Do you choose love or do you choose rules? Decision making is hard, for most of us, and maybe not most of the times.
Sankalan da asked me take part in a fun game where I am supposed to talk about 10 movies (in 10 days) in my FB timeline and as the first movie, I’ll talk about one which I watched recently, after putting it into my watchlist for almost 14 years.
Paheli is the story of a newlywed daughter in law in a rich ‘bania’ (businessman) family somewhere in Rajasthan. The new bride comes to her in-law’s place and finds out her husband has more interest in accounting than making love on the first day of marriage, and also he’s leaving her for ‘byapar’ (business) for long. As soon as he leaves a ghost comes to the her disguised as her husband. Although the ghost provokes her to commit adultery, he’s truthful in his love. This makes Lachchi, the girl, fall for him and they spend years there, deeply in love and in fun, before the actual husband finds out that Lachchi is pregnant and then comes back to the house, only to be called out as an imposter because, well, the ghost is already there disguised as himself, Kishan.
Fights start to prove who is the real son, and the villagers start to march to the king for justice, when suddenly Amitabh Bachchan the shepherd comes and resolves the issue. The ghost gets trapped and the real Kishan goes back to the house. But, to the astonishment of Lachchi and the audience, it was the ghost who came back and sat inside the body of Kishan the original. The movie ends with a romantic milieu of Lachchi and her ghost love.
Now, why will I talk about a fairytale converted flop movie, that too more than a decade after its release?
One obvious reason is it’s the starting of that era where present day Bollywood is still trying to reach, creation of an ecosystem which makes, nurtures and watches movies which are not ‘Masala’, movies which do not have item songs, which do not have star cast even.
And perhaps, dare to step beyond the clichéd valentine formula of love, where love exists between only two young chaps in their early twenties, and that love achieves ‘success’ through a marriage, which initially the families opposed but eventually agreed. ‘Paheli’ & ‘Main, meri patni aur woh’ in 2005, ‘Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna’ in 2006, ‘Nishabd’ in 2007 are but a few example of this wave, which I believe, still struggling to fight a premature death, and a ‘Prem Ratan Dhan Payo’ still emerged in 2015, with an exception of ‘Highway’ in 2014.
Another reason in existence and portrayal of Rajasthani culture a little bit. No, it’s not a documentary on how people live there, but I liked the subtle presence of Rajasthani livelihood, and yes, the costumes. Not many movies are made about Rajasthan, certainly not about the poor peasants who did not live in those enormous ‘Haveli’s. I believe we should, and Rajasthan has much more to offer to the movie industry in Bombay, since they don’t practically have one themselves.
Bad parts. An almost robotic Shah Rukh Khan. SRK is the Tom Cruise of Bollywood. His mannerisms are too prominent in almost every role he does, except for a few cases like ‘Swades’. Editing is bad. Sometimes the shots go on for too long, for no apparent reason. Too many songs and not all of them are good. Some characters are purposeless, e.g. Suniel Shetty’s & Juhi Chawla’s. An awesome camel-race scene totally wasted. Had it been Satyajit Ray, we would’ve seen totally different portrayal of the racing. Voice of Ratna Pathak - Naseeruddin Shah duo was totally under-utilized.
But overall, Paheli will be one of those misunderstood leap of faiths Bollywood took, and then found, just like Lachchi, no one understands it much.