All hail the queens of Bollywood

It is the ladies who are giving Bollywood the muscle!

Just about a decade back Farah Khan jumped or burst into the A- list of Bollywood’s best masala makers with her ‘Main Hoon Na’. Frankly till Rohit Shetty added ‘Chennai Express’ , King Khan’s most entertaining light-hearted entertainers came from the Farah Khan’s stable the other two being ‘Om Shanti Om’ and ‘Happy New Year’. In my very personal opinion, it has below zero impact on SRK’s BO status; most of his third-rate boring movies since the 1997 ‘Dil Toh Pagal Hai’ onwards were directed by Yash Chopra.

Frankly put I found ‘Son of Sardar’, which was released on the same day, had better value for money than that content less bovine crap called ‘Jab Tak Hai Jaan’. Coming back to the dynamic duo of SRK and Farah Khan, may I say one of my most favourite quote of the last decade comes through SRK’s Major Ram in ‘Main Hoon Na’ when he tells his nemesis Raghavan in the movie’s climax – “Nafrat bahut soch samajh ke karni chahiye Raghavan, hum jinse nafrat karte hain ek din unhin ke jaisey ban jaate hain” – the best convert in English of this line has always escaped me.

Anyway enough deviation – in the last three odd months, I ended up watching another two gems though thematically speaking entirely different from each other ‘Dil Dhadakne Do’ and ‘Talvar’. Then the thought struck me that in the last decade some of our most phenomenal and game changing cinema was actually delivered by women directors and producers.

Take the case of Reema Kagti, in her ‘Talash’ is actually Aamir Khan’s most respectable work post ‘Lagaan’. Sure ‘3 Idiots’ was another extremely well-made entertainer but if you look at sheer brilliance of a performance then Aamir Khan’s guilt ridden father-cop of ‘Talash’, who is relentlessly punishing himself for his son’s death is one of his most rock solid performance till date.

What can one write about Zoya Akhtar? I daresay she is miles ahead of her brother and father in delivering subtle human emotions based movies. Trust me ‘Luck By Chance’ deserved much bigger attention from viewers then it got at the box office. In some ways it was the viewer’s loss. ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’ is an iconic movie on how friends learn to forgive and conquer their own hidden demons too. To Zoya Akhtar’s credit Hrithik Roshan’s biggest commendable performance outside the Roshan banner came in this movie.

And I must mention Ekta Kapoor here as a producer. Sure the lady has got enough of criticism for her saas-bahu kachra. Frankly, in my book she deserves it too as much as she deserves the TRPs and a fat bank balance for her conviction.

As a masala movie worshipper I remain indebted to her for believing in Milan Luthria and the bloke then delivered ‘Once Upon a Time in Mumbai’ and then ‘Dirty Picture’, while both the movies set the cash registers ring at box office. These two movies also brought back dialogues to Indian cinema. Just when a lot of us thought that dialogues were dying, ‘Once Upon a Time in Mumbai’ happened. This one had such heavy duty ripper dialogues and my most favourite one being – “Har kitaab ki kismat main library nahi hotee kuch kitabein kabadi ki dukaan pe bhee miltee hain, hum sab wohi kitabein hain!” Wow, whenever I meet the dialogue writer of this movie, I shall for sure bow to him. Then came ‘Dirty Picture’ and of course besides the red hot Vidya Balan , what we remember of that movie till date is “Entertainment, Entertainment and Entertainment”.

Another significant contributor is Meghna Gulzar with her ‘Talvar’ she has simply told us this great cinema can be made with 16 crores too. Maybe even less and the audience will come to watch you despite no promotions.

I bow to these queens of Bollywood. They came to our rescue when our best directors could only think of flying cars!

- Rahul Deo Bharadwaj http://thesocietyasiseeit.blogspot.in