Let's have some India Shindia

Neal N' Nikki, I hear, is set in Canada. It's supposed to be a about a guy who's getting married in 21 days and wants to get laid that many times before D Day. Whatever. Salaam Namaste, a film ostensibly about live-in relationships and actually quite a good rip-off of Nine Months, was set in Australia. There have been dozens of Hindi films in between that have been set in England, America, Honolulu, the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. For every Hindi film that pans out against the backdrop of a Delhi or a Bombay, there must be, I think, three that find it necessary to set the scene of action abroad. And have you noticed? Most of the films that talk about 'revolutionary' concepts such as living-in are set abroad. As if the film-makers want to show how progressive and broad-minded Indians have become, but only if they are living away from home.

I had huge expectations from Salaam Namaste. I thought, ok finally, here's a mainstream, commercial film that talks about live-in relationships, and gives every indication of talking about it in a healthy, matter-of-fact way. The disillusionment started from the first scene when I realised it was not set in Bombay, as might have been expected, but in far-away Australia, and continued right uptill Preity Zinta, nine months pregnant and looking like she'd been carrying the kid for eighteen, breaks into a jig with rasta rappers. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the film, I did, immensely, and thought it was pretty well-made with wonderful comic timing, but I couldn't help being disappointed in it. Australia had nothing to do with it, and wouldn't it have been more pertinent to show how young urban Indians living in Indian metros didn't think it was a big deal to go in for a live-in relationship? Take Kal Ho na Ho, for that matter. Did the fact that these people were living in New York in any way add to the drama? It was a story about relationships, and would have worked out just as well in India, and maybe even captured a changing country in the funny, tongue-in-cheek manner that made it such an enjoyable film (Shah Rukh Khan's wet shirt notwithstanding).

It amazes me how, with the Indian social landscape changing so rapidly and so dramatically, film-makers refuse to take advantage of it. When so much social reality can be captured in film -- whether it's in a serious, funny or even frivolous way -- they go and take the easy way out to show it's all happening abroad. When the 'abroad' adds nothing to the story, and is as much a static backdrop as a set cut out of cardboard. Is it just stunning visuals they are after, or capturing the NRI audience? I just don't understand it. Anyway, I don't think I'll watch Neal N' Nikki.


UPDATE, UPDATE: I read this post just now and since it happens to say similar things and was written much before mine was and is on a vastly more popular blog than mine, I am now certain mine will be the next name on the Blog Plagiarism Hall of Shame. And I'll be on holiday (yes, despite my self-proclaimed dislike of the same) for the next two days, and don't want to come back to discover my name is mud. Genuine, genuine coincidence folks. Or great minds thinking alike. Whatever.