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 He’s 70 but has no wrinkles that come with age. He still has a muscular body and no evi­dence of arthritis or other physical ailments most septuagenarians do. No we’re not talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stal­lone here, they’re old. We refer to Bollywood’s ageing bad boy who refuses to grow up—the ever ‘young’ Salman Khan aka Sallu Bhai who stars in and as “Bharat” in his latest installment of a ‘patriotic family action drama’. The film opens with a 70-year-old Bharat (Khan) narrating his story. With the filmmakers clearly failing to make Bhai look any older, we know from the first couple of min­utes how realistic the film is going to be. “Bharat” is an excruciatingly long (155 minutes) attempt to make Khan look good from all sides. It fails, and exposes his lack of acting skills, while still offering a few les­sons to the audience.

Lesson number 1: No one can pull off the India-Pakistan partition scene in mainstream Bollywood better than Sunny Deol and his hand-pump. All other attempts are futile and the subject has been so repetitive in Bollywood that it has probably desensitized the new gen­eration to the ordeal of people from both the sides.

“Bharat,” based on the 2014 South Korean film “Ode to My Father”, tries to do a lot of things, especially from the patriotism angle, within one feature length film and thereby destroys a story that could have been deeply moving. We’ll forgo the plot here so that you can watch “Ode to My Father”, oblivious of Salman Khan and his team’s shenanigans. This brings us to lesson number 2: If you think a movie might be too patriotic to care about the basic storyline, give it a miss.

Lesson number 3: Any movie with Gutthi, sorry, Sunil Grover is bear­able because of his consistent and clever comic relief. Playing Vilayati Khan, Bharat’s devoted childhood buddy, he gives a healthy pace to the movie with his faultless comic timing; we sometimes wonder why he’s not a bigger superstar than Sallu Bhai. But that’s Bollywood for you.

The recent Salman Khan movies have all made huge money thanks to the legions of Sallu bhai’s undaunted fans—the bhai army—and this one crossed the 100 crore mark in a couple of days. But even his hard­core fans will feel “Bharat” lacks the one thing that has always been the trademark of Salman Khan movies—good music. Looks like the recent India-Pakistan rift has taken a toll on Khan’s new movie too. Some of his most popular songs of late had the voice of Rahat Fateh Ali Khan while he romanced with co-actors half his age. (Jag Ghoomeya from ‘Sultan’ and Tere Mast Mast Do Nain from ‘Dabang’.) But sans the Pakistani maestro lending his voice to Khan in “Bharat”, there’s not a single memorable song. Lesson number 4: Salman Khan needs Rahat Fateh Ali Khan to look and sound romantic onscreen.

End of the lessons and time for special credits. Katrina Kaif playing Bharat’s love interest Kumud Raina, who he refers to as ‘madam sir’ throughout the movie, looks beau­tiful as always and has evidently improved her acting and dancing skills, and also her Hindi.

But without a proper backsto­ry for her character, and with her Anglo-Indian accent, she is not con­vincing as an Indian government employee. Special mention should also go to Jackie Shroff who plays Gautam Kumar—Bharat’s father. The veteran actor holds solid ground on whatever little space he gets and sometimes we wonder how much stronger his character could have been if he had a better son, in reel life.

Who should watch it?

Besides Bhai’s unfaltering fans, anyone who loves elaborate Bollywood dramas might enjoy the movie. Comedy is definitely a genre Khan cannot fail in and the film does have its fair share of laughter. Also, Disha Patani and Nora Fatehi light up the screen in a couple of item numbers, worth watching for audiences of all ages and sexes  

Movie: Bharat

Genre: Family/Drama

Cast: Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif, Jackie Shroff, Sunil Grover

Direction: Ali Abbas Zafar

Rating: 2/5

 The Mystery of Three Quarters opens with a premise that immediately catches your atten­tion. A woman Poirot has never met or even heard of for that matter approaches him demanding to know why he sent her a letter accusing her of murder. Then comes another man, again a stranger, who claims to have received a similar letter. Two more people arrive saying they both received letters from Poirot in which he accused them of murder. The thing is Poirot doesn’t know the man who was apparent­ly murdered and he didn’t send the letters.

The Mystery of Three Quarters is Sophie Hannah’s third Hercule Poirot mystery but the first novel that is truly reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s Poirot. Hannah, it seems, has finally got everything about Poirot right, from his mannerisms to his oft-aggravated sense of self. But that’s about it.

Nothing about the plot or the narrative reminds you of flair with which Christie wrote her simple sto­ries. The plot feels forced and the characters ill-developed, with many arbitrarily thrown in. And there’s just too much happening without any of it going anywhere.

Continuing Christie’s legacy is a herculean task and it’s easy to understand why the Agatha Christie estate chose Hannah for there could perhaps be no one better at cleverly building suspense and intrigue. Her books give you sleepless nights. Fans of Christie might rejoice at Poirot’s return but for those who have read Hannah and know just what she is capable of, The Mystery of Three Quarters falls flat. Having said that, as a crime novel Hannah’s third Poirot mystery is fine – definitely way better than her first.

All loose ends are neatly tied up in the end and the solution seems believable. We would definitely rec­ommend this book as a light week­end read. Just don’t get your hopes up for it to be an immensely enter­taining one.

Book: The Mystery of three quarters (Hercule Poirot Mysteries)

Authors: Sophie Hannah, Agatha Christie

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: August 2018

Language: English

Pages: 400, Paperback

 If you think you’ve figured out the content of the movie “Kumva Karan” by its name or its trail­er, you might want to leave your assumptions at home, for you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Directed by Dipak Oli, Kumva Karan is not an all-out comedy. It sure is based in the comedy genre but the thrilling, suspenseful twists and the shocking ending will keep you entertained throughout, despite all its glitches and flaws. It’s a Nepali movie—for Satya Harishchandra’s sake! We can sure be a little forgiving. The name Kumva Karan does not allude to the mythical sleepyhead demon from Ramayana, unlike what we’d assume. Instead, the name is a tell-tale of the movie’s plot, clev­erly revealed in the second half. The whole film is done smartly, actually. Sans expensively shot item numbers and massive production cost, Kumva Karan relies on its plot, screenplay and star cast to keep the audience hooked to their seats for the 1.47-hour runtime.

The film centers around three Karans—Karandeep Ghimire (Bhola Raj Sapkota), Karan Prasad Upad­hyaya (Gaurav Pahari), and Karan Bahadur Chhetri (Abhay Baral)—respectively the head master, Nepali teacher and a peon of a community school in Pyuthan. Their otherwise passive nature is given a masculine jolt by the entry of Sapana mad­am (Nisha Adhikari), the English teacher who they all fall for heads over heels.

They compete for her attention, healthily and unhealthily, and the first half is all about their antics to win her affection. Then, what fol­lows changes the narrative entirely. (As we don’t know any other review­er who’s spilled all the beans on a review and lived to work another day, we’ll leave it at that.)

Coming to the performances, the troika of Karans fit right into their characters and are pleasant to watch. Well, it’s always good to see a Nepali comedy where the actors don’t scream their lungs out to make you laugh. Comedy can be subtle, like it is in Kumva Karan. Bhola Raj, who shot to fame with his significant appearance in the Bollywood hit ‘Barfi’ (2012), puts in a par perfor­mance as a wannabe strict headmas­ter, who actually ends up looking comical and cute. Gaurav as the shy, spectacled Nepali teacher also justifies his character.

Only if the dialogues were better! Forgiving as much as we want to be, we do need to address the elephant in the room

The one person whose name has cruelly been left out from the trailer and promotions wins the man-of-the-match though. While Bhola Raj and Gaurav manage to score what they’re expected to, Abhay Baral as the obnoxious yet lovable peon is like the tail-ender who scores a blazing 17-ball half century to take his team home. His comic timings are impeccable and he manages to grab all the attention onscreen with both his physical performance and dialogue delivery.

If only the dialogues were better! Forgiving as much as we want to be, we do need to address the elephant in the room. The dialogues under­cut the possibility of this being a brilliant movie. All the emotions in the film are basically visible, thanks to the actors, and had the dialogues given to them been any better, the characters would certainly appear stronger. Imagine a Gabbar Singh without Salim-Javed’s prolific prose-work. Jason Kunwar’s background score manages to save some grace during the pivotal scenes though and the aural needs of emoting are somewhat fulfilled.

 Who should watch it?

If you can excuse some typical glitches of our Kollywood productions, you might actually like the film. It’s definitely worth the time and movie tickets. A little humor and a rather simplistic thriller is also good when the weather is bad and you have nothing else to do.

Movie: Kumva Karan

Genre: Comedy/Thriller

Cast: Nisha Adhikari, Pramod Agrahari, Gaurav Pahari, Bholaraj Sapkota, Abhay Baral, Kuldip Adhikari

Direction: Dipak Oli

Rating: 2.5/5

 Every once in a while you come across a book that just blows your mind away. ‘Revenge’, a collection of 11 short stories, by Yoko Ogawa is one such volume. Oga­wa has you trapped in her web of dark tales and you wish to relive the experience over and over again. You enter Ogawa’s dark and delicious world with a woman going into a local bakery to buy strawberry short­cake for her son. In the course of the conversation, she tells another wom­an she has only just met at the other­wise empty bakery that “today is his birthday.” When asked how old he is, the woman replies, “Six. He’ll always be six. He’s dead,” before going on to explain the bizarre events following his death.

All the stories in this collection begin innocuously enough. Two girls work in the laundry at a hospital washing lab coats. A man on the way to his stepmother’s funeral is waylaid when his train gets stuck in the snow. Each premise is ordinary but as the stories progress they take horrify­ing turns. They are all about death, abruptly ending relationships, and, of course, about revenge. Individual­ly, the stories don’t add up to much. If you choose a random story and read that, you are likely to be disap­pointed. But it’s a powerful, albeit at times jarring, anthology when you read the stories consecutively from beginning to end. There are some stories like “Old Mrs. J” and “Lab Coats” that can be read as self-con­tained pieces but most stories have a link to the next in the anthology.

The charm of the stories, howev­er, lies in how unpredictable they are. It’s spooky and fun at the same time. You get goose bumps when you suddenly realize what has just happened. And the blows are always sucker punch—you never see them coming. Translator Stephen Snyder compared Ogawa’s work to Muraka­mi’s, going as far as to call her “the next Haruki Murakami” and some reviewers have even cited the influ­ence of Edgar Allan Poe and Jorge Luis Borges. Deftly constructed and skillfully written, Ogawa’s stories will leave you feeling a bit unsettled but also wanting to read everything else she has ever written.

Book: Revenge

Genre: Fiction

Author: Yoko Ogawa

Published: January 29, 2013

Publisher: Picador

Language: Translated in English by Stephen Snyder

Pages: 176, Paperback