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When her novel ‘The Palace of Illusions’, based on the Mahabharat told by Panchaali, was published 10 years ago, many readers asked Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni what she would write about next. Usually that was a question she had no answer to but this time she instinctively knew she had to write about Sita. Just like Panchaali, she wanted Sita to be able to tell her own tale.

In Hindu mythologies, women are more often than not relegated to the margins and we rarely get to know them unless it is in context of their husbands who are always mighty warriors. Which is why retellings of these ancient texts are so important. They bring women to the forefront and give them a chance to tell us how things transpired in their lives and how they felt about it.

And ‘The Forest of Enchantments’ is just that. It’s Sita filling in the gaps in the story and recollecting her version of events. What I specially liked about Divakaruni’s retelling of the Ramayana is that it’s not just Sita’s story either. The other women—Kaikeyi, Mandodari, Surpanakha—also get a chance to set their narratives straight. They are more than just mothers, wives and sisters. Kaikeyi is an excellent charioteer and swordswoman, and Mandodari is shown to be a perceptive leader with infinite compassion for her people.

We know how the Ramayana plays out but even if you don’t reading Divakaruni’s version of the mythology is enough for you to understand the story. There’s everything there, from Sita’s birth and her marriage to Ram, the eventual exile, to Ravana kidnapping Sita, and the ultimate rescue and the birth of Luv and Kush. Divakaruni has also chosen to be faithful to the original text and kept the ending the same. But it’s much more nuanced than in the original text.

Sita’s Ramayana, which is what this book essentially is, is far more than a story of morality and filial duty, as Ramayana is generally made out to be. The Forest of Enchantments reads like an important commentary on love, duty, the importance of balancing the two and, sometimes, when situations demand, being able to prioritize one above the other.

I read The Forest of Enchantments on a weekend. Divakaruni’s writing is a joy and the story too is captivatingly told. If you, like many women I know, have always been slightly angry by the unfairness of things in Ramayana, then this book will appease you  a little.

Fiction
The Forest of Enchantments
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 359, Hardcover

Every time a new edition of the Housefull series that started in 2010 goes into production, the filmmakers seem to leave a part of their brain at home when going to work. And that is exactly what they expect the audience to do too when they come to the cinema halls. What more, with Housefull 4 grossing almost NRs 3.2 billion worldwide in under two weeks of its release, the audience seems to be fully complying.

So the latest edition of the Housefull franchise with its old mascots Akshay Kumar and Riteish Deshmukh has once again minted much moola. But, for a critical viewer, this has to be the most senseless movie not only in the franchise but in the whole industry in recent times. Housefull 4 is a disaster in terms of intelligence, creativity and sensibility, but looks like the Bollywood as well as Nepali audiences don’t mind much. The movie theaters of Katmandu are still packed, booting out this past weekend’s Nepali release ‘Badhsha Jutt’ in under a week. 

Along with repeat offenders Kumar as Rajkumar Bala Dev Singh/Harry, and Deshmukh as Bangdu Maharaj/Roy, the filmmakers have roped in Bobby Deol as Dharamputra/Max as the essential third wheel which is signature to the Housefull franchise. As “eye-candies”, Housefull has Kriti Sanon as Rajkumari Madhu/Kriti, Pooja Hegde as Rajkumari Mala/Pooja and Kriti Kharbanda as Rajkumari Meena/Neha. (Housefull has always been about the pleasure of perversity and there’s nothing significant in any of its women characters.) These women show a little more skin than necessary, act painfully dumb, and are made to romance men double their age.

The story of Housefull 4 is based on reincarnation and we’re shown two different timelines (1419 and 2019) with all the major and even supporting characters getting reincarnated. The film moves back and forth between the timelines for a while and sticks to the present for a senseless climax that is so clichéd, it could have been straight from an 80’s Bollywood disaster.

But the climax is not the only cliché. The movie also spoofs past Bollywood films and recreates stereotypical Bollywood scenes to gimmick them. The dialogues, as coarse as they are, use lyrics from popular Bollywood songs to muster humor but nonetheless fails miserably in this over-used formula.

Even if Housefull 4 is meant to be a parody of Bollywood, it surpasses all logic in storytelling and the comedy is crass and disrespects the women as well as the LGBTQI+ community. The Housefull franchise always puts skimpily-clad women in machoistic men’s laps. This edition takes the insult to a whole new level by poking tasteless fun at the LGBTQI+ people. How long will we laugh at cross-dressing men and their stereotypical antics?

The pervasive lack of logic, repetitions and prejudice makes the movie difficult to watch. So much so that you lose all respect you gained for Kumar from his previous films like ‘Padman’, ‘Toilet’, ‘Gold’ and ‘Mission Mangal’. Kumar looks too old for this terrible slapstick. But it must be the power of mainstream Bollywood that Kumar is belting out one after another forgettable performance in back to back Housefull films. Even accomplished actresses like Sanon and Kharbanda who have stuck to their guns in independent and low-budget cinema have agreed to be reduced to naval and cleavage displays in this one.

Houseful 4 is sexist, racist, unintelligent and problematic in terms of what it chooses to make jokes of. The excellent cinematography, editing and set design make the film a little bearable. But again, 2h 26m for such a loud comedy is no fun.

Who should watch it?

Housefull 4 is an offensive vaudeville which challenges the audience’s intelligence. But perhaps all of us at times want to watch something so senseless that we cannot but marvel at our own intelligence, right?

Rating: 1 Star
Actors: Akshay Kumar, Riteish Deshmukh, Bobby Deol
Director: Farhad Samji
Run time: 2h 26m
Genre: Comedy

The point “Poi Paryo Kale” tries to get across is something new and admirable, dealing with the age-old discriminations based on skin color that is still prevalent in our society. The concept that fair-skinned people are superior to the dark-skinned fellows is absurd, yet endemic. “Poi Paryo Kale”—written and directed by veteran comedian Shishir Rana—tries to convey that it’s not skin color but a person’s substance that really matters. Unfortunately, despite the strong message, the delivery is anything but.

No matter how pure the intent behind this film, there are moments when the filmmakers unknowingly mock dark-skinned people and create embarrassing situations. This leaves us with a totally different message instead. Not everything done with pure intent turns out good. Like a 10-year-old making your breakfast. You know the intent is clear, but your kitchen is still a mess in the end. That’s “Poi Paryo Kale” for you.

Director Rana, who also plays a supporting role, has made a mess of what could have been a potentially strong story. Instead, what he has managed to do is cast half a dozen recognized faces who are badly let down by lack of good screenplay and storytelling.

Pooja (Pooja Sharma) is the film’s central character who ends up hating dark-skinned people after a childhood trauma. She doesn’t even hang out with ‘black’ people, let alone wish to date or marry one and she makes that clear from the start. She even hates black coffee, just because it’s black!

But as luck would have it, some clichéd 90’s plot creates a sequence where she is unknowingly married to Gaurav Shumsher (Saugat Malla), a rich bachelor who is ‘black’. What happens then is basically the story of “Poi Paryo Kale”, (literally translated as “I got a black husband”).

The main problem with PPK is in its execution. Malla is average in his role and without a strong motif, there’s nothing memorable about his character. The same can be said of Sharma. Although she reportedly charged Rs 2 million for this movie, she clearly doesn’t prove her worth. Pooja is supposedly a beautiful but arrogant and self-centered young woman, which Sharma finds hard to portray. Instead, she over-exaggerates her scenes and ends up looking like a vamp, without any scope for the audience to emphasize with her, although the plot seemingly wants us to.

PPK also has former Miss Nepal Shristi Shrestha as Kriti in a major supporting role. But her character is poorly built as well. One thing Shrestha can be lauded is for is her ‘Pokhareli’ accent, which only she has in the whole movie, even though it is based entirely in Pokhara. There’s also Akash Shrestha as Neil, Gaurav’s best friend and a stereotypical womanizer. To be frank, he’s someone who got the looks but whose skills can be credibly questioned by even the most novice film critic.

Besides the inability to establish strong characters, the film also fails in projecting its message clearly. Instead of making the audience truly believe skin color is not important, it instead makes a mockery of dark-skinned people and certain communities. The most cringe-worthy aspect of PPK is making the Madheshi’ characters the butt of all jokes.

It's high time Nepali cinema progressed from the “Madhesi=stupidly funny” equation. The movie also suggests that all Madheshis are dark-skinned, which is not entirely true as well. We have all sorts of ‘black’ people from other communities in Nepal. And then some characters, including Gaurav and Neil, don the ‘black’ face using what looks like boot polish. Seriously. The filmmakers probably hired the worst makeup artist ever to give ‘black’ faces to the characters because…duh! They obviously couldn’t find dark-skinned actors to match their characters.

Who should watch Poi Paryo Kale?

People with ultra-thick skin against racism and find humor in racial stereotypes would love it. The rest can hold on to their moneys while they wait for “Ghamad Shere” and “Sarauto”.

Rating: 1.5 Stars

Genre: Comedy/Drama

Run time: 2 hrs

Director: Shishir RanaActors: Pooja Sharma, Saugat Malla, Shristi Shrestha

FICTION
PONTI
Sharlene Teo
Publisher: Picador
Language: English
Pages: 291, Paperback

Sharlene Teo won the £10,000 Deborah Rogers Writers’ Award for her unpublished manuscript ‘Ponti’. Later, Picador bought the rights to it in a seven-way auction. The cover has a wonderful comment by Ian McEwan on it. When I bought the book, I had pretty much made up my mind: This was going to be one special read.Sadly, it wasn’t. The much-lauded book feels strange and is, frankly, a bit tiring as well. That’s not to say the debut novel doesn’t have a prom­ising plot or Teo’s writing is bad; perhaps what it needed was more editing. What got published seems like a rough draft of a potentially great book.

The novel is set in Singapore where we meet Szu and Circe as teenagers. Their friendship is thick but uneasy. Szu comes across as clingy, and Circe could be best described as neurotic. Szu’s mother, Amisa, was once a star—having been featured in a series of horror movies that were ignored when they first came out but now enjoy a cult following—but works from home as a ‘hack medium’ (someone who connects the living with the dead) when we meet her.

The novel revolves around these three characters, with some men making occasional, vague, and redundant appearances. However, it’s Amisa who intrigues and infu­riates you as she goes about her life, oblivious to what’s happening around her and with blatant dis­regard for her daughter. You get a sense of the problematic relationship between the mother and daughter from the start but it’s crudely por­trayed. So much so that when Amisa falls ill and is hospitalized and Szu prays, “Please just get better and look normal again. Just get better and let me hate you in peace,” you aren’t really surprised or bothered.

The narrative alternates between the past when Szu and Circe were growing up and the present-day when a 30-something Circe works as a social media consultant for a firm whose new project is to remake Ami­sa’s cult horror movies. There is also a third narrative—of the young and beautiful Amisa who gets the chance of a lifetime when a director offers her the lead role in his upcoming film. Amisa’s story is gripping—the only story that manages that effect—but the character, albeit fascinating, seems hastily written and you can’t connect with her much.

Also, a lot of what Teo tells us about the characters feels pointless. I mean, what’s the use of a long and lengthy description of a tapeworm infestation that Circe is taking medi­cation for? It doesn’t factor into the story and the description is tediously drawn out. You could argue that it is mundane things like this that give a story a real feel but Teo’s writing isn’t powerful enough for that. It takes a good writer and a sharper editor to tell a simple yet gripping story.

It’s only in the last few pages that Teo shines and the story finally makes sense. But, as a reader, you have lost all interest in it by then.