Film Impressions

MUSIC: Summer Songs

FEELING HOT HOT HOT

Summer in India is hardly a season to celebrate; and certainly not with song and dance, when it’s too hot even to move. So nobody wrote romantic songs to summer, they waited for the rains to gush about the mausam. Still there are some that evoke images of heat and dust, and here’s a selection of garmi songs.

1) Jaise suraj ki garmi se jalte hue tan ko mil jaaye tarwar ka chhaya
This Jaidev compostion sung by Sharma Bandhu, from the 1974 film Parinay could be the prayer of summer.

2) Suraj hua maddham, chand jalne lage
This romantic number from K3G had the hear rising from the arid land of Egypt where it was shot on Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol. 

REVIEW: My Name Is Khan

SAINT KHAN

The character of Rizwan Khan, played by Shah Rukh Khan in this now-controversial Karan Johar film, keeps repeating, “My Name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist.” That is the film’s single point agenda, to show that post 9/11 Muslims are discriminated against, and that US authorities paint them all with the same brush of hatred and suspicion. It’s short-sighted and simplistic, and not even willing to look seriously at the dangers of fundamentalism.

Rizwan has Asperger’s Syndrome, a kind of autism—he has trouble relating to people, and is scared of noise. He goes to America to join his brother Zakir (Jimmy Shergill) and his wife Hasina— Zakir has always resented the attention their mother (Zarina Wahab) showered on Rizwan. But that area is not explored.

REVIEW: My Name is Khan

AND I AM A COMPLETE SHAM

Why are Hindi film directors obsessed with the plight of Muslims in America? Don’t we have enough discrimination, not just against Muslims, but various other castes and communities in India to launch a thousand films? Or is it for the joy of shooting in sunny California and at other gorgeous locations all over the US that makes the plight of American Muslims a popular hunting ground for Bollywood? If Rizvan Khan (Shah Rukh Khan) had to be canonised as the messiah who integrates people, saves lives, spreads the message of love and liberates the world from all suffering with a stroke of simple-minded genius, couldn’t he just as well have taken his momentous journey across the length and breadth of India and won over hearts in his own backyard?