Road Movie: Well……..what the hell!!!

A couple of months ago, I happened to watch the trailer of this movie. It seemed pretty much an offbeat, Abhay Deol kinda movie…I seriously admired the first look of the movie…Plus I have always been able to appreciate the work this guys has done. He had never let me down with his story and script choosing ability. So with the existing impression about the film and its crew, I got along with a bunch of enthusiastic friends who were more or less on the same page about the movie as me. After all lazy lamhe of this boring Sunday, we finally moved our backs to the theatre…

The movie belongs to “Road Movie” genre, a bildungsroman, where the protagonist travels all the way to some destination and witnesses the whole new changes, growth or improvements in his character over the course of the story...

The movie starts with a supposedly hip looking guy named Vishnu, wearing aviators, listening music on a rooftop of an ancient looking city of Rajasthan ( I instantly imagined the real Lord Vishnu in the same getup in his constituency…LOL ), and his daddy calling for him to get him smell the “Tel”(Oil) and sell it calling it his future..Phew, how typical this dad is…!!

Naturally, the dude has no interest to be a “tel-salesman” having aviators and ipod ;-) and is looking for a different carrier opportunity for himself. Suddenly, he hits on an old chap to deliver the Oil bottles. This old fellow definitely misbelieve that the oil keeps his “budhhapa” away from him…Man, how long you can expect some creepy oil massage can keep you “young” in all aspects… This Buddha was gonna drive a 1942 model truck filled with probably even older machineries used to show motion pictures of the time of “Alam Ara”, to some goddamn place which is insanely far!!! Anyways, the dude Vishnu, offers him to drive the jumbo just to pass his time and escape from the “tel” business…and he gets the deal…YaaaaY..!! Here the daddy cool, assigns him last moment tasks which is to sell some cartons of tel-bottles during his journey…Aaww mann, he was so similar to your typical managers who don’t leave your ass till the last fraction of moment when you are about to leave for a break…

So here starts the journey, ohh and it halts so soon on a dhaba in the middle of the desert where the dude is proved to be a driver by a witty little worker, who wants to escape and switch to another job (May be because of recession, no hike, no girls around, or may be fed up of a long distance relationship or whatsoever…) So the little guy gets along with “truck driver” on his journey…

Oops, the internals of the big mean machine gave up somewhere where even Google maps can’t reach, and here is our dude trying to catch up with some freaking Indian cellular service provider’s network…No big deal for the little Johny, who gets onto a donkey ride and seemed to escape…But no, the dude gets lucky and the little comes back with a mechanic, portrayed by Satish Kaushik, a well known actor-director, but definitely not suited for the character he was given. This mechanic signed a MoU with chhotu that he would get the lift to the hypothetical Mela (Fair) if he gets the jumbo well…
A. Where on the earth, you can catch a freelancer mechanic in a desert?
B. Couldn’t he demand for something better than that?

So naturally he does his part and adds himself to the team…The “jumbo going ill, mechanic gets him well", scene repeats for no reason. Little Johny and mechanic steals the dude’s “Maa ke hath ka khana” while he is asleep. Dude gets his “Dimaag kharab” on the two, leaves them behind and escapes…but his jumbo loves the mechanic way too much, and the fat mechanic catches up with him again too fast…I had no clue how quickly this fat guy could catch the truck with the dude...Probably he might have used GPS…But oops, I doubted that…!!!

After some time I kinda got my consciousness back (which of course means I was bound to lose my control over my consciousness and got half-asleep) and found there is one newbie gal too in their truck who is an individual water-seeker (usually they go in a group) Finally the team reaches to the Fair’s place where you would expect ……ummmmm… nothing!!! Seriously this place is having nothing but the infinite white sand meeting with the sky at horizon….Damn you, mechanic guy…!!!

Anyways it’s a romantic place for our dude!!! And here our hero goes romantic in the dream with the village chick under the truck’s body, between the front and rear wheel. Could you have ever imagined such a romantic place!!! The fatty guy does not lose the hope and decides to show the movie there and make the place a Fair, which happens to be reality in the dude’s dream. Wait a second, what the hell is going on here…??? Dude, you have an affair in your dream, does not mean that everybody gets to have a Fair where you dream…

Now let’s come to reality, the babe seemed to be getting pretty much cozy with the hero after his dream (I have no clue about the connection between the reality and dream). Probably she forgets that you should not involve in such activities while one is driving, otherwise you might accidently hit to something like...ummmm…ohhh sorry here you have nothing to hit on…so carry on guys…

Now a twist with a twister comes up and the crew gets caught by a bunch of so called “Daakus”, supposedly water mafia of thirsty Rajasthan. The Sardar proves by contradiction that he runs his company better than the MNCs who label the rain water with their names and fools the public…He kinda kidnaps the crew (as if he could get a big ransom for this team…khee khee khee) And oh boy, here comes the biggest hit of the millennium. Guess what our dude could argue when the gunda tries to misbehave his gal??? Here it is, “Hey you, you think you are a Mard, misbehaving with a weaker woman, no my friend you are wrong. Let me tell you how you can become that…”, He runs to his truck gets the Tel bottles, and here it is…Daaku gets a Tel Champi(Oil head massage) by his co-worker…Think how would you feel when your manager would ask you to this kind of favor or service, definitely a human right violation case…Wow this daaku guy is more than happy to see himself in the water with his hair oiled and combed… But our dude is so clever and brave…He won’t let the Sardar and his team becomes “Mard” for free. So he puts a deal to get the lots of water in place of a bunch of Oil bottles. And guess what, he get the deal approved…Shame on you, you hopeless, coward daaku guy…

So the team is relaxed and our kind hero donates the whole water to the Team-WaterSeeker and gets a kiss from his lady love for this…what a mastermind, nai??? Everybody leaves him hereon to carry on…Guy gets to reach the destination, delivers the theatrical truck and gets a bike for his journey back home…And I am done…phew…

I mean, I was looking for any damn thing which I could consider logical throughout the movie. But boy, I failed. Acting wise, everybody did their part decently but there had to be SOME scope of acting ;-) The only thing nice about the movie was its length. Just 90 mins of crap and you are out of the shit saying, “Ohhhh Myyyyy Goddddd!!!”

I say No to crackers on Diwali and colors on Holi…

Diwali is considered to be the biggest festival of Hindus but it is celebrated all over India without any cast or religion barrier. One way to celebrate this auspicious festival is, burning fire crackers. Why people opt for this way of “enlightenment”? May be, to get thrilled by watching the fireworks and enjoying the patterns created by the light. While the darker side of it emphasizes that, the joy comes with enormous amount of noise, pollution of all parts of our environment, potential increase in global warming, risk of people getting burnt or injured, huge quantity of waste material including industrial waste to be recycled and so on… Doesn’t it feel like just burning money to get mesmerized by the fire and sound work? In my opinion, it certainly does.

I believe, this money could be and can be saved for lots and lots of better purposes. Those who have lower or medium financial status can save this money for betterment of their families, and those who are financially more capable of spending money on such things could rather donate the money for the betterment of the society and the environment. There are like infinite needy people and places out there in our country which could be benefitted by such contributions. Think about a family which burns some money on moderate amount of crackers, move on to a good number of such families in a medium sized colony, moving further to a bunch of such colonies in one city, then more cities, states and so on. If you even try to estimate the kind of money spent in one day by the whole country, you would probably realize yourself that how better such money could have been used…

There is one counter argument usually given that cracker’s manufacturing gives employment and business to a lot of people in our country where sources of living and the opportunities are pretty lesser than the number of people seeking for them. Well my argument is, the sources such as crackers can benefit in terms of business, mainly once a year or may be few more occasions like marriages etc. Why do the people into this business have to wait for such events or festivals and remain unemployed for the rest of the time? I doubt that this would be most likely the case. Such people would definitely be involved or dependent in other sources of living in non-seasonal times, then why those ways can’t be continued at even the special seasons?

Now let’s talk about the Holi. Whole India becomes colorful when the festival of Holi comes up. It is considered to be the festival of colors. The traditional ways to celebrate this festival used to be Gulals and colors. But human brain is something which always tries to find out new ways of doing everything. With time, there have been nasty ways being and have been developed by human brains to color ourselves. The side effects are many; ranging from skin problems which most of us just ignore with the thinking that if there is a problem it would be for some time or may be few days, to the wastage of water and electricity which are the next biggies. Again if you think about the consumption of these resources by whole country on this very single day on non-regular cleaning work to clean up the mess created during this day, the whole idea could be easily figured out.

There can be many more arguments to support or oppose these issues but one should always think before that what all can we do to improve the situation of our country, our environment and our families? Probably utilizing the resources and money we have in most appropriates places and minimizing the wastage in all dimensions could be the way to start with…