Pyaare 'Mat Ro' han

I am no movie buff. I am much more into reading or sports rather than the idiot box and Bollywood bheja fries. Yet i have friends who love idling their brains and watching all the David Dhawan-Salman Khan specials. As if the brain's a gearbox ready to shift into neutral and watch the Nanga Pahalwaan dance like a deer. The last Bollywood flick I watched was Apaharan. Prakash Jha's hard hitting movie had everything - a gripping storyline, the subtle comic sense, an authentic depiction of Bihar, technical soundness, excellent acting from all the actors and that irrefutable question that is the hallmark of all good movies. Here i would admit that i am the serious type and I really don't love watching something like 'The life and times of a Bunch of Jokers'.

And so I was already prejudiced as i went in for "Pyaare Mohan". But exceeding all my expectations, it turned out to be a royal fiasco far worse than I ever imagined it to be. Watching it I wished I’d be blind or deaf, like the male leads, to be able to escape the torment. I just can't comprehend how anyone could agree to fund such pathetic film making, get the film insured and also find enough fools like myself to watch it. This was by far the most unimaginative film making i have witnessed in years. It’s a sad reflection on the tastes of a country like ours. I wonder how the actors agreed to such shoddy work themselves. We have a nascent audience, no doubt but the actors - they are well educated and seemingly possess excellent aesthetic sense (amply reflected in their love lives). It’s sad that they don't object to dishing out such unpalatable fare.

Yet that is what our country is about. Isn't it? Swashbuckling Dhoni and sedate Dravid, simple Manmohan and 'pseudo-sensitive' Sonia, crafty Rahman and crooning Reshammiya and lastly (this one's for one of the male leads) lovely Aishwarya and lanky Abhishek. A jumble of paradoxes, a concoction of ever increasing humanity that tends to oscillate between extremes.