Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro- Second Viewing

In my teenage years, old movies regularly re-ran at theatres in Hyderabad. Why this practice was discontinued I don't really know-must be the DVDs that are rampant, and downloads, legal and illegal. But it is fun to watch some old movies in a theatre for the experience. We had one such recently, watching Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro at Pune's new PVR in a mall at Nagar Road.

The antics of all the characters are amazing- Satish Shah as DeMello, the Commissioner who takes commissions, eats Switzerland ka cake (Thoda khao, thoda phenko), and lives and dies for the gutter, the perpetually drunk Ahuja (Om Puri) in a perfect Punjabi accent, Pankaj Kapur as Tarneja the builder who gives good logic for extending buildings beyond permissible limits, Bhakti Barve the 'saviour' of society and editor of Khabardar, Satish Kaushik as Namboodripad the bumbling assistant to Tarneja, Neena Gupta as his sexy sidekick, and so on.

And to top all this, the lead characters played beautifully by Ravi Baswani and Naseeruddin Shah. Script, direction and dialogue are absolutely brilliant, and I think deserve an Oscar-equivalent recognition. Of course, the viewers have already recognised it as such. Kundan Shah, the maker, you are immortal just for this creation. So many dialogues are immortal. Wahan hum dekha, peene ka pani alag, gutter ka pani alag (about America which DeMello has just visited), Or Dhritarashtra's lament, "Yeh kya ho raha hai", through the twists and turns that Draupadi's cheerharan takes, or "Shaant, gadadhaari Bheem" in the same scene. Bhakti Barve also plays her part of seducing Naseer into doing her dirty work to perfection. All in all, a heady cocktail, though it was made in 1983- by a bunch of talented FTII alums (Sudhir Mishra and Vidhu Vinod Chopra are also in the team). Definitely should be on everyone's bucket list. My daughters liked it too, and they are in their 20s.

Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro- The Making

I am simultaneously reading two books. The first is about the Kundan Shah cult comedy- Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, the making of it, by Jai Arjun Singh. Lots of nuggets about the inside story. The guy who made it apparently looks like an accountant, and is not at all funny at first. There are a lot of script changes from the first draft. For example, it did not contain the Mahabharat climax scene with the immortal Dhritarashtra dialogue- Yeh kya ho raha hai?

Second major change was that the gorilla scene was axed. There was a gorilla who turns up to give some gyaan to the heroes- a talking gorilla, in a scene. It was axed to give a crisper run to the film. And the famous scene where Om Puri finds the corpse of the Commissioner on the road was modified to make it easier to shoot. The original was too complex.

NFDC, a govt body, was the producer of one of the greatest comedies in Bollywood. You dare not say that the govt. lacks a sense of humour!

The second book I am reading is called The Sky is Crazy by Yvonne Lee, a Malaysian air hostess who narrates funny incidents from her career. As you can imagine, they range from groping 'uncles' to a guy who pisses on the cockpit door in a drunken stupor, and many more in-between, including a guy going to Mecca who refuses to let the crew revive his wife after a heart attack, claiming God wants her to come to him. An air hostess has to be a counselor, baby-sitter, weather forecaster, and a gourmet guide, among other things, according to the author. A well-written book!