In my mind’s eye, I could see my great-grandparents and other freedom fighters who spent months and years in prison, giving up their comfortable lifestyles to fight for India’s independence, smiling down at free India – or, at least, free Gurgaon – celebrating its freedom with loud, boisterous ‘music’ inconveniencing all else (read: us) who may have stood in the way of their freedom. Ah, Haryana – the land of the free and the wild.
Delhi and NCR and the subtlety of its residents have been in the spotlight for the last few weeks. Karan Johar’s latest film, Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, has the protagonist, Rocky Randhawa (Ranveer Singh), as the owner of a mithai chain in Chandni Chowk. He is loud and brash, but ‘dil ka sacha’. His alpha male father criticises his love of dance, and your heart breaks for Rocky.
And if Hindi cinema is too declasse for you, a show called Made In Heaven, focused on the loves and marriages of Delhi and Gurgaon’s glitterati set has hit the sweet spOTT.
Rocky… seems to acknowledge Delhi’s richie rich set’s idiosyncrasies, warts and all. The same can’t be said for MIH. But in its defence, like the Delhi-NCR folks it represents, the show itself is totally divorced from reality or relatable sensibilities.
MIH is a lot like living in flashy Delhi. It might be about those in Golf Links whose homes are done up in a Good Earth patina. But it’s a show with – wait for it – a conscience! Social issues are touched upon in each episode like prime ministerial hugs – from how dark-skinned brides are ‘still beautiful brides’; how domestic abuse is, um, ‘bad’, and true love is good, even if it means it’s between two married people, celebrity marriages are a sham (that’s bad); to Muslim men love polygamy BUT IT IS BAD; first wives must stand up for themselves; same-sex couples deserve the same rights as unsame-sex couples; dalits should be able to perform dalit rituals publicly in 5-star hotels; trans people deserve love…. But like in Delhi, where people’s social awareness lasts for the length of a Hallmarked day, even MIH cherrypicks issues for 70 minutes before swiftly moving to the next social click-bait issue – while all the while dressing up characters who’ve been beaten, abandoned, discriminated against in the finest couture. Discrimination and prejudice have never looked so pretty, and troubled us for so little time. It’s the best kind of social issues programming – just an episode-long and very easy on the eye. It’s like the chi-chi crowd who travel with their ayahs to foreign destinations (so that there’s always someone capturing those magic moments on the phone) and tell you they treat their help ‘like family’. Ah, Dilli, where else will someone be flying a gargantuan national flag from his Endeavour bonnet with ‘Hindu’ in Hindi written on the back screen, all the while blaring ‘Yeh Mera India’ from the speakers and overtaking you from the left and then speeding off at 120 km an hour into the I-Day horizon?
As long as you are patriotic and wear the Indian flag on your sleeve – or car bonnet, actually – all is forgiven in NCR. Brash, rash, more than a bit flash, par yeh dil hai Hindustani.
