My take on Delhi 6

by Tony Sebastian

I feel quite sorry for Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra. For someone who hates bollywood as much as I do, Delhi 6 was a welcome relief. Having been brought up on a steady diet of Sreenivasan at his satirical best, my movie appetite has long been starving for something like this which ROM dished out. The movie was entertaining, insightful, metaphorical and clever.

I am not here to review the movie. For one, I don't think I am qualified enough to do that and also Baradwaj Rangan has done a brilliant job of dissecting the movie here. Instead, I would like to put forth an analogy which will explain why I feel frustrated with people panning the movie...

I was pretty proud of the crossword which I had made. I was even gladder still that there were about 150 people gathered to solve it. I had taken great pains in ensuring that the clues were fair and clever. It had taken over three days to make the grid, but the effort was worth it. I handed out the sheets and the heads in the hall started bending down, I sat down with a contented smile on my face.

Five minutes later, I decided to walk around looking in to see how the solvers were doing. My heart sank when I saw people filling in "Guevara" for the clue "Does he instigate revolutions? (7)" I walked around and saw a few more of the same. The solvers had expected a quick crossword, I had prepared a cryptic crossword. They failed to see why "Does he instigate revolutions? (7)" would result in "SPINNER" or why that is beautiful. One by one, the people started leaving, they had had enough.

I think that in a nutshell sums up what happened with Delhi 6. He made a cryptic crossword, but the audience did not understand it. They were too used to the run-of-the-mill quick crossword and something as trivial as a symmetric grid was enough to win their appreciation. Anything smarter was given a miss.

If Delhi 6 is a cryptic crossword, its climax was the fit in clue - That one clue which you cannot frame properly. You don't really like it being part of the crossword, but you can't take it off since you need it to complete the grid. You hope that the solvers forgive you for that one clue because the rest of the crossword is good enough, and it is only fair that the one bad element is forgotten.

I realise that I sound extremely snobbish with that analogy, but I chose it only because it is one which I can relate to. I am sure this is how Vinu (my roomie and an ace musician) feels if he tries to explain to his musically dense friend (me) why a particular song is beautiful or Thomas (my other roomie) feels when I blink at him when he tells me how awesome his new graphics card is.

Delhi 6 was a perfect movie for the wrong audience. But I don't think the bollywood crowd is to be blamed. Malayalees eat beef because that is the way they have been brought up. The reason Delhi 6 is panned is because we are used to the senseless idiocy like "Singh is kinng" and "Om shanti om". I just hope that people like ROM don't feel disheartened and play to the galleries.