Chak De India!!

It’s 1 at night and I have nothing to do. At home and comfy, I have the option to sleep obviously, but all the days of the last semester have perhaps taken their toll on my sleep glands (I know there is no such thing). So I sit here, chatting away, when even the chat friends disappear one by one, busied by their own tasks. One chat friend after ridiculing my team (meaning the football team I support) goes to prepare for his early morning presentation of some case. The other says be right back and forgets to come back after half an hour, then another bids adieu as his mom calls him for some late night chore. And so I sit here. Nothing particular to do. I therefore engage in this activity called blogging that some of my friends call atrocious (by the fact that I am not that good at it). By I believe that practice makes perfect or its increases the standard of work at the least. It’s part of the “learning curve” as we say in management jargon.

So my topic of today’s effort is a movie called “Chak De India”. A cheesy name tag I thought at first. The songs were uninspiring when they came out and the promos were less than convincing. Usually I give such movies a miss. But this time I am glad that I went along with my friends for a screening. And what a movie it turned out to be. More inspirational than most Hollywood movies I have seen (yes I set Hollywood movie as the benchmark, don’t kill me for that). And yet the movie was enjoyable. Rarely have I seen such good acting performances from a bunch of nobodies. The do the job perfectly. The reason I am writing about this movie today (a full fifteen days after I first watched it) is because I went and saw it on the big screen again today, this time with my parents. The motivation for me to go and watch it for the umpteenth time (I saw it umpteenth-2 times on the laptop) was to show it to my parents and revel as they enjoyed it. Somehow, the fact that they enjoy something makes me even happier. So off I went with them, driving like mad, jumping queues (which was justified as I had pre-booked the tickets and just had to collect them) much to the annoyance of the people standing in the queue for long, just so that they would not miss the opening.

As I went through the emotion of watching the movie again, I saw many subtle points that I had missed on my previous viewing. And it was a whole new experience. Where the last time the theatre was silent right through the movie, this time, there were peals of laughter (many a time at inopportune instances which was irritating), and genuine clapping when the climax of the movie was revealed. I would say this has been a much better movie experience than the last time around (a large Pepsi and butter popcorn certainly helped the matter). And now that the spectacle is over, I reflect on some of the most powerful scenes that I have seen in Hindi movies for a long time. Like the one where the men’s hockey team salutes the women’s team for their gutsy performance against them, or the scene where little Komal Chautala passes the ball to her arch rival (in terms of goals scored that is) Preeti for her to slot home the equalizer in the final stages of the world cup final match against Australia. Great movie, great background music (including the tracks that appeared so cacophonous when listened to before I saw the movie); I guess this should surely get its star cast a host of awards at the annual film festivals. Perhaps this movie will make it to the Oscars as well. But then win it will surely not, because the emotion that egresses our hearts when we see the females fight it out against all odds and against a male chauvinist society like India’s will not be appreciated fully by the judges coming from contrasting cultures. But whether it reaches the Oscars or not or whether it is even considered or not, I must say that it has been a pleasure watching the movie, and is certainly one of the classics that I have seen in the past year.