Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi

After watching editor-turned-director Bela Bhansali Sehgal’s debut film, I ponder: What is the point of Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi? Is it to tell a hatke love story, one involving two middle-aged Parsis trying to make out while trying to get married?

The idea is interesting and Shirin Farhad Ki Toh... is quaintly adorable when it sticks to charming Parsis and their curious quirks. But it starts to belch and choke too soon.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali (who has written the film’s script and screenplay) not only stuffs the film with the usual clichés that we see in most Bollywood love stories — read hair-brained characters with appalling sartorial and music taste — but also makes the Parsis out to be pitiable senile creatures who are forever quarreling and thrashing each other. If the film wasn’t so boring, I’m sure Parsis would have found time to take offense.
Why kill the inherent coolness and eccentricities of Parsis by turning them into inmates of a loony bin? Why get an interesting cast and make them all behave like idiots? Would you take a bunch of really cool dadi-mas and put them in convent school uniform and make them sing (Hit Me) Baby One More Time? Is that cool? No, that’s sad and makes you pity the moment when that particularly slow-in-the-head sperm swam and met its mate. You wish someone had diverted it with a little U-turn arrow.
Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi is (obviously) set in Mumbai’s Parsi quarters where we meet 45-year-old Farhad (Boman Irani), a salesman in Tem Tem’s Bra & Panty shop. He isn’t married and so is constantly goaded to go meet girls. But given his job, his old scooter with a sidecar and the fact that he lives with his Mama (Daisy Irani) and grandmother (Shammi), he is not an attractive prospective groom.
One day, while fiddling with a mannequin’s bra-panty in his shop’s show-window, he spots Shirin (Farah Khan). He just knows that she’s a 36B and offers a special florescent number that glows in the dark. But she’s shopping for 38D, plain white.
Not many Bollywood films are able to deal with these items of clothing as casually. In fact, this film also uses lots of double entendres the way they are freely thrown at unmarried men in Indian homes — Mama says “Farhad ka murga itne saal ke baad abhi jaga hai” when he falls in love. This is refreshing but it's brief, because the film can’t decide what it wants to be.
Anyway, Shirin and Farhad fall in love, go on dates and soon it’s wedding time. But there is a problem. Shirin is responsible for destroying Farhad’s papa’s akhri nishani, one paani ki tanki, and Farhad’s Mama can’t forgive her. This paani ki tanki business is funny initially, but it gets stretched so much that it gave me time to drift, to contemplate.
The film has a very funny scene where one old Parsi uncle is rushed to the hospital because he hasn’t been able to fart for two days. This led me to thoughts of a short film on how all communities in India are bound to each other by their relationship to digestion and farting. I, for example, could contribute substantially about the affinity Bengalis have for anyone who feels ambaal (pronounced ombool, i.e. acidity followed by gas) rising. Bottles of Dey’s Milk of Magnesia are promptly brought and gaseous person is force-fed. Also, an industrial size bottle of Aqua Ptychotis, ajwain ka paani, is passed around. Everyone takes a sip, just in case.
Punjabis are, of course, less queasy. They let out stuff quite easily. I recall an aunt who had a backside to rival Asha Parekh’s and who would, while talking — about maid problems, or the fact that her husband flashed every aunty in the colony — would just tilt her torso to the left, going from 90 to 25 degree, and let out a loud fart and then return to her original position as if nothing had happened.
I bet if we all contributed, it would make a good national integration video and we won’t even need to change the song. Mile sur mera tumhara... was intended for this very purpose.
While Shirin Farhad Ki Toh... dragged, I also thought of how much fun it would be to watch director J.J. Madan’s 1931 Indian talkie Shirin-Farhad, starring Master Nissar, Jahanara Kajjan and Mohammed Hussain. This film, according to Mihir Bose’s brilliant book, Bollywood: A History, “was a big budget musical which was considered superior to Alam Ara”. Though Shirin-Farhad missed the glory of being the first Indian talkie by a few weeks, it was "better produced and had more songs". Shirin-Farhad “so captivated Indian audiences that it was said that a Lahore tonga-walla pawned his horse to watch the film 22 times.” I won’t pawn a two-minute tonga-ride for Shirin Farhad Ki Toh...
Though Shirin Farhad Ki Toh... has some funny scenes — the old no-fart Bawa is in love with Indira Gandhi and keeps writing love letters to her, insisting that he’s her real Feroze — they get lost in a whirlpool of infantile humour and rubbish Bollywood moments, especially the parodies, a la Farah Khan, of Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge et cetera.
We get a brief jhalak of what the film's cast is capable of — especially Daisy Irani and Boman Irani (no relationship except that they both belong to the endangered Parsi community). I was really looking forward to watching Farah Khan who I think is very spunky and “real”. But the film treats her like a Farex baby and though her awkwardness is cute at first, it begins to jar when she sticks to behaving like an old benign aunty to Boman Irani’s Farhad.
There’s a general lackadaisical tone to Shirin Farhad Ki Toh... The story is listless, the situations are hackneyed and the acting is often very casual. I think the problem was that no one was taking their job or their characters very seriously. I guess that’s bound to happen when sister Bhansali is spending bhai Bhansali’s monies. I don’t know if this film is bhaiyya’s rakhi gift to behna, but if it is, I suggest the next time they keep it between themselves and fight the urge to share it with us.