Chunari Chunari, and the unexpected joy of rewatching Monsoon Wedding
On Saturday afternoons, I usually go to Bohri Bazaar. I have a fairly set routine that pretty much centres around eating a plate of the best chaat in this city, considering the merits of yet another sari, and then returning home and watching Netflix for about four hours straight or unravelling yarn. A weekend without this is when I feel almost bereft, robbed of one of my most therapeutic experiences in this city.
But one Saturday, I got a haircut, and I didn’t feel like leaving the house again. I wanted something comforting to eat, so I ordered in Korean fried chicken and rice, and a double scoop of ice cream. I wanted to watch Monsoon Wedding.
Monsoon Wedding, I realise, probably means Something to Someone. It is not one of those films for me, that has meant Something to me at Some Pivotal Point in my Life. And I’m sure someone has delved into Monsoon Wedding – and I fear, over-intellectualized this to a degree that will ruin this for me – but since it does not mean anything to me I really don’t care.
I think the thing that has stuck with me the most over the years is how good the Monsoon Wedding soundtrack was: Aaja Nachle! Ajj Mera Jee Karda! Aaj Janay Ki Zid Na Karo! Aaj Mausam Bada Beimaan Hai! AND Chunari Chunari — all in ONE film.
Monsoon Wedding opens with, predictably now that we’ve seen a lot of movies like this, but perhaps not so predictably for the time that it was released, with the chaos of a house being decorated for a wedding. Naseeruddin Shah, the exasperated father attempting to reason with the wedding decorator – who, with his new mobile phone and newfound ability to attempt social mobility – is giving him the run-around. The characters in the house are what one may find in any Punjabi family – the wife, hair in rollers, sneaking a cigarette to combat stress, stressed about how many gifts they need to buy, the child who no one is paying attention to, the brilliance of the Khana Khazana placement, the one person who is obsessed with the wedding dances (tag, I’m it.. Also, I had the deeply shocking realisation that the only steps I know how to do on Chunari Chunari are, indeed, cribbed from this film), the one boy who is the boy of the wedding and also the world number 1 stupid idiot duffer (Randeep Hooda! And when I learned this many years later, I was truly confounded by how long Hooda has been in the business..), the bride (who also no one is paying attention to, and is going through a crisis of her own, involving a man we can now call f**kboi), loud relatives, et al, and – of course – the parallel storyline of “the help” - Tillotama Shome, playing Alice, the maid, whose character seems so much more nuanced and well explained than the bride, who seems to be floating around in a hell of her emotional self’s making.
What I like about Monsoon Wedding, compared to many other films that revolve around weddings, is that we know something of each of the characters: their backstories, their feelings, their mannerisms, the role they occupy in the family, the grumblings under their breath, the unspoken tension and fear that underlines so many interactions. That this film showed bravery and cowardice and shock, and the trauma that underscores so many interactions, is kind of remarkable for a “wedding film.” Every actor seemed so well cast that I couldn’t picture this being any different, and then, came the last scene of the film, and, in true 1990s child fashion, I sat up straight and gasped: Jas Arora?!?!
Please, people: casting Jas Arora, of the Gurr Nale Ishq Mitha video fame, is perhaps what happens when you train a neural model to tell you “what are the 1990s”, but this was such a stellar, last-scene move that I am still not quite over it.