The not so Hindi Hindi film
We understand a particular kind of Hindi film has outsourced its story to Hollywood a long time ago. We've stopped complaining about copycat plots, borrowed genres and imitation fashion. The films on their part have started owning up to stolen narratives by paying remake rights.
We understand too that the same kind of Hindi film has outsourced its locations to the rest of the world. Why shoot in India and one can waste more money and more time by shooting in Amazing Thailand or Gorgeous Glasgow?
But must we outsource our language too? We're well used to Hindi film actors fumbling with the language in interviews, and breaking into English as soon as they possibly can -- with some actors sporting American accents much before they needed to for professional reasons.
But the least the actors can do is to speak Hindi the way it should be spoken in the movies.
But why bother when no one seems to know correct Hindi anymore. It's not just English words which now seem to have made their home in most songs.
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| A still from Baar Baar Dekho's "Kaala Chashma". |
Even the dialogues play fast and loose with grammar now. "Main sochta tha - Jindagee ek simple sa equation hai... Jai + Diya equals love," says Jai Verma, the lead male character of Baar Baar Dekho, played by Sidharth Malhotra.
Last I checked, it should have been "simple si equation", right? But no, Baar Baar Dekho knows its lines are going to be voiced by actors with even less familiarity with Hindi. Why bother?
As for the spoken language, I can understand Katrina Kaif's inability to speak the language properly. She is not a native Hindi speaker -- though one had hoped she would have learnt it by now having made her film debut in 2003.
But what explains the ceaseless torment Sidharth Malhotra and Taaha Shah (playing his younger brother) inflict on Hindi throughout the film? So difficult is it to understand some of the dialogues of the film (both the writing and delivery leave a lot to be desired) that when an actual English person recites the Hanuman Chalisa, it seems almost music to one's ears.
Just as ridiculous is the premise that Sidharth Mahotra is a mathemtician whose work in Vedic mathematics is eye-opening and whose teaching style is comparable only to Indiana Jones.
There is much gobbledygook about the universities of Cambridge and Harvard which may explain the deeply academic nature of songs such as "Kaala Chashma":
Sadko pe chale
Jab ladkon ke dilon mein
Tu aag lagade baby fire
O mainu o mainu...
Nakli si nakhre tu kare
Jab dekhe humein jhooti liar
Perhaps it's not a coincidence that the song, which comes right at the end of the movie is the only time Katrina Kaif and Sidharth Malhotra look completely at ease with each other, the story and the words they are mouthing.
Now don't get me wrong I am no Hindi fascist. But the least a Hindi film can do is to get Hindi right? Perhaps it's too much to expect and we may well be faced with the eventuality of some Hindi films seceding altogether from Bollywood and being made in... you guessed it, English!