Indian Writing

I have been waiting for someone to put my three favourite Hindi movie actors - Shiney Ahuja, Kay Kay Menon and Irfan Khan - together in a film that would use their talents effectively. How great that would be, I thought. Unfortunately, Metro is not that film.

It’s actually called, for whatever reason, Life in a…Metro. It weaves together the stories of several couples. People have been saying Amores Perros but please. I stopped counting and can’t remember the names - there were people called Shruti, Neha, etc and I can’t remember who was called who, only that the glorious Irfan Khan played a character named Monty.

Shiney Ahuja plays a struggling actor, Kay Kay plays a creep in a suit, and glorious Irfan - well, I never figured out what he’s supposed to be doing but he works in an office of some sort and goes by the name of Monty. Shiney gets into a relationship with Shilpa Shetty who is actually married to Kay Kay but unhappily; Kay Kay is having an affair with Kangana Ranaut who works in his office, but she is also the flatmate of Konkona Sen Sharma, who is Shilpa Shetty’s sister and… That’s when I lost the threads. Not that it’s very hard to remember, it’s just not interesting enough.

As for the rest of the city, everyone seems to be at two degrees of separation from having an affair with everyone else (and they’re all doing it by turns in Chachaji’s blandly decorated apartment). Which is really quite funny. The film is also not homophobic and not ageist. There’s a woman in an old age home (Nafisa Ali in an old age home! She’s lovely, but a terrible actor) and an old flame who comes back from America to woo her into a live-in relationship. Except that the old flame is Dharmendra, and when she asks him Tum wapas kyun aaye ho? He replies, instead of Kameene, main tumhara khoon pee jaoonga, that he’s ill and has very little time left…

Yes, it’s that kind of film. The script is the culprit. Trite, tired dialogues. Konkona and Irfan get the best lines, such as they are; I especially liked the scene at the beach where they’re surrounded by bags of shopping for Irfan’s impending wedding (he’s convinced Konkona to do the bride’s shopping) and suddenly Irfan gets the pre-wedding weepies. He also tries helpfully to fix up Konkona with a friend of his who has a halwai business in Lucknow and can surf the Net (can surf the Net!!) and who therefore wants a modern wife…

Kangana is good but we’ve seen her hysterical wrist-slashing antics before; Kay Kay makes a cool philanderer but gets the most hideous lines; and poor Shiney Ahuja gets Shilpa.

Oh, and it’s all held together by a group of three rockers - or at least three guys dressed in black and trying to be rockers, grimacing to some rather unmemorable music in the rain, on the roof…

Just as Kopar Khairane station is not the same as Churchgate, Metro is not the same as Mumbai. It’s not badly made, but suffers from a poor script; and it’s all too glammed up, even when it’s raining. But yes, the sad, shallow mood of the film does manage to reflect a sad, shallow aspect of this city where relationships come under so much pressure.

And it was a good idea to release it in May, weeks before the monsoon is scheduled to hit. All those umbrellas in the rain, the wet streets and buildings, it all makes you long for the first downpours of the season.