It was my first time in an environment where north Indians were not a minority.
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Given its standing as a national institute rather than a regional one, in some ways, life inside the campus represented a certain microcosm of the nation as a whole. Mehmood’s Master Pillai in Padosan: The archetypal ‘South Indian’ in Hindi films.Ī dozen years ago, I spent two years in IIM Bangalore. K Balachander, who directed the Telugu original, directed the Hindi remake too, instead of signing away the rights to a Sippy, or a Chopra, or a Kapoor. But there’s a reason why Kamal Haasan’s character was not distilled into a stereotypical caricature. From Mehmood’s Master Pillai in Padosan, to Shah Rukh Khan in near-blackface as “Omiswaami in and as Mind It” mouthing “yenna rascala” in Om Shanti Om. And therefore, when they have South Indian characters in their movies, they resort to stereotypes. For the most part, Bollywood filmmakers belong to this ilk and share the viewpoint. South Indians exist among them, and they bemusedly tolerate them.
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In the context of India’s perceived racism against Africans, he said, “If we were racist, why would we have all the entire South… Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra… why do we live with them? We have black people around us.” For many from Tarun Vijay’s part of the country, their idea of India is a monocultural north. In April this year, former BJP parliamentarian Tarun Vijay sparked a row, when he explicitly said something that most North Indians leave unsaid and implicit. Unfortunately, recent statements by our politicians, be it Venkaiah Naidu’s hilarious ‘Hindi hamara raashtrabhaasha hai’ paeans, or Shashi Tharoor’s more measured statements about how Hindi occupies a better-than-other-languages position in polity has meant that such caricatures are just reflections of imposed realities. The other thing that stands out about Ek Duuje Ke Liye is that Kamal Haasan’s character, although a Tamilian in a Hindi movie, is not a caricature, the way such characters usually are in Bollywood movies. Kamal Haasan and Rati Agnihotri feature in the song, Mere Jeevan Saathi. The highlight, possibly the lightest the movie ever got in its narration, is Kamal Haasan wooing his heroine while stuck in an elevator by singing a song whose lyrics were essentially a bunch of movie titles strung together. When the movie was remade into Hindi, Kamal still spoke Tamil, and Rati Agnihotri, the new heroine, spoke Hindi.
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In the Telugu original, Kamal Haasan’s character spoke Tamil, and Saritha, the heroine, spoke Telugu. And I think I know where I stole that idea from.Įk Duuje Ke Liye was the Hindi remake of the Telugu blockbuster Maro Charitra, a romantic tragedy about two doomed lovers with a language problem. One trick that I use to reduce the mistakes was to memorise lines from Bollywood movies I have seen, and string them together as needed in conversation. Whenever I attempt to talk in Hindi, I am prone to mixing up kaa, ki, and kii, effortlessly achieving gender fluidity of a sort. At least, not enough to come to grips with even basic grammar.