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It was a long weekend and we had nothing much to do at home. My wife and I decided to watch Kambakht Ishq, which had released earlier, but for some strange reason we had missed. A DVD was promptly bought and we settled down to watch the movie on my home theatre, which I am particularly fond of showing off.
The movie was chugging along nicely. Kareena Kapoor is a model/actor/doctor and Akshay Kumar lands up as her patient. Interesting. In one scene, Kareena is supposed to be looking at Akshay’s medical reports. She does a good job at enacting the doctor’s role and looks at the reports as seriously as a genuine doctor would. Impressive, I thought.
But hey, something was wrong. There was something that was very very wrong in the scene. It was not the acting, it was not the situation, there was something else. I paused the DVD and rewound much to my wife’s irritation. And then I paused. The frame froze on the screen. And there it was. I did not believe my eyes when I saw it. To confirm, I zoomed into the picture (these days the gizmos come loaded with all these features).
In front of my eyes was the medical report that Kareena was looking at. It was supposed to be Akshay’s medical history. And guess what it actually was? Don’t be surprised — it was an income tax return. A Saral tax form, complete with the signature and even with an income tax “received” stamp!
When the makers of the film were picturising the scene, they would have just put some papers in the file and shown it as a medical report. However, shouldn’t they have taken care to ensure that such faux pas does not happen? That is what people call “eye for the detail”.
Moviegoers are not idiots that anything can be passed off in the name of a medical report. The average moviegoer may not be filing tax returns, given that less than 5 per cent of India files tax returns, but I am sure they are discerning enough to know the difference between a medical report and an income-tax return.
Another such incident happened that weekend. This time I went out to watch, Main aurr Mrs Khanna. Salman and Kareena as the lead pair, the movie had to be good. Or so I thought.
Guess what? Kareena lives in an orphanage and wears designer clothing. Well, I consider that acceptable given that the movie has to be made in an aesthetic manner and Kareena, even if she is in an orphanage, has to look good. But what came later was strange, if not unacceptable. Kareena is in a church, bows before Christ. There are a number of unlit candles in front of her. When she opens her eyes, lo and behold, the candles are lit, and there is a gentleman walking out of the church with a swagger of Salman, because he is Salman. Kareena runs after him and confronts him and he asks her to become Mrs Khanna.
Well is this how love at first sight happens? And even if it does, what was Mr Khanna doing in a church? He is more likely to go to a gurudwara or a temple. While this may be a touchy question, it is quite unlikely that Mr Khanna would go to a church and patao a orphanage ki kudi. And if there is a valid reason for him to do so, then the filmmakers should have provided a rationale for this. Else it would be construed that Sohail Khan and company had no clue about what was going into the film that they were making.
These two back-to-back incidents made me a bit concerned that big names in the industry are taking moviegoers for a royal ride. The attitude of “sab kuch chalta hai” will sooner than later be the reason for the downfall of many biggies.
Though not entirely due to the observations above, both the movies bombed at the box office and caused considerable financial loss to the producers.
Despite being disappointing, these incidents have not completely unravelled my faith from the Indian film industry. I continue to remain a big, big fan, however, I might not so vigorously defend Bollywood from the ridicule of any of my friends. It has lost that right.
The writer is a senior banker at HSBC. These are his personal views
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