RDB----Black statuette and biting Realities

Bleary eyed me, yeah it is 9:50 and day is about to start(Welcome to paradise ), just scour the news through Sunday newspaper. Same old trite news offering no incentive to get me up. back page is sheepishly announcing India’s nominee to this year’s oscar. OK so RDB(Rang De Basanti ) it is , I feel vindicated perhaps the easiest choice to make . A lot better compared to say paheli a silly choice indeed when the stable boasted of “Black”, but god knows what goes inside mind of these selection committeewallahs.

Anyway back to RDB, a movie which kind of became path breaker , remember those anti reservation rallies culminating into final staging of RDB amid lot of fanfare. A movie can cause so much euphoria in a country devoid of basic infrastructure amused me to no end. Well I too felt euphoric after coming out of PVR. I loved first half , quite refreshing from the regular run of mills. Second half well nice to pump up some pseudo emotion inside all in name of patriotism. Had many a heated debate with friends of mine and reaching a conclusion was as easy as say making Palestines sit along with those Israelis . But I refused to discuss the same in public domain , ah who would take chances with a generation awakening with sudden enthusiasm. Any satire on the movie would have seen me in bad light so I patiently waited for hysteria to die down before I could claim “chill out guys , it’s just another movie from big bad stable called bollywood.”However since quite a few months have passed since then, I think the time has now come to gingerly put my head on the chopping block .

Let’s face it RDB is an over hyped piece of glory(I and you made it after all a generation has to be awakened), why there was sudden spate of emotions , I failed to understand , did the youth of country never come to see better movies than that?? Can Aamir say it to be his best work till date?? The concept of the movie took four good years, holiness me, what took four years could someone pose it to Mr Mehra ?

Yeah I said it then I say it now, RDB is just another movie and if you leave aside Siddharth’s role(that green horn of forgettable Boys, did lot of alle alle in that one) may be none other role was meaty enough to be remembered one year down the line.

Let’s accept it. All of us, at some point of time, have muttered under our breath : “The only solution to India’s problems is to parade all politicians , put them in a firing line and shoot them.” It’s a desire we all share, a desire shaped out of decades of watching the ruling babus shamelessly helping themselves at the cost of the country. Yeah hapless we felt and that feeling of helplessness gives rise to such sentiments. There is nothing wrong with such feelings , one would have such feelings after repression and haplessness goes beyond a limit.

But then there is nothing wrong with any fantasy that one can have, they are limitless and they need no rationalizing. Some other directors have pandered to other so called lower forms of fantasies in trying to mint some quick money, Mehra went the other way . He has sold us a fantasy and we the generation in making have lapped it up. Except that unlike the seller of skin flicks, he has packaged his blatantly commercial exercise with a wrapper of pulp nobility--- trying to give you that jingoistic feeling , make you warm and josheela inside let your heart take control of your reasoning.(you can vouch 4 his success if you already in queue for third time to take glimpse of Sue,DJ and gang).

Yeah he has managed to do so and let him win some hard earned cash but making a messiah out of an also ran director would be a blot on some big names which ever treaded in this industry. Certainly not a landmark movie in Indian history nor a life-altering one. (I sincerely hope, it should not be a life-altering one) .


Ok so you end up saying “chill out yaar , don’t do a postmortem here it’s just another movie” . so true that’s all I want to prove in the first place and the moment awakened generation understands that I feel vindicated and should I add a bit gleeful.


Leave the intellectual pretensions aside and weigh it properly. Call me cynic , call me thanda , call me another of “those yearning to be zara hatke”, but then after shelling out cool 200 bucks to be in rat race of ‘Be the change” as mouthed by many a star of the movie exactly what change it brought in any one of us. Life remains same for me and hope for you too.

Here wishing RDB all the best for OSCARS. Well idea was not to beat the movie black and blue. Idea was to justify that whatever gimmicks did they play was for increased commercial viability and any such slogan “Be the change” or “A generation awakens” was utter crap. RDB go all the way on the red carpet and collect that black statuette, wish you don’t find any No man’s land la Lagaan….