SRK dumps Ritesh for Arjun

LINK

Shah Rukh Khan, Arjun Rampal and Ritesh Deshmukh were close friends till SRK chose Arjun over Ritesh to play a baddie in Ra.One.

They say three is a crowd. And going by this recent incident, the commonly held belief seems to be true. The close friendship between Shah Rukh Khan, Ritesh Deshmukh and Arjun Rampal has now reached an impasse. The cosy bond now only involves SRK and Arjun while Ritesh has been left to fend for himself.
 
Buzz is that Shah Rukh chose Arjun over Ritesh to play the villain in his home production Ra.One. Despite Ritesh being the original choice, Shah Rukh eventually brought in Arjun to play the same role.

A source says, “Ritesh and not Arjun was the first choice to play a baddie in Ra.One. Director Anubhav Sinha also wanted Ritesh as the film’s villain as he had worked with the actor in Cash. Everything was going fine and Ritesh was very excited about the project as his look and remuneration was also decided. But the next thing Ritesh read in the papers is that Arjun is playing the bad man in Ra.One.”

“Even when Arjun was suffering from a back problem for a brief period and he was not too sure if he would play the role, SRK didn’t ask Ritesh to step in. Ritesh’s sudden ouster was so unprofessional,” says the source.

Even though Ritesh was shocked at the unfair treatment, he didn’t confront Shah Rukh. “Ritesh is a very mild-mannered guy. He undoubtedly felt very disappointed but he didn’t express his displeasure to SRK. He only talked about it to a few of his close friends. Shah Rukh or Anubhav should have at least informed him that he is no longer in the film,” adds the source.

While Shah Rukh’s character in Ra.One is of a super-hero , buzz is that Arjun will be playing his nemesis. The sci-fi film, which went on the floors early this month, has Kareena Kapoor playing the female lead. The film is based on gaming, bad guys and super heroes.

We sent text messages to Shah Rukh, Anubhav Sinha but they remained unavailable for comment.

However, Ritesh says that he was never offered the film.

SRK dumps Ritesh for Arjun

LINK

Shah Rukh Khan, Arjun Rampal and Ritesh Deshmukh were close friends till SRK chose Arjun over Ritesh to play a baddie in Ra.One.

They say three is a crowd. And going by this recent incident, the commonly held belief seems to be true. The close friendship between Shah Rukh Khan, Ritesh Deshmukh and Arjun Rampal has now reached an impasse. The cosy bond now only involves SRK and Arjun while Ritesh has been left to fend for himself.
 
Buzz is that Shah Rukh chose Arjun over Ritesh to play the villain in his home production Ra.One. Despite Ritesh being the original choice, Shah Rukh eventually brought in Arjun to play the same role.

A source says, “Ritesh and not Arjun was the first choice to play a baddie in Ra.One. Director Anubhav Sinha also wanted Ritesh as the film’s villain as he had worked with the actor in Cash. Everything was going fine and Ritesh was very excited about the project as his look and remuneration was also decided. But the next thing Ritesh read in the papers is that Arjun is playing the bad man in Ra.One.”

“Even when Arjun was suffering from a back problem for a brief period and he was not too sure if he would play the role, SRK didn’t ask Ritesh to step in. Ritesh’s sudden ouster was so unprofessional,” says the source.

Even though Ritesh was shocked at the unfair treatment, he didn’t confront Shah Rukh. “Ritesh is a very mild-mannered guy. He undoubtedly felt very disappointed but he didn’t express his displeasure to SRK. He only talked about it to a few of his close friends. Shah Rukh or Anubhav should have at least informed him that he is no longer in the film,” adds the source.

While Shah Rukh’s character in Ra.One is of a super-hero , buzz is that Arjun will be playing his nemesis. The sci-fi film, which went on the floors early this month, has Kareena Kapoor playing the female lead. The film is based on gaming, bad guys and super heroes.

We sent text messages to Shah Rukh, Anubhav Sinha but they remained unavailable for comment.

However, Ritesh says that he was never offered the film.

Is Pawar behind Sena's renewed opposition to SRK-starrer MNIK?

NEW DELHI: NCP boss Sharad Pawar seems to have got back at Congress over the price rise missiles aimed at him during last week's meeting of the Congress Working Committee by egging on Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray to revive his opposition to Shah Rukh Khan-starrer `My Name Is Khan'. 

The Sena's chief's U-turn on MNIK after having dropped his objections to the film is seen as a fallout of Pawar's calculated move to meet Thackeray on Sunday, ostensibly to dissuade him from opposing inclusion of Australian players in IPL 3. Pawar claimed he was only wearing his cricket cap when he met Thackeray. 

Pawar's "offer" to make a presentation on IPL and presence of BCCI chief Shashank Manohar at the Thackeray residence buoyed the Sena chief and left Congress fuming. Pawar threw a lifeline to Thackeray just as the Sena chief was isolated over attacking SRK's comment that he would have liked Pakistani cricketers to be in IPL. It also came just as Sena also had its thunder stolen by Rahul Gandhi's ride in a Mumbai suburban train. 

Congress sources said while MNIK's producer-director Karan Johar was promised adequate protection for the film when he met Mumbai police commissioner D Shivanandan on Tuesday, he and SRK might also meet chief minister Ashok Chavan on Wednesday. "If the police assurance is strong, the meeting with the CM may not happen. But it needs to be seen how secure the producer and exhibitors are feeling," said sources. 

With what is seen to be a wink and a nod from Pawar, apparently smarting from the CWC flaying him for price rise, the Sena supremo is back in business. Exhibitors in Mumbai were told of plans to disrupt the film. Panicked exhibitors approached SRK who swiftly got in touch with Congress leaders seeking protection for the film's release on Friday.

Read more HERE.

Is Pawar behind Sena's renewed opposition to SRK-starrer MNIK?

NEW DELHI: NCP boss Sharad Pawar seems to have got back at Congress over the price rise missiles aimed at him during last week's meeting of the Congress Working Committee by egging on Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray to revive his opposition to Shah Rukh Khan-starrer `My Name Is Khan'. 

The Sena's chief's U-turn on MNIK after having dropped his objections to the film is seen as a fallout of Pawar's calculated move to meet Thackeray on Sunday, ostensibly to dissuade him from opposing inclusion of Australian players in IPL 3. Pawar claimed he was only wearing his cricket cap when he met Thackeray. 

Pawar's "offer" to make a presentation on IPL and presence of BCCI chief Shashank Manohar at the Thackeray residence buoyed the Sena chief and left Congress fuming. Pawar threw a lifeline to Thackeray just as the Sena chief was isolated over attacking SRK's comment that he would have liked Pakistani cricketers to be in IPL. It also came just as Sena also had its thunder stolen by Rahul Gandhi's ride in a Mumbai suburban train. 

Congress sources said while MNIK's producer-director Karan Johar was promised adequate protection for the film when he met Mumbai police commissioner D Shivanandan on Tuesday, he and SRK might also meet chief minister Ashok Chavan on Wednesday. "If the police assurance is strong, the meeting with the CM may not happen. But it needs to be seen how secure the producer and exhibitors are feeling," said sources. 

With what is seen to be a wink and a nod from Pawar, apparently smarting from the CWC flaying him for price rise, the Sena supremo is back in business. Exhibitors in Mumbai were told of plans to disrupt the film. Panicked exhibitors approached SRK who swiftly got in touch with Congress leaders seeking protection for the film's release on Friday.

Read more HERE.

A Knight In Comic Armour - Raju Hirani's incredible life story

Tracking director Raju Hirani’s incredible life story, SHOMA CHAUDHURY discovers his light, feel-good cinema disguises an urgent moral vision

TO BE unconventional about success has always been difficult. In circa 2010, it’s almost impossible. With gilt images beaming down 24/7 from television and multiplex screens, only hyper fame and money define success today. There can be no other parameter. Certainly, for a Sindhi man — whose community stereotype demands that money and convention play a key role in the great scheme of life — directing the biggest grosser in Bollywood history, earning Rs 20-odd crore from it as a director, and having a shiny trail of two earlier megahits behind him should have meant a very big deal. But ask 44-year-old Raju Hirani what success means to him and the miracle unusualness of the man and his art kicks in.

Hirani’s latest film, 3 Idiots, has been having what stock markets would call a historic bull run. In just 18 days, it has mopped up Rs 350 crore — double the entire business of the last record-holding film Ghajini (which in turn had done 50 percent more business than all the films that ranked below it). Numbers aside, the film seems to have uncorked a dormant emotion in society, and its upbeat slogan “All is well” has become the unchallenged anthem of the season. The film had 21 nominations at the Screen Awards and won 10, including best film and best director. Hirani is undoubtedly the big man of the moment.

Yet the affable, mild-mannered man sitting unassumingly at a coffee shop in Delhi under the TEHELKA office seems peculiarly untouched by the applause around him. He’s been quite happy to trek across the city for his interviewer’s convenience rather than insist on the star’s prerogative that we go to him. Sundry people are swarming around him, jostling for autographs. For a film man, it should have been a cinematic moment. More than 20 years earlier, Hirani had opened his autograph book in the anon - ymity of his room in the Film and Television Institute in Pune (FTII) and signed with quiver of excitement: Raju Hirani: editor, director, producer, 1988. The world lay headily at his feet, he was sure he was going to conquer it. What a self-fulfilling proph - ecy it had turned out to be.

But for Hirani, of the many major “plot points” in his life, the public success of 3 Idiots features nowhere. His idea of success lies in other, much more poignant, autobiographical moments. The moment he first told his father that instead of studying to be an accountant, he wanted a career in cinema. The exact moment he received a tele g - ram from FTII telling him he’d been selected for the editor’s course (NSD and FTII had both rejec ted him first time round when he applied for their acting course). The first 5-min - ute student film he made on a Chekov story, The Bet. Powerful moments of escape, selfrecognition, arrival — many of which imbue his film with the searing conviction and tension of lived experience.

“You cannot imagine what it meant for me — a middleclass Sindhi boy in Nagpur — to be set free by my father,” says Hirani. “I was so scared and then so relieved, I went up to the terrace and flew a kite.” This incident was so seminal for Hirani, in fact, its powerful emotional duet — fear and release — reasserts itself again and again in the film in varying combinations. The road taken; the road not taken. And all its varying consequences. Virus’ son committing suicide; Farhan Qureshi telling his father he wants to be a photographer not an engineer; the acceptance letter from Hungary; Rancho’s immense pleasure in nurturing his high-school in Ladakh, his inevitable material success as the scientist Phunsukh Wangdu; Pia risking social censure to seize love over convention. In fact, if there is sometimes an over messianic, almost didactic zeal with which Hirani goes about delivering his message in 3 Idiots—“Follow what your heart wants” — it is bec - ause this freedom to make films was the primary, enabling miracle of his life. It released him from the self-hat - red of low grades and the grinding mediocrity of a borrowed life. It gave him back his identity.

Apart from this, the film’s peculiar didactic energy probably also draws from the fact that though Hirani got lucky on the professional front, in his private life, he knows the pain of looking back on a road not taken. At a crucial juncture in his life, in a personal episode he would rather not make public, faced with a life-defining choice, Hirani fatally chose pragmatism over his heart. The vacuum and lingering loneliness of that decision dogs him till this day. He has felt the soul-draining dread of going into someth - ing knowing it was wrong for him, the dread of caving in to please those he loved and to accommodate the constraints of money. This rebuking memory imparts an extra urgency to 3 Idiots.

In fact, part of the explanation for the film’s astronomical success may lie in the fact that, by excavating his own autobiographical emotions, Hirani seems to have divined a massive common nerve in Indian society: the humiliations of living a life you don’t want, regret for the unlived life, and the empowering potency of being shown you can choose otherwise.

Hirani has divined a huge nerve in Indian society: regret for the unlived life

AT FIRST encounter, you could dismiss Raju Hirani as merely a simple man. His films lead you to expect someone wholesome and kind, and wholesome and kind he seems. But his friends have other, more illuminating, des criptions. Abhijat Joshi, his co-scriptwriter and creative soul-mate, calls Hirani “ET”, evoking his otherworldly optimism and childlike heart. Aamir Khan likens him to director Frank Capra (whose films always had a message about the basic goodness of human nature). His younger sister Anju and director Sriram Raghavan, friend and one-time roommate, speak of him as a “consummate prankster”. And producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra extols his utter and inviolate honesty.

Sitting over a coffee, you also get sudden sneak previews of Hirani’s famously dry humour. We are discuss ing the many controversies his film has been surrounded with. Soon after its release, 3 Idiots’ dream run was marred by an unpleasantly pesky shadow. Writer Chetan Bhagat, whose book Five Point Someone the film is loosely based on, alleged the producer and director had cheated him of due credit. The claim was unreasonable and Chopra and Hirani threw book and contract at him. But the controversy refused to go away till, having raked its benefits, Bhagat agreed to subside. Barely a day later, another controversy popped up. There was a ragging incident in a college in Maharashtra. Talk went around that the incident was inspired by 3 Idiots. Ludicrously, media reports said the state government was planning to summon the film to see if it had encouraged bad behaviour. “Soon I’ll be responsible for everyone’s farts,” Hirani laughs self-deprecatorily (a reference to Chatur’s character in the film, who’s beaverish desire to succeed is only matched by the offensive surround smell of his flatulence.)

All these qualities, and more, imbue Hirani’s cinema, and like Munnabhai MBBS and Lage Raho Munnabhai, 3 Idiots is undoubtedly a warm, life-affirming film. But as Boman Irani — who has played pitch-perfect antagonists in each of Hirani’s films — says bemusedly, “I loved all three films and am thrilled this one’s doing so well. But if you ask me why we’re being treated as if we are the Beatles, I have no answer!”

The bemusement is wellplaced. In cinematic terms, Hirani’s films are not – and do not aspire to be — pathbreaking in any way. They are firmly middle-road, firmly familiar, and very firmly, happy. In fact, the phrase “feel-good cinema” that everyone, including Hirani, casually uses to describe his work, captures the danger of banality on which it hovers. Small offen - ces are cured by small palliat i - ves, and you know before you’ve begun that by the end of the film, the good guy will prevail. In fact, in less affect i - onate hands, Hirani’s biggest gifts to contemporary popular imagination – “Jaddu ki jhappi”, “Gandhigiri” and the rebel cry “All is well” — could easily have become the trite tropes Bollywood co medy is infamous for.

So, contrary to evidence, it’s not the obvious attributes of Hirani’s cinema that explains its tremendous popularity. It’s not just the syrupy resolutions or the great gags subor the whip-crack humour. It’s not just the creation of the inspired pair, Munnabhai and his lovable sidekick, Circuit. Or the hyper-intelligent but less empathetic prankster, Rancho. Individually, each of these accomplishments could have wound up on the overstacked shelves of forgettable Bollywood comedy.

Art apart Raju and wife Manjeet in their Bandra home

The real key to Hirani’s cinema then — the reason why his audiences (probably unconsciously) have more than just a passing engagement with his films — lies in their unusual and strong underlayer of moral anger. At a time when all conventional signages point in a different direction, Hirani dares to be a Romantic. He dares to rail against the general human condition. You would never imagine it at a first meeting, but Abhijat Joshi says, “Hirani is full of revulsions. And religious superstition absolutely tops the hate-lists.” Joshi also admits of himself, “If a film doesn’t explore social truths, half my interest immediately evaporates.”

Indeed, if you go back to any of Hirani’s films — the two Munnabhais or 3 Idiots — you will find that alongside the spinal plot of the film run dozens of other tertiary preoccupations: greed, abandonment, callousness, cruelty to parents, corruption, superstition, slavish bondage to convention, parental oppression. In another age, a more biting cinema would probably have been Hirani’s most natural medium: Hindi heartland satirists Sharad Joshi and Harishankar Parsai are big inspirations. But driven both by his own temperament and the intuition of the genuine mass-media communicator, Hirani realises that contemporary audiences would reject anything too obviously dark. So over a complex and collaborative process of scripting that often takes more than three years and is conducted trans-Atlantically, the US-based Joshi and he turn his original impulses into unabashed, pre-modern feelgood melodramas — full of great jokes and sunlight and improbable, extreme situations. In the process, they slyly hold up a mirror to middle- class venality and the middle-class is gently nudged to transform itself without even realising it.

(Interestingly, many of the incidents in Hirani’s films are based on his own life. In one such incident, Hirani’s airhostess wife, Manjeet, was seriously ill, suffering from partial amnesia. Despite repeated visits and tests, a neurologist at a prestigious hospital kept treating them with supreme callousness — interrupting his sick wife’s narrations with social phone calls and brusque orders. “At one point, I got so mad, I stood up, grabbed the phone and banged it down hard on his table,” remembers Hirani. Triggered by this and other encounters with heartless doctors, Munnabhai MBBS started out as a visceral diatribe against the medical profession. But narrations to friends quickly showed Hirani he was getting no takers. He went back to the drawing board. By the time he was ready to go on set three years later, the anger had been wrapped in sweet gauze, coated in laughs, and served up as a hugely enjoyable, easy-to-swallow pill. The only indication of that first anger was the conceit of Munnabhai himself — a criminal more compassionate than medics. And the offending neurologist, whose memory is served up as a cameo in a ragging scene where senior doctors are stripped to their undies. Lage Raho similarly had more prickly origins, with a young man knocked on his head in 1947, emerging from a coma 50 years later to the utter despair of modernday India and the betrayal of what Gandhi had stood for. But Hirani and Joshi worked on this original idea — sometimes over 17-hour stretches a day — till they came up with the highly soluble message of sending floral bouquets as a modern-day equivalent of satyagraha.)

Ordinarily, “sweet” is an appellate that would kill any self-respecting satirist. But having transformed themselves into doctors of sweet angst, Hirani and Joshi’s cinematic vision is rescued by the subterranean moral clarities that flow beneath the fun. As Boman Irani says, “They have real insight into the darker side of human nature.” Part of Hirani’s inimitable formula then is that while watching his films and laughing in the dark, middle-class Indians feel subliminally grateful that at least someone is bothering to acknowledge they are ill and doling out “get well soon” messages to them.

Read more HERE.

A Knight In Comic Armour - Raju Hirani's incredible life story

Tracking director Raju Hirani’s incredible life story, SHOMA CHAUDHURY discovers his light, feel-good cinema disguises an urgent moral vision

TO BE unconventional about success has always been difficult. In circa 2010, it’s almost impossible. With gilt images beaming down 24/7 from television and multiplex screens, only hyper fame and money define success today. There can be no other parameter. Certainly, for a Sindhi man — whose community stereotype demands that money and convention play a key role in the great scheme of life — directing the biggest grosser in Bollywood history, earning Rs 20-odd crore from it as a director, and having a shiny trail of two earlier megahits behind him should have meant a very big deal. But ask 44-year-old Raju Hirani what success means to him and the miracle unusualness of the man and his art kicks in.

Hirani’s latest film, 3 Idiots, has been having what stock markets would call a historic bull run. In just 18 days, it has mopped up Rs 350 crore — double the entire business of the last record-holding film Ghajini (which in turn had done 50 percent more business than all the films that ranked below it). Numbers aside, the film seems to have uncorked a dormant emotion in society, and its upbeat slogan “All is well” has become the unchallenged anthem of the season. The film had 21 nominations at the Screen Awards and won 10, including best film and best director. Hirani is undoubtedly the big man of the moment.

Yet the affable, mild-mannered man sitting unassumingly at a coffee shop in Delhi under the TEHELKA office seems peculiarly untouched by the applause around him. He’s been quite happy to trek across the city for his interviewer’s convenience rather than insist on the star’s prerogative that we go to him. Sundry people are swarming around him, jostling for autographs. For a film man, it should have been a cinematic moment. More than 20 years earlier, Hirani had opened his autograph book in the anon - ymity of his room in the Film and Television Institute in Pune (FTII) and signed with quiver of excitement: Raju Hirani: editor, director, producer, 1988. The world lay headily at his feet, he was sure he was going to conquer it. What a self-fulfilling proph - ecy it had turned out to be.

But for Hirani, of the many major “plot points” in his life, the public success of 3 Idiots features nowhere. His idea of success lies in other, much more poignant, autobiographical moments. The moment he first told his father that instead of studying to be an accountant, he wanted a career in cinema. The exact moment he received a tele g - ram from FTII telling him he’d been selected for the editor’s course (NSD and FTII had both rejec ted him first time round when he applied for their acting course). The first 5-min - ute student film he made on a Chekov story, The Bet. Powerful moments of escape, selfrecognition, arrival — many of which imbue his film with the searing conviction and tension of lived experience.

“You cannot imagine what it meant for me — a middleclass Sindhi boy in Nagpur — to be set free by my father,” says Hirani. “I was so scared and then so relieved, I went up to the terrace and flew a kite.” This incident was so seminal for Hirani, in fact, its powerful emotional duet — fear and release — reasserts itself again and again in the film in varying combinations. The road taken; the road not taken. And all its varying consequences. Virus’ son committing suicide; Farhan Qureshi telling his father he wants to be a photographer not an engineer; the acceptance letter from Hungary; Rancho’s immense pleasure in nurturing his high-school in Ladakh, his inevitable material success as the scientist Phunsukh Wangdu; Pia risking social censure to seize love over convention. In fact, if there is sometimes an over messianic, almost didactic zeal with which Hirani goes about delivering his message in 3 Idiots—“Follow what your heart wants” — it is bec - ause this freedom to make films was the primary, enabling miracle of his life. It released him from the self-hat - red of low grades and the grinding mediocrity of a borrowed life. It gave him back his identity.

Apart from this, the film’s peculiar didactic energy probably also draws from the fact that though Hirani got lucky on the professional front, in his private life, he knows the pain of looking back on a road not taken. At a crucial juncture in his life, in a personal episode he would rather not make public, faced with a life-defining choice, Hirani fatally chose pragmatism over his heart. The vacuum and lingering loneliness of that decision dogs him till this day. He has felt the soul-draining dread of going into someth - ing knowing it was wrong for him, the dread of caving in to please those he loved and to accommodate the constraints of money. This rebuking memory imparts an extra urgency to 3 Idiots.

In fact, part of the explanation for the film’s astronomical success may lie in the fact that, by excavating his own autobiographical emotions, Hirani seems to have divined a massive common nerve in Indian society: the humiliations of living a life you don’t want, regret for the unlived life, and the empowering potency of being shown you can choose otherwise.

Hirani has divined a huge nerve in Indian society: regret for the unlived life

AT FIRST encounter, you could dismiss Raju Hirani as merely a simple man. His films lead you to expect someone wholesome and kind, and wholesome and kind he seems. But his friends have other, more illuminating, des criptions. Abhijat Joshi, his co-scriptwriter and creative soul-mate, calls Hirani “ET”, evoking his otherworldly optimism and childlike heart. Aamir Khan likens him to director Frank Capra (whose films always had a message about the basic goodness of human nature). His younger sister Anju and director Sriram Raghavan, friend and one-time roommate, speak of him as a “consummate prankster”. And producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra extols his utter and inviolate honesty.

Sitting over a coffee, you also get sudden sneak previews of Hirani’s famously dry humour. We are discuss ing the many controversies his film has been surrounded with. Soon after its release, 3 Idiots’ dream run was marred by an unpleasantly pesky shadow. Writer Chetan Bhagat, whose book Five Point Someone the film is loosely based on, alleged the producer and director had cheated him of due credit. The claim was unreasonable and Chopra and Hirani threw book and contract at him. But the controversy refused to go away till, having raked its benefits, Bhagat agreed to subside. Barely a day later, another controversy popped up. There was a ragging incident in a college in Maharashtra. Talk went around that the incident was inspired by 3 Idiots. Ludicrously, media reports said the state government was planning to summon the film to see if it had encouraged bad behaviour. “Soon I’ll be responsible for everyone’s farts,” Hirani laughs self-deprecatorily (a reference to Chatur’s character in the film, who’s beaverish desire to succeed is only matched by the offensive surround smell of his flatulence.)

All these qualities, and more, imbue Hirani’s cinema, and like Munnabhai MBBS and Lage Raho Munnabhai, 3 Idiots is undoubtedly a warm, life-affirming film. But as Boman Irani — who has played pitch-perfect antagonists in each of Hirani’s films — says bemusedly, “I loved all three films and am thrilled this one’s doing so well. But if you ask me why we’re being treated as if we are the Beatles, I have no answer!”

The bemusement is wellplaced. In cinematic terms, Hirani’s films are not – and do not aspire to be — pathbreaking in any way. They are firmly middle-road, firmly familiar, and very firmly, happy. In fact, the phrase “feel-good cinema” that everyone, including Hirani, casually uses to describe his work, captures the danger of banality on which it hovers. Small offen - ces are cured by small palliat i - ves, and you know before you’ve begun that by the end of the film, the good guy will prevail. In fact, in less affect i - onate hands, Hirani’s biggest gifts to contemporary popular imagination – “Jaddu ki jhappi”, “Gandhigiri” and the rebel cry “All is well” — could easily have become the trite tropes Bollywood co medy is infamous for.

So, contrary to evidence, it’s not the obvious attributes of Hirani’s cinema that explains its tremendous popularity. It’s not just the syrupy resolutions or the great gags subor the whip-crack humour. It’s not just the creation of the inspired pair, Munnabhai and his lovable sidekick, Circuit. Or the hyper-intelligent but less empathetic prankster, Rancho. Individually, each of these accomplishments could have wound up on the overstacked shelves of forgettable Bollywood comedy.

Art apart Raju and wife Manjeet in their Bandra home

The real key to Hirani’s cinema then — the reason why his audiences (probably unconsciously) have more than just a passing engagement with his films — lies in their unusual and strong underlayer of moral anger. At a time when all conventional signages point in a different direction, Hirani dares to be a Romantic. He dares to rail against the general human condition. You would never imagine it at a first meeting, but Abhijat Joshi says, “Hirani is full of revulsions. And religious superstition absolutely tops the hate-lists.” Joshi also admits of himself, “If a film doesn’t explore social truths, half my interest immediately evaporates.”

Indeed, if you go back to any of Hirani’s films — the two Munnabhais or 3 Idiots — you will find that alongside the spinal plot of the film run dozens of other tertiary preoccupations: greed, abandonment, callousness, cruelty to parents, corruption, superstition, slavish bondage to convention, parental oppression. In another age, a more biting cinema would probably have been Hirani’s most natural medium: Hindi heartland satirists Sharad Joshi and Harishankar Parsai are big inspirations. But driven both by his own temperament and the intuition of the genuine mass-media communicator, Hirani realises that contemporary audiences would reject anything too obviously dark. So over a complex and collaborative process of scripting that often takes more than three years and is conducted trans-Atlantically, the US-based Joshi and he turn his original impulses into unabashed, pre-modern feelgood melodramas — full of great jokes and sunlight and improbable, extreme situations. In the process, they slyly hold up a mirror to middle- class venality and the middle-class is gently nudged to transform itself without even realising it.

(Interestingly, many of the incidents in Hirani’s films are based on his own life. In one such incident, Hirani’s airhostess wife, Manjeet, was seriously ill, suffering from partial amnesia. Despite repeated visits and tests, a neurologist at a prestigious hospital kept treating them with supreme callousness — interrupting his sick wife’s narrations with social phone calls and brusque orders. “At one point, I got so mad, I stood up, grabbed the phone and banged it down hard on his table,” remembers Hirani. Triggered by this and other encounters with heartless doctors, Munnabhai MBBS started out as a visceral diatribe against the medical profession. But narrations to friends quickly showed Hirani he was getting no takers. He went back to the drawing board. By the time he was ready to go on set three years later, the anger had been wrapped in sweet gauze, coated in laughs, and served up as a hugely enjoyable, easy-to-swallow pill. The only indication of that first anger was the conceit of Munnabhai himself — a criminal more compassionate than medics. And the offending neurologist, whose memory is served up as a cameo in a ragging scene where senior doctors are stripped to their undies. Lage Raho similarly had more prickly origins, with a young man knocked on his head in 1947, emerging from a coma 50 years later to the utter despair of modernday India and the betrayal of what Gandhi had stood for. But Hirani and Joshi worked on this original idea — sometimes over 17-hour stretches a day — till they came up with the highly soluble message of sending floral bouquets as a modern-day equivalent of satyagraha.)

Ordinarily, “sweet” is an appellate that would kill any self-respecting satirist. But having transformed themselves into doctors of sweet angst, Hirani and Joshi’s cinematic vision is rescued by the subterranean moral clarities that flow beneath the fun. As Boman Irani says, “They have real insight into the darker side of human nature.” Part of Hirani’s inimitable formula then is that while watching his films and laughing in the dark, middle-class Indians feel subliminally grateful that at least someone is bothering to acknowledge they are ill and doling out “get well soon” messages to them.

Read more HERE.

Star Screen Awards 2010 - Best Joke of the Decade????

Best Actor: Amitabh Bachchan (Paa)
He was good. But I will go with Shahid Kapur for Kaminey. Infact even Ranbir Kapoor deserved it more IMO for Rocket Singh and Wake Up Sid.

Best Actress: Vidya Balan (Paa)
She was great IMO. But Priyanka Chopra is more deserving IMO.

Best Director: Rajkumar Hirani (3 Idiots)
:(. Should have been Vishal Bharadwaj easily.

Best Film: 3 Idiots
Kaminey was the most deserving film. As for 3 Idiots what to say. MOHABBATEIN + TZP + FIVE POINT SOMEONE + MUNNABHAI + AAMIR KHAN + CONTROVERSY + MONEY = BEST FILM.

Best Entertainer of the year: Katrina Kaif
Kya Category hai!!!!!

Best Jodi of the decade: Shahrukh Khan and Kajol
Again kya category hai!!!! Anyways, did they deserve it???

Best Actor in a comic role: Omi Vaidya (3I)
Who deserved - Sanjay Mishra for All The Best.

Best Actor for Most Popular Category: Shahid Kapoor (Kaminey)
Poular, Not Popular - The award should have gone to him.

Best Actress for Most Popular Category: Kareena Kapoor (3 I)
I vote for Priyanka Chopra for Kaminey. Though Kareena Kapoor was great too in 3 I and Kurbaan.

Best Actor in a negative role:Boman Irani. (3I)
Was he playing a negative role? Who deserved - Prakash Raj for Wanted

Lifetime Achievement Award: Javed Akhtar
He deserves it, if Gulzar has got it already.

Star plus jodi award: Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan
Again Kya category hai!!!

Best Supporting Actor: Rishi Kapoor (Love Aaj Kal)
My vote will go to Piyush Mishra for Gulaal

Best Supporting Actress: Arundhati Nag (Paa)
Who deserved - That fat girl in Wake Up Sid or Gauhar Khan for Rocket Singh.

Most Promising Debutante Director: Nandita Das (Firaaq)
Ayan Mukherjee was more deserving easily.

Most Promising Newcomer (Male): Omi Vaidya
Prakash Raj(If this was his debut in Bollywood) deserved it

Most Promising Newcomer (Female): Mahi Gill
Well deserved

Ramnath Goenka memorial award: Nandita Das for 'Firaaq'
What is this??

Best Music Director: A R Rahman (Delhi 6)
Who deserved - Amit Trivedi (Dev.D)

Best Playback (Male): Rahat Fateh Ali Khan for 'Aj Din Chadya' (Love Aaj Kal)
Piyush Mishra for 'Duniya' (Gulaal) is my pick.

Best Playback (female): Kavita Seth for Ore Manva (Wake Up Sid)
Well deserved. I liked Rehnuma of Shreya Ghoshal too.

Best Lyricist: Irshad Kamil for Chor Bazaari (Love Aaj Kal)
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. AARAMBH HAI PRACHAND BOL MASTAKO KI JHUND AAJ JUNG KI GHADI KI TUM GUHAR DO BEEP. BEEP. BEEP

Best Cast: Luck By Chance
Kaminey. But the casting of LBC was good too.

Best Child Artiste: Pratik Katari (Paa)
Who is he? Who were his competitors???

Best Dialogues: Abhijat Joshi, Raju Hirani (3 Idiots)
Rocket Singh easily was most deserving this year.

Best Screenplay: Abhijat Joshi, Raju Hirani (3 Idiots)
No one deserves it more than Vishal Bharadwaj for Kaminey. BEEP

Best Story: Imtiaz Ali (Love Aaj Kal)
It's a copy!!!!!!! Should have been Kaminey again.

Best Choreographer: Bosco Ceaser (3 Idiots)
This should have been Chor Bazari for Love Aaj Kal IMO. I like these kind of random dance steps.

Best Cinematographer: Rajiv Ravi (Dev D)
Not a very good person to comment on this. But Why? For snorricam? My pick - Delhi 6 just for that Jama Masjid shot.

Best Action: Vijayan (Wanted)
Hmmm. Is there any other option? :)

Best Special Effects: Aladin
Well deserved. But again it hardly had any competition.

Best Editor: Raju Hirani (3Idiots)
Impossible to say. 3 I's editing was good. So was Dev.D's. So was Delhi 6's, So was Kaminey's.

Star Screen Awards 2010 - Best Joke of the Decade????

Best Actor: Amitabh Bachchan (Paa)
He was good. But I will go with Shahid Kapur for Kaminey. Infact even Ranbir Kapoor deserved it more IMO for Rocket Singh and Wake Up Sid.

Best Actress: Vidya Balan (Paa)
She was great IMO. But Priyanka Chopra is more deserving IMO.

Best Director: Rajkumar Hirani (3 Idiots)
:(. Should have been Vishal Bharadwaj easily.

Best Film: 3 Idiots
Kaminey was the most deserving film. As for 3 Idiots what to say. MOHABBATEIN + TZP + FIVE POINT SOMEONE + MUNNABHAI + AAMIR KHAN + CONTROVERSY + MONEY = BEST FILM.

Best Entertainer of the year: Katrina Kaif
Kya Category hai!!!!!

Best Jodi of the decade: Shahrukh Khan and Kajol
Again kya category hai!!!! Anyways, did they deserve it???

Best Actor in a comic role: Omi Vaidya (3I)
Who deserved - Sanjay Mishra for All The Best.

Best Actor for Most Popular Category: Shahid Kapoor (Kaminey)
Poular, Not Popular - The award should have gone to him.

Best Actress for Most Popular Category: Kareena Kapoor (3 I)
I vote for Priyanka Chopra for Kaminey. Though Kareena Kapoor was great too in 3 I and Kurbaan.

Best Actor in a negative role:Boman Irani. (3I)
Was he playing a negative role? Who deserved - Prakash Raj for Wanted

Lifetime Achievement Award: Javed Akhtar
He deserves it, if Gulzar has got it already.

Star plus jodi award: Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan
Again Kya category hai!!!

Best Supporting Actor: Rishi Kapoor (Love Aaj Kal)
My vote will go to Piyush Mishra for Gulaal

Best Supporting Actress: Arundhati Nag (Paa)
Who deserved - That fat girl in Wake Up Sid or Gauhar Khan for Rocket Singh.

Most Promising Debutante Director: Nandita Das (Firaaq)
Ayan Mukherjee was more deserving easily.

Most Promising Newcomer (Male): Omi Vaidya
Prakash Raj(If this was his debut in Bollywood) deserved it

Most Promising Newcomer (Female): Mahi Gill
Well deserved

Ramnath Goenka memorial award: Nandita Das for 'Firaaq'
What is this??

Best Music Director: A R Rahman (Delhi 6)
Who deserved - Amit Trivedi (Dev.D)

Best Playback (Male): Rahat Fateh Ali Khan for 'Aj Din Chadya' (Love Aaj Kal)
Piyush Mishra for 'Duniya' (Gulaal) is my pick.

Best Playback (female): Kavita Seth for Ore Manva (Wake Up Sid)
Well deserved. I liked Rehnuma of Shreya Ghoshal too.

Best Lyricist: Irshad Kamil for Chor Bazaari (Love Aaj Kal)
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. AARAMBH HAI PRACHAND BOL MASTAKO KI JHUND AAJ JUNG KI GHADI KI TUM GUHAR DO BEEP. BEEP. BEEP

Best Cast: Luck By Chance
Kaminey. But the casting of LBC was good too.

Best Child Artiste: Pratik Katari (Paa)
Who is he? Who were his competitors???

Best Dialogues: Abhijat Joshi, Raju Hirani (3 Idiots)
Rocket Singh easily was most deserving this year.

Best Screenplay: Abhijat Joshi, Raju Hirani (3 Idiots)
No one deserves it more than Vishal Bharadwaj for Kaminey. BEEP

Best Story: Imtiaz Ali (Love Aaj Kal)
It's a copy!!!!!!! Should have been Kaminey again.

Best Choreographer: Bosco Ceaser (3 Idiots)
This should have been Chor Bazari for Love Aaj Kal IMO. I like these kind of random dance steps.

Best Cinematographer: Rajiv Ravi (Dev D)
Not a very good person to comment on this. But Why? For snorricam? My pick - Delhi 6 just for that Jama Masjid shot.

Best Action: Vijayan (Wanted)
Hmmm. Is there any other option? :)

Best Special Effects: Aladin
Well deserved. But again it hardly had any competition.

Best Editor: Raju Hirani (3Idiots)
Impossible to say. 3 I's editing was good. So was Dev.D's. So was Delhi 6's, So was Kaminey's.