The production company that created the modern day bromance genre with Dil Chahta Hai and defended its reputation with films like Rock On!, and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara would seem perfectly fit to construct a comedy about a bunch of young guys in pursuit of making their dreams come true. Well-written characters, memorable dialogues, and the strong bond of bro-hood have defined the Excel Entertainment brand. Fukrey marks the company’s official foray into the ‘youth oriented’ space characterized by edgy, experimental content appealing to a younger demographic. And the recent success of zany comedies set in Delhi like Delhi Belly and Vicki Donor makes the Delhi-based Fukrey well positioned to generate much interest and deliver quality entertainment. But places where the aforementioned films succeeded, is exactly where this film failed.

Hunny (Pulkit Samrat) and Choocha (Varun Sharma) are friends who keep failing the 12th standard and dream of joining college strictly to chill with chicks. Like them, Lali (Manjot Singh) yearns to become an independent college goer and leave the drudgery of his family-owned restaurant. Zafar (Ali Fazal), the desi-emo college student hoping to make it as a professional singer must put aside his passion to take care of his ailing father. Being the fukrey these guys are (i.e., broke slackers with not much going for them) they devise a shortcut involving minimal work but requiring a large investment. What sort of plan do the dudes hatch? They rely on Choocha’s wacky dreams, and Hunny’s ability to decipher them, to guess winning lottery numbers that in the past has paid off in cash. The catch is that Choocha dreams infrequently, but if the guys play big the next time Choocha has a vision, they have the potential to make their individual dreams come true: Hunny, Choocha and Lali can pay the donation needed for admission, and Zafar can provide his father with quality healthcare. The fukrey put all their money on the line (Lali even hands over the deed to the restaurant) but even then they need help from a big fish to provide the required returns. Panditji (Pankaj Tripathi), who is literally and figuratively a college gatekeeper, introduces the lads to the Bholi Punjaban (Richa Chadda), a brash n’ crass female gangster who runs a brothel and what looks like a Nigerian email scam. If the fukrey are able to manage shady characters and situations, they can hit the jackpot and transform their lives.

My guess is that director Mrighdeep Singh Lamba must have provided a similar synopsis to executives at Excel, and by showing interest in such a lackluster premise is proof that Excel unfortunately believed the winning formula for this genre is outside the universe that made films like DCH, Rock On! and ZNMD successful. Fukrey is a juvenile attempt riddled with plot holes, insipid jokes, and scenes that do nothing to move the story forward. Why do Lali, Zafar and the ruthless businesswoman Bholi Punjaban place so much faith and cash on Hunny’s promise of Choocha being a golden goose? So Hunny happily dresses up in drag to dance in front of an audience for money, only to back out because he doesn’t want to shave his chest? And why does Bholi Punjaban hand over a bag of ecstasy worth tens of thousands of rupees to guys to she just met to sell at a rave party? Furthermore, Fukrey isn’t even successful in making the city of New Delhi a key character the way Oye Lucky Lucky Oye, Delhi Belly, and Vicky Donor did. Rather than adding flavor, culture and flair, Delhi does nothing more than provide a backdrop.

A highlight in the film is the melodious Punjabi number ‘Ambarsariya’, which plays in the background as Hunny flirts with his ladylove, Priya (Priya Anand). The song is a bit of ‘Masakali’ from Delhi 6 and a dash of ‘Pani Da Rang’ from Vicky Donor and manages to steal the limelight from the forgettable ‘Beda Paar’, which now has the distinction of being a Mika Singh song that will not be danced to at any wedding.

Pulkit Samrat, who was last seen as the lead in Bittu Boss has the looks of a leading man, but too often relies on his version of the Blue Steel pose to impress. Newcomer Varun Sharma is comfortable in front of the camera and shows a flair for comedy, but would have truly shined had the poor jokes not failed him. Manjot Singh continues to play the same character he did in Oye Lucky Lucky Oye, and Priya Anand, who was the supportive niece in English Vinglish, has no real scope to charm this time around. The best performances come from Richa Chadda as the queen of illegal enterprises and Pankaj Tripathi as the connected gatekeeper. Both Chadda and Tripathi perform with ease and successfully navigate through a weak screenplay.

Fukrey highlights the fact that the makers who perfected the bromance formula forgot their own recipe and proves that making a comedy for a younger audience involves much more than a college, double entendres, females hurling expletives, and a Delhi dialect.

Of late, India has been gripped by a riveting soap opera. To borrow Dharmendra’s immortal words…is kahaani mein drama hai, tragedy ha. In short everything that spells ‘high TRPs’. The soap has been titled ‘Cricket’ for convenience’s sake simply because the plotline contains a few elements of the game such as bat, ball, stumps and a few men dressed in blue.

Indeed, recent episodes of this show have proved to be more exciting and entertaining than any movie or TV series released in the last few years. Sreesanth’s towel antics, Ajit Chandila’s sob story and Ankeet Chavan’s wedding drama amidst fulfilling jail duties have been riveting stuff, to say the least! Then came the other more important characters – a beefy Bollywood sidekick with a funny name Vindoo, a big fat expressionless ringmaster called N Srinivasan, whose part-time job includes being the President of the Board of Control of Cricket in India (BCCI), his multi-tasking son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan who gives the term ‘enthusiastic’ a new meaning altogether, the lead hero MS Dhoni, who also holds the position of the national team’s captain among other duties, and the two new latest, glamorous entrants – Raj Kundra and yummy mummy Shilpa Shetty. Can you name any film or TV series that has so many characters, each more complex and devious than the other, so many twists, turns and hidden motives that add more masala to an already sizzling tale?

But just when the plot is heating up, come the spoilsport purists with their familiar lament – about how innocence has been lost forever in cricket and how the great game has been sullied. These vocal but boring commentators, writers and arm-chair critics have been trilling a lot about the need to clean up the game. They belong to a different generation and era – a period, when they say, cricket was a great sport and players played for pride. They feel the current spot-fixing saga, in many ways, represents the greater rot in society. They question the silence of the mighty lambs – the Tendulkars, the Gavaskars, the Kapil Devs and so on. They ramble about the urgent steps needed to stem the rot.

They are just talking bullshit. Ladies and gentlemen, THIS – money, greed, sex, ambition – is what the soap called Cricket is all about. Who said it was about pride, achievement, sporting spirit and all those lofty ideas? May be they were, in a different time and zone.

Some are even suggesting that we should stop watching IPL since it’s our eyeballs that account for the TRPs. How silly! In a country where depressing news constantly makes headlines, why should we be denied of our yearly source of entertainment? Getting entertained is our basic human right after all that we are subjected to by our politicians. We can either spend a bomb on tickets, popcorn and nachos and watch a bad movie in the multiplex or watch Cricket in the comfort of our own home – the latter is a cheaper option anyway.

So please, let’s hope the current brouhaha doesn’t lead to the banning of the IPL or any other form of cricket.

Sometimes I wonder why there is so much outrage among fans about the recent developments. If you remember correctly, we, the shock-proof aam aadmi of India, got introduced to the term ‘match-fixing’ in a context other than marriage more than a decade ago. Even then, similar editorials and laments were made. Surely, we weren’t so naïve to imagine that cricket has been cleaned up just because the careers of a few fixers like Mohammad Azharuddin, Manoj Prabhakar, Nayan Mongia, etc ended!

And that’s exactly the point – when you can’t change the situation, change your expectation from it! We feel shocked and angry because we ‘expect’ our cricketers to be honest. Do we feel shocked when news of yet another scam breaks out? No. We just shrug, utter a few expletives, then wearily resign ourselves to the fact that the nation has been looted of a few more thousand crores. So why this outrage over a few cricketers tucking towels in their pockets?

Cynics say the current controversy will also follow the same pattern that other episodes have – expose, outrage, action, discussion, more discussion, some more action and finally….back to square one until the next incident wakes us up from our stupor. Now, after all the hollering and posturing by our TV anchors, despite new juicy revelations coming out every single day will the bad guys get punished? Your guess is as good as mine.

So instead of getting cynical or outraged, let’s change our expectations at least in the matter of cricket. Cricket, henceforth, should be declared a source of entertainment and levied entertainment tax. Characters of the game, like that of a saas-bahu show will come and go. What matters is that the drama is intact.

The next time a cricket match is telecast, let there be a disclaimer like they do in movies – ‘All characters in this match are fictional, any resemblance to any real sportsman is strictly coincidental.’

Similarly, the next time we watch cricket – be it in the stadium or on TV, be it a Test, ODI or an IPL, let’s be aware that what we are watching is one big theatre of the absurd. Don’t we willingly suspend our disbelief when we watch a film? Let’s treat cricket the same way!

Perhaps cricket can also be anointed the biggest reality show of our times since we love reality TV so much. A show which has been carefully scripted by someone sitting in the BCCI or a bookie’s office. We will clap, cry and cheer our on-screen heroes; they are doing such a great job of faking emotions!

Now if you still insist on being silly and feeling the REAL thrill of sport, don’t expect it from cricket. Watch tennis or athletics instead. The cricket, the way we knew it and grew up watching, is perhaps dead forever. RIP.

One of the last Twitter messages by Nafisa (Jiah) Khan – sent on 20 April and nestled awkwardly under a page of thanks and smileys to well-wishing fans – simply read:

“were.”

Not much we can glean from that, except that it is in the past tense. Now that Ms Khan herself is also consigned to the past, it takes on an eerie significance. What could she have meant? Perhaps it somehow ties into all the inside knowledge and speculation about her personal life and career. Perhaps it was something entirely trivial.

*

As it is, Khan was found hanging from a dupatta tied to the ceiling at her Juhu home on the night of 3 June 2013. Police announced that the death was accidental. She didn’t have a major fan following, but the major news outlets all picked up the story and her name became a trending topic on Twitter the next day. Her roles in Nishabd, Ghajini, and Housefull, opposite superstars such as Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, and Akshay Kumar, had gained her enough of a profile to be missed upon her passing.

And what an awful end! Suicide. A shiver-inducing word, a dreadful deed. Such a beautiful young woman, only 25 years old. Why did she do it? Many expressed shock at the news. Others criticised her choice harshly. Still others criticised those expressing shock as jumping on some sort of mourning bandwagon. Mourning can be ugly, no doubt, but never as grotesque as those who would make light of it.

We can’t know exactly why she did it. Suicide seems to happen for so many reasons, and while there are overarching theories (such as those explained in this memorable article on the ’suicide epidemic’), each individual case is unique.

There are trends. Viveka Babaji, a Mauritian model who committed suicide in Mumbai 2010, left a note accusing a former lover. R. Ajay, a Tamil actor who committed suicide in 2011, was said to be in love with a co-star. Jiah Khan’s suicide was immediately linked by fellow actor Kamaal R Khan to matters of the heart. If you’ve ever been in love, you’ll know how it can carve up your perception of reality, how it can take you lower than you’ve ever been. If you’re reading this, though, you haven’t reached a point at which taking your own life is palatable – for love or any other reason.

Glad we’re both still here. I came close once, though, when I lived in Kerala. The details are too painful and embarrassing to admit right now, but I picked up the knife with intent because the hurt inside and the sense of mental isolation became too severe to bear. In the face of overwhelming mental strain, I sought a different kind of pain to occupy my focus. It genuinely seemed like it would be easier that way. A desperate distraction, a lesser evil. More an episode of self-harm than a fully ideated suicide attempt, but it could have ended very badly.

The moment passed soon enough. As I lay in a bed with bandages stopping up my arm, I had the opportunity to reflect on what I had done, and the hurt I could have caused others. This was far more unpleasant than the act itself. To those of you who believe suicide is selfish, worthy of criticism and condemnation, I would say that in some cases – mine, certainly – the idea that what you are doing is selfish has absolutely no bearing on the situation. It is a visceral decision. Whether or not it was a choice, it did not seem like one at the time. The pain exceeded my capacity to cope in a less destructive way.

I can’t speak for the dead, of course, or for the countless others who have attempted suicide, or for millions more who have seriously considered it. All I know for sure is what I experienced. It comes back to me with every suicide in the news and holds me back from jumping to conclusions.

Suicide has left holes in most people’s lives in some way or another. Perhaps a good way to fill the void is listen to those who most need to speak.

*

Fifteen minutes after that one-word message — “were” — Ms Khan tweeted an apology. Her BlackBerry had sent the message by itself, it seemed. Just an accident. Can’t read too much into it. Even so, I feel a sadness at how final it seems.

*

A good resource with realistic help for those considering suicide can be found here.

If you are in India and want to talk to someone about depression, call AASRA on 91-22-27546669 or email aasrahelpline@yahoo.com.

Is British Asian culture uncool? The event at Asia House in search of an answer was over-subscribed, suggesting it’s a question many younger British Asians still aren’t sure about. Are we cool?

Led by chairperson – self-admittedly un-cool journalist Sathnam Sanghera, the dubious panel didn’t seem too sure either. Radio presenters Nihal and Bobby Friction, cookery author Ravinda Bhogal and writer Siddartha Bose, the sole objective voice of the four, were all supposed arbiters of modern British Asian cool but their take seemed to be that the currency of British Asian cool has ebbed and flowed, the apex being the mid-late 90s scene centred around Talvin Singh’s Anokha club. Since then, it’s been largely left to hip-hop producers like Timbaland to take up the mantle (though this was over a decade back). Asians themselves have been out of the picture, reliant on black or white backers for credibility, whether it’s Jay Sean or MIA. Friction and Nihal waxed nostalgic over the 90s, displaying little enthusiasm for the Asian underground of today, Friction more excited about what’s happening in India.

That’s the populist arts. In literature and theatre, south Asian themes have been a trendy favourite, even if this hasn’t always extended to British Asians closer to home – but then perhaps Bollywood’s inclusion of NRI stories has negated the need for British Asians to tell their own. Much was made of how the UK’s Asian populous has splintered so that we’re more likely to define ourselves by whether we are Punjabi or Mirpuri, with the panel wondering whether this new micro-localism means British Asians are too stratified to produce anything that could satisfy everyone.

There was some mulling over whether certain values in Asian culture inherently prohibit the freedom that coolness generally requires. At least, cool as we know it – is there an Asian sense of cool? Questions of whether British Asians are too in thrall to the dominant, western, Hollywood and rock ‘n’ roll definition of cool to acknowledge – or celebrate – a different kind went unanswered. Though perhaps they didn’t have to – Friction has a de-Asian-ised nom de plume while Nihal has lost his surname. It seems that even cool Asians have to lose some of those still-less cool ethnic signifiers to make it happen. So even if the panel’s definitions of cool never got much further than “not caring what others think” (though for a discussion that kicked off with Sanghera’s opener “what do your parents think about what you do?”, it wasn’t that surprising), in a world where individualism now carries a greater implication of selfishness, perhaps old notions of cool are in flux.

Curiously, when an audience member asked if there was any protest in British Asian music, the sensible panel disapproved that such songs would perpetrate Asian victimhood (never mind that Nihal’s childhood heroes Public Enemy specialised in underclass protest). He favoured the ‘work and don’t complain’ ethic of his parents while Ravinder preferred the respectable ideal of “empowerment” over ugly protest. They suggested that far from the lonely old days of feeling like the only Asian in the room, brown-ness is now a useful bargaining tool in media life (though these established, middle-class media professionals might not be best positioned to comment on the odds for all).

A quick glance at the media seems to confirm this – Asians have never been more visible. The UK’s biggest ethnic group, British Asians might can be spotted across television and radio networks, both behind and in front of the scenes, middle class Asian women in particular. Professional and hard-working enough to satisfy old values, but ‘different’ enough to provide novelty and the sense of a path self-defined, perhaps media professionalism is the new British Asian cool.

According to lots of media reports across the World Wide Web, women are choosing NOT to come to India by the planeload. This season has been pretty tough for tourism operators who specialise in women travel (Women Travel Mother India) to a land where women tourists have been forced to leap from hotel room balconies to avoid unwanted attention of the salacious kind. For the male traveller to India, it’s somewhat different – India is paradise to the average bloke for whom all this gender hysteria is getting a wee bit too threatening. Girls might wanna have fun but blokes really just want to be blokes.

I mean to say, if you could live in a world where there was no need to even bother to civilise yourself in order to find wife because your mummy was going to take care of that for you and present you with a ready wrapped bride at just the right time in your life, where you could burp and fart and scratch your balls whilst staring slack jawed at the nearest woman, where you could brush into the delicious curves and bumps of any random woman of your choosing on a city street, where people stepped out of your way on the street, where you could make loud and suggestive comments to your friends about a woman walking by, where you could hold hands with your bestie and hang out for endless hours just shooting the breeze and where you could go home at the end of the day to a house where at least two women would treat you like a king, what are the chances that you would think you were in some kind of bloke paradise?

Most women who travel to India will report a sense of discomfort if they travel alone in the land where only the goddess aspect of the female energy is worshipped in theory but not in practice. Reports of men staring, touching, groping and making lewd comments abound and god knows I have had my share of that in my years of being a woman alone in India.

I have been told that it’s a cop out to mention that rape and sexual abuse of women is a world-wide phenomenon, and that while we live in a patriarchal society rape will always be a very handy method of social control. This is by no means a way of excusing or negating the reality of the situation in India but simply something I know from more than forty years of gender activism and working with survivors of sexual abuse. The lessons from those years are a bitter pill for me to swallow when I ask myself what my years of activism has won for women in my own country, for my daughters and granddaughters. Pretty much nothing. We kid ourselves that we have managed to get wage parity but there is still a terrible imbalance there as any woman who has hit her head on the corporate glass ceiling will testify to. Is life any safer for women since I began my No Excuse for Sexual Abuse campaign as the community educator for the Rape Crisis Centre in my local community? Nope.

What has changed is that women are no longer re victimised by the system should she report a rape. Cops have undergone specialised training and sexual abuse teams have been set up in police stations. Doctors have also undergone training in more sensitive ways to deal with a survivor of sexual assault. The legal profession has been bought into line and no longer is a woman’s sexual history of any relevance in a rape trial. What has changed is that the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff now has new tyres and the survivor is more often than not believed, respected and listened to by a team of sexual assault specialists. But it’s still an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. Women and girls are still raped, their lives radically altered and damaged in ways that are terribly difficult and often impossible to overcome. No woman who has been raped or sexually abused will ever be the same woman as she was before the violence. But her voice will be heard.

That’s something at least, and something is always better than nothing as we say in India. Rape like drinking and driving is not socially acceptable or excusable any more. Men have been sensitised by the actions of radical feminists to think before they speak. In fact we have civilised them. We demanded change from them in our homes, in our workplaces, in schools, in training centres and universities. Now men have to think before they speak and they do so in fear of being verbally challenged by any right thinking woman. Men will not civilise themselves within a patriarchal society but women do that work. Mothers do it, workmates do it, sisters and cousins do it, teachers do it. Pretty much every woman who a man meets in the West will demand certain markers of what we consider ‘civilised behaviour’ from our men. The poor dears have been forced to think before they speak on gender issues lest some woman challenges his stance.

Its women who civilise men, its mothers who raise these boys who grow into men who harass women on city streets.

I recently had an epiphany. None of my emotions, feelings or thoughts are of any significance. When I am sad, I call my friends (poor things) and weep, when I feel affection towards someone I tell them, when I like someone I make it a point to let them know. When I am mad at someone, I tell them off… well actually that’s not true, I just sulk a bit and then forget about it, but that’s not the point.

Of late though, I have realized that these emotions of mine are mere pretenders, watery facsimiles of the real thing.

Like the old tree that falls in the forest, an emotion is of little or no value if kept to oneself (how sad is that?) or expressed to a small handful of close friends. Today, no emotion is true until it has been expressed with 4 exclamation points and 3 emoticons on Facebook. While Hallmark offered its honey-glazed sentiments ready to consume, FB is a DIY forum for you to let loose upon the world your brand of emotion.

And this is interesting in a country that used to until 20 years ago preferred to see its emotions in Eastman colour and heaving chests on the screen- preferably expressed by Mohammed Rafi or Lata Mangeshkar. At home, we would rather have slit our collective throats before telling our kids we errmmmm loved them.

And this goes along with another very common Indian trait that FB has allowed us to jettison – our superstitions around good luck –touch wood. Don’t brag too much, don’t get too happy and so on. Somehow, the fact that we are all packed so tightly into this bandwagon seems to have squeezed that fear out of the window. Since everyone’s bragging about their children, it should be ok.

And at a personal level, clearly, sending out this gooey, glutinous stuff out to hundreds or thousands of faceless people is less threatening than sitting one slightly bewildered child on a knee and telling him you love him or saying that to your puzzled parents.

So what we have is this – the collective unexpressed, repressed love, pride, joy, happiness of the last few centuries now flooding FB with regularity. Here for your benefit is my analysis of the nuances of the emotions we see on FB.

Glutinous Emotion – Mothers – have never been more doting of children, more proud of them or more happy to have carried them for 9 painful months

Gruff Emotion – Fathers – have never gruffly been so proud of their offspring, now in Stanford ( take that – guy from school who friended me last week)

Smarmy Emotion: Kids have never thanked mothers more extravagantly and embarrassingly for their love and support – for being the great mothers they are and have been and will always be for they are always such wonderful people … at some point everyone gets lost.

Birthday Emotion Children are thanked profusely for having birthdays before being congratulated, blessed etc. No detail is too minute or personal, no thought must be left unexpressed. I find it particularly charming when one and two year olds are heartily congratulated for having negotiated their ways through the pitfalls of year one and two (thanks for not crashing the car).

Corporate Emotion – Colleagues and bosses are thanked profusely for their collective support and creativity and affection. This must be accompanied by a group photo of suitable corporate silliness.

Marital Emotions : Husbands and wives thanking each other everyday for their sheer awesomeness. Congratulating each other on anniversaries and pledging everlasting love.

I miss the old days. When my dad felt a surge of affection, he’d buy me a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate (the narrow, purple and silver foil one) and that was it. Nuff said.

A shamed policeman (a short but effective cameo by Anupam Kher) slowly approaching his death informs his policeman son, the cynically suppressed Arya (Prithviraj Sukumaran) that he secretly fathered another family shortly after Arya’s mother’s death. Now it is Arya’s responsibility to look after them. When he visits the family, he discovers that his ‘brother’ Vishal (Arjun Kapoor) is a dead ringer for Ajay, the abrasive son of criminal tycoon Yashwardhan (Jackie Shroff). With the help of his strong, assertive uncle, DCP Ravikant (Rishi Kapoor) they hatch a plan to switch Vishal with Ajay in order to infiltrate Yashwardhan’s business and to bring his corrupt empire down. But once seedha-saada Vishal is embroiled in the politics of power, he begins to wonder whose side he should really be fighting for. As does Arya. As does Ajay.

Let’s get one thing straight – forget the posters you’ve seen, the scantily-clad music video you may have noticed on syndication, even the innovative marketing strategy that has Arjun Kapoor playing a double role in his media interviews. This. Is. An. Ensemble. Piece. The promotions for the film have all but claimed that Arjun Kapoor’s Ajay/Vishal is the next Don movie. With the great box office that the aforementioned franchise made, it’s not a surprise why they wanted to do this, but the truth is that Aurangzeb is a lot more intelligent than Shah Rukh Khan’s entertainer.

There are some truly strong, interesting themes at play here. How much of our personality is dependent on societal upbringing over genetic inheritance? Can we be family without sharing the same blood? Should ambition trump family? Should family trump justice? Each of the male characters in this film has a part to play, and director Atul Sabharwal has done a great job in devising a strong ensemble of three-dimensional men, all with their own ambitions, strengths and weaknesses. Arjun Kapoor, Prithviraj Sukumaran, Rishi Kapoor and Jackie Shroff should be well commended for their fantastic performances here. Fantastic male performances for male characters.

The moments where the film truly fails is when it attempts to cater to the ‘public’ (i.e. horny Indian men) with slow-motion bikini swims and unnecessarily long sex scenes, courtesy of Brit-Asian actress Sashaa Agha. As her debut, Sashaa unfortunately delivers a below-par performance, showing more talent for her vocals on the film’s song “Barbaadiyaan”. Female talents are generally wasted here, with even Amrita Singh’s comeback as Yashwardhan’s shifty moll Nina coming off a bit stale. Not all of the blame can be taken by the actresses – the female characters just aren’t very well-developed. Let’s not even get started on Tanvi Azmi’s ‘80s antihero’s mother’ stereotype previously designed for Rakhee / Nirupa Roy.

With so many characters and multi-stranded stories to follow, it would have been easy for the viewer to get lost but thankfully the characters are so diverse that this is never a predicament. Unfortunately, there are plot holes aplenty that are often covered up by lazy writing. A continuous occurrence is a character witnessing something bad, only to tell the culprit in vivid detail how they’re not going to get away with it as they’re going to straight to the police. “And there’s nothing you can do about it. What are you going to do? Shoot me?” Duh.

Inspirations from Hollywood films such as The Devil’s Double and True Romance are clearly visible, in addition to Bollywood classics like Khal Nayak and Don (obviously). Inspirations work fine in a film, other than when they are (a) scenes copied action for action or (b) scenes that have inspired so many other films that they’ve become downright clichés. Unfortunately for Aurangzeb, it claims the latter – the Mexican stand-off, the bad-guy-gone-good,…Nirupa Roy. There’s nothing wrong with being inspired, but Sabharwal really should have put his own spin on it if he wanted to go down this path.

With just a little more development, Aurangzeb could have been a masterpiece. It has its heart in the right place with three-dimensional characters you care for, great cinematography, a heap of strong morals relevant to today’s India and a fantastic story where you really don’t know what’s going to happen next. It’s just a real pity that the journey is peppered with idiocy between the genius that is clearly visible here. For his next film, this reviewer implores Sabharwal to forget about box office and what he’s seen in other people’s films, but to follow his own heart – because that’s where Aurangzeb really gets it right.

What is worse than being single?

It’s being in the company of ‘a double’.

Ok, that’s a terrible one but there is no other way to describe my predicament when I went out on a ‘triangle date’ the other day.

Now, what’s a triangle date you may wonder! Let me explain.

It’s a ‘date by mistake’ where a singleton goes out (knowingly or unknowingly) with a man and a woman who are in a relationship or are planning to get into one. You go out with them because you believe you are out to have a good time with your pals at the movies or at a café or restaurant. Instead, you suddenly find yourself in a strange situation – of being the third angle of a triangle. The angle where you are pushed into the corner at the top, solo, and have no choice but to sit and stare benignly at the other two angles who appear to be in such perfect symmetry at the two ends of the line.

Now, I am not jealous of couples though pop psychologists may think so. Neither does seeing the unmistakable flush of love on their faces make me feel wistful. Like the rest of the world, I too love lovers. But the fact of the matter is: nothing can match the unbearable, agonizing, hair-splitting annoyance of being in the company of a much-in-attraction couple. Whoever said that three is a crowd was damn right, never mind what a ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ or a ‘Kai Po Che’ would have you believe. (But then they were about three men having a blast, I am sure things wouldn’t be as sweet and fun if the threesome comprised two women and a man in love with one of the women).

The sequence of events usually happens thus: you plan a harmless evening out with your friends or get invited to one. But as the evening progresses, you realise that your friends are more interested in each other than you. Gradually, subtly, unconsciously, you are edged out of the equation as they crack jokes or make gestures that you barely recognise. You try to fit in, laugh with them, crack a few jokes of your own and to their credit, they graciously make you feel welcome but that is exactly the problem – they, as well as you, have to make the EFFORT to have fun and feel like one unit. At times, they go out of their way to draw you into their world so that you don’t feel left out but that, in effect, makes you feel worse. For reality strikes you hard that you have unwittingly become the thorn in their rose stem! This especially happens when you, for some reason or the other, are not aware that two of your friends are seeing each other or are interested in each other ‘that’ way. You do not only have to get over the shock realisation of a new thrust to the friendship, you then have to pretend to be happy for them!

There are also times when you invite a friend and she insists on bringing her boyfriend or husband. “You wouldn’t mind, would you?” she coos. You want to say you do but end up saying ‘of course not’. And the torture begins. If you know the boyfriend well, it’s a slightly different story but if you don’t… well, it’s pure torture.

Mind you, I am not against PDA. Those in love kiss, hold hands, dance, behave as if they are oblivious to the world (they are), but can they at least respect the sentiments of a singleton who is forced to have a plastic smile on her face even as she is expected to gush, ‘oh how cute the two of you look’ when in reality she’d rather give them a hard shake-up and scream, ‘stop it you two, get a room’!

My worldly-wise friends who are experienced in relationship matters often chide me for my immaturity. It’s natural, they say, for couples in love to behave like couples in love (as if I didn’t know!) and that I should grow up and stop behaving like a nanny. But they don’t get it. While we, the single, cynical and unattached, agree that love is a many splendored thing and it’s amazing to be with the object of your affection there is one message to love-birds: please do not behave you are on a date when you are not on one! Just what are we supposed to do when you are busy feeding each other or making those eye gestures? How long can we pretend to pick on our food or stare lazily at the sky or look side-wards at other diners and manage to be totally cool? It’s plain BORING!

The worst is when you are taken for a human shield, especially by those having an extra marital friendship. Since you are not a threat, you are taken along ostensibly to act as cover for unsuspecting spouses or family. It’s terrible because they expect you to understand and not judge and of course you do understand, but standing guard so that they have a good time is against the human rights of singles!

The recently-married ones are a different story altogether. Since the honeymoon phase is still on, the topic of conversation often centres on their fantastic marriage, fabulous romance and family even if you’d rather talk cricket, movies or the latest scam hitting the country. The most torturous part: when they ask you about your non-existent love life (“still single?” “are you on the lookout” “what plans of marriage” “let’s fix you with a great guy we know”) and then sagely go on to extol the virtues of being hooked.

Finally, there is the other extreme – couples, who you believed, were solid but suddenly liquefy over a small matter and begin arguing in front of you. They may or may not be married; they may be in the first few months of a relationship or may be love-veterans but nothing, absolutely nothing, can hide the fright of having to hear and see a man and a woman argue when you least expect it – say in the midst of a movie or a dinner or when you are at their home. Suddenly you feel like choking on your coffee as unsavoury family details spill out or snide remarks passed. You feel like curling into a ball and disappear into earth and look everywhere else except them! But suddenly there is no escape as you are drawn into the fight and horror of horrors, forced to take sides!

The safest is to go with world-weary, been there-seen-that-experienced-that couples, married or otherwise. Secure and comfortable with each other, it’s like socialising with any of your buddies. Perhaps they know what happens to a relationship after years of being in a relationship and hence, just let you be without any additional drama.

Having been the thorn or to use a more desi term, the kabab mein haddi with far too many couples in varied stages of relationships, I have decided I will try my best to avoid going out with them. Though it is a bit difficult given that I am one of the few singles left in my group! Perhaps a smarter thing to do would be to enquire what stage their bond is in at the moment. Or better still, have a date of my own or another friend to accompany me. At least I can be meaningfully engaged in conversation with the fourth angle of what now becomes a square while the other two are lost in their world! Then, whether they are squabbling or cootchie-cooing, it doesn’t matter!

Yes, a foursome is definitely is so much better than a threesome!