Darr andar

Putting the prop in propaganda

The odd time you make a new friend in your late 30s, you realize what a roller coaster the conversation can be. It can shift from small talk -

“This winter has been unbearable” to bombshells like “That’s why I don’t like his mother”. It’s the convergence of sedate get togethers like a dinner party and the aggressive shedding of ‘fucks to give’ like its hair on your scalp.

When I’m playing it safe I rely on the old “I don’t have much of a sweet tooth”. This can be trotted out with dessert either to explain my abstaining.

Why the fuck is there coconut in this?

Or to justify why I smashed a second helping

“I like it because it’s not too sweet”

Objectively, this top 10 small talk hit is true. I can go years of eating dinner without thinking about dessert. But it also has its exceptions. Gulab Jamun. Or GJ as Amal and I call it. Hot choc fudge junior from corner house. And the one to rule them all, Nandini Dhoodh Peda.

As for the longest time one of the landmarks for our house was a milk booth, Nandini stash was a fairly common occurrence. And I remember in high school, making a few trips to the fridge in a day to lighten the load of that square cardboard box.

This nonchalance however was only possible when 2/3rds of the house was diabetic/skipping sugar for a few weeks. When my brother and I shared a roof, my peda approach was like a grand slam quarter finalist playing Djokovic. Take what you can get and hope to not get hit in the face.

This energy is similar to Mali and I enjoying screen time. Since the addition of a fourth monkey to our household zoo, our free time Is limited and usually cut short by screaming.

I usually stop if the baby joins in.

This has made us more discerning about what we watch. Some known evils get a pass - Love is blind a.k.a kidding I’m shallow as fuck, shows based on Harlan Coben’s books- people start acting crazy because London weather is depressing.

So even if it’s something like Dhurandhar, which has been in the conversation for some time, it took a while to get around to seeing it.

What can I say about Dhurandhar that already hasn’t been said about a root canal by a dentist? I will admit that this is the first movie I’ve seen of Aditya Dhar.

His first, Uri, had made its way into the zeitgeist. I still remember portly Mishra’s and Gupta’s during the Delhi marathon in 2019 taking a break from their huffing to greet one another with “How’s the Josh?”

“High sir!”

I blame this for not getting around to watching it. Not just because it was a movie about a surgical strike on the eve of elections. But because it was ‘meat for the base’ - who are most likely to have done a surgical strike on chola bhatura for breakfast.

To be fair, I understand that all art on some level can be labeled propaganda. If I hadn’t watched Swades I wouldn’t have ended up moving back from Europe to work in a village with no roads and sanitation. Also known as Sarjapur road.

But Uri and Aditya’s filmography after have flown under the radar somewhat because they are competing with 2 strains of cinema/propaganda++ - the quantity of which has exploded since 2019.

The first being the “insert name” files/stories version of films. You know the ones. Kashmir files. Kerala Story. Windows files etc. The filmmakers fellation of the government is comically obvious.

The only thing cinematic about these films is the disclaimer at the beginning that a lawyer has wrestled with to make what follows look somewhat sane. Each plot can be summarized as:

Roses are red, violets are blue, if not for modi, Muslims will replace you

And then you have the RSS equivalent of the Marvel universe. Ram Setu. Veer Savarkar. JNU : Jahangir National University etc. This excluded the Modi biopic because apparently even the RSS film universe has standards.

These films lack in craft what they make up for in enthusiasm. And apparently in this economy even blatant hindutva pandering won’t sell seats. Like the time the maker of “The udaipur files” went crazy that no one watched his film despite his title leading people to believe it’s a movie about invoices for marble.

Which brings us to Dhurandhar, which looks like Citizen Kane in comparison.

The positives? Soundtrack in parts is epic. Some of the scenes have spectacular cinematography. And he knows how to build conflict/tension in a plot as we get to the climax.

And because my palette has not been tainted by ‘Hindutva icons’ like Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri, here are some of my issues with the movie.

Firstly, the length. 3 hours and 32 minutes is outrageous. At least Lagaan had a cricket match in it. There are entire plot lines that can be ripped out including the love story between Ranveer and the teenage girl. Their chemistry on their date and through most of the movie is akin to an uncle taking a niece to the zoo.

Secondly, the cast. Everyone was raving about Akshaye Khanna’s intensity but I think that was just his acting trying to overpower his botox and failing. Arjun Rampal, playing an ISI agent by way of Haryana. Madhavan working with the makeup department to look the way he sounds on family WhatsApp groups and Ranveer Singh forcing himself into a shirt with buttons that work. Most of this cast did more work acting sober when wishing the RSS a happy hundred year anniversary.

And then of course, the lazy detailing. Leaving aside the lazy dialogue- where the Urdu is peppered with Hindi, there’s an entire plot line about Baluchistan and yet multiple characters who are Balochi insist on speaking to each other in Urdu/Hindi. This is like movies like Kerala Story where the filmmakers think that the most natural thing for the world is a group of mallus talking to each other over beef fry, in Hindi.

This is after discounting the hagiography of the Indian government or regurgitation of the top 10 complaints of WhatsApp uncles. Just sample the dialogues in this one scene that is not even central to the plot- on the flow of counterfeit money to meat markets in UP.

“Sometimes Indians are the biggest enemies of India”

“Ek din aayegi aisi sarkar, jise desh ki fikr hogi”

And the most egregious one which is a throw away line from a subordinate explaining why they can’t see through an investigation into the UP mafia.

“We can’t do anything. Communal violence ka backup hai”

And this is my biggest issue with Dhurandhar. For a movie that claims to be fiction it sure works in a lot of actual real life incidents to muddy the waters. The average Indian film viewer began to leave missed calls on a phone number

tattooed on Aamir Khan in the Gajini poster. You think that film viewer can draw a clear red line between the actual clips of terror attacks and the likelihood of a Balochi gangster from Karachi dancing amidst whirling dervishes to an Arabic song? This was like the time I ordered Mongolian chicken as the Chinese special at the Andhra restaurant near my college.

What good is superior craft if in favour of the same tired Hindutva message? If not me take it from Amrish Puri. Arguably in his second best scene after the one about black dog.

And in a time when this prostration to the government is just image building when the actual reality is less appealing.

I’m sure post production had to lower the AQI to make the shoot look like it was happening outside India. Some sad sack AD probably had to drive far and wide to find roads sans potholes for the chase scenes. And in the months intervening the release and the sequel, Namo’s limp hug of America and Israel show us that the chest thumping is reserved for cinematic battery of our neighbours and not actually being a power house.The US literally bombed a ship a few nautical miles from our territorial waters and we said less than Arjun Rampal when provided a script with words over 3 syllables.

Or as Madhavan would put it, “Ek din aayegi aisi Sarkar, jo US se permission lega

Since the sequel is out any time now it’s too late to add this into the plot when he probably is already going to justify demonetization.

We can rely on Aditya Dhar and his ilk to rewrite this in time for the next general elections in part 3/4. Here are some titles for their consideration: Irandhar, The Epstein Files: Only Sabzi no puri and Tanha hoon main, Netanyahu.

I am particularly looking forward to Ranveer Singh/Insert steroid receptacle here indulging in some heroics in one of these films. I can see it now. He bursts on screen in a shirt that is meant for a 4 year old. He is holding up an LPG cylinder like it’s a kettle bell as he stares down before swinging it downwards in a lethal fashion.

“How’s the price”

“High sir!”