Abhijit Speaks :

After I saw “Welcome to Sajjanpur”, I asked myself a question “Can anybody make a movie worse than this?” However, I suppose we live in times where illusions are quite short lived. Further, after my complete disillusionment from RDB, I should have thought twice about watching “Delhi-6″. Temptations are meant to fall prey for and so did I.

If one reads around – one can figure out what briefly the story line of Delhi-6 is. I’d not get into the details of that. Just posting some of my observations here.

Within first 5 minutes you are left wondering whether this is a Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra Chopra movie? It has got all the elements of being a Chopra movie – The not so happy family living in New York missing India, the over enthusiastic family members of our hero. The movie was just short of the grandson calling his grandma sexy to make it an authentic chopra movie and of course SRK was missing. In a few minutes this Chopra movie starts becoming Swades (again minus SRK, thankfully).  Then we are presented about the usual menu of Indian cinema, Hindu-Muslim, Ram and Allah. I bet both Ram and Allah themselves must be tired of them being abused in the movies by now. Oh and don’t forget the Taj. I can imagine lack of creativity on the part of a British director about depicting India in SMD millionaire, but our very own director seems to be not able to cross the self imposed limitations of story line.Did I forget a corrupt police officer leching on a lowercast woman?

Then our hero has to fall in love and can’t explain it to the heroine and if there was KBC in SMD millionaire, its Indian Idol here in the movie ( I guess this whole deal is part of movie sponsorship). Then there’s a parade of arty types actors which reminds us of ‘nukkad’ a beautiful television serial telecast a loong time back and there’s this counter trend somewhat pleasant Rehman’s music.

All of this happens on the backdrop of a mysterious ‘kaala bandar’, who has supposedly created havoc in Delhi-6. I guess originally intended as Pun on the television channels, but later on elevated as the central theme of the movie, for, the story writer realized that he didnt really have a story to tell. Subsequently through the twists and turns, the bade dilwaale of delhi 6 realize their fault, in the meanwhile creating an irreparable damage. The song ‘masakali’ had to be “included” in the movie – somehow. And we are again being reminded of “Why India Works!” by an America borne 20-30 year old who has barely spent a few days in India and that too not beyond the few mohallas of Delhi-6.

The only silver lining on this kaala cloud er bandar er whatever was – depiction of Times Square with our friends of Delhi-6 being part of it in the imagination of our hero Rohan Roshan. Like most other things it was symbolic, but I for once liked it  – for I thought the director whanted to show – These residents of Delhi-6 could as well be the people walking in Times Square and still doing the same things as they are doing here, and it may not be too odd. Its just that we are not used to seeing it or perhaps as a sheer pun on America. Whatever may be the intent, I thoroughly enjoyed. I’d have liked the making out scene as well, but the details of the scene were left as a homework for the imagination of the audience.

Also, I believe that the movie makers should also adopt some kind of smily subtitles – to help us naive (and somewhat stupid) audience know when we are supposed to laugh and when we are supposed to cry. For instance there’s a scene thats going on and the story teller expects you to laugh then the director during post – production should add smileys to the scene as subtitles and we’d oblige, otherwise its impossible to laugh at any of the humour (they have a name for it black humour.. kaala humour!). I thought the only kaala thing in the movie was an Ape, but there’s this kaala humour as well.

The story ends  with “Gobar” a character (which means dung) – who is supposedly an idiot telling all the wise Men of the society that the real kaala bandar who’s created the havoc is within each one of us and not some imaginary animal. I guess this guy was somewhat  nay completely wrong – the real kaala bandar is the story teller, the real kaala bandar is the director, the real kaala bandar is the producer and the biggest kaala bandar is the viewer who has spent a precious few hundred rupees of his(or her) hard earned money and even more valuable time in watching something as pathetic – in a movie hall where the quality of the movie print is worse than the food and beverages they serve there (not to mention served above MRP) .