Ideologues, 'Idol'ogues

In the topsy-turvy equation of Indian politics ideology was long back overtaken by ‘idol’ogy. So, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the ever overzealous party workers of the Congress hung a portrait of their leader Sonia Gandhi depicted as goddess Durga in their party office in UP. It may have given a new political ammunition to Congress baiters, but it certainly shouldn’t surprise anyone. Sycophancy has always been the badge of this dynastic party; and now of many other parties.
Not long ago did BJP find itself in a similar symbolic turmoil when party workers got Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje portrayed as goddess Lakshmi.
And only two years ago, protege of Dalit ideologue Kanshi Ram, Mayawati inaugurated her own idol in Lucknow. It is time the culture of sycophancy paraded by our political leaders as loyalty starts embarrassing them enough to bring about a change.

Copout at Lokhandwala

Sanjay Gupta's film is nothing but a parody of the Mumbai police and underworld


It's raining bullets and the area is cordoned off. Policemen toting sophisticated guns are all donning bullet-proof jackets. Still a powerpuff TV reporter calmly walks past all barricades by merely flashing her press card. That's an access most crime reporters in Mumbai would die for. And that's precisely the problem with Sanjay Gupta's two-and-half-hour parody of Mumbai police and the underworld: it will make every self-respecting crime reporter angry. Not because we envy Dia Mirza, but because the film fudges around with facts; if at all it plays true to some, it deals with them amateurishly.

Senior officers with the Mumbai Police will tell you in confidence that the November 16, 1991 shootout at Lokhandwala was one of the few real (as real as it gets) encounters conducted by Mumbai Police. For a story as racy and powerful as this one, Gupta and his director Apoorva Lakhia just needed to stick to their research.

But as it is with most of Gupta's films, style and 'auteur-ship' take precedence over the script. His cardboard characters walk straight into the camera holding on to their Ray Ban shades even when they are engaged in fierce gunbattle with terrorists and gangsters. Abhishek Bachchan even dies with his shades on. Gangsta guys (Maya Dolas et al) throughout the film are either pulling the trigger or breaking into unwelcome songs.

Only caricaturish details are known about the main character in the film: Maya Dolas (played by Vivek Oberoi). A bit of honest portrayal of the gangster's early life would have done wonders to the character. Dolas was not an uneducated hoodlum; he had passed SSC. He also did not kill his father as shown in the film. In fact, his father died in 1997, six years after Dolas was killed. And a young Dolas was a musician; part of a band that played at marriage parties.

The director has bungled even the main plot of the story: the shootout. While A A Khan's (played by Sanjay Dutt) men wear bullet-proof jackets, Dutt's men in the film prefer to go bare-chested. In fact, Dutt himself walks with a Bond-like swagger into the building, throwing away his bullet-proof jacket, when one of his men is shot at. What ensues after that is completely comic. Dutt and his men choose fists over guns. Punches, blows, wham, bam: Damn! A shootout turns into a street-fight. It's one on one after that. If someone is thrown off the terrace then another has a knife pierced through his heart. Oberoi dies in the most uncharacteristc manner. Khan enters the building and engages into fisticuffs with Oberoi before literally pegging him onto the wall. In fact, no one including Dolas was killed inside the building. They all were killed while trying to escape. Dolas came out begging to be spared, but was sprayed with bullets.

If that is not all, in between the raining bullets and showering punches, Oberoi and his boys even get time for remorseful and melodramatic chats with their kin back home. While a teary-eyed Oberoi expresses his wish to have 'maa ke haath ka khana' to his mother over the phone, his sharpshooters confess love and seek forgiveness via MTNL lines. Gupta would have done well to extend his research a little back in time to instil some meat in the late emotional surge of his dark characters. In 1987-88 when Dolas was in jail he wrote a letter to his mother saying he knew that as he has killed so many people, one day someone would kill him.

Sanjay Gupta is not new to 'being inspired'. He would have done his film a favour to watch a less glamorous Black Friday and take some lessons in making films on real incidents. He and his director possibly cannot claim the alibi of their film's tagline 'Based on True Rumours'.