Bollywood Star on SBS Australia: Or why the project is doomed from get go.

The much-hyped Bollywood Star show on SBS channel Australia - which hopes to find, groom and lauch the Bollywood career of six Aussies - is doomed to fail. 

Here’s why.

Because this should be a geneology hunt, not a talent hunt: Whoever came up with the dumb idea that you need talent to make it in Bollywood? 

The most reliable and sureshot way to make it into Bollywood is to possess the right genes. Nearly 90 per cent of the current crop of top Bollywood actors have taken this tried-and-tested path to Bollywood stardom. Think Abishek Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan, Farhan Akhtar, Abhay Deol, Imran Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Sonakshi Sinha: all made it, thanks to the right sirname and familal connections. 

Even a B-grade actor such as Emraan Hashmi had to find a geneological relation to Mahesh Bhatt before he got casted to his first film. 

So if SBS genuinely wants to help these poor sods become a Bollywood Star, it should be sponsoring a find-your-ancestors show not a talent hunt. The six winning finalists can be the ones who find the closest geneological connection to any of the film families: the Khans of all varieties, Chopras, Deols, Kapoors, Bhatts, Roshans et al.

Because this is not a beauty contest: If genes are not very obliging, the next best way to Bollywood is winning an international beauty contest. Think Aishwarya Rai, Sushmita Sen, Priyanka Chopra, Lara Dutta and Dia Mirza. All of them beat some seriously white skin to get a crown on their head. 

So another option SBS has is organising a seriously ambitious sounding beauty contest. As you must have noticed, any title with “India” in it doesn’t make the cut. (Sorry Ms India-Australia). It has to be more than that. (Now the titles of Universe, World and Earth are already taken, but Galaxy, Milky Way and Solar System are still available for SBS to cadge). 

Because foreigners have no place in Bollywood: Name one foreigner who has had a successful Bollywood career. 

If you have a white skin, you can only graduate to villains or vamps, no matter how much you profess to love dancing, colours and curries. Why? Elemetary, Mr Watson. Bollywood films are about how great Indians are, and having a white-skinned hero or heroine would defeat the very purpose. 

But... but... what about Katrina Kaif, you’ll say? What about her? She didn’t make it into Bollywood on the basis of being a beautiful Brit of Indian ancestry. She made it purely on the strength of being Salman Khan’s girlfriend - she piggybacked on him in all her initial films. 

Because Mahesh Bhatt is the chosen producer/director to launch the six finalists and Mahesh Bhatt has not made a decent film in more than a decade. In the last five years, he has made three films - all flops. He is also disgustingly sensational. These days he is busy launching the career of Sunny Leon, an international porn star trying to gain respectability as a Bollywood star (Yes, indeed, our six finalists will be joining such elevated company). 

Because one episode down, we are already scraping the bottom of the barrel: Any talent hunt which is reduced to selecting three contestants out of the last six - after going through some 300 contestants - is seriously in trouble. 

Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu: Or the new-found zaniness of Bollywood's heroines

Oh God! Not another "zany" Bollywood heroine!

It was sort of fun when Kareena played the exuberant, irrepressible, rebellious (read: zany) Geet in Jab We Met in 2007. But the success of that film led to an avalanche of bordering-on-mad heroines, almost all of them coupled with long-suffering but essentially sensible heroes.

• Think Aditi from Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na (2008) who Wikipedia describes as "a highly aggressive, impulsive girl. She abuses. She scratches." In other words, zany. 
• Think Aaliya (Deepika Padukone) from Break ke Baad (2010). She was loud, unpredictable, smokes, get drunk and is generally impulsive. In other words: zany. 
• Think Dimple (played by Katrina Kaif) from Mere Brother Ki Dulhan (2011). Again bold, mischievous, impulsive and good at keeping her hero in a permanent state of alarm. What's that word again: yes, zany.
• And then there was Tanu (Kangana Ranaut) from Tanu Weds Manu (2011) who was practically bordering on psychotic, as far as I am concerned. 

And now, there is Kareena Kapoor in Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, due to release in February 2012, threatening us with her "zaniness" again if the trailer is anything to go by. 

Apart from extreme loquaciousness and boundless boldness, the heroines' "zaniness" also tends to include smoking and getting dead drunk at some point in the film (give or take a few films). Luckily, our long-suffering hero is always near by to rescue her when she passes out. Rebelliousness doesn't include rescuing yourself, it seems.

Our hero, in contrast, is sensible, responsible and generally good at toeing the line. This, we are supposed to see as repressed. Our heroine's zaninesss, then, is really about releasing the inner Marlboro Man in the hero. So while our hero rescues our heroine from drunken scraps, our heroine rescues him from life itself. (Also for some reason, it is a role Imran Khan is determined to colonise, playing it in four of the five films I mentioned above).

In most parts, I don't mind the zaniness, except in three respects. 

First, why is it that so many rebellious heroines seem to have no careers or jobs. Geet, Aditi, Dimple and finally the horrifying Tanu: none of them showed any interest in gainful employment. They were all just waiting to get married, hoping to bag a guy through their exuberant personality alone. Between Aaliya and Kapoor (in Ek Main...), one wanted to become an actress and the other a hair stylist. Obviously, careers like law, IT, journalism etc are not zany enough.

Second, zaniness and all is fine but I do mind watching smoking as somehow being emblematic of rebelliousness. It is a generally accepted as a harmful and somewhat disgusting habit and is becoming increasingly unfashionable in the West, from where we picked up the notion that it is fashionable in the first place. In fact, I can't remember the last Hollywood Rom-Com, in which the heroine smoked. Do we always have to remain a step behind the West all the time? Can't we just buck the trend for a change. 

Third, after so many films, zaniness is turning into a bore. 

Let's hope, Kareena Kapoor, who started the trend with Jab We Met, will bring it to an end with Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu.

***
Here's a previous blog, I wrote, about the Bollywood heroines: Dil Chahta Hain: Or Where Have All the Bollywood Feminists Disappeared.

Don 2 or MI4: Which is a more Indian experience?

Last night, in a bid to introduce Sid and my very-soon-to-pop-out baby to some Indian culture, we went to watch the super slick Don 2: The King is Back.  Unfortunately, culturally and aesthetically the film was so derivative of Hollywood that we would have been better-off watching MI4: Ghost Protocol, the twenty minutes-climax of which is set in squalid Mumbai and even features one of its famous traffic jams.

The film reminded me of a corny dialogue from a late-80s Bollywood-starrer Jamai Raja. It had Shakti Kapoor eulogising a prospective son-in-law with: "woh breakfast London me khate hain, lunch Paris mein, aur dinner New York mein. Bus su-su karne India aate hain". (He eats his breakfast in London, lunch in Paris and dinner in New York. He only comes to India to pee). Don doesn't even dignify India with his precious pee.

Everything about this super-villain is foreign: his empire, his clothes, his cars, his toilets, his targets and his ambitions. Only, the language in which he operates is clean, unaccented Hindi, which in turn forces the film to place Hindi-speaking Indian characters in unlikely settings: as Interpol officers in Malaysia, heading German banks, or as computer hackers or contract killers in Berlin.

There is a lot of talk of how the film can match any Hollywood thriller in its production values. Yes, it can. But all of it is great imitation at best: Don 2 never uses the foreign locales, settings or aesthetics to say anything original or authentic. But then again, Bollywood film-makers rarely use Indian locales, settings or aesthetics with any imagination so why should they accord the respect to foreign locales.

The good news for us is that it doesn't matter. Western film-makers are slowly discovering India as a possible setting for its films. (MI4 is the latest example). Once, they discover us and find an aesthetic language to cinematically represent our strangely ugly-beautiful cities, I'm confident we'll quickly rediscover our streets. After all, it only took Farhan Akhtar two years to recreate Bourne Supremacy's (2004) fabulous car chase in Goa for his 2006-film Don: The Chase Begins Again. Others will take even less.

***
Here's a great spoof of MI4 featuring Anil Kapoor. I couldn't resist...

The rise and rise of Mayank Shekhar: Or has Sarah Palin found her literary match?

To
Mayank  Shekhar
National Cultural Editor and Chief Film Reviewer
Hindustan Times
India

Dear Mayank,

In the Wikipedia entry for Peepli Live – one of the most talked of Hindi films of late – I came across an extract from a review of the film by you: “The satire is irresistible; the subtext, compelling. And yet neither shows itself up in any form of self-seriousness. The comic writing is immaculately inspired”.

Mayank spreading knowledge - hopefully not on English

And I found myself wondering, what exactly is “self-serious”?

Perhaps, what you mean is serious.

Only, as I understand a good satire is something superficially funny but with a serious subtext. If it doesn’t have a serious subtext, then it is just a comedy not a satire. So what exactly do you mean when you say that the satire and subtext are both good, but thankfully not serious?

And what exactly is “immaculately inspired”? Now, I’ve heard of immaculate conception, but immaculate inspiration? I am still trying to figure that one out.

Now, I bear you no malice – after all, you are my Facebook friend, a friend of a friend, and best friend of a best friend, and we did have a hazy, boozy conversation at a literature festival in Mumbai several years ago. But this is what I don’t get about your rise and rise: How can you be one of the most popular film reviewers of India, the national cultural editor of one of the country’s largest selling dailies, and a winner of the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism – when you have no concept of the English language, your primary tool of trade?

For example, here is what I don’t get about your review of another recent film, We Are Family:

The review begins with: “It’s this thing about soppy chick flicks, or afternoon soppy soap operas, if you will. The male character is destined to severe step-mom treatment. If he’s present at all, he usually has no say in his own destiny.” Err.. perhaps what you meant was “severe stepson treatment”. Step moms are usually disturbingly in control of the destinies of others.

“The setting is the sanitised First World. Spaghetti's ready for supper. Aesthetics of modern, good housekeeping is established.” What exactly is “spaghetti’s ready for supper” hanging around for unless it is a quote from the film, in which case shouldn’t it be placed within quotes?

“It’s just the idea that binds all these together, which is entirely outsourced from the West.” No, no Mayank, what you mean is “entirely borrowed from the West” because you cannot outsource from, you can only outsource to.

“A warm, doting single mother, losing before her eyes, her life and her sweet children to fatal cancer, you can tell, is something that’ll weep any woman off her feet.” Only Mayank, in the film the mother is not losing her kids to cancer, the kids are losing their mother to cancer.

And you don’t “weep women off their feet”, you “sweep them off their feet”. Or were you punning? It is so difficult to tell.

“This cultivated suaveness is but suddenly forgone as everybody begins to simultaneously weep from the screen.” 

Now Mayank, I am trying very hard – very hard indeed – to imagine them “weeping from the screen”, but it is very difficult, let me tell you.

And then there are the mysteries of your review of another film Kites:

Your review begins with: “Two people (Hrithik Roshan, Barbara Mori), respectively romance another from the same family (Kangana Ranaut, Nicholas Brown), purely for the love of the money. The girl’s an illegal immigrant into the US from Mexico. The boy is the American half of various green card marriages on sale: “$1,000; honeymoon charges extra.””

Now, I’ll forget the messiness of a phrase like, “American half of various green card marriages on sale”. Let’s start with the basics - which girl and which boy? I mean, is Moli the illegal immigrant or Kangana Ranaut? Is Roshan the one half of the various green card marriages or Brown? I am confused.

“The premise from hereon could take the shape of a slight comedy of deceit (Woody Allen’s Matchpoint), or follow an aggressive drama (Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr Ripley).”

A “premise” does not have continuity, Mayank, so it cannot not take shape or follow. I think, the word you were looking for was simply “story” because a story can take shape.

“The said Mafiosi home belongs to one, Bob Grover (Kabir Bedi), the “owner of one of the biggest casinos in Vegas,” no less. Senators, governors etc swim under Bob’s pant pockets”.

I won’t quibble over the fact that there should be no comma following “one” because I am too busy trying to imagine people swimming under pockets. Only, I can’t. What do you mean?

“No Hindi film actor ever, I suspect, has worked himself up this much to make the super-star grade.” No, no Mayank, what you mean is “worked on himself”. “Worked himself up” means gotten himself excited.

“Hrithik remains the perfect foil for an action piece across the barrenness of Nevada.” No, no – “foil” means “to frustrate” or “defeat”. What you want to say is “perfect … “perfect… I don’t know. I don’t know what you want to say.

And Mayank, these are only two reviews. And I have not yet mentioned all your mixed tenses, misplaced commas and crazy syntax. You would be such an inspiration to Sarah Palin.

But come every Friday, I'll carry on with my helpful advice on your language bloopers.

Or else, I will be happy to pass on the numbers of some good English language tutors. After all, you are my Facebook friend, friend of a friend, and a best friend of a best friend. And what else are friends for?

Yours
Always ready to help
Chetna Prakash (nee Mahadik)

Work of art: Or why I love reading Bollywood film reviews

Birds of prey

No matter what Indian filmmakers may say about Bollywood films coming of age – we all know they haven’t. They are still as silly as they come.

But here’s why it is important to keep Bollywood a going concern. Because they lead to such pricelessly funny reviews. Like this one of the latest Bollywood release in India, Lafangey Parindey (translated as “Loafer Birds”, told you silly as hell).

The thing is that if you are an intelligent person and have to review a completely absurd product, the only way you can survive the process is by developing a sense of humour. If most things about the film suck – the story, the characters, the acting, the plot development, the editing – the only way to get any joy out of the work is to make fun of it. So actually, the worse the film, the better the review.

Of course, that can happen with films elsewhere as well. Every now and then, silly British films come up that lead to incredibly funny reviews. But Bollywood film reviewers have an edge over others for three reasons.

First, they get so much more practice. After all, as is famously known, Bollywood produces more films a year than any other film industry around the world, most of them silly.

Second, everyone in the know – the reviewer, the filmmaker, and the audience – takes it for granted that sense has no place in the film. So you are relieved of any responsibility of looking for it in the film. Your sole responsibility is to make sure that the audience enjoys your review.

Third, you know that your review will have no effect whatsoever on the fate of the film.

So you are free to have as much fun with your review as you want without any kind of responsibility or ethical dilemmas. Slowly, as your skills get more honed, the reviews become works of art in themselves.

So, if I was a book publisher looking to come out with a book on Bollywood that intelligent people would enjoy – I would forget the films and focus on the reviews.

*** 
At the risk of self promotion, here are a couple of Bollywood film review that I had fun writing: Namastey London & Shaadi Se Pehle.

Rescued by Bollywood: Or How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love Kathak

The thing about being out of India is that the moment I hear of anything even remotely connected to India, I feel I must experience it. Yesterday, I actually found myself considering attending some loud, over-the-top Baisakhi festival at Trafalgar Square -- the kind of affair I would have certainly turned up my nose up at, when living in India. Academics would call it my search for identity in an alien land or some such.

What else but my "search of identity" could have led me to Sadler's Well theatre last Tuesday for a Kathak performance by Akram Khan? After all, hadn't I decided early on in life that Indian classical dance and music was not for me? So, naturally, as I sat down on my seat, I nervously wondered whether I had signed myself up for more Indian culture than I could take in one evening.

I tried to take courage from Akram Khan's impeccable reputation - a dancer of Brit-Bang origin (my short form for second-generation British-Bangladeshis), who has not only mastered classical Kathak, but also modern dance, and by combining the two has apparently breathed new life into Indian classical dance in the West. I hoped to find solace in his modern-take on classical, if not classical dance itself.

I needn't have feared. Just because I never actually attended Kathak performances myself, doesn't mean that all along Kathak hadn't been visiting me. It had - through all the Bollywood films I had grown-up watching. As I saw Khan sway and twirl elegantly, I found myself revisiting the dance sequences (particularly, the infamous mujras, come to think of it) of so many films through the '50s and '60s, and found myself absorbed by the performance. Heck! At some point, I even felt tears well up in my eyes. Nostalgia - we are all such suckers for it.

In fact, at the end, I actually enjoyed the first half more, which was entirely in Kathak than the second-half, in which he performed Kabuki-style modern dance.

I don't know whether it was Khan's best performance or not. Maybe, he missed a beat or two here or there. Maybe, he didn't. Who cares? I was just happy to realise that I had known and loved Kathak all my life, thanks to Bollywood.
 
***

Watch Akram Khan talk of Kathak:



And here's a Bollywood version:

Diversity Bollywood-style

Trying to play catch-up with Bollywood, I watched 3 Idiots and Rocket Singh: Saleman of the Year back to back this week. And what struck me was that the narrator of 3 Idiots, played by Madhavan, was Muslim and the hero of Rocket Singh, played by Ranbeer Singh, was Sikh. And they were Muslim and Sikh for no reason other than they just were. I loved that.

Usually, Bollywood films will introduce a Muslim character to overtly and particularly refer to his or her Muslimness and use the fact to preach tolerance, secularism, partriotism etc etc – think Rang De Basanti, Heroes, Fanaa, Chak De! India.

As for Sikhs, they simply don’t exist except for ridiculous comic effect (anyone remembers that gawdawful Dil Bole Hadippa). Even in Rang De Basanti, the director gives Aamir Khan a Sikh name, family and son but not the turban and beard that would seal the fact that he is Sikh. It is simply not sexy to have a Sikh hero.

But in 3 Idiots, Madhavan is Muslim for no other reason than that surely there are Muslims studying in Indian engineering colleges. He dresses, acts, speaks, eats and behaves like his two other roommates. Sure, his parents put Kajal in their eyes and wear Salwar Kameez, but again their Muslimness has no bearing on the plot. The director even gives him a particularly devout Hindu roommate, played by Sharman Joshi. But Madhavan's Muslimness and Johsi's devout Hinduness is never a point of confrontation. Both facts exist simultaneously without any friction – as they do between me and my many Muslim friends.

Rocket Singh goes a step further by introducing us to a Sikh hero. Again, his Sikhness has no material bearing on the plot. He just as soon could have been a Christian, Hindu or Muslim. All of the three religions have the same moral code against corruption and greed that guide him through the film. His beard and turban is neither a subject of comic relief nor of any other particular interest. He has a girlfriend of ambiguous religious antecedents though we can be sure that she is not Sikh. The film tells us that a Sikh can be attractive, intelligent and the hero of a film without actually referring to Rocket Singh’s Sikhness at all.

Now, I am waiting to see the first Malayalam Christian hero of a Hindi film answering to the name of Jacob Kochumman.

***
After watching Taare Zameen Par and 3 Idiots, Sid wants to know if Aamir Khan has got some special axe to grind with the Indian education system.

Romancing the Indian way

Karan Johar is appalled by the way the American authorities treated his friend Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan - daring to question him at the Newark Airport. After all, as Shahane in his latest blog Shoot First, Mumble Later points out, Johar has always been so kind in his intelligent and nuanced potrayals of western cultures.

That reminded me of another "pure Punjab vs wicked West" film, Namastey London, that I had the honour of reviewing for Time Out Mumbai a few years ago.

Needleless to say, Punjab came out toppers. But what really struck me about the film was the director Vipul Shah's idea of how Indian men should woo women (NRI or otherwise): apparently it involves leering at them frankly and aggressively, accosting them in a drunk state in the night, and giggling idiotically when talking to them. Treating them with respect or acting like intelligent beings around them is overrated.

The movie was a thunderous hit. No wonder, Indian men think sexual aggression is a perfectly acceptable part of romance.

If only, western men would take a few lessons from their pure-bred counterparts in Punjab.

****
Leering is sexy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6g3XPI7HRc
Accosting is macho: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBtzfKGr5Fk
Idiocy is attractive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXsOy9vZQnk
Review on Time Out Mumbai: http://www.timeoutmumbai.net/film/film_details.asp?code=199&source=2

AR Rahman: Or why shower singers like me detest you.

Composer AR Rahman may be raking in the international awards and accolades but he has a lot to answer to the joyful shower singers of the world like me.

Before he trotted up, the vocals (lyrics and singing) dominated the foreground, and the music accompanied from the background. Thus, the words, diction, and poetry made enough of an impression on our nuerons, for them to effortlessly come tumbling out in the shower. Then came Rahman and inversed the equation: the music overwhelmed the foreground, and the lyrics became helpful mumblings from the back.

But does he realise how incredibly difficult it is to sing his mumbles in the shower? My brain simply doesn't retain enough of them.

Besides, the lyricists have caught on to Rahman. Why bother with logical sequencing of words, give a proper subject and object to your poetry, or lend sense - when the mumbles are barely perceptible anyway.


Take for example, Roobaroo from the film Rang De Basanti (2006). Such fabulous music - my heart dived and rose with Rahman's strokes. But singing it is hell. What cues to use to remember its nonsense lyrics? Take para 2 for example:

jo gumshuda-sa khwaab tha
voh mil gaya voh khil gaya
woh loha tha pighal gaya
kichhaa kichhaa machal gaya
sitaar mein badal gaya



Now I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, but I still can't understand how Prasoon Joshi, the lyricist, connected the gumshuda khwab (dream) in question to bloody pighla loha (melted iron) or turned it into a sitar (a kind of guitar) or what exactly is getting "khiccha khiccha" out here, and pray why. I suspect, he tacked lots of lovely sounding Urdu words - and I bet even shit sounds lovely in Urdu - together in complete faith that no one would notice. Well, guess what. Shower singers do.


Here's another one to give Lewis Carol a run for his money - Aye Udi Udi from Saathiya (2002).

(Aye Udi Udi Udi Aye Khwaaboon Kii Burii
Aye Aang Rang Khelii Aye Saarii Raat Ho Gayi )...(2)
Halkii Aye Halkii Kal Raat Jo Shabnam Girii
Har Akhiyaan Vakiyaan Bhar Gayi Kal To Haath Par Dab Dab Girii
Pahalii Pahalii Baarish Kii Chhiite Pahalii Baarish Bhiige



A hershey's kiss for anyone who can identify the subject of this stanza!

Grrr.. Mr Rahman... a big boo from all the shower singers of the world.


****
Correction: In an earlier version, I had written that Gulzar was the lyricist of the song Roobaroo. Sorry for the mistake. He deserves credit for the other jem - Aye Udi Udi.

Dil Chahta Hain: Or where have all the Bollywood feminists disappeared?

Bollywood isn't exactly a bountiful hunting ground, when looking for feminist role models. I can't remember the last film in which the heroine actually worked and made a living. And the more upscale and urbane the films are becoming, the more regressive their portrayal of woman is getting.

Let's take for example, Dil Chahta Hai: the archetypical urban film, hailed by many as the first to reflect the life (and perhaps, the lifestyle) of urban India. What did the two heroines -- Preity Zinta and Sonali Kulkarni -- do in the film? Precisely nothing, beyond waiting to get married. In fact, Zinta atempts the ultimate K-serial good Indian woman act: try to sacrifice her love for her family obligations. The only woman to work was Dimple Kapadia, and we know what happened to her: she died of consumption, lonely and sad, too gutless to accept the love of a much younger man.



How about comparing these characters to that of Vidya Sinha's in the quiet, middle-class 1975 film Choti Si Baat? It is a character I find fascinating for its unfussy boldness, seldom seen in Bollywood.

At first glance, she seems like an unlikely feminist role model - Sinha sports ugly saris and hairdos through the film, a far call from the sophisticated and chic Zinta, Kapadia and Kulkarni of DCH. But think about it. Sinha is portrayed as a young, independent woman living and working on her own in Mumbai. (Her family was not referred to even once in the film.) And it is more the vivaciousness of her personality than her beauty that has her two suitors - played by Amol Palekar and Asrani - eating out of her hand.

She confidently accepts lunch date offers, and shows no misgivings about meeting her two suitors one-on-one even though she is well aware that they are trying to woo her. She has a gorgeously wicked sense of humour, and shamelessly gossips and giggles about her escapades with her friend in office. All the same, she is far from a bitch. She prefers Palekar to Asrani for being a kinder, better person.

But what I like most about her, is that it is finally she - tired of the game of one upmanship going on between the two men - who asks Palekar to cut the bullshit out and marry her. In every situation, she seems to be in more control that either of the two heroes.



I particularly think of this contrast between DCH and CSB when I look around at women in Mumbai. An American photojournalist friend, Sam, on his first trip to Mumbai a few years ago, remarked how surprised he was to see women sport jeans and tank tops with such elan in Mumbai. He took it as a sign of their liberation. In response, my thoughts immedietely went back to so many of my rich Marwari classmates in Sydenham College, who would easily fall into this liberated category based on clothes. Yet, they tamely married guys chosen by their families the moment they stepped out of college. So much for their tank tops and low waist jeans! By contrast, many of the sari-clad women jumping out the 9.00am local train and fighting their way to Mantralaya - much like Sinha in CSB - may hide Sam's liberated Mumbai woman.

To what extent, can we judge a woman's independence on the basis of their clothes?