My Yahoo! Movies column, first published here.
As The Lunchbox was all ready to go on a trip to LA, in came an
unknown story from Gujarat and broke many hearts. Just as last week’s tribute
was towards ‘food movies’, this week’s tribute is dedicated to The Good Road
and ‘road movies’.
Bombay To
Goa – India’s favourite leisure drive – was immortalized by a girl
(Aruna Irani) escaping from gangsters out to kill her for witnessing a murder.
She got on to a MP Travels bus bound for Goa and a lanky stranger who was
following the girl also joined her in the bus and created such a ruckus that we
still have his song buzzing in our ears. Dekha
naa hai re…
Three friends took the same drive from Mumbai to Goa in a Mercedes
convertible and made promises to make the same trip many times together. Farhan
Akhtar made Dil Chahta Hai – which
isn’t entirely about journeys – but it egged many people to get into a car and
zip southwards from Bombay along the Konkan coast.
Pooja Bhatt ran away from home to marry her beau who was after her
father’s money. She met a smartass reporter on the way. He helped her to get an
exclusive. They fell in love. They got separated. Eventually, all got settled
and the heiress ran away again – this time, with her new lover.
Dil Hai Ke
Manta Nahin was a rip-off of Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (which was also used to make Raj
Kapoor-Nargis starrer Chori Chori).
Vivek Oberoi and Antara Mali eloped to avoid her father’s wrath in
the first ‘official’ road movie of Bollywood – Road. Their plan was to get to Jodhpur, get married and get back to
pacify the girl’s dad. This was seriously jeopardised by an increasingly
demanding hitchhiker (Manoj Bajpai) and the search party sent out by the girl’s
dad.
A business heir was trying to escape his unsuccessful life when he
met a bubbly girl in Jab We Met. They
started from Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus but they had missed the train at two
successive stations, thus ending up spending a night at Hotel Decent. Soon they
had shifted to state transport buses and singing songs before tripping into
Kareena’s home in Bhatinda.
Two college-mates were looking for their best friend when a
despicable batchmate landed up and claimed that he had found Rancho. Farhan and
Raju immediately got into the car and during the drive, they remembered the
great time they had as 3 Idiots.
But the man they met in Shimla wasn’t the man they were looking
for. They got an address in Ladakh and zoomed off, ending their trip on the
banks of Lake Pangong of Ladakh.
In Anjaana Anjaani , two
strangers met while trying to commit suicide. After multiple attempts, they
decided to have a twenty-day binge that would end with their suicides on 31st
December.
They drove from New York to Las Vegas in a classic red Ford Falcon
and the drive became, literally, a song. They went from the snowy, windy climes
(Priyanka in woolens) to the sunny, sultry weather (Priyanka in hot pants),
giving lifts to all sorts of hitchhikers and their own moods.
A banker from London, a businessman from Mumbai and a copywriter
from Delhi met in Barcelona for a pact made in college. The pact was that each
would choose an adventure sport and the other two would participate
unquestioningly. That was the trip they took in Spain for Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. The three friends went from Barcelona to Seville
via Costa Brava in a sky-blue Convertible through scenic roads, with scenic
girlfriends, in their super-scenic car.
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