Sulemaani Keeda
was one of those low-profile films that all your friends love and egg you to watch
but the multiplexes conspire to run the shows at odd timings and you miss out. I
had forgotten all about it till I read an interview of the director (Amit
Masurkar) in HT Brunch about his second film and ended up (legally) streaming Keeda.
The lead pair – the painfully shy Dulal and the painfully exuberant
Mainak – form a quirky duo out to write a ‘badi film kissi bade Khan ke saath’. In
their pursuit, they meet some real people picked up from suburban Bombay (or is
it Mumbai?) and some not-so-real people (or are they?) picked up from
Bollywood. You have a cat named Fellini and a star-son called Gonzo who wants
to show ‘angry lustless dark orgies’ in films that are completely ‘out of the
box’ (the new-age shorthand for ‘hatke’).
In between open mics for budding poets and shopping expeditions
in Colaba, we get glimpses of scriptwriting sessions in farmhouses where fly-swatting
neighbours turn out to be more important than they look.
The performances are uniformly real, of which Aditi Vasudev (who
was earlier seen as Rishi Kapoor’s daughter in Do Dooni Char) really stood out.
Razzak Khan – in a short scene as Bollywood producer Sweety Kapoor – brings in his
customary flourish with a neat hanky trick.
Sulemaani Keeda captures beautifully the dilemma of the
new-age writers in old-school Bollywood where Last Tango in Paris’ ‘masala
scenes’ are used to pacify irate landlords and Dekalog is in conflict with
Dabangg.
Essentially, it is about writers and their ordinary lives in pursuit
of extraordinary stories. The writers’ blocks, the snobbery of ‘film writers’
towards ‘TV writers’, their humble brags and their desperation are brought out
really well.
Quite naturally, there are some subtle tributes to writers. For example,
the “life is a handkerchief” scene was done by Salim Khan in an interview and
the exhortation to “think like the buyer, not the creator” was said by Javed
Akhtar in a speech to budding writers. [Yeah, I love writers. Especially, these
two.]
And finally – having written a book on those two writers – I
have to quote that one scene which made the film for me.
Mainak stops his scooter in front a building in Bandra.
Dulal: Arre bhai,
yahan kyun rok diya?
Mainak (points to passerby): Isse poochho kyun rok diya.
Passerby: Yeh Sallu
bhai ka ghar hai, iss liye roka.
Dulal: Arre, Salman
Khan ke ghar kya karna hain?
Mainak: Yahan Salim
Khan ji hi rehte hain… Samjhe? Kya samjhe?
Dulal: Yehi ke actor
ka baap writer hota hai.
Comments