Move over, gays. Your place in the sun just got jaded with over- exposure. It’s the turn of transgenders now.
In barely a fortnight, we’ve been introduced to three. After Dr Trinetra Haldar in Made In Heaven, National Award-winning filmmaker Ravi Jadhav directed Sushmita Sen in Taali, the biopic on Shreegauri Sawant, the real-life transwoman-activist. One of the victorious petitioners who got the Supreme Court to legally recognise the third gender in 2014, Gauri had battled for equality. Taali was an eye-opener as the third gender had so far been denied the right to even hold a passport or driving licence. Therefore, no death certificate either, said Taali, the title referring to the clapping and begging at traffic signals by transgenders.
This week, R. Balki alsocast transwoman Ivanka Das as Abhishek Bachchan’s raakhi-sister after “he” became “she” in Ghoomer. Balki has been gender-correct even inthe disclaimer that prefaces every film where he refers to he/she/them.
Incidentally, Ghoomer is laden with Balki’s gratitude to Amitabh and family. Besides Aishwarya Rai, he even thanks Aaradhya Bachchan in the credits. After Amitabh’s grandson Agastya Nanda makes his debut with The Archies later this year, perhaps the Nanda family too will get a place in Balki’s adulatory credits.
“Ghoomer is a bloomer,” forecast the film trade only because Gadar 2 and, to a smaller extent, OMG 2 are rocking the theatres. Sounds unfair to the Abhishek Bachchan-starrer.
But box-office success, especially in India, is dil over dimaag. Rajinikanth’sJailer, an overlong sleeping pill, is simply fan mania, with strongholds like Singapore, Malaysia and the UAE contributingto its Rs 400 crore global earnings. But there’s barely a ripple in Hindi where Rajini is not a craze.
It wasn’t cerebral thinking but Pankaj Tripathi’s comic timing (plus a bit of titillation and the lure of sex education) that brought in an audience for Akshay Kumar’s film. Because honestly, where is the logic, even for a story set in a Tier 2 city like Ujjain, in a teenager being held guilty, sus-pended by an elite school and treated as a social outcaste for taking a “selfie” (euphemism for masturbation) in the privacy of the school bathroom? Completely overlooking the law that students who took a video of him in the act were guilty of invading his privacy, OMG 2 castigated the boy to the extent of driving him to attempt suicide and had an educated female lawyer outraging in court, “Masturbation is a sin.” An outdated and illogical premise amused the audience enough to earn itself a hit label though a film that cost about Rs 150 crore needs to gross Rs 300 to make a neat net profit. OMG 2 is still to cross Rs 100 crore.
It’s the pricing that matters and that’s where Gadar 2 scores. Director Anil Sharma had told me that reports of a Rs 100 crore budget were off the mark, he’d spent less than that figure. “Except for Sunny Deol’s fee, and he also compromised on it, we spent money on the making and not on actors’ fees,” he said, disclosing that he kept a tight rein on the budget. “Gadar was called Gutter,” Anil Sharma’s exclusive to me is on YouTube and when we’d shot it, the director had been so sleep-deprived with post-production work that we had to edit portions where he’d dozed off.
“I finally had a full night’s sleep,” he said 10 days later. Calm despite the manic celebrations in the theatres, Anil wondered, “Why is the film industry surprised that Gadar is such abig hit? I’m not surprised. I was sure of its success from the day I got my storyline from my writer.”
He explained that where the industry has got it wrong lately is that it has relied heavily on multiplex audiences. “Gadar is 65 per cent single screen audience and 35 per cent multiplex,” he said.
Once again, it is a sentiment thathas boosted the film to breast the Rs 300 crore mark this weekend, poised to cross Rs 500 crore.
Gadar 2 reiterates the single-screen maxim: don’t overwork your brains. Take your heart with you and go balle balle.
