All about silence….

I saw this movie (rather an edited and shortened version) on a transatlantic flight. I rarely watch movies on planes. The best way to beat (or prevent) jet lag is to sleep on the long flights. But this was an Etihad nonstop flight from Abu Dhabi to Los Angeles that was scheduled to land in the evening hours at LAX. That meant that I could reach my niece’s place in an hour or so after landing, freshen up and sleep at the normal sleeping time at Los Angeles, my trusted formula of avoiding jet lag. Etihad has created this unique facility where you do the US Customs and Immigration clearance in Abu Dhabi itself during the layover between the two flights there and you’re then kept in a secluded area of the terminal awaiting the boarding call for the US flight. When you land in US, you are treated as if you’ve taken a local flight within the US, you just walk to the carousel, pick up your bags and walk out in an unimaginably short time. One of the most painful things to happen to you at the end of a long flight is having to wait upwards of an hour in the immigration hall to get out. Heaven help you in this situation if you’re connecting to another flight to your final destination. You’ve to first pick up your bags, do the immigration, then the customs and then recheck in your bags for your onward journey. I’ve known many who missed the onward connection as they didn’t manage to do the first parts quickly enough. This is especially the case on busy airports like JFK. Less than 3 hours and you’re virtually guaranteed to miss the connection. That won’t happen on the Abu Dhabi route as you’ve done your statutory clearance waiting for your US connection and can then actually ask for your bags to be checked in to your final destination.

I will return to the movie, lest this sounds like a spiel to sell Etihad. (To be frank my talks with them haven’t yet begun so have of course not yet concluded). Jokes apart, I had seen a bunch of Ranbir Kapoor movies in that period and loved his ability and preparedness to break the mould all the time. He was so prepared to take risks and even dared to be iconoclastic about his own on-screen persona and image.

Rajneeti is supposed to be Prakash Jha’s (Dipti Naval’s ex) adaptation of Mahabharata. A scion of a politician detests the idea of stepping into a murky, amoral world of politics and is forced to return from US (where he wants to stay with his girlfriend) and enter the dirty world of electoral and caste-ridden politics. In reality I thought it was a little ill constructed mashup of Mahabharata and Godfather. I daresay Mahabharata was better adapted by Shyam Benegal as Kalyug. Prakash Jha who is credited with contributions to the story, script and screenplay,  and is also the producer/director looked less taut and focussed than say Gangajal. I thought there were just too many loose ends created by the numerous subplots and the narrative suffers as a result. The musical score was wonderful. I particularly liked this song, sung and composed by the ill-fated Aadesh Shrivastava, and with lyrics by Sameer Anjan. https://youtu.be/X-0CXsGcW8Y

I liked the repetitive, haunting introduction to the male version of the song which is the soul, the fulcrum around which the rest of the melody revolves.

I liked Ranbir Kapoor as well as Ajay Devgan (he hadn’t then started mutilating the way his family name is spelt thanks to some stupid pseudoscience called Numerology. If you believe in that, you’ll believe the earth is flat and  the geocentric theory as well) as depictions of Arjun and Karna in the Mahabharata syntax. This was the first movie I ever saw that had Katrina Kaif and I liked her role and acting too. I thought it was interesting the producers/director decided to use as many as 4 composers for the movie.

Wayne Sharp, Pritam, Aadesh Shrivastava and Shantanu Moitra figure in the roll of honours. Between the four, my emotional connect was to Aadesh Shrivastava, as he had married my favourite vocalist’s niece- Sangeetmartand Pandit Jasraj’s niece Vijeta Pandit. I liked this song when I saw the movie. The harmonizing with the back up vocals has been well done and the song is very well constructed.

The female version, sung by Kavita Seth actually has a different overall feel about it and impact, too. The instrumentation is a bit different, too. Please ignore the visuals that come with the original audio clip which unnecessarily convey very negative ideation. https://youtu.be/TOonGNsslvY

All in all, I enjoyed the movie in bits and pieces. Arjun Rampal and Ajay Devgan were good, as was Ranbir Kapoor. Katrina Kaif was excellent and her role ran into unnecessary controversy thanks to hypersensitive politicians and a judicial system that allows frivolous complaints to be considered ahead of zillions of suits stuck in the largest backlog of cases in the world. Think of the tens of millions of poor folks rotting in some hellhole awaiting trial, and being proven innocent after years and even decades. It happened to a doctor who was crucified by the shameless media for some 23 years, for alleged negligent medical practice before being pronounced innocent by the court.

The movie won a sackful of nominations across the awards circuit and picked up a few too. The lyrics of this song, the composer/singer (Aadesh Shrivastava) were among the long list (& categories) of nominees.

An adaptation of an epic that was a wee bit loose but compensated to a great extent by great acting and some good music. And this served the purpose admirably on the flight, too.

Stay safe, folks. Thankfully the rain Gods have been a bit more generous in the last week or so than in the previous five. See you guys at 1120 hours on AIR Delhi for the 30th of my fortnightly programs on selection of songs by a band that was pretty much mandatory hearing when we were in College.