independence day and chennai axepress

I'd vowed to boycott Chennai Express, bloody northies think they can get away with making a "parody" of southie movies, who do they think they are? Lungi Dance irritated the crap out of me too. But faced with an indulgent uncle willing to spend 325 rupees for me, I shrugged and caved. I was half dozing through the thing anyway, only engaged when Deepika and her ridiculously cute accent [and her bindi, what gorgeous] were on screen. I came out of the hall, and couldn't find it in me to bitch about how very loose and idiotic the plot was, how very tired the jokes and scenarios, how cliche and stupid the whole thing was. 

This may sound pretentious of me, but I didn't mind Chennai Express so much because all throughout the climax I had Ilaravasan in mind.

He married for love, and people died and died for it. He died for it. In the end when Shahrukh spouted off about girls who aren't free to marry for love don't have the right to celebrate independence day, I could only think of how fucked up caste and mafia-structure wise Tamil Nadu is, men aren't free to marry for love either. The whole of India really. Khap panchayats spare none, "honour killing" doesn't always differentiate.  And reading about abandoned NRI brides, diasporic India as well. Love is fucked up. There's that incident in JNU, that had us students in a daze for a few days - a country revolver that refused to fire, an axe turned on a girl, poison that killed the boy finally, all in the name of love. 

And it's a total stretch of course, to connect the two. But, man, in the CGI-d heartland of Tamil Nadu, to watch Shahrukh get beat up and make a speech and get to go away with the girl he wants to be with -- Ilaravasan never got to do that. He never would have. Such escapist fantasy it was, I couldn't help that feeling of looking at the screen with a sigh, oh if only. If only life was slightly more like Bollywood, if only life followed principles such as looking past caste/community/religion/class to look at people's "hearts" because they've survived being supremely beaten up, if only a village protected him and his wife, if only he got to live and love. 

I always think about bit in Arundhati Roy's book, about love laws - laws that decide who can love whom and how much.

Man, what are our movies doing to us.