5. Suspect love ishtories: It was never very clear WHY the hero and heroine fell in love in those days. It could all start with just one look at assorted body parts....err, I meant the face (like moon), arm (like "vazhaithandu), foot (like lotus flower...yeah, I did not get that one either), hair (like kaale baadal), eyes (like water in the jheel) or even at a the sound of jhankar of payal worn by heroine and seemed like the (il)logical conclusion, considering psychopathic tendencies demonstrated by hero.
Scenario:
After monologue in the last segment, our dear tapori goes about the business of apnaaoing the babe. He will stalk her to her college, her home, her typewriting/shorthand institute (southie touch) and even to the neighborhood dukaan/maligai kadai with very suspect lusty looks. Babe is not impressed. He accosts her and says Tum aur mein pichle janam ke saathi hain. Babe walks past him with a hmph. She still has books on chest even though it is probably 5 am and she is going to buy bread aur andey from chachaji ke dukaan.
Tapori: Jao.....kahaan chali jaaogi? Mein tumhe apnaake hi rahoonga, haan! (With swagger of a man having scaled Mount Everest).
Babe walks back irritated and says Dude, I am really NOT interested. I cannot make this clear enough. Mein tumse behad nafrat karti hoon, and marches back home, bread and andey forgotten.
(Poor, unsuspecting school girls in the audience think how wonderful it would be to be loved thus and pimply adolescent boys think, Yeah baby! That's the way you stalk a girl...and its legal? This is my lucky day!)
This does not deter the tapori and he continues stalking the poor babe. Many, many, many, many, many, many lovely songs later, there appears to be some progress. Babe's expression changes from loathing to tolerant. The deal is sealed by ruffians who are either real or fake.....let me explain this. Tapori sends gundas to mock molest babe, quite conveniently forgetting that his behavior towards her could be best described as inappropriate. The idea is that tapori will beat up fake gundas to impress babe. Sometimes, the fake ones arrive as expected, but sometimes, real gundas appear at the designated spot by sheer coincidence. So, now the tapori fights the real ones and impresses himself along with babe.
To make a long story short (no really, the stories were that long), the couple unites in the end. There were a few fun elements thrown in like advice given by worldly wise friends, cut wrists, Bapu and Mayi with many apoplectic fits, bloody family feuds, lusty uncles who want to marry the babe or childhood fiance who appears from nowhere and even terminal illness. There will even be a second hero/heroine thrown in to supposedly hoodwink the audience into believing that the hero/heroine might end up with the spare. Really? With a hand-me-down wardrobe, terrible make-up and hair, no songs and that moping expression, they never stood a chance!
These days, the hero/heroine have the attention span of a housefly.
Hero: Hey, how you doin'?
Heroine: Great, if fact, I am seeing someone. So thanks and goodbye!
Hero: Slides over to next barstool and says Hey! How you doin"? to the next girl.
Many confusing turns later (all the spares are well-dressed and equally unknown wanna-be's/starlets, so we never know who is going to end up with whom in the end), two random people from the group "hook-up". What? Did they not say that they were brother and sister? No, that was him and the other spare. I have this to say, however suspect the yesteryear stories were, there was NEVER a confusion who the hero and heroine were!
More later......
Scenario:
After monologue in the last segment, our dear tapori goes about the business of apnaaoing the babe. He will stalk her to her college, her home, her typewriting/shorthand institute (southie touch) and even to the neighborhood dukaan/maligai kadai with very suspect lusty looks. Babe is not impressed. He accosts her and says Tum aur mein pichle janam ke saathi hain. Babe walks past him with a hmph. She still has books on chest even though it is probably 5 am and she is going to buy bread aur andey from chachaji ke dukaan.
Tapori: Jao.....kahaan chali jaaogi? Mein tumhe apnaake hi rahoonga, haan! (With swagger of a man having scaled Mount Everest).
Babe walks back irritated and says Dude, I am really NOT interested. I cannot make this clear enough. Mein tumse behad nafrat karti hoon, and marches back home, bread and andey forgotten.
(Poor, unsuspecting school girls in the audience think how wonderful it would be to be loved thus and pimply adolescent boys think, Yeah baby! That's the way you stalk a girl...and its legal? This is my lucky day!)
This does not deter the tapori and he continues stalking the poor babe. Many, many, many, many, many, many lovely songs later, there appears to be some progress. Babe's expression changes from loathing to tolerant. The deal is sealed by ruffians who are either real or fake.....let me explain this. Tapori sends gundas to mock molest babe, quite conveniently forgetting that his behavior towards her could be best described as inappropriate. The idea is that tapori will beat up fake gundas to impress babe. Sometimes, the fake ones arrive as expected, but sometimes, real gundas appear at the designated spot by sheer coincidence. So, now the tapori fights the real ones and impresses himself along with babe.
To make a long story short (no really, the stories were that long), the couple unites in the end. There were a few fun elements thrown in like advice given by worldly wise friends, cut wrists, Bapu and Mayi with many apoplectic fits, bloody family feuds, lusty uncles who want to marry the babe or childhood fiance who appears from nowhere and even terminal illness. There will even be a second hero/heroine thrown in to supposedly hoodwink the audience into believing that the hero/heroine might end up with the spare. Really? With a hand-me-down wardrobe, terrible make-up and hair, no songs and that moping expression, they never stood a chance!
These days, the hero/heroine have the attention span of a housefly.
Hero: Hey, how you doin'?
Heroine: Great, if fact, I am seeing someone. So thanks and goodbye!
Hero: Slides over to next barstool and says Hey! How you doin"? to the next girl.
Many confusing turns later (all the spares are well-dressed and equally unknown wanna-be's/starlets, so we never know who is going to end up with whom in the end), two random people from the group "hook-up". What? Did they not say that they were brother and sister? No, that was him and the other spare. I have this to say, however suspect the yesteryear stories were, there was NEVER a confusion who the hero and heroine were!
More later......
Totally fun read.....keep them coming. Loved the bread aur andey. But whatever said and done, the scenes and songs from those yester year classics are still in mind. Movies may definitely have more production value these days with all the technical staff having professional degrees in film making and what not, but apart from a handful of them, most movies don't make a lasting impression these days.
ReplyDeleteFair point Chandra. However, my take is that the reason the scenes from yesteryear are still in our minds is because of a sense of comfortable familiarity and not because it is necessarily great movie making (much like an Uday Chopra re-re-re-re launch vehicle...you know that its going to be horrible, but you still might watch it because you want to see how much he is going to ham in this one, how soon you will get irritated with his mug or how much hair he has lost from his previous movie). Lasting impact is created only by great cinema...be it then or now or fifty years later.
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