Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham revisited: a Bollywood anniversary

Well, the time around Thanksgiving was not just a holiday for me. It also marked my one-year anniversary with Bollywood. Sometime around Thanksgiving (or a little after) last year, I watched my first Bollywood film, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, with my then-roommate.

I was reluctant to watch it, actually, because of the subtitles. But little did I know what would result! I fell in love with K3G almost immediately (almost meaning after that confusing opening scene that I still don't love) and that was the launching pad to my Bollywood obsession.

Well, on the occasion of my Bollywood anniversary, I wanted to do a list of the 120+ films I've seen in the year since then, but I lost my list somewhere and most of my viewing history was wiped out when I canceled my Netflix account a few months ago. So instead I only get to do the other thing I wanted to: an assessment of how far I've come in that year. Aka watching K3G again and thinking back to the first time I watched it (or even the first three times I watched it within a two-week span because I was introducing it to other people).

I realize now that watching Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham — whose title I couldn't even remember or pronounce — there were so many things I straight-up didn’t understand. Some of them you think I would with my literary background that has a definite lean toward India and colonialism. But, nope, I was clueless.

Swades (2004): A beautiful, well-rounded image of nationalism

Hello, all. I’ve been a tad absenteeish lately, but I’ve been super busy. Even now, I'm popping in briefly. But to my sheer surprise and joy, the blog for the newspaper has been doing well (actually drawing more hits than any other blogs on the site) despite some controversy/attacks made on me that I won’t even dignify by mentioning the details. I also want to thank all of you readers for helping us soar past the 10,000 views to this blog. :)

While I haven't had time to watch anything new lately, I still have a brief backlog of films that I watched before I canceled my Netflix subscription out of frustration with their poor business practices. I also have some films that I’ve seen part of but can’t post about — like Maine Pyar Kiya, which I’d started watching on YouTube until the subtitles inexplicably cut out halfway through the movie.

But anyway, here’s one I watched a few weeks back and have only a little to say about.

Swades (2004)

Synopsis: Mohan Bargava (Shahrukh Khan) is an NRI living in the U.S. working for NASA. Lonely in the U.S. (given that he’s an orphan), he decides to take time off to return to India, which he hasn’t visited in 12 years, to find his old nanny Kaveri Amma (Kishori Balal) and bring her back to the U.S. In her village, Mohan finds several social and living-conditions problems and also reunites — and reconnects — with his childhood friend Gita (Gayatri Joshi), a spirited school teacher who dislikes Mohan’s Americanized ways.

I was initially somewhat reluctant to watch Swades. The description sounded supremely boring (and I believe the exact way things went down was that Papaya read the description; I said, “That sounds boring”; she said, “It’s SRK”; and I said, “Hmm, well add it to the queue.”), but it had SRK (remember my insane impulse to watch through his films?) and Netflix thought I’d like it.

Turns out that I did like it more than I was expecting to, and not just for Shahrukh. The film has a rather mellow, laid-back feel to it that seems to grow on you. Is it one of those films that wowed me? No. Did it make me smile and make me think? Yes. It has an almost understated simplicity to it that’s quite beautiful.

I also had moments where I thought the Indian nationalism was going to get to me. Maybe it’s because criticizing the way that nationalism (“the story a nation tells about itself,” as one of my professors defines it) is constructed as a concept has been a rather large part of my literary studies, but nationalism is sometimes hard for me to stomach, especially when I’m trying to watch a film for enjoyment and not to pick it apart. I knew from the moment in the beginning of the film where Mohan listens to an answering machine message that says his request for citizenship has been approved that this was going to be a movie where a man “regains” the national identity he’s lost and renounces the one he’s adopted through osmosis. In effect, the NRI is going to realize that, living in America or not, that I is still his identity — he’s still Indian. And of course, I was wary as a patriotic American of how much America-bashing would be entailed in that realization.

It turns out that it actually wasn’t what I was expecting. Part of Mohan’s eventual decision to return to living in India is a decision to change the problems he sees for the better. Having been educated in America, Mohan is critical of or even outrightly against caste discrimination, apathy toward education, child marriage and reluctance to change. This plays on the stereotype of liberalized thinking from living in America, which is something that often bothers me, but it comes with a valid dose of logic. Mohan doesn’t seem to tout it as his Americanized ideals; he’s simply resolute in his feeling of what is right and what is wrong.

Similarly, I found it refreshingly different and honest when Mohan responds to the elders’ claims that India is clearly the best by acknowledging that while certainly on an upward arc, India still has a great many problems to fix — the “developing nation” issues, if you will. And the great thing about it as a whole is that these issues are many of the ones he decides to fix when he returns permanently to India. That to me is a beautiful and self-aware affirmation of nationalism: My great nation has issues, but because I love it, I’m going to tackle them.

And much to my surprise, Mohan actually sticks up for America (though we know he won’t choose it in the end). When the leaders of the village jokingly but gustily pronounce that India is the best because of it has culture and heritage that’s lacking in America, Mohan decidedly renounces their idea and states that simply because America’s culture is not like India’s doesn’t mean that America doesn’t have culture, heritage and rituals. Ironically I think Mohan understands this much better than a lot of Americans; I can’t help but feel that there’s often a sentiment that white Americans don’t have culture (or at best have the Hollywood and mass media form of culture), a sentiment I thoroughly despise as a proud Southerner from a distinct and rich cultural background.

I loved this scene. Really did.

But onto less ideological things. I liked Gita (Gayatri Joshi) and her spunk, though sometimes she became oddly mellow. Similarly, I loved the pairing of her and Mohan when they had friction and disagreement, but it faded too quickly into bland mush.

The cast of supporting characters — aka the villagers — however, is very much spicy and loveable. I don’t think there were any useless characters or ones that you didn’t develop a feel for by the end of the film, though at moments I wished there were less of them to keep track of.

It was also quite nice to see Florida apart from Miami shown in a film. I’ve sadly never been to Kennedy Space Center, and now… there, well, isn’t as much point in going there. But still, it's part of my Florida just the same.

Lame way to represent that you're a globalized man,
but that there is Kennedy Space Center in Florida!

I will say I had my moments where I doubted the validity of Mohan’s science or of his commitment to science, as much as the film tried to make him rely on his science. For one, the filmmakers seemed to forget that he was an aerospace engineer working for NASA; "Yeh Tara Woh Tara," a song about the stars (which I actually rather liked along with the rest of the gorgeous music in this film), was the only real throwback to what should have been his love of space and the stars. Instead, his only real “science” while in India is to build the reservoir, which has nothing to do with aerospace. What's that? I'm picky? Yes, I know, unfortunately. But it did bother me.

Kicking off Imran Appreciation Week: The Next Generation of Khan

In honor of this weekend’s release of Delhi Belly, we bring you a mini Imran Khan Appreciation Week, complete with a post each from the three bloggers here, including (HOPEFULLY) my lame co-bloggers who rarely show themselves these days. If anyone wants to join in, that’d be more than welcome. We plan to cover Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na, I Hate Luv Storys and Break Ke Baad (we have yet to see Kidnap, Luck, and Imran’s roles as a young Aamir in Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak or Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander).

To kick off the week, I want to talk about some of the reasons we just love Imran.

But before I get into the specific reasons that we love Imran, I want to take a look at a larger sort of trend about our blog. I’ve noticed so far that an overwhelming amount of our blog thus far has focused on films from the 2000s, particularly on new films since 2010 (eight posts on films from just the last 18 months). Part of that is ease of access through Netflix, part of that is probably attributable to our age.

Yes, we have quite fervent attachments to Ranbir Kapoor, Shahid Kapoor and particularly Imran Khan, probably more than we’ve seen from other bloggers. To be perfectly honest, I attribute it to the fact that these guys are the stars of “our” generation. We’re all quite young (I won’t go into exactly how young, but let’s just say even these three youngsters are older than us), and while we all adore Akshay Kumar and the three seemingly ageless Khans, these men are older than our fathers. Despite their youthful appearances (really really youthful), they aren’t young. I also admit I think I developed a strong like for Shashi Kapoor in the 45 minutes of Kabhi Kabhi I watched, and Shashi is roughly the age of our grandpas. Obsessions like that just get a little weird at that point.

So it’s really nice to have some younger fellows on the platter as well so we can feel slightly less creeped out by our obsessing.

Maybe part of it is also that with the basis of our movie-watching experience formed by Hollywood, it’s refreshing to see the films of this younger generation step out of traditional Bollywood boxes and take on some more globalized film elements. I think it's an effect one of ever-growing globalization (with technology, the world keeps getting smaller, folks) and an audience that is globalized. In fact, I get the impression that with several films of the younger lot that they could, with minor adjustments, take on a Hollywood audience. If you cut down or out the songs, shortened the runtime and spoke English, many of these films could be on the clean side of Hollywood. And all of this is perhaps pushing further and further all the time, like with the fact that Delhi Belly is in English (which we all actually have mixed feelings about); I know lots of Bollywood folks want to be able to capture the American-film audience. (Which is particularly interesting because our dear Imran is actually Indian-American; love you, brother!)

For example, I’ve noticed that an increasing trend with the younger set is they’re much freer with kissing and talking about sex. The dynamics there are certainly shifting. There’s also been a healthy dose of skepticism added to the normal love story (see I Hate Luv Storys) but without changing the basic message of all-conquering love. (And it’s a healthy skepticism too; not the mess that Hollywood has.) Then there’s also the fact that these films increasingly take place partially abroad (Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na has its protagonists fly off to America, I Hate Luv Storys has a jog in New Zealand, and Break Ke Baad is set primarily in Australia).

Call this change what you will, but it’s nice to enjoy a younger, more globalized film once in a while; some of the obvious points that other films ignore are getting easier to tackle for the younger, less-established set. (Not that untainted, pure, classic Bollywood cinema isn’t fabulous itself; we obviously love Bollywood more than Hollywood for many reasons. Trust me, we get tired of the unrealistic sleazy sex-fest that is Hollywood all the time.)

*ahem* Anyway, proceeding off of that... One of the reasons that we love Imran is that he’s, well, sexy. Like really. (Even though the poor fellow cannot wow with his dancing skills.) Photos say it all when words can’t.

But Imran’s not just a sex symbol either. The man, like his Uncle Aamir, is completely adorable in the most basic, unmanly, cheek-pinching way. Maybe it was growing up around Aamir because sometimes Imran is almost frighteningly like him. And hate to break it to you, fellas, but an adorable man works his way into a woman’s heart much faster than a hot one.

And Imran works both sides of that coin flawlessly.

The man can even do both hot and adorable with just his eyebrows!

And as part and parcel of his being adorable, he can make us laugh pretty easily.

He’s so likable, in fact, that you like him even when he’s a MEAN pain in the you-know-what like in I Hate Luv Storys. (This is a quality he shares with his buddy Ranbir, as seen in Bachna Ae Haseeno.)

Do I think Imran has potential for leading-man status worthy of the surname Khan? Sometimes I doubt he has the full-power impact of the elder Khans, and instead of Aamir’s perfectionism, Shahrukh’s charm and Salman’s badfannyness, Imran has a chill, relaxed coolness instead. He has less of an immediate knockdown-powerful presence. But even if he doesn’t, I’m convinced he has the subtle likableness to be just fine without it.