THODA SA THANDA HO JAYE

A CASE OF ROTTEN FANAA(NAS)

Romeo tour guide meets beautiful blind Juliet. He goes bananas over her. But instead of eating these kelas, beautiful blind Juliet shoots him. And no, she wasn't doing target practice in the dark. The good doctor had just performed the eye surgery to beat all eye surgeries and restored her sight (and that too mufaat mein). But she so badly wanted to sing the national anthem. Unfortunately, the terrorist wouldn't comply. So she had to shoot him. Ah well, not quite but you get the picture.


The backdrop of Fanaa is the vadiyas of Kashmir where beautiful Zooni Ali Beg (Kajol) is beset by patriotic fever that makes her constantly sing "sare jahan se achha"....or was it "jana gana mana". And by virtue of the Muses having bestowed poetry on her, the girl is loony too (after all what else would rhyme poetically with Zooni).

Zooni meets a shayar (singing mein shayar to nehin ) who becomes her "shahezada" (Aamir Khan) but before they can ride into sunset singing self composed Sufi lyrics, AK disappears. Good thing he does. By then his teenage style frolicking was getting quite sickening. Someone should tell our heroes that wearing bright scarves and cavorting around trees does not a teenager make. I am reminded of this Dharam-Hema starrer where the story demanded a young college going protagonist. So Dharam (by then in his early 40s) rides a bicycle and Hema dances around with two plaits wearing a...shriek...frock.

AK, of course, does not disappear forever. He returns, complete with a ski chase (a la James Bond) although truth be told this whole sequence of antics on ice is quite miserable. Compared to Brosnan's smooth sail on Alps' slopes (The World is not Enough) our AK seems to be driving a ekkagari on the Himalayas. An ekkagari reined to a lame horse. Regardless of all that, AK returns to find his lady love who in the meantime is the mother of a darling boy. According to the script this darling boy is AK's own son (no rocket scientist needed to figure that out but B'wood never had much respect for the audience's intelligence...so along with the sneak peek at THAT romantic carnal night there are other BIG HINTS).

As for me, I am not so sure. For all you know darling boy could be Caesar's direct line descendent (now if Christ can have one, Caesar surely should). Plus both ancestor and descendant (loony's kid that is) have ONE common trait in that they speak in third person (remember: Yet Caesar shall go forth; for these predictions are to the world in general as to Caesar).

Fanaa, means "annihilation", and is a Sufi concept that denotes extinction (of self, I believe!!!!). The on screen annihilation is immense as hordes of Indians, Pakistanis and Kashmiris, indeed anyone or everyone is made extinct. Including the paisa for the movie ticket. But one can't savor rotten fananas...can one?