Yeh Mera India

Bollywood's answer to Friends makes Hollyoaks look like porn

That's the headline of the review of 'Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na' that appeared in The Guardian. I haven't even started on the review and I'm actually having issues with this article. I'll try not to go on for too long about it, but the basic premise itself is so wrong. What possible comparision can there between the American F.R.I.E.N.D.S and British show Hollyoaks? They're based in two utterly different cultures, involve people of different age groups and most basic of all, F.R.I.EN.D.S was a comedy whereas Hollyoaks (what little I watched of it) seemed more of a drama. So yes, this review starts out on the wrong foot. But hang around for the main course of foot-in-mouth.

For starters (of wait those were already served, sceond helpings of starters then) 'Jaane Tu...' was in no way India's answer to F.R.I.E.N.D.S. And not only because the movie doesn't involve any actual sex between any of the characters. Which seems to be the main bone of contention with the reviewer. Who thereby misses the point of the movie, in my very humble opinion.

'... I found it as painful and mind-numbing as someone drilling a hole in my head and filling it with cement. A mainstream movie that seeks to portray India's MTV generation's progress into adulthood, it tiptoes through the issues of sex and dating with a timidity makes Hollyoaks look like porn. But the theatre was packed with people of all ages, from babies through to grandparents, and many twenty-somethings – who loved every minute.'

Mmmm... painful... mind-numbing... head... cement... I watched the movie you know. It made me laugh. And while I'm unable to appreciate the whole best-friends-louve-each-other angle*, this is what the movie is. It definitely is the portrayal of India's MTV generation's rogress into adult-hood but essentially, it's a love-story. Like most Indian movies are. And the fact that the reviewer missed this is evident in his very first sentence (beyond the allusion to porn in the headline)

'I sometimes feel completely out of the loop of contemporary India.'

Yes, Mr Nirpal Dhaliwal. Indeed you do. With all due respect, I am guessing you're a second or third generation British-Indian, the kind whose only connection to anything Indian is the trace element of 'Indian culture' which you exhibit when it suits you, mostly when you eat Indian takeout on the days you're too bored with your usual fare. As do I guess that only your Indian roots begot you the chance to write this review in the first place. Excuse my vituperative tongue, but I am absolutely riled by the fact that someone who doesn't even begin to understand the things that constitute being 'Indian' is daring to diss a product of that very Indianness.

And so, you merrily write things such as

After a date with Meghna, Jai returns home and breathlessly tells his mum, "I have a girlfriend!" and the two stay up late chatting excitedly about her. He bases this assertion on the fact that he watched a Bond movie with a woman who kissed him goodnight on the forehead afterwards. God knows what he would have said had Meghna let him have a fumble.

There it is, again. Sex. And as if to further illustrate your point, you come up with this gem

The film then enters a strange period in which people who aren't having sex with each other steal glances at someone they're not having sex with, envying or despising them for being the person that the one they're not having sex longs to be not having sex with above all others.

I won't even pretend that I understood what you were trying to say. And this after trying several times to read through that sentence. First in a rush, hoping the meaning would hit me, much like a train hits you if you run at it full speed... when that didn't happen, then slowly, pausing so I understood the seprarate segments... but I'm afraid I had to give it up... it just doesn't make sense you see.

And then you wrap up your narration of the plot with

He and Aditi tumble into a sexless, no-kissing embrace and decide to go off to New York together and happily never have sex ever after.

Sex? Is that ALL you could think of through this movie?? Beg pardon, but there seem to be some unaddressed issues here with you.

The point being that, the no-sex was not because this was an Indian film (not entirely anyway... there's enough smut in our movies, thank you, just not your variety), but because this was not about sex at all. This was about relationships. And here's a revelation. Relationships can be interesting and riveting without having to have sex to show for it. This isn't some 'sex is against the Indian culture' attitude either. It's just that, relationships aren't given the casual status in India as they are in... the west. A boy and a girl dating isn't about the first time they play tonsil-hockey and who was better at it, or when they finally 'did it' and how good and passionate it was on a scale of one to ten... it's not about sex only. It's about the more delicate things.

Like the first time you realise you have feelings for someone. And how you grapple with those feelings, feeling shy, nervous, hopeful and terrified of confessing your love to the object of your affections. The way your heart bursts with happiness when your feelings are reciprocated and you are finally able to tell the world (if it cares in the first place, which in India it does btw) that you've found love and are celebrating. It's about excitedly telling your friends about this new development, hopefully sharing the joy with your family as well and then excitedly discussing it... It's about the time when you plan the perfect birthday for your love interest, scrimping and saving so that every little detail is perfect. It's about the plans you make for your first ever Valentine's Day together. Your first walk together in the rain. Your first bike-ride...

It's about the things that seem to be taken for granted over at yours and seem stale to an experienced dating society.

Sex figures in it all, but it's not the only thing. That is the crux, of this movie, of India's MTV generation and the crux that should have been of the review of this movie. I'm not saying this was the most brilliant film ever made about the Indian youth. But I am saying that it merited better treatment than it received at your hands.

Everyone talks about the 'Indian culture' without ever really being able to define it. I won't deny that there is much that is wrong with it and the mindsets of the Indian society regarding a few things. But we're still able to dream of delicate firsts and camaraderie with parents on issues that are central to us as the new youth... maybe on cellloid, but dream we still do. Which is more than can be said about other sex-obsessed societies which have long past lost any similar values or connections they had to those values.

A review is only good in as much as the reviewer is able to fully immerse himself in the subject and then find flaws with it. It isn't sunbathing sitting at the side of the pool, paddling with your legs in the water.

On an aside, I thought it was commendable that the very-adored character of Jai in the movie didn't have a cell-phone and refused to have one. It speaks to me of an inexplicably grounded, sensible, sensitive, comfortablein-his-middle-class-skin character. And I would any day go out with him, purely for the fact that he doesn't have a cell phone.

*mostly because right since I discovered boys, the idea of ever having to consider your male best friend as a sexual object put me off big time. Turning an asexual thing into potent sexuality is NOT a turn on.