Tarzaning

 Maybe there was some special argot of the teenagers emerged in the late 1970s where they combined with "-ing" to make hinglish present participles, or Hrishikesh Mukherjee was incentivizing words decades before Joss Whedon came up with buffyspeak. Either way, it is kickass, and is one of the things Im going to start incorporating in my daily vocabulary. 

If you are soching what im bhoking about, you should be dekhing Gol Mal. It was years ahead of its time. And really good nataking. 

Like the most common one is banaoing, but why don't we use more in our vocab? 

Then there is the song, "Ek Din Sapne Me Dekha Sapna"... that right there is the concept of Inception, in song form! The genius of Hrishikesh Mukherjee is clearly far ahead of Christopher Nola, at least temporally, and I sound like one of those cultists gushing about Gunda on a seedy forum, but so be it. 

Rita Coolidge. Bread. George Baker Selection (Paloma Blanca). Asha Puthli. 

I really like Ram Prasad Sharma though. He really is Purshottam, or perfect man. He is in tune with sports and music and pop culture, and equally is well versed in Kabir. Hats off to this dude, he is not like Urmila, studying history and forgetting it. Literally translating to reading history and forgetting it. Practically translating to "byhearting" history and translating it. 

Then I really like the chase sequences in old Bombay! Even in Don they were epic. It is so awesome to see havildars in shorts! hahahaha. Till a few years ago, you could still see those in Bangalore. 

Keshto Mukherjee just had to enact pulling a chillum in the middle of struggling to Patta Kat Loonga. Epic. They don't drink water, they don't drink alcohol, they drink something else. HAha. Kya joke maring. This movie is definitely utsahing smoking weed. 

The bestest thing was when the photographer with the Rolleiflex says smile, and smiles himself!  

They couldn't or didn't want to write around the fact that in the end it was Ram and Urmila that ended up together. If it was released today, I'm sure there would be a #boycottgolmal trending on twitter, but not going to go too much into that :D

There are a few things I didn't like though. It is the subtext. 

First of all the movie suggests that in order to completely please the father in law, and the wife you need to be have a split personality! That threat of marry me or suicide... I don't know where it was coming from. It was like a Schrodinger's threat, you never know if it was legit till it happens (it does not!), but that is a horrible question to ask, only when one is too involved in a movie that clearly should not have used such an unnecessary story trajectory for the pure purpose of entertainment. Pure-ish, I really think they were trying to tell a story here, and not just for the sake of entertainment, but for reaching out to a youthful community and validating some of their beliefs and thoughts. It is a window into how my parent's generation was when they were kids. 

People often ask who is the villain in Gol Mal, and it is such a clean movie without any bad actors. The thing is, there is a demonisation of tradition going on, as if the timeless wisdom of the ancients is somehow at odds with the new discoveries. This sets up an unnecessary conflict, between an ageing civilization and a developing one. It forges a narrative, a world view, that we have to let go of the inertia of culture to embrace whatever it is that the lack of one affords us. This is a dangerous path, and if anything, we are seeing a return to roots all around the world, a primal call to find a way connect with who we truly are, and how our brains work. In fact, I really think this is the exact path that has resulted in many backward looking societies emerging around the world today. We may taking to paleo diets, neo shamanism and yoga, but underlying all of that is still a struggle to get back at... I really like the opportunity of using this phrase... the heart of what was lost. 

And that, was a glorious moustache.