Chakde India: 16 girls, SRK & hockey-shockey

Media & Entertainment

Anything new in Chakde India? Nothing.

Would I still recommend watching it. Yes.

The movie starts with the customary disclaimer that it is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real people or events is purely co-incidental.

Now, if you consider the following as facts…

  • People who run sports bodies in India are boring sarkari-types.
  • Zafar Iqbal was the captain of the Indian hockey team that lost 1-7 to Pakistan in the finals of the 1982 Asian Games in New Delhi.
  • Yuvraj Singh was dating Kim Sharma and was the vice-captain of the Indian cricket team.
  • The walls of Mohammed Kaif’s house were blackened with graffiti by vandals after India lost a cricket match.
  • Women married into many middle-class families are expected to be nothing beyond good housewives.
  • Many people from North-East of India do not associate themselves with India.
  • Women from the North-East are subject to lewd remarks in many places in India.
  • Rustic Haryanvi lines in Hindi films (remember the wrestler-goon in Khosla Ka Ghosla) and television (remember Udham Singh on Channel [V] ) are funny.
  • A regular Indian team is composed of players chosen from different states.

… then Shimit Amin (Ab Tak 56) does craft a whole movie out of co-incidences alone!

The fundamental premise here, like in all sports-based films, is that audience sympathy is always with the underdogs and therefore the protagonists have to be the underdogs. Remember Lagaan, Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar, Iqbal and recently, Ta Ra Rum Pum? (I won’t ask you, but if you also remember Awwal Number, All-rounder, Kabhi Ajnabi Thhey, you rock!) And if the underdogs happen to be women with their own respective odds, then you have a completely-on-the-side-of-political-correctness double-whammy lined up! Now top that up with Shah Rukh Khan being their mentor — and you have a triple-treat-sundae ready!

Shah Rukh as a mentor of people is a film-genre in its own right. Whether it was mentoring a gurukul of plastic love-birds in Mohabbatein, or mentoring villagers wanting their own electric turbine in Swades, or as Major Ram studying alongside students who called him uncle in Main Hoon Naa, and of course my favourite SRK-as-mentor scene from DDLJ (which I mentioned here). (Please note: any assumptions about SRK’s acting abilities are your own!)

I deliberately won’t venture into how all and what all does Chakde India not deliver. Because in our land of abundant contradictions I still believe if something can make a small difference, it is a movie dripping with clichés and stereotypes!

If people believe that a Veer Zaara can contribute more to building relations between Indo-Pak aam janta than official actions — then I won’t play party-pooper to the hope that after Chakde India the integrity of the ordinary Indian Muslim won’t be ever questioned again; that people of North-East India would start seeing themselves as citizens of India; that the girl-child in Haryana (which has one of the lowest female:male ratios in India) gets her due; that middle-class families start giving their daughters-in-law some space to fulfill their aspirations; that people from Jharkhand are no longer seen as backward tribals but recognized for what they can contribute to the country; that boy-friends become less patronizing towards their girls; that we rise above our regional-linguistic chauvinism and start thinking of ourselves as Indians first!

Go watch it.

p.s.
On the other hand, the official Yashraj Films.com website (click here at your own peril) is perhaps the epitome of traumatic navigation websites. Every module, every link you click takes 10 times longer to load (with a Flash pre-loader) than the amount of time you finally end up spending on the resultant page! Have you ever been exasperated using phone IVR call-in menus — press 1 for Hindi and press 2 for English. Now press 1 for blah and 2 for blah-blah and 3 for blah-blah-blah. Now press 1 for dang, 2 for dangg, and 3 for danggg? Grrrr. That was child’s play! On this official website I was actually scared of clicking on any link — afraid of the next loading-section countdown screen that would be unleashed on me!

Some funny signboards

Humour, Travel

Some funny signboards collected over time.

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Shop in Seoul, Korea:
Obviously this has a cultural context. I don’t know about other places, but in India, the little finger is sometimes used as an action-euphemism for answering nature’s call! Yeah, this was not a men’s room — just an auto-accessory shop!

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Shop very close to Jaipur on Delhi-Jaipur highway NH-8:
This signboard is dirty. Oh! Not for the pun in the syllabic-abbreviation S EK C — but the actual dirt on it!

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On the way from Shenzhen to Hong Kong:
Ahem! What in the world do they mean by Character City? So, by implication, others are characterless cities, eh?

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Shop in Coex Shopping Mall, Seoul, South Korea:
Even though this is an English word too — I read it as a Hindi word! Predictably, this shop had nothing to with India or Indians!

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On the way from Shenzhen to Hong Kong:
Ok, I shall refrain from spelling that out as this blog has a family audience too! (I mean members of my family read it :-p)

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Related:
Whether this disappointed you big time or interested you even a wee bit — you must check out eye5.blogspot.com for an awesome collection of Indian signboards by Nikhil Kulkarni.

Awesome leg…pieces

Humour, Travel

Delicious!

Ooh! What a dish!

Yummy!

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In most situations we would assume we know what these exclamations were for. Right?

But if you were to see the following images, you might start thinking a little differently! Pay attention to the labels.

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I swear, there’s no PhotoShop kind of manipulation work involved in these above images! (Incidentally, I don’t even use PhotoShop anymore. Instead I use GIMP. You should try it too. It’s a cost-free, guilt-free and obligation-free open source software that does most of what you do with PhotoShop.)

Coming back to the subject…

So is this Korea ki goriya taking her afternoon meal for a walk, eh?

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:-p

Hold on, don’t throw up! The food labels (Original Home Dog & Home Chilli Dog) were merely the result of crude translation of Hot Dog into Korean and then their cruder translation back to English!

:-)

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Legnote, oops, Footnote:
It is not that all Koreans eat dogs, all the time.
It is not even that some Koreans eat dogs all the time.
Not even that all Koreans eat dogs some time.
Just some Koreans eat dogs some time.
And most of the people we met had not eaten and would not eat dog meat.
Apparently this has a direct correlation with the economic prosperity of the land — with other costlier sources of protein being available to people.

A vegetarian goes to Burger King, Korea

Humour, Travel

Based on a real storie story. (Blame that typo on Aap Ka Kaa Suroor Surroor! And this one too!)

It’s all about loving your vegetables. (Blame that on Karan Johar!)

To all the vegetarians out there…

In a land where people are said to eat dogs, never walk into a fast-food joint and ask for a ‘hot dog’ — they might take it literally! (Ok, that was joke to kick start the post!) And offer you Tommy HighFiber! (Joke again)

To play it safe, walk into an American fast-food place. (Thought being: You have eaten at American fast-food places in India, so this would be a ‘little’ different at best!)

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Then order something that meets your high vegetarian standards — a cheeseburger. (Thought being: A cheeseburger is a cheeseburger is a cheeseburger!) Then you see the line ‘…sometimes we wish we were you…’ Touché!
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All you now need to do is turn the burger over. (Thought being: Maybe they have another sweet message for you over there!)imga0175.jpg

Of course font-sizes DO NOT make a difference here. The message that has to catch your eye — catches your eye! (Thought being: It’s not just beef. It’s 100% beef! ) Holy cows! (pun intended)
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And then something like this…imga0177.jpg

Becomes something like this…imga0178.jpg

Out you go!
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Now you understand why they say: “Have it your way!”imga0180.jpg

All this happened to a hungry young man recently!

Humour by templates – 3 :: Salary equations

Humour

Disclaimer: To people who feel these humour templates lack solid punch lines: These are NOT renditions of jokes, so the intention here is NOT to have you fall off your chair and roll on the floor clutching your tummy while reading them. These are TEMPLATES — which means they provide you certain situations — which are not uncommon — and how you could almost practise/rehearse YOUR OWN PUNCHLINES, in such situations. So for me the gratification does not lie in your immediate response to these — but when sometime later in life you encounter such situations and you end up using the responses suggested here. With this backdrop of grand altruism and noble intentions let’s get on with today’s template!

Humour template – 3 :: Salary equations

When someone tells you that s/he has got an X amount of money as bonus — and that amount X in your assessment is far lower than her/his salary — your response should be of mock-delight at her/him getting double their salary as bonus.

Not clear? This should help:

Scenario

Masood: You know, my boss was so happy with my work that he gave me a bonus of Rs. 10,000.
You: Wow! That would’ve almost doubled your annual income!

Obviously the difference here has to be exaggerated. For example this would be a limp comment if Masood were indeed earning Rs. 10,000 or thereabouts as annual income!

This template is not restricted to bonuses and salary increments. It can also be customized to various other situations — in fact any situation where the other person has stated a certain amount of money.

Scenario

Deepak: I bought this Nokia Communicator for Rs. 15,000.
You: Holy cows! You spent a full year’s salary on buying that silly phone?

In these situations the assumption is that the amount of money being discussed is far lower than the annual income of the other person. However, you can try a corollary of this template too — where the amount of money being discussed is higher than your assessment of the other person’s income.

Scenario

David: Dude, that 3-bedroom flat in Versova is going to cost me almost Rs.60 lakhs.
You: Big deal! I am sure you’ll be able to make that payment with the money in your wallet alone!
David: Huh?
You: Oh! At best wait till the end of the month so you could pay them in cash with your next month’s salary!

Poor David! That was a double-whammy application of this template :)

In fact the more I think of it, such money-equating situations are there all around us. I am already thinking of a few situations where I am going to try this template myself!

So try this template out a few times, and do let me know if it was worth your money. Of course it depends on how much worth is your money to begin with!