Watched a Movie!

Chak De!

You never thought you would hear me talk about this, did you? The fact of the matter is that my husband loves going to the movies, and for a brief honeymoon period we used to watch a movie every weekend, even if I fell asleep through half of it. He loves those action & drama things that Hollywood churns out so routinely. Denzel Washington, Harrison Ford, and what not. Perhaps that shows you that for the past five years or so I am a little out of touch, considering how old these guys that I am talking about are! He would always manage to talk me out of chick-flicks, and since I rarely had enough enthusiasm to go without him, the only real chick-flick I managed to see in the past billion years is Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion (I strongly recommend this one, it rocks). Anyway I would go to all these movies with him but I would insist that they were all exactly the same, like there is a whole series of them based on American Presidents, starring Gene Hackman & so on, which are identical. It infuriates him to hear me say this, the man who has watched A Few Good Men about a million times and can quote word for word all the dialogues, and still, when it plays on the Idiot Box on a Sunday, will abandon everything else and glue his eyes to it.

Well, that’s him, don’t tell him I said all that about him here, OK buddy. In a coup of sorts I convinced him to watch Chak De! I reminded him incessantly that the only sort of movies that we watched in our hey-days that we both enjoyed were Sports Movies. The Mighty Ducks, The Air Up There, anything to do with any Basketball Player ever made, that stuff. Also we go so very rarely to watch movies these days (last one being Sivaji), that he was almost excited to go along. Despite SRK & Bollywood’s general tendency to break into song & dance (which is another place we completely bifurcate at; he switches away from songs, I flip channels to find them), and generally cry randomly. You know, nothing clever about them, no coherent mention of the IRA or Bad Russians. No particular statements that catch you, no ‘You want the truth, you can’t handle the truth’ type stuff. Plus he is still reeling from Kal Ho Na Ho where SRK did his ‘Mera DIL to kamzor hai’ dialogue & cried and generally irritated everyone mightily even when he died. So, you may say, coup it was. Plus we had to take the child along.

I would say, in all, that it was good fun. I did not feel miserable and irritated when I emerged out. I was feeling all enthusiastic about going for a game of something, soccer, basketball, squash, whatever. The girls were great, I think you are supposed to say that, it’s the politically correct thing to say. But really, not all of them, but the Punjabi girl was real cute, and while the short one was irritating (despite or because of the fact that she reminded me of myself), she had some good dialogues. Some of the ladies looked a little too made up to be real sports people, but then maybe I could give them the benefit of doubt based on the fact that my connection to reality is poor. And SRK, well, several things about him: (a) He looked real nice, that ginger-ish beard thing was good, also very fit (b) He did not cry, or dance, or laugh maniacally (c) He runs well, not in the usual manner of Bollywood. I am willing to forgive his poor basketball dribbling skills exhibited in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai now (d) Did not sing in the middle of the stadium or appalling things of that nature.

So, yeah, good movie. I was feeling so good at the end of it and almost as if SRK was a friend I would go drinking with on a Saturday night that later in the evening when I had some very very rarely achieved alone time, I decided to watch Veer Zaara. Which was really a bad move on my part, it took forever to finish thanks to advertisements every three seconds, he cried and recited random poetry and made his hands shake and acted all vague and old and rubbishy most of the time, and though I kept telling myself that I believe in true love, felt like crap at the end of it. So despite Chak De, I will restrict myself to song videos & if I ever meet Shah Rukh Khan on the streets (ha ha!), tell him honestly that I like his beard.

PS: Must avoid Om Shanti Om, viewed from any angle, this one will be painful.