Why do you do this?
Now, every girl with a recent heartbreak, is on streets looking for her own Shah Rukh Khan. Do you know, you have spoilt psychologists for us, like forever? Humph.
Gauri Shinde is a lyrical story-teller. For someone who could make such a local concept so universal in English Vinglish, something went amiss while making a fairly universal concept local with this movie.
I think ‘Dear Zindagi’ was a nice, feel-good, 2-hour pep-talk, but rather too naive for the subject. Having said that, I am not even sure if the audience is ready for a movie minus Katrina’s thumkas and Honey Singh’s..umm..words. It is probably not made for an out-and-out box office success, because a lot people struggling with getting their payday from the banks are a little too busy sorting their life-struggles out ( or “real” struggles as they are called) to wonder about their emotional sickness. But, at least the conversation has started – someone is finally talking about emotional well-being, and it is out there in the open for discussion. This movie is about everything that you have said in your mind, but never aloud.
It happened to remind me of a word that was doing the rounds a few months back – Urban Poor. It was a concept that only these “urban poor” understood, and for me, was a slightly romanticized notion for a situation that millennials had put themselves in. Theoretically, I always understood this concept, but I could never accept the dumbness of it all. Just by giving a label to something quite silly, doesn’t make it valid, you know!
Well this movie for me was like “urban poor well-being” – I am not saying that the struggle is not real. All I am saying is with what was shown on screen, theoretically one could understand Alia’s pain, but it failed at making me live it with her, and hence the very reason for therapy is somewhat shaken.
Having said that, I encourage everyone to see the movie – especially, people in tier II and tier III cities, where ‘modernism in thought’ is yet setting in. It is a great ice-breaker and conversation-starter between young adults and their parents about older taboos, et al. – which is pretty important. While it took some time for my mum to wrap her head around Alia’s choice of life, she was reasonably happy with Shah Rukh’s role of Krishna-right-out-of-Geeta-kinds.
Well, like SRK puts it in the movie – Genius is the one who knows when to stop. In my case, it’s at 500 words. So ya. Bye.
Genius, I say.
It is day 2 in the January of 2016!Basically, the day we are sane enough to regret all that we did to bring in the New Year! Also, the day we realise that the resolution list is made of a “no” before all that we did to bring in the new year. And also the day we live the first lie of the new year – by not doing anything or everything from the New Year resolution(s) list!
eternallytangled 