A tribute to Bollywood

Now that I have your attention, let me tell you the truth - this is not a tribute to Bollywood. It's actually the opposite, a 'dis-tribute' to Bollywood as I would like to call it, for lack of a better word or more precisely, my lack of knowledge of one.

Bollywood has been seeking inspiration from Hollywood since eras long gone by. Stunts have been inspired, dialogues have been inspired, entire scenes have been inspired, names have been inspired (remember Fight Club: Members Only) and most frequently, entire movies have been inspired. 

Here's the Bollywood-Hollywood relationship from a different take. What if some of the Hollywood movies were made in Hindi with their names translated literally? Well, here's what we would get:

• The GodFather - Bhagwan Papa
• Psycho - Paagal
• Rear Window - Peeche ki Khidki
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - Anguthi ka bhagwan: Raja waapas aa raha hain
• One flew over the cuckoo's nest - Ek Koyal ke ghosla ke upar se ud gaya

The list could have gone on and on. In fact, all of what I had to do was open up the IMDB Top 250 movie list and one in every 7 movies made it to the list. As for the other 6, some of them were too long (Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb), som too short (Wall-E), some Chinese movies, some I couldn't understand how to interpret (The Departed) and some which you wouldn't have understood after I used the Hindi word as suggested by Word AnyWhere (Google's first result for English to Hindi translator).

And if you think the above list is funny, the actual names given to the Hollywood movies when dubbed in Hindi are no less. The best example of this that I can remember is Tomb Raider becoming Sherni No. 1. And Slumdog Millionaire becomes Slumdog Crorepati - what about the Slumdog part of things? I know it's a little difficult to translate that but then how about coming up with an entirely different name for it as is the norm? How about "Jamal ka Kamaal"? (For those who haven't seen the movie, Jamal is the name of the lead character in the movie)

Before I round up the post, let me do some justice to the title of the post. And how? Let's re-vist the legendary "Gandhiji ki dhoti mein" game. This game is a part of growing up of every Indian guy, and the girls who happen to be around them while the game is being played. For those of you who don't know about the game and think of me as a sick, perverted and repulsive bastard, well the game is exactly what you think it is - Think of a Bollywood movie name and then prefix "Gandhiji ki dhoti mein" to that and say it aloud. After years of playing the game as a teenager and loving Bollywood for it, here's revisiting the best of it as a 20-something:

• Kaante
• Hungama
• Sholay
• Zanjeer
• Ram Gopal Varma ki Aag
• Andaaz Apna Apna
• Golmaal
• Main Hoon Na
• Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi
• Heroes
• Dhoom
• Aaja Nachle
• Bhool Bhulaiya
• Darna Zaroori Hai
• Halla Bol
• Jab We Met
• Mere Baap Pehle Aap
• No Smoking
• Shoot on Sight
• Ugly aur Pagli
• Phoonk
• Mere Do Anmol Ratan

Gandhiji ki dhoti mein Bend It Like Beckham, anyone?

A random assortment of facts

My mind works randomly. It hits a note, stays put for some time and just when that note is about to peak, it hits another note. I know it's a weird analogy to draw but then weird things can be explained only using other weird things, or else they would sound just like a I-woke-up-at-10-in-the-morning-and-went-to-the-toilet-and-took-a-long-piss kind of thing. Anyways, so I told you that my mind works randomly. And when it's working randomly, it works really fast. It is the closest I can come to the multi-tasking performed by modern operating systems and the fairer sex.

I am talking rather randomly, am I not? So let's cut things short and let me do what I do best - split incoherent text into cohesive pieces of text and give you....ahhhaa....bulleted text. So, these are the latest notes that my mind hit and my fingers took down in the GMail Drafts folder (I don't trust my hard disk when it comes to my "funny" blog entries):

• When was the last time you tuned into a news channel and they weren't airing "Breaking News"....can't remember right? It's pretty much like the last hot chick you saw on Roadies whom Raghu didn't ask to dance (aka "Entertain Us...do something....can you dance? Music please" - with a big smile and expectant eyes).
  
  
• Ever thought of why so many children have been ending up in trenches and ditches ever after the Prince incident? That incident took the entire nation by storm with everybody anybody knew following the rescue operation as if they were following the stock market after the Satyam fiasco. But after that happened, I can distinctly remember atleast 3-4 more of the same incidents happening, government coughing up compensatory sums everytime when the media blamed them for leaving the trenches open and yup it's "Breaking News" everytime.
  
  
• When was the last time you logged into rediff.com or msnindia.com for that matter and you don't remember seeing a "The Hottest Bollywood Babes" link floating around somewhere on the homepage? And if you happen to click on the link, which you would if you happen to be sitting at home on a Sunday afternoon with nothing to do, it will be the same old collection of Mallika Sherawat, Bipasha Basu, Priyanka Chopra and Gul Panag (she looks like a Goddess after the Maxim Metamorphosis though) with the same old saucy chessy text written all over. Is it that our country doesn't generate enough news (which is highly improbable having a country of a billion and more and a proportional number of Sa-Re-Ga-Ma type shows - "Himesh ko gussa kyon aata hain" - a full 6 mins, 37 seconds coverage on you-know-which-channel showing how Himesh got into an argument with one of the co-judges) or is that in India, no matter what sells and what doesn't, sex forever will (after all we are from the land of Kamasutra, so the legacy has to continue).
  
  
• How low would the self esteem of call center guys be? I mean, first of all they have to put on accents and change names, so Sudhanshu becomes Sam and Annapoorna becomes Anna, which basically means they are faking identities and .... oh no I forgot I was talking only about call centers, so they are only faking identities; keep awake when the rest of the populace around them is sleeeping and then listen to absuses when it's not even their fault - it must have been some sleepy-eyed programmer who might have said to a co-programmer at 1 in the night when the coffee machine wasn't working - "Let's forget this bug. Let's just forget that it even exists. I mean, those 250 call center guys shouldn't be paid for doing nothing and that too when their coffee machines and stress balls are all working fine. And what do you think we could put in the new version anyway?"
  
  No offence to you call center guys, I would still much rather talk to you than have the following conversation, say when I want to know my tariff rates:
  
  Me: Hello, hello, haalllo..
  Automated voice replies: Hello and welcome to BadaFone...BadaFone mein aapka swaagat hain...Press 1 for English, Press 2 for Hindi...
  I press 1 because hearing an automated voice talk in Hindi kind of reminds me of the Ramsay brothers
  Automated voice: Press 1 if you want to know your account balance...Press 2 to recharge your account...Press 3 to know more about our value-added plans...Press 4 to know more about our roaming facilities....Press 5 to ....Press 8 to....
  I am still waiting for some option that could be useful to me....There is a pause at the other end...I am waiting to hear "Press 9 to talk to our support department"....
  Automated voice (starts all over again with the menu options): Press 1 if you want to know your account balance...Press 2 to recharge your account...Press 3 to know...Press 5 to...Press 8 to...
  Me (talking aloud to the automated voice): I would much rather press my balls and talk to someone.
  Automated voice: Invalid option...please listen carefully and then enter your choice...Press 1 if you want to...