Aiyyo Ra-One-Aaaah!

The squirms began when Subramanium, aka Lucifer, flew across the screen with silken tresses falling over his face. And the squirms gained momentum when the daughters of Bruce Lee appeared: Iski Li, Uski Li and Sabki Li.

Real-li? I mean, R-E-A-L---LI?

And just when you thought it couldn’t go downhill from there, the director throws in slices of Desi Girl and Khalnayak to the broth and you get an opening that is in every way worthy of the ‘don’t-quite-know-where-I’m-going-with-this’ saga that follows. 175 – or is it 200? – crores in the making, for ‘jokes’ like this? And I had forked out 400 bucks to sit through this? 

As a pure-blooded denizen of the region south of the Vindhyas, the curly-haired Shanker Subramanium had me hitting the Squirm button throughout his ‘not-brief-enough’ lifespan – from the disaster involving his car keys, to the noodle-plus-curd dinner, to the ‘Criminal’ dance. I know seven Subramaniums and I cannot imagine any of them walking up to an unknown woman, peering down her cleavage, and asking for a ‘kiss’.

Now, I really enjoy the way we twist English words out of shape as we forge them in the smithy of our mother-tongue-oriented language centres in the brain, but then the manner in which these accents dent words is governed by certain rules of the tongue... and a Tamil accent would never blow the word ‘keys’ into the shape and sound of ‘kiss’ ... ‘keyz-uh’ maybe... but ‘kiss’? – nah, the Tamil wind does not blow in that direction at all.

In fact, the very thought of six of the Subramaniums I know venturing into territory that lies within the intimate zone of any human being – much less a human being who’s a stranger and a female – kadavule.... shiva shiva. The seventh one I’m not sure really respects the Subramaniumrekha, but he would sooner be dead than caught saying ‘kiss’ for keys.         

And no Subramanium worth his salt (or in the world of clichés, worth his curd rice) would ever desecrate curd with noodles --- no-no-no-no no-no.  Nor would they draw pearls of wisdom from the well of V Shantaram (a very honourable gentleman, but not exactly more popular than Thiruvalluvar in Subramanium’s world).

With the departure of Subramanium, the squirms stopped. My limbs settled into a more sedate rhythm....my breath slowed down and somewhere between trying to figure out “Ra-One ko gussa kyon aata hai?” and “G-One aisa kyon hai?”, I slipped into a state of deep relaxation. Till the attendant came and disrupted my dreams – “Picture khatam, madam.” I peered at him bleary-eyed. “Truly, my friend, picture khatam.”