'iqbal'. ateya’s birthday. new car ganesh. ganpati.

nagesh kukunoor’s 'iqbal' is safe harmless multiplex cinema at its most banal, yet reasonably all right for a mindless night out. a rage to riches inspirational drama about a deaf and dumb village boy who makes it to the indian cricket team because of his love of the game and the help of a drunk local now fallen into drunkenness hero, the move doesn’t even attempt to add anything novel to the premise. a premise so old that we have seen it before in countless american sport films. in fact even the background score was vaguely ‘chariots of fire’. every scene and moment in the film was derived and therefore predictable.

i guess that is all fine enough, but in the first half when everyone is being ingratiatingly endearing and cute, at least i wanted to strangle somebody. in the latter half things got a little better with the cricket playing becoming central. so there we have it a film with nothing much to recommend but nothing much to hate either . but then maybe i am just an asshole who expects more from his films- or an overly intellectualized pseud who is unable to shamelessly enjoy mindless films (like kuntal accused me of yesterday). but i loved ‘the princess diaries’, ‘the rock’ and ‘legally blonde’- so?

aditya aditya ubaid prasad

prasad

mukul rupali

chitra sahal

ateya
ateyas house is this enormous marble mansion overlooking the sea in colaba in a building where , in a similar flat, ratan tata houses his dogs (and his mother in a separate similar apartment) the birthday party was a small intimate affair with 8-9 people from college and some of her friends from school. the alcohol was divine with spectacular cocktails of all types, rum toddy, whiskey sour, and something with vodka and lime; and then the watermelons soaked in bacardi. rupali, prasad, prasad, aditya, aditya, ubaid, mukul, ninad, pooja shah… we drank, gossiped and laughed a lot. spent the night at kuntals place and slept in a beautiful wooden room overlooking priyadarshini park.

got back home and ran to shahapur with mr ganesh where we went ganpati hopping from home to sweltering home and ended up on the site. meanwhile we also conducted many enquiries about the status of education in the area. mr ganesh wants to start a tuition course for the kids. we met more small town power brokers and contemplated the right way to begin intervening in a place where outsiders are seen as money plants to be squeezed for every thing that they can possibly give.

mukul and mom meanwhile went and picked up the new car which is shiny and new in the parking lot downstairs.

new car

all the roads meanwhile are jammed with ganpatis presiding over throngs of people carrying and worshipping them. these shiny pink skinned, lotus eyed, garlanded gods with gilded crowns in surreal sets.