Half Girlfriend: An Aftereffect of 2 States?

A month and half back, Chetan Bhagat released the title and synopsis of his latest novel. Instantly the social media went abuzz. The hardcore fans experienced ecstasy after reading the plot of 'Half Girlfriend'; the anti-Bhagat brigade used the twitter platform to express their feelings. On the other hand, the neutral 'janta' like me was left somewhat surprised. The reason for that is the constant attempts by Bhagat in last couple of years to come across as a youth icon, rather than a storyteller with a huge fan base. His last novel, 'Revolution 2020', had focused on corruption in education sector in India. Thereafter he had released 'What Young India Wants', a compilation of his speeches and essays. Clearly, he was trying to rebrand himself. But the plot and title of 'Half Girlfriend', his upcoming novel, suggest that Bhagat is back to writing sex-sprinkled masala romantic novel for the masses. The question, in my mind, obviously was why?

2 days back I saw a full page advertisement in Bombay Times and instantly the mystery was solved. Let's call it '2 States Effect'. 

'2 States' was released in the month of April this year and became just the second movie without headlined by any of Khans, Roshans and Kumars to gross more than 100 crore (apart from Bhaag Milkha Bhaag). It was a sweet success and very significant for Bhagat in many ways. Though 2 States was the 4th film based on his work, it was the first genuine success. 'Hello' (based on One Night @ Call Center) was a box office flop while 'Kai Po Chhe' (based on 3 Mistakes of My Life) did well in few pockets of the country only. I won't include '3 Idiots' in the list because in spite taking inspiration and basic premise from '5 Point Someone', the final product was much different and better than the novel. 

2 States was almost entirely based on the original novel. There were very few differences from the book. The director, unlike Abhishek Kapoor and Rajkumar Hirani, didn't try to give any depth to the generic romantic material in his hand. 2 States, as a movie, has little originality. Instead, the film is full of cultural stereotypes and cliches. The director, in fact, left out one of the most uplifting part from the novel in which bride's father gives his point of view on parents' reservation against love marriages. 2 States was an ordinary romcom with caricatures out of Punjabi and Tamil Nadu families. 

But the film worked; worked really very well. Bhagat is no fool. He could see that 2 States had done well in multiplexes as well as Tier 2 towns. It was a testimony to his fanbase and enduring brand in smaller cities where a lot of youth have read only Chetan Bhagat (or his clones ) all their life. And they love masala romantic novels in simple-to-understand English. They don't care about characterization, plot intricacies or eloquent writing. 2 States success showed that in spite facing a lot of flak from the sections who dismiss his novels as rubbish, Bhagat's fan base is intact. Half Girlfriend is the manifestation of this fact only. 

The movie rights of the novel have already been sold to Ekta Kapoor's production house and the movie (to be directed by Mohit Suri) on the same will be released in 2016. The announcement for the same was made just 2 days back. Of course, the novel is yet to hit the stores. Bhagat, very cleverly, has left no stone unturned in making the novel hot property in every sense. His hardcore fans are already dying to read the book which begins in a small city of Bihar (you got the connection, right!). The film, therefore, will remain in news right till its release. I believe Bhagat will ensure it as he is also the co-producer. In short, he has stopped caring about rebranding himself for the sake on intellectuals. He means business now, pure business. 

In the end, I would like to share this wonderful tweet I found on twitter

Half Girlfriend is not a book it is a script of a new movie which he will sell on Flipkart first & show you the movie later

And then there was Gumnaam ...

I watched 'Gumnaam' sometime in late 90s and for many years it was the quintessential Indian murder mystery for me. The thrilling plot of a group of people stranded on an island and getting killed one by one was in complete contrast with the Bollywood I was familiar with in those days. What added to its aura was the fact that the film was from 1960s, and not a modern thriller. For the first time I realized that even songs can be spooky. 'Gumnaam' title track played a substantial role in setting up the tone of the movie and bringing it back on the track whenever the script went awry.

I didn't know anything about Agatha Christie or the novel 'Gumnaam' was based upon.

I read 'And then there were none' in 2009, full eight years after I had read the first book of Christie. By then I knew that it was the bestselling mystery of all time and has been adapted across various media, right from movie to television to theater. Gumnaam was one of those films that had borrowed the plot from it (without giving any credit, of course). By then I had largely forgotten the film and so enjoyed the novel without any major spoilers. Few months later I caught Gumnaam on one of the TV channels and decided to watch it again now that I had read the novel as well.

And then my love for 'Gumnaam' was lost forever.

The biggest strength of the Christie novel, in my opinion, is the eerie atmosphere filled with intense suspicion. Initially it seems that someone has played a joke with those 10 people on that small island. When the first two murders take place within next few hours, a frantic manhunt begins for the unknown killer. However, the most dramatic, and powerful, sequence is one when one character concludes (something that even other characters had realized by then) that murderer is one of them. From thereon the novel grips you and never let you go. Gumnaam too works fairly well till this point, and then everything goes downhill.

Consider yourself in a situation where you're trapped with a group of people in a island disconnected from the mainland. People are getting killed one by one and you all know that killer is one of you. What will be your natural reaction to such situation? Will you wander alone even for a minute? Will you trust other person even a bit? Won't all the people in your group devise some strategy to stop killer from striking before any help comes from outside?

The characters in 'Gumnaam' don't give a shit to this dangerous situation they are in. All they do is accusing each other and seeing Helen dance on 'Gham chhod ke manao rang-reli'. That is absolute mockery of the situation where a person is dying every few minutes. I wasn't mature enough to ponder much about it when I had watched the movie for the first time. This second viewing gave me headache upon seeing characters behaving as complete idiots.

I don't expect a lot of logic from Bollywood films even in suspense thrillers. I have seen a lot of such Hindi films with glaring loopholes, illogical explanations and tame ends.  Songs and dances have been an important ingredient even in a horror film. Perhaps why 'Gumnaam' hurt me more because it is based on one of my most favourite books and that it gives a typical Bollywood treatment to the part I consider the novel's biggest strength.

The best thing in Gumnaam today, for me, is the title track and its picturization. Rest of the movie is just a sham. 

Exploring Dystopia

This has been a 'depressing' week. No, not literally. I'm calling it depressing because of all the stuff that I watched this week, right from 'The Walking Dead' to 'The Maze Runner'. We don't exactly live in a way that can be called utopian with all the problems and wrongdoing all around us, a dystopian world still looks far more dark and depressing & no one would like to actually experience it (though situations in war-torn countries and the nations fighting poverty & famine aren't very different from that of a dystopia). 

The west is much more obsessed with the concept of Dystopia than us. That explains why there are so many novels, TV series and movies set in a Dystopian universe. We hardly have any material based on it here in India. The reason is very obvious - the people are not interested in such gloomy stuff. We are still caught in the process of making our lives better, worth living. A piece of fiction depicting a dark, depressing future isn't something we Indians would cherish a lot. 

Anyway. coming back to the two titles I discussed above. I am almost done with the season 3 of The Walking Dead. The series has got me hooked like anything. I have a taste for movies based on zombies due to the sheer thrill they provide. However, what makes TWD different is the human drama. Almost every good movie/book/TV series in the post-apocalypse/Dystopian genre has emphasized more on the meltdown of morality, compassion and pathos as the life takes the form of an survival exercise almost every day. TWD has captured that transition very well. I will be discussing in TWD in detail in few days when I will be done with the season 4. 

I saw 'The Maze Runner', latest film in the young-adult adaptations, last Sunday. The premise of the film is simpler when compared to 'The Hunger Games' or 'Divergent', and only towards the end it is revealed that the movie is set in a post-apocalyptic age. Don't count this revelation as a spoiler as little has been shown on screen and all the answers will be (hopefully) provided by the sequel. The movie works well as a thriller and the premise (a group of teenagers trapped in an open field surrounded by a giant maze which is inhabited by mechanical monsters called grievers) is all about survival of small group of young boys under testing conditions. This is what we actually see in most of the movies set in dystopian world. The action is good, there are some edge-of-the-seat moments and film isn't too philosophical. So, it works perfectly as a decent time pass, even if the subject matter is grim and the movie ends on a cliffhanger. 

Review of The Krishna Key

In the midst of numerous authors trying their hand at writing a 'masterpiece' (a five point someone)in the romance genre, Ashwin Sanghi is a whiff of fresh air who dared to dabble in a genre as niche as anthropological thriller. His third novel 'The Krishna Key' has led to him being labelled the 'Dan Brown' of India. I am yet to read his first two novels viz. The Rozabel Line and Chanakya's Chant, and so won't comment on them. His latest, and the most popular novel, was bought by one of my dear friends and that allowed me to judge whether Ashwin really qualifies to be the Indian version of a sensation like Brown.

The answer is NO. 

An archaeologist is killed in his home in a brutal manner and his friend Ravi Mohan Saini, the protagonist of the novel, is accused of the murder. He escapes from the custody with his research scholar Priya in a bid to clear his name and find the killer before he uncovers the ancient secret of Krishna leaving a trail of dead bodies behind him.   

Ashwin has literally followed Brown's steps in sketching the characters, proceedings and the plot. A murder in the beginning, an academician as the protagonist, a skeptical law enforcer, a cold blooded killer, a figure in the shadows and finally a quest to find an ages old secret - this novel has all the necessary ingredients of a typical Brown thriller. But this cocktail lacks substance and from midway the novel begins to disintegrate.

Perhaps the biggest flaw in the novel is that it lets go of any coherency and logic post midway. The character development takes a backseat, the action becomes overtly dramatic and the plot is completely lost. Especially towards the end the novel stops making any sense with climax being completely humdrum. 

One of the problems with Sanghi here is that he had a lot of information from history and mythology at his disposal and he had forced all of that in the novel. Almost every prominent character is an authority on Krishna as well as Indian mythology & history, and so after every few pages, the reader is provided with a heavy dose of information by some character. The information often lacks coherency and facts are repeated throughout the novel without adding any significance to the plot. In the end you become a victim of information overload. 

Sanghi is also guilty of failing to do justice to the principal characters. Unlike Brown, he has presented the backstory of most the characters which is one of the highlights of the novel. But then he abandons them somewhere in the middle and the readers slowly lose interest in them. The novel becomes too filmy towards the end with a dull and confusing climax. But by then the reader hardly cares for it. 

Those who haven't read Dan Brown might find it interesting. For the others it is a letdown.