The Chetta Spirit Rockksss!!!

For the uninitiated, Chetta is the Mallu equivalent for Brother or “bhai”, and being in Kerala I need to use this word to attract attention of a passer-by if I want some help to find my way on the road. To avoid being sexist, let me also introduce the Mallu equivalent for the other gender, “Chechchi”, fondly used to address the lady working at the coffee vending machine in the campus.

Many of you may ask now, why am I teaching you Mallu at the first place? The reason is the adventures we had last night when we went to watch the movie Om Shanti Om. Being in Chetta land, we were highly fortunate to be able to watch a Hindi movie at the first place. The tickets are dirt cheap, you get to sit in a balcony seat, which we have long forgotten with the Multiplex era, and that too in 35 rupees (We spent 100 bucks on travel though). Compare this to the price of a pack of popcorn in PVR Gurgaon!!! And one more thing, you can stretch your legs also for maximum comfort. Coming back to the experience, I should divide the fun in two parts, the paid fun and the unpaid fun.

The movie was fun. The only condition is that you need to leave your brain either in the car or if you forgot to do that, put it on the seat next to you. Once you have done this, you are ready for an awesome joy ride. It starts with Rishi Kapoor dancing with Shahrukh, it shows you Manoj Kumar being beaten by the security guards, it shows you Deepika Padukone (God! She is Gorgeous, we will come to it later) dancing with Sunil Datt and Rajesh Khanna, it shows you flying Shahrukh Khan etc etc. And believe me, I enjoyed it!! The story is copied and the movie makes it clear in the first scene itself. The director nowhere pretends about showing a sensible and logical movie. Deepika looks stunning but is grossly underutilized. She doesn’t get any screen time, every moment of it is gobbled by SRK who looks ugly and malnutritioned dancing topless in the item song. Now here lies the difference, in Chetta land the entire crowd goes mad as soon as SRK makes an appearance on the screen and goes silent when Deepika appears. Whistling is on full swing for SRK but Deepika draws a blank crowd. From previous encounters with Chettas, it is also reported that the same was observed in the movie DON with Kareena and Priyanka failing miserably in luring Chettas with their pelvic thrusts. SRK is a craze here. I have never seen such loud claps, whistles and shouting for SRK before in my life.

The best part of the movie was when the projector stuck for 15 minutes. In such a case, some hooliganism is expected but we were shocked to see Chettas dancing and singing. Imagine 20-30 chettas singing Mallu songs and dancing bhangra to their own tunes, slapping chairs to generate some background score for it. The same situation in Delhi would have caused a silence resembling a morgue with a boy watching his girlfriend popping the popcorns with amazing grace and the same situation in Bihar would have caused a riot with the manager being beaten up. It was amazing to see the spirit of fun and enjoyment in a moment of frustration. Chettas rock!!!

I am longing to go back for a movie again there and praying for a power failure again. The net return on 35 rupees can nowhere be more than in a movie at Chetta land. Once again, Chettas and the spirit of Chettas surely rock. They sure know how to enjoy a movie. Way lot to learn, Delhi!!

The NameSake, story of ABCDs

A Bengali academician moves to US to study and work on advice by a fellow passenger on an ill-fated train, comes back to marry a Bengali girl and then grows up two children in US who struggle for their identities as ABCDs. This is THE NAMESAKE, a book and a movie. I watched the movie after reading the book, deliberately though. Once again the belief that a movie cannot do justice to a piece of literature reinforced itself as I continued through the adaptation by Mira Nair who tries her best to capture the essence of a 300 page book in a 2 hr movie. She is successful to an extent that the film is able to showcase the emotions flowing though the main characters. But she fails to get the strength and power of the characters totally out on the screen. Jhumpa Lahiri’s characters are stronger, her story more gripping and more beautifully written.

The story is about Ashoke Ganguli and his family. He names his son as Gogol, the namesake being a Russian author Nikolai Gogol. Gogol grows up hating his name and the Indian culture forced onto him by his family. The story has a twist here. After Gogol’s father dies, Gogol is reminded of his responsibilities towards his mother and sister. He shaves off his head in respect of his dead father, becomes emotional and sentimental and to an extent less confused and less frustrated. Suddenly he becomes a darling son in the eyes of the audience. This transition is very subtly yet very beautifully crafted by the author. He even marries a Bengali girl, well not because his mother fixed his first date but because he fells in love with her. It’s a different thing that he is divorced in two years because of adultery on his wife’s part.

The book very well captures the struggle for identity in an alien land, fought everyday by expatriates seeking solace in the company of fellow countrymen. These are people who feel nostalgic about their homeland every now and then, who are concerned about the culture their children are growing up in, who want their children to marry an Indian, who read a letter from their near and dear ones hundreds of times crying every time nonetheless, who have learnt to celebrate Christmas with the same fanfare as they once celebrated Diwali. The problem arises when their children, born in the land of opportunities face this dilemma between the land they belong to and the land their parents belong to. They are not able to understand why their parents invite Indians every weekend, serve samosas and want to go back to India at the first possible opportunity. They want to be Americans; hanging out at MacD’s, kissing in the open, and not wanting to be an Engineer or a doctor. Well, one cannot blame them for they have always seen this only. It is unfair to even expect that they can behave like an Indian. This struggle leads to frustration and confusion in these kids. They become detached to their families and try to be an American, sometimes overdoing things.

For people who are still wondering why actually Gogol was named Gogol, I would advice watching the movie if not reading the book. The movie is passé but maybe because I saw the movie after reading the book with high expectations. I can guarantee that this story will be liked more by someone who has lived outside India at some point in his life. Don’t watch the movie if you are expecting a typical masala movie, watch it for Tabu and Irfan Khan. But as always there is nothing better than reading the book and feeling the emotions through the words.