Sunday, January 2, 2011

Rise of Pappu Pager and Fall of Azghar Jurhad

I have grown up watching the movies of 80s and 90s like Shaan, Mr. India, Tiranga, Vishwatma, Tridev etc, where there used to be a distinct bifurcation between the good guys and the bad guys, we can call them hero and villain respectively. Hero used to too good, which effectively means, he used to be an underachieving loser, with a BA degree and ghar me and andhi maa aur vidhawa behan, oops vidhawa maa and andhi bahan to support.

Villains used to be too bad with names like Azghar Jurhad, Bakhtawar, Shakal, Dr. Dang, Gaindaswami, Mogamgo etc (imagine how ugly the boy has to look for his father to hold him into his arms at the time of birth and say, "kitna katarnaak dikhta hai, iska naam Azghar rakhte hain."), and all they could dream of was ruling India, with a very simple plan in hand i.e. firing missiles at three metros Delhi, Mumbai and Calcutta (I have always wandered why they always ignored Madras now known as Chennai), some had even simpler plan, blast a missile in Delhi only and be the King of the country as big as India. Most of them had a foreign hand helping them, normally played by Bob Christo (he was Macmohan of foreigner goons, who played same role in so many movies without even changing his get up). Minimum ticket size for all the transactions for these villains would be in tunes of Crores. Nashte me sau, do sau crore idhar udhar kar dete the. They would make the state and central government fall matter of factly. A typical breakfast conversation would be something like this:

Chamcha: Wo chief minister humare liye sar dard ban gaya hai.
Super Villain: (taking a sip) ek kaam karo, sarkar gira do. Humare videshi agent X ko bolkar yahan itni tabahi machao ki mukhya mantri istifa dene pe majboor ho jaye. use is kaam ke liye 100 crore bhejwa do.


Then suddenly came Satish Kaushik playing Pappu Pager, a dumb goon with silly antics. People laughed at his stupid actions and idiotic conversations and came the era of villains like Vasuli bhai, Munna mobile, Aslam bhai. Basically now the hero is no longer a loser with no vidhawa maa and andhi behan, he doesn't even care for a job anymore. The role of the loser has been taken over by villains. I don't like these loser villains who are abused, beaten and made fun of by all and sundry. I miss Amrish Puri, I miss Azghar Jurhad.