I love the song Laree Chooti from Ek Chaalis Ki Last Local. It is aired occasionally on MTV Kickass or on channel V, the only programs that I watch or rather listen to on TV. Yes, I do listen to the TV! I’m usually still in the mission to grab some extra winks when my early-bird flatmates will be up and going about. They usually turn on the TV and continue with their activities and I just take in the song and increase my count of zzzs though the z’s will be in lower case, now that the proper upper-case ZZZ sleep is over! I love listening to this particular song. It sort of peps me up. My colleague, Rishi downloaded the song and scped it to my account and I lost no time in getting it onto my phone after which I have listened to it a gazillion times! The movie itself was extremely enjoyable in spite of which it didn’t do too well in the box office. Maybe my perception of a good movie is not shared by the common public. One more piece of evidence that I’m not in synch with the crowd. I really have given up trying to fit in. I mean, if I really have to do something, pretend to like something when I don’t, do something that I’d rather not just to gel with the croud, I’d rather stick out like a sore thumb. No compromise on that one. I call a spade a spade without trying to transform it into anything else. I believe that polical correctness is to be left to the people who are predictably the masters at it, the politicians. However, when these people make the mistake of being politically incorrect, it often leads to resignations being demanded and national furore, fights and slugfests in the parliament and what not! I’m luckier that way you see. The maximum that would happen in my case is that an individual incapable of appreciating the fine lines that I skate upon might get offended and my typical reaction? Dear Mr Over-sensitive, you are most welcome to get irritated. In fact, it is a pleasure!

More about the song and the movie. The movie is full of turns and twists in the plot that are anything but predictable. That is the reason why I loved the movie so much. Maybe the common public wanted something more formulaic. Like I have observed earlier in my other blog (nestedminds.blogspot.com) about another movie, Fight Club, people don’t seem to like having anything that they cannot easily classify into some category or the other. If somebody tries to break the mould, he or she is shunned and treated like an outcast. Down right disgusting, but true. When foreigners innovate and improvise, they are revered, but when our own homegrown people try to innovate, they are labeled as elitist attention seekers at best and much more harsher things in the worst case. Bollywood copies and plagiarizes movies right, left and centre and the people don’t even bother about that, yet they shun good movies only because they are original. Chak De India is a movie that hogged the limelight because it used a lot of hyperbole. Shot in the arm, some said. Just what the doctor ordered, said somebody else, while My father Gandhi or whatever else the movie was called was given the short shrift. I heard that it was a brilliant movie, but before I could adjust my schedule to watch the movie, it was out of the theaters. Some of the greatest and the most brillliant movies of all time have not fared well in the box office and Fight Club is just one of the examples . My father Gandhi could be another one. I also loved Cash. It was an amazing movie. It was of the caliber of movies like Ocean’s Eleven and The Italian Job, with slick action scenes and a very original use of graphic cartoon sequences interspersed in the movie. The effect was superb. Again, no prizes for guessing that the movie did not do well. My point? Movies that cause one to think and those that are original don’t fare well in Indian theaters. Give them the same formula rehashed and served and the people will lap it up without any complaints. Oh, I guess I’m in a mood to rant today and I better go before this post of mine gets so much longer that I will be forced to use lj cuts and I hate lj cuts!