A fortnight ago, I received more SMSes and inbox messages about the quality — or the lack of it — of Chennai Express. As an afterthought the friends, acquaintances and strangers added “Id Mubarak”.

Not done. Why so much hysteria on every Id and also on every Diwali week, about the new mega-hyped movie in town? Any which way you look at it, that takes away quite a lot from celebrating the festive Id and Diwali days. Instead, the focus is on: Will the Shah Rukh Khan movie go boom or bust? Will it equal the collections of Salman Khan’s Id bonanza Ek Tha Tiger? Size matters, of the ticket sales.
For over a month, reports about Jeetendra and Ekta Kapoor’s Once Upon Ay Time in Mumbaai Dobaara! stepping back to allow Chennai Express a solo Ramzan Id release, became the yakety-yak of the nation. And the brouhaha, believe me, took the sweetness out of my sheer khorma on Id.
Plus, there were laments from the neighbours of Shah Rukh Khan’s abode Mannat, about the mammoth crowd which had collected to wave out to him on Id. An eminent art gallerist posted her consternation about the milling crowds outside her window. She couldn’t sleep, neither could she call the cops to control the noise levels. Or remind SRK, love thy neighbours please.
Okay, so what point am I making? It’s simply this. Cinema is an all pervasive influence in our lives. Sure. But must we permit it to encroach into our everyday lives? This hysteria-inducing addiction can become a disease if we don’t diagnose it and treat it right now. Alas, easier imagined than done maybe.
Just today, I visited a friend, recuperating in hospital after surgery. He lit up and asked, “So is Chennai Express a genuine hit or is it exaggeration? Someone told me when he went to see it there were just 36 people in the auditorium.” Next he wanted to know if SRK had SMSed to invite me to his star power Id dinner. No? Then, surely Boney Kapoor must have extended an invite for Sridevi’s 50th birthday basheroo. “Don’t stray too close to Amar Singh, he doesn’t like journos like you,” he chattered on. And his wife said this Bolly-chat was just what the doctor had ordered, my friend had cheered up magically.
Although all the jaguar-speed crores collected at the cash counters have been blared, there are two schools of thought on Chennai Express. One, it was monumentally baaaad. And two, it was great fun, total paisa vasool. A senior scribe in Bhopal belonged to the paisa vasool school, elaborating that he’d watched it in “that kind of mood.” The mood wasn’t specified.
Actress-singer-artist Suchitra Krishnamoorthi also registered her feelings of “paisa vasool” on Facebook, ticking off the critics who had ripped it apart. How can they expect caviar when they should have known they were in for idlis? Hey miss, let the critics do their number. Why should they think or react like you did? Moreover, why the comparison between food and cinema? To this, she stated that from cinema, as from a meal, she expects taste and satisfaction. Okay okay, no argument there. Give up! Because any discussion of cinematic niceties, scripting, technical competence and er... mise-en-scene would be refuted as “pseudo-intellectual”, a term applied to all dissenters in Bollywood circles nowadays.
So any final words on Chennai Express? Yes. It just didn’t compare to a bowl of sheer khorma. Or even idlis, if you ask me.