Apne

Yeah its a very emotional and a typical "deol" movie with all the illogical things happening and all the proper hindi masala including the unnecessary, not so very interesting hindi songs sprinkled all over the 3 hours of the movie, with the ever so frequent reminder of the movie name ... apne tooohhh .. apne hoten hai ... Unfortunately, at the end of the movie, the audience ends up remembering this reminder and nothing else !!!

The real reason for writing this post are all the things that surrounded the event of watching this movie. About a couple of months back, all of us at home travelled out to a lovely town for attending one of our friend's wedding. I had spent a lot of my school years in this town, so it wasnt such a new place to me and my parents. The wedding itself was a beautiful fusion of Maharashtrian and South Kanara culture. The highlight of the wedding was the garlanding event, where the bride and the bridegroom are made to stand on either side of a white curtain waiting for the exact auspicious moment to garland eachother. And just when the moment arrived and the curtain falls down, the cousin and uncle of the bride lifted her up and the groom had to jump and jump and jump more to be able to garland her before she could garland him. Well, quite obviously, the bride won the battle and garlanded the groom first. All said and done, this was undoubtedly the happiest and beautiful moment of the wedding.

After enjoying the delicious luncheon served with 17 various food items, following the wedding, we reached back to our hotel room for some rest. The late noon showers spilled water on our further travelling plans and we settled for watching the newly released hindi movie, Apne. It had been quite sometime since our whole family had been to a hindi movie in recent times and i thought that this should be a "family" movie, which it thankfully was :-) I stood there in the ticket counter after years and it brought back all the memories of those gold old movie watching days. One funny incident happened while I was in the queue. A guy standing in front of me in the queue, who I came to know later on was very poor in maths, asked the ticket vendor how much it would cost him for 15 tickets. After hearing the cost, he hesitated for sometime, and produced 250 rupees and said, give me as many tickets I can fetch in this money. You must have guessed by know for whom he was buying those tickets ;-) That brings me to the lack of this practise in the modern multiplexes. Ofcourse, its illegal business, but then you could atleast be assured of getting a ticket even after reaching the theatre just when the movie is about to start !!! But then, with the costs for watching a movie in the multiplexes zooming further and further up, watching a movie has lost all its charm. I bought 4 tickets, a pop corn and a couple of pepsis costing me less than the cost of a single multiplex ticket !!! And, before you start thinking, the theatre was air conditioned and in great shape. It really gets tough to reason out the amount of money metro people shell on these multiplex movies.

Back inside the theatre, we had to wait for the previous show to get over and then rush in as soon as the doors were opened. We did not want to miss any of those "Paragon chappal" ads :D After the strangely enjoyable advertisements, the movie opened up to huge number of whistles and claps for Dharmendra. The only other person for whom the audience gave such a welcome on the screen was for the now world famous in London and India actress, Shilpa Shetty and the London girl [ ? ], Katrina. Apart from all its flaws and stereo-typical moments, the movie completely belongs to the one and only Dharmendra. This was the first Dharmendra movie that I watched on the big screen. In his golden days he was known for his handsome looks and power fights apart from his true to the heart, typical Punjab da puttar type dialogues. I havent seen many of his movies, but he was said to be the most romantic hero of his era. And is undoubtedly very well known for his acting skills as well. I went to the theatre for this movie without any baggage of expectations and was left amazed by the acting prowess of this fine actor. He was the central character for this story and his expressions and timing were just awesome. He portayed the character of a lost sportsman trying to revive his own dignity through his son, battling through the circumstantial delimma of reacting as a father and the hurt sportsman causing his heart to be emotionally ripped open, with great elan.

Recently, he was awarded the lifetime achievement award for his contribution to Indian cinema. The award was presented to him by the great Amitabh Bachchan, who portrayed the role of his long time crime partner in the epic Sholay. Amitabh announced to the audience that it was his friend, Dharmendra, who had recommended Amitabh's name to Ramesh Sippy, the director of Sholay, for his role in the movie. And what a great pair it ended up being !!! These friends portrayed their roles so beautifully that they ended up immortalizing the characters forever :-) On recieving this award, Dharmendra got emotional and gave a very long and touching speech. That speech just showed what a lovely human being he is. He has very straight forward thoughts and open heart. He openly proclaimed that Amitabh and himself though staying so nearby almost like neighbours still have to travel all the way to London to attend this award ceremony to meet up and get a hug :)

How strange, that sometimes, people staying far away get the time to catch up more often than those who stay so near ...