Maybe they filmed her while she was acting in some other film. Sanya Malhotra wears a look of extraordinary avidity through the film, and it a mystery that is never solved, because nothing in her vicinity inspires such devotion, or indeed explains it.
I have survived Vivek Soni’s ‘Meenakshi Sundareshwar’, and existential questions such as why anybody living in Madurai would begin sentences in Tamil and trail off into Hindi as if it were the most natural thing in the world. It is this laziness which is the mystery we will have to endure from time to time. ‘Chennai Express’ (2013) and its Thalaivaa song is worth only a well-articulated arc of saliva for its laziness in looking at the North-South adventure. If Bollywood ever got a lungi right, leave alone a lungi dance, I have only seen it happen in this beautifully self-aware film. I am not given to giggling usually, but alas, such ambushes laid me low through the watching. Only rarely do Bollywood films build themselves around the idea of female desire and rapture, and that part ensures that the Prithviraj-Rani Mukerji pairing gallop and gambols in the most fun way. The other film that kicks some ass in this department is the somewhat underrated ‘Aiyyaa’ (2012).
Where did he come from? What was he doing in that town? Answers to these questions might have left us with a vastly superior film. I loved ‘Padosan’ (1968) for many reasons, including Mehmood’s verve, but found myself wishing for more than the limited Carnatic-loving Madrasi caricature that was allowed to him. Meanwhile, let me run past you the two honourable exceptions I can think of. I’d love to hear what you think, dear reader. There are exceptions each of us can think of, I’m sure, but that is my point. And yet, the biggest of our storytelling industries, one built on the energy of these multiple crossovers, simply sucketh and is never ‘sakkath’ when it comes to telling the story of North and South. We are a country whose history is an endless crisscross of migrations.