"Gin se namardi hoti hai"

I bought a pair of shoes to replace my last pair. It wouldn't be correct to say I bought them. I had them shamelessly exchanged for my beautiful 6-month old pair of Reebok sneakers. I don't know if it's just me, but I find it remarkably hard to approach the smiling sales attendant and tell him that the pair of shoes I purchased from the store a few months ago, has come undone at the stitching on the side, so pretty please with a cherry on top, would you kindly replace it for a new pair, you know it being within warranty period and all! I just can't do it. I feel cheap. So I took mom along. Apparantly the guy didn't need much conviction. Within seconds I had a white slip of paper with a typed assurance that I could buy any pair of sneakers from the store within the retail price of Rs. 6500. So I bought one for 7 grand. (Yeah, I have a fetish for shoes. So what?) But a pair of veronas for 500 bucks isn't a bad deal. Not a bad deal at all. All those years of experience at tearing tennis shoes within 3 months finally paid off!

I don't know what it is about the guards at the entrance to Fame cinemas but if they're recruited based on the only criterion that they be homosexual, then they're a bit too flamboyant for my approval. Sure, they ask "May I?" before they feel you up, but sometimes I get the feeling they do it just because they enjoy it. Yesterday, I carried that humongous box of size 12 Reeboks in to the theatre and that lousy son-of-a-bitch didn't even bother to check it? But they're more than happy to search your pockets and feel the size of your wallet. He didn't even give me the chance to complain about the cumbersome process of taking the shoes out of the box just for his amusement and then putting them back in! Incompetent asshole! What if I had a bomb in that box? I wouldn't put my cinema going life in his hands. I wouldn't put my ass in his hands either! But they don't give us a choice, do they? I'm gonna dash past him next time.

So, DevD has been having a galla time at the box office. A 5 star rating in TOI isn't easy to come by. Unfortunately I hadn't read the reviews before I decided to take my mom along for it. As the reel started unwinding, I realised what a mistake it was. Let me tell you, there is no possible expression I can come up with to make it look like I'm cool when I'm trying to find a decent-sized chip in a packet of Lay's in my mother's hand and the actor goes "Do you...(long dramatic pause)...touch yourself?" It was too emphatic to ignore, too tense to shirk and too cold to sweat. Okay I didn't see it coming. I had expected something like 'Life in a Metro' or 'No Smoking', not three lovelorn losers being, well....desparate. Seriously, how much can a guy fuck? DevD, played by Abhay Deol, is a lost, pathetic richboy, gone astray. Initially, he relies on dirty talk and nude pics of his childhood love, Paaro, to crave his sexual angst. When he finally gets the chance to actually fuck her when he comes back to India, he is overwhelmed by a sense of resentment at her for getting physical with the help, which of course, was untrue. So he ends up sleeping with some other female whose only role in the film is to sleep with DevD from time to time(in the chicken coop, brother's bedroom, wherever). Foreseeably, Paaro and DevD fall out with each other and DevD then gets hooked on to weed, coke and booze to slake his carnal urges. Paaro gets married and DevD meets this prostitute who calls herself Chanda through an altruistic pimp whose only motive in life is to help DevD. Now this guy is so fond of his employees( his hookers), that he gifts them bikes, pays for their education and in a way, seeks to fulfill his duties as a benefactor of society. His magnanimous overtures don't go wasted as we now see a deep and fruitful friendship begin to ripen between DevD and the altruistic pimp. A flashback and we see how Lenny(a disturbed child of mixed lineage. Indian and Ukranian I think) becomes our Chanda. We see sex scandals, suicides, compunction, pathos, yaddy-yaddy-yada and we have Chanda!

Chanda begins to develop feelings for our now drunk and for the most part, impotent DevD. DevD in turn runs over seven pedestrians with his new car. Somewhere along the way, his father kicks the bucket, and he is so pained at this that he embraces his mother, cries, and then decides to not pay his lawyer and go on a road trip. A few days later, he finds himself out of cash in a dusty pub by the road with nowhere to go and befriends a stray dog. Then he calls Chanda, gets almost hit by a car and is shaken to the extent that he decides to marry Chanda and set his life back in order. So, contrary to our expectations( and quite regrettably) DevD doesn't die. Oh and during the course of the movie he also tries to sleep with the now-married Paaro, who refuses and gets herself thrown out the door.

That's the gist of the story. I'm sorry if I missed a few points but I was too busy trying to pretend I didn't exist, but I was there, sure and breathing, stuck between my mom who, in every possible sense of the word right should not have been there, and the young couple canoodling on my left. The chip in my hand cracked with a deafening...well for want of a better word, 'crack' as Paaro on the screen succumbed to a toe-crippling orgasm in response to the "Do you touch yourself?" question. I decided that it was now the opportune moment to slink away from my mom, but bumped into the guy on my left who, by now, was in a passionate French kiss with his lady. Distracted, he gave me an annoyed look, and I leaned right back on the other side, trying to avoid his stare. This led to my mom thinking that either the guy was trying to act tough or that there were 'chharpoka' in my seat. Either way, she fixed him with a questioning look. This, apparantly, seemed to unnerve him as he backed away and got busy again.

An hour into the movie and some sort of discrepancy seemed to have arisen to the left of me. French dude now shifts to the right of his seat( I was still trying to refrain from any kind of bodily contact). He then looks at me. I turn apprehensively his way. He rolls his eyes at his girl, indicating some sort of unreasonable behaviour. I give him a sympathetic smile and my been-there-done-that nod, which is weird since I haven't been there and definitely haven't done that. He turns back to face his girl. She looks at him. Their eyes meet. I put my hand in his bucket of popcorn. He turns viciously around and snatches it away. Bastard!

DevD begins to open up to Chanda. "What do you know of pain?", he asks rhetorically. "What do you know of pain?" the girl repeats, looking at her boyfriend. He closes his eyes and sighs painfully. I raise my hand and reply "Err...I waxed my chest once!" Startled looks all around.
All in all DevD was a masterpiece of direction, screenplay, camera work and portrayal. There was this one scene where the camera follows the main actor around in front person, Requiem for a Dream style, which kind of shocked me an instant. But the movie as a whole, was not to my liking. This is strange as I am an avid viewer of Anurag Kashyap's works and have not seen even one that I absolutely did not like. The storyline, I felt, was lacking something essential. It was bland. It might appeal to the youth, their emotions, even artistic sense, but that still doesn't make a movie. I wouldn't give it a 5 star rating. If I'd heard the story from DevD himself, drunk at a bar, I'd have given him a pat on the back and a mug full of sympathy. Had I read the story, I'd have thrown the book away where it would lie for eternity with my copies of Chetan Bhagat and Aravind Adiga. But, hey, if White Tiger can get the Booker while Sea of Poppies wilts in envy, give DevD a 5 star rating....it's worth a watch if only to get what I mean to imply. As for me, I'd give it 3 stars and smirk as the interrupted couple get away from me and resume their canoodling in a different part of the hall!