Myth 2 : Hindi Movies are so unpredictable

Thanks to the millions (exaggeration is a tool which I use the most when I blog) who read my Blog 1. http://toomuchofbongblood.blogspot.com/2010/07/myth-football-is-most-beautiful-game-on.html (This is a business approach –Influence of Gujarati friends I made in Pune).
Candidly speaking, I had to bribe almost my whole friendlist in Orkut and Facebook to read that blog. I had to do few “hey Sweeties, read ma blog?” kind of things to gals who r not sweet from any possible angle;with whom I had last talked some 5 yrs ago. Still when I found that my readership is not crossing the single digit mark, I threw a party at my place and did a narration of the blog. But when I realized that they are more interested in watching “Milenge Milenge” on a pirated DVD than listening to my blog which I was narrating with the same magnitude as Steve Jobs did while addressing the Stanford University fresher’s batch a few yrs ago, I gave up.
Soon, I was watching voluptuous Kareena and size Zero Shahid (yes, this epic was made some 5 yrs ago when Shahid did not have a chest to flaunt, and Kareena did not lose hers… ) cuddling in exotic Locales. That’s when I decided if I write on something next, it would be homage to the Bollywood scriptwriters on how they manage to unravel so many fascinating and unpredictable stories year after year.

The spinal column of a movie is its plot. Now, Hindi Cinema has for eternity been very sturdy and severe in this context; i.e. the plot will be for the most part sketched on one of these lines.
• Poor Guy loves Rich Girl (Rich Girl’s dad = Mr.Evil)
• 2 Guys Love same Girl (The guy who trails the whole movie will unexpectedly hit aces in the last half an hr.)
• 2 Long Lost Twin Brothers (One of them definitely evil) who were separated at birth
• The Hero with a incurable Disease (He’ll not die until the last 10 secs of the movie)
• The Badass killing the Hero’s parents(Or Looting the Izzat of the Hero’s Sis)

Now, the most remarkable thing about a Hindi movie is that you cannot fit it into one single genre. So, even if you go to a theatre and watch an absolutely crappy movie, you are still somehow happy on your way back that you watched almost 5 movies at the price of 1, because a Hindi Movie will consist of all the 5 broad genres:

• Comedy (If sudden dropping of the comedians Pajama qualifies as comedy)
• Romance (Insects sucking the nectar out of a flower kinda stuff)
• Action (From Slaps to Rocket Launchers, u name it , we’ve got it)
• Musical (Nobody can beat Bollywood in the avg. 10 song/movie record)
• Drama (Everything in Hindi movies are over the edge dramatic)

Now, coming to the ‘Must have Characters’:
# 1 The Mom – Immortalized by Nirupa Roy’s ever perennial source of tears and her “Choukh gaye? White Saree”. This character has undergone some serious metamorphosis and has become Kirron Kher wearing a Rs.1.8 Lakh Stone studded Ritu Kumar Saree (for people who love useless trivia) in the epic “Singh is Kinng.” But she will still cry if her son indulges in some “Itne saare paise kahaan se mile beta?” activities and won’t touch the money (jo khoon se range ho) even if the son’s Pitaji is on his death bed in some old ward of a municipal hospital (In other words, the Mom has stood the tests of the time like a Giant Tree, completely unshakeable.)
# 2 The Beta/Hero – Surely he has changed a lot from the times of Rajendar Kumar, where even touching a woman was considered a sin (unless the woman was drowning/freezing and you had to transfer “tann ki garmi” by..You know what). Respecting his parents and siblings was the first and last thing in his mind. Now, he has the liberty to smooch 17 times in a movie. He drinks, lives with the heroine “shaadi ke pehle , ek hi chhat ke neechhe..” He two/multi times with simplicity. This change of the hero’s character is superbly captured by Karan Johar (people who are not straight are finally happy with my mentioning his name) movies. From K2H2, K3G, KHNH to KANK his message has simply shifted to “Love your Friends to Parents to Neighbors to finally… the other man’s wife”. The only thing which has not changed throughout is that his favourite dish remains “Gajar ka Halwa”
# 3 The Gudiya/Heroine – Gone are the good old days when she and her bunch of bubbly sahelis played Balloons and Rings all around Papa’s (Mr. Evil, remember?) huge mansion, dressed in the most eye catching outfits in Yellow, Purple or Pink polka dots. Not to forget the retro oversized glasses and hair bands. Now, imagine 20 something of this rare species on identical bicycles singing “Laa Laa Laa.. Laa Laa”. Now, she wears bikinis even if she’s out shopping for breads n eggs. Vanished are her girlfriends, they are replaced by pretty pretty boyz, she calls friends. She has eradicated the need of Item girls (vamps) like Bindu and Aruna Irani, because she herself can wear (or not wear) more revealing clothes and dance more provocatively than them. So, she is doing 2 roles (Buy 1 get 1 free) together (# 1 The heroine – whom the hero romances, # 2 The vamp – Used to seduce the hero/villain). And btw, she does not fit the image of a Gudiya anymore , unless you are into Sex dolls and other kinky stuffs.
# 4 The real Bad-Ass/Gudiya’s Papa – He has lived in underground dens, with fluorescent lights and smokes to add to the effect (The sets look more like Kumortuli Pujo Pandel though), and the head of a dear and a tiger-skin for long. With high hunter boots, pipes and sone ka biscuits, he has sent shivers through the spines of the viewers for years. Nowadays, he has sprawling villas, the longest stretch limos in town, and the Devil wears Prada. In first impression it’s difficult to say whether he’s good bad or ugly. And he has a pretty daughter, who will get hooked up with the good guy, and then troubles start. Alternate sources of trouble are if he had berahami se katl’d the hero’s parents for some whatsoever feud.
# 5 The Good Cop – He is the one who is transferred to the most wretched locations over and over again, for doing what he is supposed to do – yes his Job. When he again tries to continue the same out there, out of habit, he is invariably suspended by the balding Commissioner who has just received a Call from the Minister screaming ”Yeh sab kya ho raha hai?” But that’s not all, the suspended Cop will finally solve the case, or in other words, he can only solve the case if he is suspended. On the process, he will definitely visit some dance bar, where he will get hold of the baddies after receiving a tip off from a little, skinny guy who calls him from a STD Booth.

So this was all about the characters. Now, to make a Bollywood movie and not have the song and dance sequence is blasphemy. So you have a fixed methodology; songs and dances are like the best practices injected into specific slots just to make your movie compliant to the industry standards. So you need to have at least 5 songs and a maximum of well, whatever Hum Aapke Hai Kaun had.
# 1 The Happy Song – Generally sung in and around Colleges with Bikes, Beers and Friends all around. (All the college knows your song and steps)
# 2 The Fell in Love Song – Figments of thoughts of how beautiful love is with the hero imagining himself feasting the heroine’s body.
# 3 The Transparent Saree Song – With Rainfall, Waterfall or hay mounds adding to the titilation.
# 4 The Sad Song – The Hero gets an excuse to drink and lament about their Judaai for whatever trivial reason.
# 5 The Happy Song 2 – Generally sung in and around a homely atmosphere with Bikes, Beer and Friends replaced by a Car, Kid, and the wife.

Now you have 5 plots, 5 genres, 5 characters and 5 songs under your belt. So anyone who has paid a little attention in Std XI-XII Mathematics could figure out instantly how many different Permutations and Combinations can be made out of these. For those of you, who were more interested in reading Playboy magazine in the last bench instead of what your Geek Madam was trying to convey, the figure would be… mmm…(trying to calculate) …Huge.
So that’s the success formula of Hindi Movies. You work out these few elements in such different combinations and orders that though two films are made of the same elements, they can be as different as ‘Paakeezah’ and ‘Tashan’. So, that’s simple, isn’t it? And you always thought that Hindi Movies were so unpredictable