very much popular among teenage girls including herself. Some had gone to the extent of marrying him by garlanding his photo.
Apart from educating Guddi, the film also touches upon the stark realities of film making in the 70s. It touches upon the issues such as the stars hog the limelight while some workers still struggle for "do waqt ki roti".

I can go on and on about these, as I kind of know most of the dialogues verbatim. But the real essence lies in watching these movies and enjoying the simplistic story telling, without spending much on the costumes, without having any "videshi" locations and having great music.

Date: 2009-03-13 13:27 Subject: Blast from the past - Chanakya Security: Public Mood: happy Tags: country, entertainment

This time I was catching up on Chanakya, the Doordarshan series originally aired in 1991. During that time, I was about 11 years old and could not comprehend the entire story. I was not able to judge the strength of the people during that time, the characters, the political situation and the issues then.

Now, having attained more maturity, am able to understand it much better.

Chanakya was a Political Science professor at the Takshashila university in the kingdom of Gandhaara. Originally from Pataliputra in Magadha kingdom, he was forced to move out of his place of birth due to the political unrest during the rule of the unjust leader Dhanananda. He took refuge and sought education in Takshashila, one of the very prominent universities of those times (around 400 BC).
During these times, Alexander, the Greek warrior in a bid to become the emperor of the world invaded the Indian subcontinent. Chanakya does not want to surrender his motherland to a Greek warrior and having stiff opposition from his adopted kingdom's ruler AmbhiRaj, approaches his parent kingdom Magadha. There he receives nothing but humiliation and apathy from Dhanananda.
He pledges to unite the nation to fight the Greek invaders and how he goes about his mission is the crux of the story.

The situation is not too different from the British rule of India. Only that the British were far more methodical in annexing the different parts of India and far more shrewd. It took a MK Gandhi to finally drive them out.

The thing that differs from Chanakya's realm and the 20th Century India is that, then, India was far more cohesive in terms of culture. 20th Century India had already faced too many invasions and too many dents on her cultural binding that it was much more difficult to unite her.

Coming back to the serial, the main thing I like about these DD serials is their Hindi vocabulary and also the purety of the language used. Not adulterated with Urdu, English, Punjabi and other language words, this is as pure as we can get. I absolutely loved it.  Dr. Chandraprakash Dwivedi, the writer-director and lead actor originally holds a medical degree, but the love for literature lead him to change his profession. I thought his expressions were a tad stiff but possibly suited the role as well.

Check out the following song from the serial, it comes at the time, when Chanakya and his students are on a mission to unify India.

हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन
हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन.. आराधन

तन से, मन से, धन से
तन मन धन जीवन से
हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन
हम करें राष्ट्र आराधन.. आराधन...

For the full song, you can check out this link.
This ignites the patriotic spirit like few other songs do.