# 41 - Very Short Story - True Love

[My attempt at a genre that doesn't come easily to me, but then again, what does?

Written sometime in 2013.]

“Dear Roshni,

I know it’s hardly been half an hour since we met, I can still smell that dreadfully expensive perfume you wore (my axe smells better by the way), but I can’t help it, I have to write this letter.

I know, I know, it’s old fashioned, why don’t I just Whatsapp or text you instead, right? It’s practical I admit, and quicker too, but you have no idea how great it feels to hand over a simple handwritten letter to you in person, and watch you read it, and see you react.

How many years has it been? How many years has it been since you and I have been….for the lack of a better word, seeing each other?

Seeing each other……that sounds so wrong, it’s as if the next chance you or I get, we will be seeing someone else.

Nope, you and I aren’t seeing each other, we are soul mates.

I can visualize you cringing, saying ‘that’s so damn corny Mayank, is that the best you can come up with?’

Yup, make all the faces you want, you know that’s us, soul mates.

We practically grew up as childhood sweethearts, except we didn’t realize it then, when and how we became a couple still remains a mystery.  

Maybe that’s the thing with soul mates, there’s no particular reason why we click, all I know is that we do, and no matter what, we will be together, now and forever.

Remember when you and your family went to Shimla that summer, way back in 2006? You told me not to call you for those three entire weeks, it would be too risky with your parents virtually breathing down your neck, I had bravely nodded my head, thinking inwardly, how the @%@$%@^ would I manage? Each day got progressively worse, and after five days, I literally fell sick, but it was that evening, you somehow managed to be alone for five minutes and called me up from an STD booth.

I don’t know who coined the phrase ‘music to my ears’, I guess he would’ve had a soul mate too, but that is exactly how I felt, and I don’t exaggerate when I say that I was dying to hear your voice. Thank god, you managed to call me every day after that.

As clichéd as it may sound, every time I see you, my heart skips a beat, every time you speak, or brush your hand over mine, I feel the excitement of first love, true love, the kind that went out of fashion decades back, the kind a Bollywood buff might call ishqwala love.

Okay, all this mushy writing has made me miss you a lot, and I think I am going to call you up right now. So I’ll just end this letter here.

Love,

Mayank

P.S. I love you, Roshni! I love you I love you I love you I love you!!!!! Don’t you ever leave me! I won’t say that I won’t be able to live without you, but I will just be a pale shadow of myself. Alive yet dead, but nothing like that terrible, terrible movie Zinda Laash!”

***

Finally stopping, Mayank read the letter over thrice.

Good enough. Now, where could he keep it, conspicuous yet not too obvious? A place his mother would definitely check. The desk? Naah, he never kept anything there but his books, which rarely interested his mother.

Mayank glanced around his room and had a brainwave.

Folding the paper neatly, he slid it into the back pocket of his jeans that he had kept away in the basket for cleaning.

Maa always double checked the pockets before putting clothes into the washing machine, and the next time she went through them, she would obviously find the letter, and since Mayank was the careless sort, she would assume that it was kept accidentally. 

No scope for suspicion. 

Maa being maa, she would read it and would breathe a sigh of relief.

“Anything this romantic was definitely for a girl, a girl named Roshni. Such a sweet name, Mayank was normal after all”, she’d think.

Mayank smiled to himself, the things he did to keep his sexuality a secret. 

He picked up his phone and started messaging Roshan, of course, his name was saved as ‘Roshni’. 

Image taken from here.

# 40 - Cool it, Kohli !

To call Kohli a fine cricketer would be an understatement. 

He is arguably an 'all time great' at the age of 28, and at the rate that he is going, he is quite likely to surpass Sachin Tendulkar's records, something we were convinced a couple of years back, were unbreakable.

He is also a marketing juggernaut, ubiquitous in a way that would make Amitabh Bachchan worry. The guy is everywhere, when he isn't collecting man of the match trophies or smiling for the cameras, he is wishing his own mother and Anushka Sharma on Women's Day on social media, thanking them for making him the man he is. 

Awwwww. Cho chweet.

Women's Day - 2016 - Apologizing for all the jerks, whistlers, cat callers, blank callers etc. [Cho Chweeet #2]

He owns a soccer team, is the highest paid sportsperson in India and the no. 1 Batsman in the world, has a clothing merchandise brand (called WROGN) and makes more than 130 crore rupees a year.

He is also, when his PR team isn’t there to give him directions, somewhat of a brat.

In his own words, he 'likes to give it back, as much as he gets'. If that means showing the finger to the crowd (Sydney, 2012) so be it.

"Because aggression is all about MC BC"

But maybe that's a part of his charm and why brands love him; here is a young, immensely successful man captaining his country's cricket team across all formats, assured of greatness, humble in an odd Delhi-esque way (bahar kuchh bhi karu, hu toh main mamma’s boy), has a movie star for a girlfriend, stands up to trolls as opposed to ignoring them, and of course, gives it back.

An Aussie cricketer had once remarked that Virat has an Aussie side to him, meaning that Kohli has aggression levels not usually associated with us Indians.

As this series has shown, not quite. 

Steven Smith, in spite of being Australia's captain, is never in the limelight like Kohli is, this has less to do with his cricketing abilities and more to do with the fact that Australians don't hero worship cricketers the way we do. 

It's probably due to the fact that Australia is pretty good at every sport, unlike India. We have a serious dearth of sporting icons here and Cricket is the one team sport where India enjoys an enviable level of dominance, at least when the games are played in the sub-continent.

Smith isn't considered to be a cricketing great, while he has been ranked no. 1 in tests, he lacks the flair of Kohli and isn't in possession of a technique that makes for good looking cricket. If anything, his shots are, more often than not, quite ugly. 

But compare his track record in Tests, vis-a-vis Kohli's, and you'll find that there's not much separating the two, in fact, arguably Smith is just marginally better - and that's why I was looking forward to the series.

	Matches	Innings	NO	Runs	HS	Avg	100s	50s
Virat Kohli	57	97	6	4497	235	49.41	16	14
Steven Smith	54	100	14	5251	215	61.05	20	20

It was a foregone conclusion that India would clinch it, some, such as Dada even predicting a whitewash.

But it was the relishing prospect of the showdown between the captains had me excited, a battle between equals. Who would prevail over the other?

Turns out the series was more evenly contested than we ever thought, the Australians punched well above their weight, and while India did go on to win the series, the Australian team wouldn't be too unhappy with the way they performed.

Smith didn't disappoint, but Kohli sure did. 

He failed with the bat, scoring 46 runs in 5 innings; Smith, on the other hand, scored 499 in 8 innings (average of 71.28, 3 centuries), more importantly, he was probably the one man who stood between India and victory, more than once. Smith was, without a doubt the better performer in what turned out to be an anticlimax of a contest.

Of course, there was the brain fade moment, which was obviously, in Smith's words....'stupid'. Kohli was right to point it out to the umpire.

What happened next, however, was shocking [Sorry ScoopWhoop], Kohli stopped short of calling Smith a cheat, he made it pretty clear though what he really felt about Smith and the Australian team in general. 

There was the shoulder gesture by Maxwell, but too big a deal was made out of it, we have done similar things, remember Shikhar Dhawan mocking Shane Watson? Not really a classy move but nothing to get worked up about either.

There was some vague allegation regarding the Aussies insulting India's physio, which sounds far fetched unless Kohli meant that the shoulder gesture was indirectly insulting the team physio for his lack of competence (Eh?).

Kohli said something to the Australian media to the effect that they are the ones unnecessarily asking controversial questions, and questions that have nothing to do with the match.

Media, whether Indian or Australian or Italian, tend to do that, it's your call on how you answer those queries, Kohli had the opportunity to win brownie points with Australian media (and the Australian people) and much like his on-field shot selection, chose to play it the worst way possible. 

Smith may have called Murali Vijay a 'f****** cheat', but he manned up and admitted to his mistakes, being apologetic when you have made a spur-of-the-moment mistake (or a wilful one) makes you more human, with that he won a lot of us over (including Sunil Gavaskar) - Smith was gracious in defeat. 

Kohli on the other hand, in a move that can only be called childish, said that he wouldn't call the Australians his friends anymore. 

YIKES.

Exactly the kind of words I would expect from a playground bully who has just been bullied himself, or the response of a guy who has been dumped by his girlfriend and has been offered the chance to remain friends.

Why is the captain of the team that has just won a series, whining?  Certainly not expected from the man who is the best batsman in the world. Where did all the self-assuredness go?

The thing is, maybe the guys in the team are not as good with sledging as they think they are; the great sledgers know how to take it, how to give it back, and when to stop. 

We, on the other hand, pretend to be tough, abuse freely and consistently (particularly since the Ganguly era), but more often than not, fail to back it up with our performances. 

Think Glenn McGrath or Steve Waugh, they swore like sailors and you knew that they could take the game away from you.

Ishant Sharma can make faces all day, but very rarely does he produce something with the ball that is half as threatening (though he has been decent this series).   

No matter what Kohli says or how many times the camera catches him mouthing abuses of the incestuous kinds, it appears that he was been deeply affected by what was a very obvious attempt by the Australian cricket team (and support staff, and media, and former players) to target him.

And he couldn’t handle the pressure.

Unlike Smith.

The Indian media bayed for Smith’s blood; I have the feeling that the crowd who showed up to watch the games weren’t very friendly either, and while Smith has played in India before, I don’t imagine the conditions exactly suited him, yet he played on, and on, and on; making runs, not a treat for sore eyes, but playing test cricket as it is meant to be played. Displaying grit and character (most of the times). 

I am sure that Kohli will go on to have a fantastic season, and he will continue to break records, but in spite of everything, he won’t be half a decent ambassador for the sport in a way Tendulkar or Dravid ever was.

And sometimes, that is more important than everything else.

Image from here.

# 39 - Movie Review - Trapped (2017) - Uncomfortable, Claustrophobic, Brilliant!

Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Geetanjali Thapa.

Directed by: Vikramaditya Motwane.

A man gets trapped inside a flat in Mumbai with little means of communication with the outside world.

If the name of the movie doesn’t give the plot away, the trailer surely does.

What separates ‘Trapped’ from ‘Castaway’ and ‘127 Hours’ is the fact that unlike other survivor dramas, the protagonist here isn’t stuck in the middle of nowhere, he is very much in a metropolitan city, but oh-so-alone.

Rajkummar Rao plays Shaurya, a man who is desperate in more ways than one.

There isn’t much of a back-story shown but thanks to the clever writing, direction and performance, one can figure out the missing details. As things stand, in the beginning of the movie, Shaurya is a bachelor who stays in a shared rented apartment and like so many of us, manages to survive in the Maximum city, just barely.

He finds romance in office in the form of Noori (played by a very capable Geetanjali Thapa, who shines in spite of the limited screen-time) and chain of events lead to him shifting his residence to a flat in the yet to be occupied high-rise building ironically named ‘Swarg’.

And yes, all of this happens within the first 15 minutes of the film.

In a set of circumstances that seem scarily possible, he gets trapped inside his flat; what is somewhat far-fetched though is the happy combination of coincidences - no-one is aware of Shaurya's whereabouts, neither does anyone seem to note his disappearance from office, there’s no electricity, his cellphone is out of charge and his apartment has limited and unpredictable supply of water, these are of course explained in the plot, but the coming together of such chances are hard to overlook nevertheless.

What follows thereafter forms the movie, and it is as much as Shaurya’s journey as it is the viewers, the (luckily) semi-furnished apartment becomes our jail as much as it is his. We celebrate his little victories and suffer as he suffers, and this is where the Director and Rajkummar Rao triumph.

‘Trapped’ makes you feel for the protagonist, you wonder what you would have done if you were in his place, you squirm uncomfortably as his desperation grows and he almost descends into insanity. It is a film that grabs you by the collar and forces you to feel uncomfortable and claustrophobic.  

It reminds you that the most crowded places can, in the right circumstances, be the loneliest.  

Superb!

The sounds play more than an active part in this, refer to the trailer to know what I mean.   

Rajkummar Rao is fantastic, it’s tough to imagine anyone else play this role with as much conviction as he does. Brilliant casting. His take on the small town guy (I assume) in the big city, who has grand plans but little means is as believable as it gets. Having said that, he has played somewhat similar characters in different circumstances before (CityLights, Queen).

Kudos to Vikramaditya Motwane for this film, he is now three films old, and they are as different as they can be. Also, because he hasn’t succumbed to directing typical potboilers yet, not that there’s anything wrong with that.  

Special mention of the scene at the Hospital - pulls at your heartstrings, despite the predictability.

There are loopholes of course, apart from the coincidences mentioned above, one wonders from where Shaurya manages the seemingly unending reservoir of matchsticks, how he becomes a champion slingshot marksman (perhaps because he grew up in a small town?), how he possesses the strength (of body and mind) to do what he does in the last 30 minutes of the movie, in spite of his limited food supply – but all that can be forgiven in the larger scheme of things.

I watched ‘Trapped’ on a lazy Sunday evening and was pleasantly surprised at the packed hall; the fact that an unconventional movie made on a shoestring budget and devoid of ‘stars’, item numbers, and buzz surrounding its release could pull in such a crowd is testament to the fact that Bollywood and viewers have come off age.

Now if only the rest of the stakeholders woke up to that fact.

RATING: 3.5/5

P.S. Read my short story about an odd building in the middle of the city here.

Image from here. 

# 38 - Short Story - Kalu

It was the last class of the day, and Sauvik struggled to stay awake. He regretted picking the front row to sit on instead of his usual second last - he forced himself to focus on the whiteboard.

 “Kalu” - he thought he heard someone whisper from behind. He was about to turn around but better sense prevailed.

“Kaloooo, move your head.”

“Abey oye kalua, shift your desk naa slightly.”

This time he recognized Vivek’s voice.

He was wide awake now, and looked ahead at the Professor, trying his best to ignore the voices coming from behind.

“Acha okay sorry, Mr. Fair and Handsome, I said sorry na?! Now move your desk to the left.”

Muffled laughter from the back, few of the girls had now joined in.

Sauvik waited for a few seconds before moving his desk, hopefully, they would stop bothering him now.

He knew that he was dark, but to be told of the fact every minute was uncomfortable, it probably would have been alright if the words being used were as decent as “dark”, but people were coming up with new synonyms and prefixes and suffixes every day, ranging from Kauwa to Alkatra, and he was fed up, and these guys had shown no signs of stopping.

The jibes stopped for a while, and Sauvik had almost dozed off again when Manoj from the back whispered.

“Andhera, arre o andhera, thodasa right ho jaanaa, board dikh nahin raha hai.”

Manoj was loud enough for the professor to hear, but the old man let it go.

Encouraged, half the class laughed this time.

Sauvik silently swore, it wasn’t actually about looking at the board, it was about giving him a hard time, and trying to elicit a few giggles from the girls.

It wasn’t as if Sauvik hated these guys, in fact, most of them were his friends, but even during normal conversations, his ‘friends’ would find ways to bring up his complexion every now and then, he had become a laughing stock, the means for people to show off their creativity, how good they were at coming up with new names.   

He hadn’t minded it initially, after all, most people had a nickname, he had even thought that it was a sign of his growing popularity, that he was going through an initiation process of some kind, painful…yes, but temporary.

But years had passed, and it was only getting worse.

Sauvik recalled the initial semesters when he was just ‘Sauvik’; not ‘Kalu’, not ‘Alkatra’, and definitely not ‘Invisible man’. 

And of course, he thought of that fateful day when Yash had called out to him as ‘Kalu’, that day had changed everything.  

How can I put an end to this? Sauvik thought.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the bell rang and the professor, almost as relieved as Sauvik at the classes being over, quickly departed.

Sauvik was about to leave too, when he heard Pankaj, who was staring out the window and talking to no one in particular, “look at the clouds, almost as dark as Sauvik.”

Unlike the others, Pankaj wasn’t a friend, they had rarely spoken in all these years, and that too because Arnab used to invited him to their room.

Something snapped.   

“WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY BHENCHOD?”

The classroom went quiet immediately, everyone stared at Sauvik with their mouths open, some possibly entertained the thought of a fight.

In a flash Sauvik was standing before Pankaj, his hands rolled into fists. Pankaj managed to lift his own hands defensively, painfully aware that no one would come to his help if Sauvik was in a mood to get violent.

 “I..I…just said your name.”

“BHOSDIKE..DO I LOOK LIKE A DARK CLOUD TO YOU?”

Sauvik had never sworn like this in college, being especially mindful of his language in front of girls.

But he didn’t care now.

Pankaj adjusted his glasses, and with the resignation of a man prepared to get beat up, provided the best possible response.

“But everyone calls you far worse things. Especially your friends, you don’t react like this. All I said was your name.”

The bastard was right.

Arnab meanwhile tried to take Sauvik away from Pankaj, “Cool down bhai, people are staring.”

Sauvik pushed Arnab away, “I am not doing anything. Besides, he is right, when your own friends treat you like shit, how can I blame a guy I don’t care about.”

Arnab stood embarrassed, unsure of how to react. Pankaj breathed a sigh of relief, happy that Sauvik’s attention had been diverted. Vivek whispered something to Sauvik, hoping to calm him down, but Sauvik wasn’t in a mood to shut up.

“I am making a scene? What were you doing when you called me Blackie in front of everyone? Oh, I am sorry, you were trying to be funny, weren’t you? So I am trying to be funny as well, I don’t see you laughing.”

Sauvik paused for a second. Suddenly becoming aware that none of the students had left the class. He felt his rage subside, replaced by a wave of sadness.

“Leave it yaar. It’s not your fault. Maybe I am an easy target. I can’t threaten or force people to stop calling me names, that’s not in my control. But there’s one thing I can do. I can stop being friends with people who get a kick out of making fun of me in public. I thought being friends meant being accepted for who you are, and things like complexion don’t get in the way. But – “

Vivek tried to interrupt but Sauvik wasn’t done.

“Shut up and let me finish. Maybe I’m stupid, but I thought friends are supposed to be there for each other, to support each other during the tough times, but you guys, my so called friends are the ones who have been giving me a bad time, all these years. You know what? Fuck you, I am proud of my complexion, I don’t care what you think of it, but calling me names and making fun of me to make the girls laugh is not something that friends do. I didn’t have a say in choosing my complexion, not that I would change it anyway, but I do have a say in choosing who I am friends with.“

He took a deep breath and picked up his bag, on the verge of leaving, he turned around to look back at Vivek and Arnab, and spoke loud enough for the class to hear.

“Think about it guys, I mean it. If you make one more inappropriate comment about my skin colour or call me names, I am not going to talk to you anymore.”

With this he was finally done, he stormed out of the class and hurried back to his hostel room. Slamming the door shut, he bolted it, knowing that his roommates would soon be there.

He headed for the loo and stood in front of the mirror, he took a good, long look at the face staring back at him.

A face that was angry, hurt, and betrayed….but more importantly, dark.

He took out the fairness cream he had bought a week back and carefully started applying the cream to his face.

The damn thing was supposed to show results in two weeks time. 

Image from here.

# 37 - Days of our future past

My Saturday morning was ruined by a notification from Google – my Gmail account was a couple of megabytes away from exhausting its 15 GB limit.

Back in the day when yahoo chat was cool and people wanted to help out Nigerian princes, I survived on a 6 MB mail limit, but that was more than a decade and a half back, and I, the man behind critically acclaimed email IDs such as devil_ethan_hunt / superbatman007 & of course kanishka_cool_stud, had grown accustomed to not deleting e-mails, all thanks to Gmail's seemingly infinite storage.

But my luck and inbox space had finally run out, and I knew that I had to re-visit a ritual that I hated, deleting e-mails.

As far as I could tell, there were two options I had, delete the locust-like irrelevant e-mails that were small sized but came in such numbers that they couldn’t be ignored, or, delete the heavy emails that were less frequent but took up way too much space.

I opted for the latter, figuring that it would take less time, and accordingly searched for old emails that were more than 2 MB in size.

An hour later, I had to admit that I had made the wrong choice.

THIS was a gold mine.

This was a trip to a time and place that I had grown out of. This was a revealing account of who I was at one point of time, and while many of the mails were cringe-worthy, it wasn’t always just me.

A batchmate who is quite respected in law-firm circles had an email ID that probably could be used to blackmail him now. If you thought kanishka_cool_stud was bad this was closer to, say, tanhaboy_16.

And there were the emails and chats.

References to Orkut, email forwards (when was the last time you received one, the non-work kind?), and GIF files touted as the latest tech, it was all there. So were popular songs of the year mailed to and received from friends.

Obama’s Cadillac and George W. Bush jokes found their place alongside conspiracy theories about Saddam and Osama. Stephen King and RL Stine books co-existed in peace, and surprise of surprises, I found out that I had actually sought out the twilight series.

I also found some of my projects and dissertations from college; my wonderful choice of topics ranged from the concerned ‘Energy Laws in Ethiopia’ to the sublime ‘Politics, Technology, and Corporate Governance’.  

My faith in the education system restored (let’s just say the projects got the marks they deserved and not what I needed), my search through 14.995 GB of culturally, historically or aesthetically significant emails resumed.

The deeper I delved, the more I realised that I had little in common with who I was a decade or so back, it seemed as if I was a different individual altogether, not just the superficial things such as taste in music, movies and books, I was actually a different person entirely. Things which seemed crucial at one point of time didn't matter anymore, and the past me would have scoffed at some of the things which now hold importance.

Not just 10 years back, I seemed to have evolved changed even from who I was 5 years ago.

Some things, of course, stayed the same. The sarcasm, the impossible sleep cycle which would have driven lesser mortals insane, the ability to incorporate filmy dialogues in routine conversations, and last but not the least, my never-ending quest towards achieving excellence in the field of awesomeness.

Okay. These emails couldn’t possibly be deleted. They were artefacts from more innocent times. So what if they contained humiliating details such as the time I almost threw up on a friend after having one too many, and more disturbing details like the other time a friend looked like he would throw up on me and proceeded to do exactly that.

Needless to say, good times.

I got thinking about the time before Gmail, before kanishka_cool_stud and indya.com; way back to the golden period that was the early 90s.

I am sure you have received/forwarded that popular WhatsApp message that glorifies the 1990s, and maybe you have seen those click bait articles as well:- “Top 20 things that every 90s kid will get....we bet you still miss #3!”

Ahh, to speak of the days when the Indian cricket team was known as the Wills Indian cricket team, a time when it wasn’t beneath the middle class to travel by train in non-AC sleeper class, a period when the Khans were actually young enough to play college kids -  a time when arithmetic problems involving distribution of mangoes  (or apples) amongst Ram, Rahim, and John usually led to the foregone conclusion that they would each end up with the same number.

A time when life moved at an easier pace.

Ironically, even in those days, the present always seemed tense, and the past, whatever little of it that did exist, seemed magnificent.

So do we actually visit the past through rose tinted glasses, or were the past days actually better?

Or is life getting progressively worse?

And there’s the fourth alternative that made me panic during exams:-  ‘all of the above’.

Studies tell that we are living in the most peaceful period of history, and contrary to what you may believe, crime and violence are at an all time low (even in Delhi, yes), life expectancy and literacy rates have never been better.

So why in Manoj Kumar’s name do we feel that ‘the times they are a-changing’, for the worse? In spite of the statistics and the conveniences associated with modern technology, why has it only become harder to find genuine moments of peace and happiness?

The obvious answer seems to be that life tends to get more and more complicated as we age.

As a kid, my only priority was not pooping in my pants, and in the unlikely event of that occurring, successfully hiding the fact; my measure of success was based on and equalled to not shitting in my pants. Literally.

I was a successful kid.

On most days anyway.

Education starts assuming more and more significance as the years roll on, along with friends come peer pressure, and before you know it, life loses its simplicity. With increasing number of things that matter, our success rate is bound to come down.

 I remember immediately after my Geography paper in class 10^th finals, I picked the textbook up and flung it as far away as I could, ecstatic that I would never have to study the subject again. Problem solved.

If only...

Geography was gone, but Calculus & Trigonometry had taken its place. No Ram, Rahim or John to give away clues this time. In comparison, Geography now seemed meek.

Life was so much easier five years back, we think, and we think that every time a new criterion that is supposed to be important is thrown into the mix.

Our careers, our personal lives, our health, our hobbies, our duties as citizens, the compulsory requirement to have an opinion on topics ranging from same-sex marriages to Open internet ....the list goes on and on.

No wonder going through my old emails made me nostalgic, life was far from perfect those days, but at least we had lesser number of things to worry about then.

Well, if there’s any consolation, it’s not always going to be like this. In 45 years or so, just as suddenly as things had once become important, the same things will start to lose their meaning - we will be too old to be concerned with our general appearance, our annual bonuses will stop being important, what others think of us will start counting for less and less.

Until one day, when the definition of success reverts to our ability to not soil ourselves.

Can’t wait.

Image from here. 

# 36 - Movie Review - Raees (2017) - Watered down booze

Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Mahira Khan.
Directed by: Rahul Dholakia.

A bootlegger in Gujarat with a flair for business wants to scale up his operations, but an honest cop, competition, politicians and restrictions imposed by his own conscience stand in his way.  

Masala movies form the backbone of the Indian film industry, they promise entertainment and cheap thrills - unapologetically. And while masala is aplenty, you know good masala from the rest.

Raees had built up expectations from the moment it was announced, SRK may have become King Khan thanks to his lover-boy roles, but box office numbers aside, it's whenever he plays the anti-hero or dons the role of a character of questionable motives that he really lights up the screen.

Yep, no one plays the bad guy as well as SRK, and after a string of not-so-successful-films; this one definitely seemed like the one in which SRK was revisiting the kind of roles that had made a star out of him.

SRK mouthing one liners that became catch-phrases even before the release, Nawazuddin playing the cop out to get him, a critically acclaimed director.....this had good masala written all over it.

Unfortunately, it's just another film that everyone will forget about in two weeks time.

There's a very good movie hiding in Raees somewhere, but it's lost in the layers and layers of chaff.

Like the central character, the movie tries too hard to be too many things at once, so we have a bootlegger for whom bijness is bijness, and bijness is supreme (no he doesn't say that in the movie, not in those many words), but wait, the second law of bijness keeps his villainy in check, bijness is supreme but no bad act allowed. 

Ahh, a criminal with a heart of gold.

The movie does start off well, and the younger actors do a fabulous job, but it was as if someone told the maker mid-way that the movie won't work because of certain issues.

Issue 1: Lead character too evil.

Solution: Enter second law of bijness.

Issue 2: Lead character still too evil.

Solution: Okay, for every bad thing he does, let's make him do two good things. Keep a count.

Issue 3: We have to cater to an audience who want to see SRK romance.

Solution: Write up an unnecessary romantic track.

Issue 4: SRK's character appears too real, don't forget, he is a star...

Solution: Insert tacky action sequences giving SRK the ability to dodge bullets and defy gravity.

Issue 5: Umm, possible controversy because of riots scene in the script, and the other thing as well...

Solution: Just mention the words in passing.

Issue 6: No Sunny Leone!?

Solution: Get Sunny Leone.

....and so on.

The result is a dumbed down version of a movie that caters to everyone and yet, no one.

The closest thing to a redeeming factor is Nawazuddin, he is getting typecast, but still manages to make the most of a one-dimensional character.  

Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub too is typecast as the best friend/sidekick of the lead and doesn't leave a mark.

Mahira Khan doesn't have much to do but does look her part.

And Shah Rukh? He shines in a few scenes, but they are mostly restricted to the first half, his performance crumbles as the storyline progresses. Perhaps under the weight of absurdity. We looked forward to seeing him play the quintessential bad guy, instead, he gives us a hotchpotch performance that does disservice to his abilities as an actor.

A word about his gait. There's a very odd walking mannerism that he first displayed in Don 2, maybe he thinks it makes him look tough, but right now all it does is remind us of Dev Anand, not for the good reasons.

Raees does have its moments, but they are too few and far in between, and by the time the movie's ended you end up wondering if Kaabil would have been the better decision.


RATING: 2/5

Fun Fact about the director: You probably know that Rahul Dholakia has won the national film award for the movie 'Parzania', but did you know that his first movie was the Jimmy Shergill-Kim Sharma starrer 'Kehta Hai Dil Baar Baar'? Neither did I.

Images from here and here.