Aug 02, 2015 12:37 PM
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(Updated Aug 02, 2015 02:45 PM)
Hindus have the Sidhs, Surs, Buddhas and Naaths to enlighten man’s path to salvation via the 68 holy pilgrim places, the four Vedas and the 18 Puranas; the Muslims have The Khans!
Salim Khan, while defending Salman Khan’s indiscretions on twitter about Memon, confessed to his interviewer on TV last night that the safest place in the world for Moslems is India. ‘Would you like to stay in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq…’ he asked, in visible horror.
Accordingly, the flavor of the season is every Khan taking to the stage to perpetuate this safe haven called India by preaching to the Hindus(as if they were bigots): on the virtues of religious tolerance, on dialogue with Pakistan, and on the pristine nature of their faith. Islam, unlike, Hinduism, is a proselytizing religion, meaning it seeks converts.
Aamir Khan took it upon himself to preach us about Hindu dogmas and meaningless rituals. Salman Khan, teaming up with another convert, Begum Kareena, carries on the proselyting agenda of his predecessor, making as much money in the process, on the auspicious occasion of the first sighting of the crescent moon during the revelries of the Eid weekend.
Like PK before him, Salman makes fun of Rambhakts as sniveling retards that prostrate before monkeys, and have less common sense than a dumb six-year-old Pakistani girl who has apparently never been to school.
Don’t tell me this movie isn’t about “Aman Ki Asha” brainchild of some nitwit bureaucrat, and about religion – because it is! The only thing missing in the cheeky narrative is the Pakistani anthem – the day is not far either, methinks when that too shall come to pass.
An out of work Rambhakt, with three months to go before he has to buy a house and make himself worthy of his paramour, Begum Kareena, who seems to be an unbelievably easy pick, chucks all to take a lost, mute girl illegally to Pakistan, without bothering to acquire a Visa or a passport. It seems the entire system in our country fails, or conspires to fail, to force BB to seek the clandestine route foolhardy spies take, braving electric border fencing, camel mounted guards, hostile foreign police, non-vegetarian cuisine and a general lack of direction. The enormity of the stupidity of BB is hard to swallow – the man takes off in a hostile territory with no navigational aids save his faith in Bajrang Bali, and sign language of a mute girl! In the end, obviously, it is not Bhagwan Ram but some Pir who comes to the rescue of BB and thumbs the girl firmly in the direction of her lost and grieving mother.
It is believed that if a writer can infuse a human interest and a semblance of truth into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgment concerning the implausibility of the narrative. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote the fantastical “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” when he was only 28, coined the term, “Willing Suspension of Disbelief”. To believe this diabolically insane story, one has not only to willingly suspend his disbelief, he has to grab hold of whatever sanity he has left and strangle it completely! In the age of Internet, Facebook and YouTube, when the world is become a global village - so what if it includes saxicoline Pakistan – it is hard to swallow that BB has to resort to such desperate means to put his - even if dumb life - at risk to restore a lost girl to her home.
The music is atrocious. The moviemakers ride solely on divine faith, the innocent charm of the little girl and Salman’s pavement-riding machismo to carry this impossible and painful narrative through. After interval, had it not been for ma’s intervention – pardon the alliteration there – I would have ambled into the much more interesting environs of the Ladies Room and lingered at length therein with my powders and warpaint.
The lazy writer – what better name can he conjure for a Rambhakt than Pavan! Why he stopped short of calling him Hanuman beats me. The conversion of a diehard Bajrangi to an ambivalent Bhai Jaan marks the culmination of the proselyting agenda in this ill-disguised sermonette.
The formulaic plot, in the first five minutes, becomes as predictable as acne in an adolescent.
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