Delhi 6

You know what – move over the Katrinas and the Deepikas – my new pinup-girl is Sonam Kapoor !! Man, she has an enchanting face - AND an enigmatic smile !! A little hard to quantify, but what sets her apart is that hint of mysteriousness – ahhh, beautiful :) If you don’t agree, go watch Delhi 6 (though the missus wasn’t quite floored by her, so maybe it’s just a guy thing)

However, Sonam Kapoor is pretty much the only reason why I would recommend anyone to watch Delhi 6 - other than to all Old Dilliwalas, ofcourse ! Mind you, not all Dilliwalas, because this movie is completely set in Chandni Chowk. And maybe I am wrong, but I feel that this movie is more like a collective slap on the faces of Dilliwalas, rather than an ode to them. The attitude of the people in the movie was REALLY conservative – more small town rather than a metropolis! If they hadn’t shown a couple of shots of the Delhi Metro, the movie might have been shot in Haridwar, Varanasi or any other old city with small dingy roads ….

Ok, enough of the attitude bashing. Delhi 6 has some very delectable moments for you too. It starts off with Waheeda Rehman (playing Dadi to Abhishek Bachhan), being diagnosed with a life threatening cancer. Dadi wishes to return to her roots in Chandni Chowk and grandson Roshan complies. And the regular NRI-returning-to-mad-India sequence follows. What is different however, are the people.

Rakeysh Mehra has assembled a brilliant set of actors in the support roles and each of them perform excellently. Most of them happen to be neighbours of Dadi in Chandni Chowk and the first half of the movie is spent giving each character his 5 min of fame – and Roshan plays the tourist NRI, intrigued by everything and capturing everything on his Motorola phone. The director has managed to capture the flavour and views of Purani Dilli immaculately – and the characters create a very warm and believable world.

We are introduced to a majority of the cast at the Ramleela performance – and Rakeysh Mehra keeps coming back to the Ramleela at important points in the movie – which makes you wonder if the Ramleela is a year-long fixture in Chandni Chowk :) ? The other oft-repeated event and ultimately the movie keystone turns out to be the kala bandar – remember the monkey-man scare in Delhi a couple of years ago ? And it is this part of the story that completely destroys the movie.

I wont give away exactly what happens in the last 30-40 min of the movie, since it is the only unexpected part of the story, but all I will say that its very cliché and forcibly pushes a message down your throat. Not in the subtle way that he does in RDB – but a literal ‘look inside your soul’ and ‘god is in everyone’ style preaching. The Roshan-Bittu (Sonam Kapoor) love story also very unsatisfying. From perennially sparring with each other, suddenly they spring to ‘I am not going back to America without you’ level – not believable at all !!

Technically, the story moves in a rather jerky fashion throughout the narrative – someone likened it to watching a bunch of serial episodes together – and it takes a couple of sequences to get used to. But it doesn’t impact the movie in any negative way. Music from A.R. Rahman is top notch, though the song placement was not optimal – some songs were totally lost. Particularly, Genda Phool picturization was rather disappointing.

The standout performances in the movie (apart from Sonam Kapoor, ofcourse ) are Rishi Kapoor, Vijay Raaz, Pawan Malhotra and a newcomer Aditi Rao who plays the Bua. Abhishek Bachhan doesn’t have much acting to do since his is a passive character – most of the times he is just playing the observer. Sonam Kapoor, apart from looking fabulous, does her part rather well. As I have mentioned before, all the other performances are top notch too.

If I had to rate the movie just on the first hour or so, I would have probably given it a 4 star. But the way the plot nosedives, even with the superb all round acting, I cant give it more than a



Addendum - After the movie, it struck me that for a born-and-brought-up-American, Roshan is a little too cool with India. I mean a first-timer to India would have gotten exasperated at something - the inefficiency, the craziness or the dirtiness … something ! But Roshan never once seemed to mind anything, except for the police high handedness. Minor quibble, but feels like a big omission compared to the meticulousness the director displays for the other characters.