I assume that you all would have
seen the Khosla ka Ghosla. If not, then do
yourselves a favor and watch it. This along with 'Bheja Fry' started the trend of
small budget, non-slapstick, colloquial comedies, with Bollywood then destroyed
by churning out innumerable cheap copies very fast, the same way they destroy
every genre.
But its merit as a movie is not the
point I wanted to talk about here, but how it most accurately described the
typical Indian middle class family. We (the assumed readers of this blog) are
the 80s and 90s generation, much has been written about us but now we have been
largely forgotten because the Millennials are now hogging all the ink, except
for the occasional memes like “if you remember this you had an awesome
childhood” which surface on Facebook every once in a while. But even less is
and was written about our parent’s generation, the people who were born in late
50s or early 60s. The people born into free India, the people who saw one war
lost and two won. They had the ‘cautious optimism’ the term that we often read
about in the so-called financial market news. They saw the euphoria of
independence and the idea of how we can be whatever we wanted to be of the 50s
and also the economic stagnation and unemployment of the 70s. Back in their
days having a telephone was a status symbol, a scooter had a one year waiting
period and buying a house was something you saved for your entire life.
And buying a house is what the
movie starts off with, rather buying a piece of land on which the house is
supposed to be built upon. Anupam Kher’s character K. K. Khosla short for Kamal
Kishore Khosla (referred as KKK from here on) put’s his life’s savings or his provident fund money, which was
the working class’ life savings, into buying a house where his kids can have
some space for themselves. This was the most typical thing of our parent’s
generation, to save it all for the kids. Spending money on yourself was an
absolute no no after you have kids, from the vacation destinations to menu for
dinner was decided keeping in mind what the kids would like. While I am
certainly thankful to them for what they did, but I really do wish that they
spent some more time and money on themselves. Investing was a totally unheard
of thing except in gold, the mandatory PF and the new mysterious thing called
LIC which the neighboring Uncle’s brother claimed was a very good thing and
should definitely be taken. As the movie progresses K. K. Khosla reminds me of
my dad very often and so would he remind you of yours.
The scene where they discuss the
new name for Cherry is the first one that pops up in my head, when KKK is watching
news and his wife tells the kids to keep quiet. All dad’s news watching time
was sacrosanct, more important than their prayer time, absolute silence had to
be maintained, TV room had to be vacated and meals and other things were
planned around news time so as to leave dad undisturbed and free when he
watched the news. And watching the news was serious business; actually DD news
was serious business with none of sensationalism and ridiculous headlines as of
today, it was succinct, to the point, and wrapped in 30 odd minutes. Remember
the days when movies on DD had a news break? That’s when I ran away to do my
homework and stuff, mom got up to make dinner and dad sat there for the most
important thing of the day.
Second scene that really nails the
middle class family dynamic is the scene where KK Khosla tells his wife to tell
Cherry to drop his plan to dupe Khurana. The indirect communication is the most
typical of all middle class families where Mom was the go through, she was the
one who was able to talk to both sides. My Dad did that every time he was angry
or disagreed with what I was doing, actually he still does that. He tells my
mom to tell me to do stuff, to not spend money on eating out a lot, to be not
too late if I’m going out, to find out why I want to change my job etc.
etc. Even phone calls with Dads in all
our families are the same, he goes on to ask the basic questions like “How are
you, How is your job going. Do you need anything” and then mom takes over to
ask the real questions. And the reverse is also true, whenever I wanted
permission for something I went to my mom first and her answer was always ask
your dad and my reply was that you ask dad that I want this. Then she would
break it to my dad; that is if the request wasn’t too ridiculous to be directly
rejected by her and then my dad would call me and say “You mom is saying that
you want to…..” I never had the gall to ask my dad directly about wanting a new
cycle or spending a night at my friend for
studying or any of those things. Dads in that generation were I guess
supposed to be tough and authoritarian and a bit distant, they were supposed to
play with their kids and indulge them but never to molly coddle them or use
baby talk or try to be their friend; that kind of stuff was left to moms.
Because of strictly defined gender roles maybe.
Moms knew how to diffuse a
situation and to play referee as well. They knew the subtext and reasons behind
every argument, like women nearly always do and we man at most time have no
clue. Dads of their generation pretty much never knew the likes and dislikes of
their kids, they spent most of their time working and the remaining time
worrying. Heck my dad still thinks I like Dairy Milk and my brother likes Aaloo Matar even though we only did that
when we were five. This was outlined by the scene where KKK buys whiskey to bond
with his sons and then gets shocked and embarrassed when Cherry says that he
doesn’t drink. While this is certainly better than my Granddad’s generation,
the brother of my grandfather had 9 kids and did not even know the ages of some
of them, but this is still kind of bad to not know that your son is teetotaler
or not. Perhaps our generations will do a little better in knowing their kids
and the generation after that still a little better.
The whiskey scene is preceded by
the scene where he goes out to buy the bottle, he is thoroughly embarrassed and
hides the bottle while coming back. There is also a scene where one of Cherry’s
girlfriend’s friend comes in smoking and she tells her to put it out. KK Khosla
knows why the girl is in his house, she is there because they are trying to
swindle Khurana for a lot of money, but while cheating and fraud can be
tolerated by him, a girl smoking certainly cannot. Alcohol and Cigarettes were
the biggest taboo of that generation, no matter how many songs Rajesh Khanna
sang with a glass in his hand and how many smoke rings Helen blew, this was
still taboo in homes. Buying booze was still shady business and drinking it had
to be in secret, quickly and behind closed doors. My dad drank his tea outside
in the porch on Sundays but his whisky was always only in his room or in the
drawing room when he had company with curtains drawn. He did not even throw the
booze bottles in the waste bin, not because he was very environmentally
conscious, but he did not want everyone seeing that we had whiskey bottles in
the trash and by inference in our home. We still have situations where two
generations, that is him, my uncles etc. sit and drink in one room and we sit
and drink in another, both fully knowing what is going on in the other room.
Add a smoking girl in this mix and all hell will break loose.
And finally
I want to talk the very first scene of the movie, which is the best and most
tragi-comic. Comic because of the obvious jokes being made there and I will
talk about talk about the tragic part after this. The first scene is his
funeral, a dream sequence of course, this is not American Beauty or Sunset
Boulevard. On his funeral one guy comes with a bill and his wife rejects it,
saying “Ye nahi rahe to kuch bhi bill
doge? Chinese calculator pe ek ek cheez ka hisaab rakhte the”. That in a
nutshell was the finance policy of the Indian middle class household, penny
wise and pound fool. They kept a check on the most miniscule of things like how
much they spent on buying milk and which vendor has the cheapest vegetables but
never on the bigger stuff, whether they can invest their money on anywhere else
than PPF, was the home loan being offered really came with best interest rate,
were they actually losing money on their old scooter. All my lives my parents
spent too much time and effort on spending less, never on earning more; even
talking about the way to earn more was the equivalent of being greedy. And
interest rates, stocks, cost of ownership etc.? All those were left to Harshad
Mehta and other Gujrati businessmen.
The last but the foremost, the
tragedy that he thinks will happen when he dies is the greatest tragedy of the middle
class, small dreams and small disappointments. KKK’s nightmare was that when he
will die his daughter would be wearing a jeans, his son will be late in office,
other son will be talking tall about a watch, wife would only be worried about
how to cook for so many people and the cancelled trip to Bangladesh, neighboring
boys will lech at his daughter and the newspaper boy will charge him extra. If
that is worst fear when you die that you either had a very good life or a very
mediocre or perhaps both. Which was the case of that generation, the dreams and
nightmares were both small. Whenever Amitabh Bachchan tried to reach for the
stars he was always humbled at the end of the movie, either by giving up his
dream or being shot in the abdomen, only the bad men got rich very fast.
Actually movies of a generation are a very good indicator of its aspirations,
fears and rebellions. KKK’s generation prized mother over cars & bungalows,
thought of running away with Bobby as a rebellion, even second cousins were family,
getting a job deserved running with joy to your mom and saying “Maa ashirwad de maa, mujhe naukri mil gayi”
and they believed that fate would unite everyone by the climax. The next
generation does not believe in fate, it believes that if you want to correct
Khurana’s wrong then you have to do it yourself, by hook or by crook.
