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Rewatching India

Watched Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro  with my friend A who wanted to see something from my childhood in India. After so many years, my own perception of the movie is very different from what it it been as a kid. The action is loud, theatrical and over the top all around but these are actors I love and many among them are extremely versatile. But for A who is not familiar with the oeuvre of Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri or Pankaj Kapoor, it was hard to appreciate their range. 

For me it was a return to my earliest memories of India, the way as a young person I understood how the system works. It was this and other movies of similar genre that shaped me as an adult. The corruption, connivance and lack of consequence creating a no-win scenario for the little guy trying to make an honest living were the themes of our times. In the 80s the chances of entrepreneurial success were slim to none as we see in the struggles of the protagonists. 

In my extended family we had a fair share of young men who were unemployed into their late 20s, working for small private companies that paid very poorly and treated them like dirt. The dream was to get employed by the Central Government and the competition was brutal. By the time it was my time to enter the workforce, the Indian economy had opened up and objectively people of my generation had way better opportunities than those who were ten to fifteen years older than us. 

Notwithstanding, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro would remain a bell-weather for what I believed I should expect in my adult working life, give or take a few details like I might work for a multi-national company (as was common when I graduated. The MNC has become the new thing to covet for like that Central Government job) and not try to run a small business. I simply did not believe the core of India could change enough in my lifetime. 

The Mahabharat scene towards the end of the movie was the most memorable when I first watched the movie and I loved it all over again this time. As a kid it was all about the comedic elements. This time, it was nostalgia for a time when it was okay to be irreverent about religion, mashup Draupadi with Anarkali with hysterical results, The character of Dhritarashtra is a proxy for the common person in India who witnesses the chaos of everyday life and asks in vain "Yeh Sab Kay Ho Rahi Hain". As in real life, no one has the time or interest to answer that question. 
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