Shubh Mangal Saavdhan: British sex comedy in desi milieu Jaljeera with Whiskey.

Can Indians laugh at themselves? The answer is finally yes. I loved"Shubh Mangal Saavdgan"  - an unlikely  comedy of manners and behavioural idiosyncrasies in a society transitioning from a moribund sanskari inertia to a more liberated value system.  It is tough to blend British style sex comedy with a small town Indian milieu, but director R.S. Prasanna, who earlier made this movie in Tamil, pulls it off,aided by earthy UP-meets-NewDelhi dialogues. This is what happens when mausis and tayajis meet malls and multiplexes in an age of feminism and the Internet.

Flawed Machismo And Philandering Femmes: Tanu Weds Manu Returns

Two archetypes of Modern India.
Tanuja Trivedi a.k.a. Tanu - from UP. Romantic, aggressive, self-confident
Kusum Sangwan a.ka. Datto - from Haryana. Confident, dutiful, athletic.

Then you have Manu Sharma a.k.a.  Manu - A man torn between the two women
In the trignometry of modern India's changing gender equations, writer Himanshu Sharma and director Anand Rai explore patterns that go beyond the obvious.
Marriage meets betrayals. Lovesick Romeos flaunt flawed machismo. Girls lose their heads and find their feet as freedom comes with its warts. Tanu Weds Manu Returns is a subtle comedy of manners spiced with a depth that arrives elegantly when Kangana meets Kangana in a voluptuous meeting of dialects and dialectics. See it for her histrionics and the rugged charm of a plot that celebrates the vulnerabilities of hinterland India.

Selfie Verite - When stand-up comedy makes you sit down

'Time stands still in Calcutta. That is where ambition goes to die. It has a high return on investment on nostalgia'- says Papa CJ

It was delightful attending his PAPA CJ - NAKED (Gurgaon - Sun 31 May)show on Sunday. It is more than comedy. It has a deep literary flourish, with a visceral sense of pathos as he journeys into his own past to mix the ribald with the profound and the profound with the poignant. There is always a challenge in making stand-ups rise above the simple stringing of gags. CJ, reveals much more (body and soul) in what you could call Selfie Verite -- a click into his true persona. He does that in a fascinating way, combining impromptu interactivity with audience with a part-nostalgic, part-incisive recollections of his own past.

Pronounced bowels and digestible consonants: Piku

There is only so much you can guffaw when the bowel is a muse.
But beyond the ablutions lie the intuitions that provide a richer variety of humour.
Piku is brilliant. Beyond its toilet humour lies a sense of character and souls trapped in a rubble of conditioned habits and ways of the flesh. The richness of cultures ingrained and established is nothing when worlds collide between souls in search of harmonious understanding. Writer Juhi Chaturvedi excels in a matrix where characters are stripped naked of their habits and social mannerisms to a point where you see the constant permanent over the variables of everyday idiosyncrasies. Shoojit Sircar's ability to weave in little oddities and rich textures of culture within single-frame detail and short-lived gestures is amazing.
We are quite used to excellence from Amitabh Bachchan, but he can excel himself sometimes -- and the more weird the character, the more is his ability extract the juice of mannerisms, twitches and eccentricities. 

Irffan Khan, by now Bollywood's uncrowned king of understated elegance, can somehow combine the ruffianesque with the sensitive as only he can do, it seems.

But what is fascinating alongside is Deepika Padukone's ability to retain a sense of modern, independent, aesthetic style even as she sinks into a messy role that reflects a character steeped in the hallowed weight of traditions and responsibilities beyond what her tender shoulders might permit. Some things, when chewed well, can be very digestible and delicious.

When Bollywood bodies mess with Sufi souls: A day out at Coke Studio, India

It is all in the point of view.
Sitting on the 18th floor of the Westin hotel on the Western Express Highway – or is it the 17th? – the view is stunning as we look at the distant condominiums with a golf course in the Goregaon area – green, serene and resortish. The perspective from the coffee shop’s charmed glass window is not quite the Bombay we are used to – noisy, bustling, congested.
We are on our way to Malad, the Coke guys and us, and there is a sense of thrill. Finally, Coke Studio is happening in India, and over some eclectic banter on the flight with Coke’s senior brand manager Abhijit Datta, I get some interesting tidbits on the phenomenon that has become quite the rage in a new-new South Asia.
Apparently, Coke Studio was not born in Pakistan, as it is often believed, but in Brazil, as Coke Estudio. And the man who made it happen there – Ricardo Fort - - was, believe it or nuts, until recently posted in India as vice-president, marketing, though it beats me how this novel experiment of putting rock stars, folk singers and sundry musicians in a novel, milkshake concoction did not happen during his Indian reign.

* * *

Beyond the fish-smelling suburbs of a sultry Mumbai afternoon suburbs, beyond the Shiv Sainik posters promising moustachioed regionalism, beyond scurrying, emaciated Mumbaikers, we reach a place that is now Coke Studio for us. This could be a haunted house in a nice Bollywood flick, where they have the final fight scene. It is some old Goanese-style mansion. Inside, I see a counter-intuitive sight. My bad. I expected some cosy, concert-like atmosphere with a decent crowd being enthralled in sequence by a procession of talented musicians. But, no. This happens to be just a studio, where the focus is on the recording. Just a few moveable chairs strewn in the darkness for us.
And like a Bollywood movie, there are takes and re-takes and re-re-takes and re-re-re-takes.
Sabri Brothers (the local brew, not the original Pakistani singers), are busy doing what could be a rock qawwali of a song that we used to sing more in jest than in profound musical experience as children: “Hamein toh loot liya milkey husn walon ne, kaley kaley balon ne gorey gorey gallon ne.” The folks apologetically tell me as I see 18 re-takes that it is not always this bad. Songs move faster in the series of recordings that preceded this. Guided by Aditya Swamy, MTV India’s channel head, I am taken to a waiting van outside (the kind in which Bollywood stars dab make-up and give interviews to Page 3 journos). In a laptop, they make me taste the sounds that happened before. Good stuff, actually. There is Harshdeep, there is Shaan, and there is a Bengali folk singer called Sourav Mandal and a Tamil folksie, “Chinna Ponnu” (literally, Little Girl). It is clear to me by now that the magic of Coke Studio, is, well, in the studio. Much mixing and bartending will make this drink hit you. And a big question hangs. Why is this all so Bollywoodesque? The Pak version was more Sufi rock, wasn’t it? Inside, Leslie Lewis, the talented composer, producer and guitarist who ought to be the alter-icon to any Rahman-respecting aficionado, explains in a simple analogy the daunting challenge he has faced in the 40 days of a Lent-like penance that audaciously straddles the superficiality of the pop culture and the richness of a heritage it is trying to court. “I am giving them some bitter chocolate. And then I given them the chocolate they are used to, in the hope that later, they discover the bitter taste.” To good effect, he adds his own intuition as he experiments away. Ramya Iyer, the dusky “English pop” singer I hang out with as the Sabri Brothers drone on in re-takes, has a rich voice and so Lezz decides to do away with all musical instruments for her -- but for a sound pad. With her is Roop Jolly, a poetess. The surprise is that Ramya sings a Urdu ghazal (Aaj jaane ki zid na karo) and Roop intersperses it with recited poetry.
This is all so experimental.
Lezz has not slept much for 40 days, and his supportive wife is hanging in there, helping him every step as he walks the crevices of an uneven, glacial musical landscape. And Lezz is no mere composer, but a medicine man. His plaited hair waving, he gestures to the musicians from a console as he brews what he hopes will be a trick that works. In another console a few yards beyond, Samar Khan, with a crutch to guide him after an accident, watches as a key member his team is guiding the cameras like a soccer coach shouting to half-backs.
The mission of this man, who directed the 2008 movie “Shaurya” is to add to the event some of the Red Chillies (the SRK company) he works for now. The red-and-black colours of the studio glow amid the cameras and I get one more hang of what will eventually become a TV experience: angles and lights and sounds in a Coca-Cola concentrate formula. The logic of the focused factory over the magic of the spontaneous craft.

As I get ready to take the flight back, the music seems more evolved. There is seasoned Kay Kay and there is the talented Mathangi, trying to do a pleasant, quicker version of the S.D. Burman classic, “Khilte hain gul yahan.” The humming is nice, the reverb just fine and the song somehow sounds alluringly new.

The challenge for anyone who has tasted the Pakistan stuff is to shed the baggage and look at the Indian Coke Studio with a new pair of eyes. The burden for the Mumbai gigsters is to be odiously compared with the geniuses of Lahore. The challenge for Leslie Lewis is to make it all somehow popular with the kids who watch MTV (er, aren’t they drooling on foul-mouthed Roadies, otherwise?), while he tries to transplant a Sufi-folk soul into the humdrum of the Bollywood culture.
Bitter chocolates are so hard to sell to sugar-high kids.
Somehow, one hopes that India’s own Coke Studio will provide the respectable view of the kind I got on Mumbai from the top floor of the Westin. In the end, it is all in the point of view

The Branding of Friendship

It began at 9 a.m. on Sunday.
The student-friend who is getting some research help cancelled her appointment. "I kind of forgot its Friendship Day today and my best friend called up…alll of us are planning to hang out."
Aah, I said, fine. Have fun, and all that.
On Radio City, celebrating Kishore Kumar’s birth anniversary, the RJ played "Yeh dosti, hum nahin, chodhenge…." And said it was for Friendship Day, too.
On the way to M.G. Road later in the day, Naga movie theatre shows a huge hoarding of a new release: Hrithik Roshan, with flaring nostrils, shining skin, overflowing eyes and that grinny-grinny, goody-goody papa’s boy face. Wanna see "Mujhse Dosti Karoge.?"
Down at M.G. Road and nearabouts, Bangalore’s new coffee house culture is vying hard with pubbing, and there are lots and lots of friends hanging out this Sunday. House full everywhere.
Most of the pubs, noisy and beery, feature groups of men or 20-something guys and "gals" taking time out from writing software code on weekends. Its quite common to see trendy jeans, shampooed hair and Bareilly Hindi mixing in Bangalore’s excruciatingly pleasant monsoon air.
But we are on to coffee houses this Sunday. And suddenly the sociology of the new culture seems blurred.
The three new icons who have jostled to replace ole, grimy-looking Koshy’s have their own unique airs, and also not sooo crowded. But not today.
Usuallly, Java City is for sit-down-service and old-fashioned ambience…you can smoke amid the dim lights and friendly bearers, and the music can range from fusion, Bollywood chic and live jazz at Church Street on Sunday evenings.
Barista is well lit, pizza-boy type bar tenders and its plush, spacey, airy, steely self-service interiors is naturally for the yuppies and with-its, most of whom are usually well dressed in a see-and-be-seen ambience.
Café Coffee Day, with a bright red logo and glassy exteriors, is sort of crowded with teenagers, many of whom buy cheaper takeaway coffees and squat on the stairs outside or watch TV inside with some contemporary pop.
Today, the difference has gone for a six over mid-wicket.
There are lots of excited kids, college types and high-school types feeling like college, and all are collectively killing these brands to build that bigger brand: Friendship.
I walk past a crowded Java City in Church Street and a crowded Barista at St. Mark’s past yet another crowded, spanking new Coffee Day at Lavelle Road and just about grab the only table available at another Java City.
Through the looking glass of dark espresso, I see more teens. A girl who seems undernourished wears lipstick and offers a card, presumably the Friendship Day stuff, to a goateed, bulky, young man in a flowered shirt. I see flowers clutched in hands at Brigade Road.
On the way back home, I see two pairs of girlie-teenagers cheek-cheeking as they say their byes to each other from scooters.
On good old All India Radio, the RJ, stutteringly, dedicates "Careless whispers" ( "Shoulda known better to cheat a friend…..blah) for Friendship Day.

*****
Does Anil Moolchandani know?
To think that some clever supply chain economics lies at the root of Friendship Day is both lilfting and depressing…
Aah, The Might of The Brand.
The tale of Dhirubhai Hirachand Ambani turning from a gas pump attendant to a cloth-meets-polyester-meets-petrochemical-meets-naphtha-meets-refinery-meets-petrol pump tale is part of the year’s folklore for the departed Gujubhai, but few would remember or know anything about the Clint Eastwood poster.
As a teenager selling his family’s cloth in Kamla Nagar, strategically next to Delhi University’s sprawling campus, Anil Moolchandani found a strange customer asking for a teenybop poster of Eastwood. (Is that for sale, the lady asked. It was really not).
The poster had been been acquired by Anil on one of his "phoren" trips in those Indira Gandhi days. One thing let to another, and Archies was born as a greeting card brand, growing from posters. Its tacky, unabashedly me-too brand is now a household name.
Its early rival, Giggles, must have stopped laughing while Anilji, working from his shed-like Naraina Industrial Estate factory in West Delhi thrived on the business of feelings and laughed all the way to his banks, listing on the Bombay Stock Exchange along the way.
Anil had cards for all the year around…or nearly.
From Raksha Bandhan to Ganesh Chaturthi to Dusshera to Id to Diwali to Christmas to Holi to what not, cards flow easily from Archies. But then, there was a supply chain and inventory issue. You see, August was not really card prone, unless you count August 15. You need to keep the distribution and card printing plants buzzing to make more business sense.
Uncle Moolchandani figured that youngsters loved the friendship-and-feeling thing, and invented the Friendship Day…like Uncle Sam’s Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.
This is for the same reason why Domino’s wanted to build pizza parlours at Ambala. (Don’t know if they actually did).
With a centralised kitchen near Chandigarh and a key market in Delhi, one way to make use of the route was to build pizza outlets all along the route..like a Rath Yatra or something for the pre-whatevered pizzas before they get baked for the delivery boys and hungry-kya phoners.
Also a bit like Coca Cola, given free to school kids in early days so they could get used to the strange taste.
So Friendship Day was born…the first Sunday of August, he said…and so they all believed the Gospel of St Moolchandani.
You see, Moolchandani reasoned, August 6 was when the Yanks nuked the Japs…Hiroshima and all that. And Friendship being the first "chachera bhai" of Peace, what better day than Aug six. But you can’t hang out or make card journeys on working days...so make that the first Sunday of August.

Hiroshima, mon amour?
Just as well they didn’t make it on that very date.
I do not fancy holocaust memorials and teeny exchange of cards coinciding…though you never know these days.

P.S. Long after Moolchandani told me his tale and long after I wrote this piece, I heard that the Friendship Day was originally proposed in the US by some politician. Am still not sure.