Delhi 6

Let’s start with the story/plot first. Abhishek and his grandmom return to Delhi from US. Grandmom, Waheeda Rehman, has come here to die, and even begins shopping for her funeral. The neighbourhood they live in appears to have Hindu-Muslim unity stamped all over it. Example: a Muslim jelaabi seller is a Hanuman bhakt, Abhishek is the product of an cross-religion marriage, Rishi Kapoor, a Muslim, is a close family friend and so on.
The town is a far cry from a space-launching India. Untouchability is still practiced. Waheeda, faint from a stroke is being taken to the hospital in a cycle-richshaw. Just as Abhishek gets into a heated argument with a crowd gathered around a pregnant cow, we see Rehman limping for a darshan of the cow herself. Meanwhile a man dressed as the Kaala Bandhar wreaks havoc in the neighbourhood. Rumours, mostly exaggerated or wholly untrue, surround this creature. In no time (jusht two hours) suspicion of the Kaala Bandar’s identity divides the Hindus and Muslims. Politicians and police join in and the focus now shifts to a masjith, which some claim was built on a mandir.
The storyline evokes images of a quintessential, Indian small town, seeped in old-world charm. If the director also sought to add vignettes of neighbourly camaraderie, illogicalness of superstition and the ignorance about fashion and technology in his Delhi 6, the film had to be light footed, part-whimsical, part-satirical. And we have those moments too - when two warring brothers finally look at each other in the eye and a brick falls on the old radio making it finally sing in years. Or when the older brother advocates his younger brother’s water strategy to ‘short-circuit’ the Kaala Bandhar, or when two children walk with a lit cigarette down the street, feeling very grown up. There are several postcard scenes and their depiction is bang on right.
But then Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra also wanted a message delivered. And not subtely either. When Abhishek is pushed down the stairs of a mandir, he picks himself up (so much like his papa’s 80s films), and, with two feet clearance around him, delivers a speech on the mad fakir’s mirror. No, don’t ask.
The climax is again a tug-of-war between Bollywood old school (like the scene described above) and Mehra’s attempt at a tragic-comic situation (which, according to me, should have been the chosen style). The movie constantly shuffles between the two, blocking the possibility of either working.
The editing was just bad. So was the camera work. Would it have killed them to have two cameras? There’s just so much twirling-bluring-why-is-she-laughing-now one can take. And god, the songs were placed so randomly. And the actors lip-synched! (Told you, old-school). Even RDB spared us effort of trying to believe that Shreya Goswami’s rich voice could come out of Sonam or that every now and then we all do a cool gansta’ walk down busy streets, rapping.
Finally, the message. It doesn’t work for many reasons - overstatement, everything ending so pat, Abhiskeh’s rendezvous with his Dad in Heaven (I swear I could see myself in pigtails and uniform chanting ‘Our Father in heaven, holy-beed-ai-name’!)
Something tells me Mehra took a long vacation post production, because way too many things are messed up in this department. I’ve mentioned sound and editing already, haven’t I?
Performance wise, Abhishek was just ok. Waheeda Rehman is was the best.
Anyway, the film wasn’t anything of what I had expected. Disappointing, in a word.

**Update: It all makes lots of sense now. The editor was none other than his wife Bharati. "I've now left Dilli 6 to her. She's now trying to make sense of my nonsense," chortles Rakeysh. I told you he wasnt around, ha!