Arnab Ray: A chick flick by any other name

Zindagi Na Milega Dobara is fascinating. Not as a movie though. A lavishly-mounted, wannabe re-tread of Dil Chahta Hai but with less humour and lesser humanity, it parades a profusion of stock situations, cardboard stereotypes and “Seize the Day” hoo-haah.

What makes it fascinating though is something else. Ostensibly a movie about guys bonding on a road trip through Spain, it is actually not about men at all. ZNMD is an unabashedly escapist chick-flick, a wish fulfillment fantasy for yuppie Indian women for whom the three protagonists represent their ideals of what men should be, what their problems should be and what they ought to do when men get together.

The reality about the normal Indian man is far removed from what you see in ZNMD. First of all not too many of us look like those handsome dudes, the kind that could have any woman they want but choose you dear lady and only you. Even more importantly, we ain’t that rich, not rich enough to go journeying about in Spain or Greece. Any cheap place where one can get desi liquor stuffed in recycled milk packets is good enough for a guy’s get-together.  Adventure sports? Sure. But not sky-diving. No, not that kind of ‘bull’. The asli mard tries to see if he can get his nose to touch his nipple or if he can get drunk by pouring alcohol in his eyes.

When we men gift something to our dearies, it is not a designer bag worth 12,000 Euro, but the small perfume sampler that came free with the bigger bottle we bought for ourselves.

The problems in our lives aren’t “Oh my God I earn millions and I want to earn more but I cannot give time for my loved ones”. I know you ladies would want us to have exactly these kinds of fashionable problems but reality is a bit different. Most of us aren’t as keenly in touch with their feminine sides as the heroes of this movie. When we want to humiliate a langotia yaar, trust me that it’s not something as polite as buying him a pink cell phone. And most importantly, no one would ever be caught dead as impeccably turned out as the “Three Musketeers” while on a road-trip. If we are not dirty and unshaved and do not reek of sweat, vomit and Old Monk, then what kind of men are we?

Backslapping, anyone?
Real men-friends. when they get together,  fight. A lot. But not over the past like the girlie men of ZNMD. No they fight over the present. Like why does Nitin always have more kababs than everyone else or why does Rohan make some excuse not to pay his share of the bill. And when fights happen, they are intense. It does start with references to intimate acts with close relatives but soon escalates into something more physical, much more severe than the light girlie tamacha in ZNMD. When real men on road-trips fight among themselves, balls are kneed and collars twisted. And then the men go to bed and wake up next day go on living as if nothing has happened. Which I believe is the best thing about guys and their guy friends.

There is a movie still waiting to be made, one which portrays men as men and not simply as unreal projections of “what women wish they were”, one which is funny, poignant and dare I say manly. Maybe some day it will be made. Maybe some day.

— Arnab Ray is the author of the best-selling May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss