Sunday, December 26, 2010

Munni And Sheila Are Saviors Of India

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Munni and Sheila have done an impossible task to take India to the future. One of the things that India suffers with is the hypocrisy that has become part of our culture and both these ladies of glam are here to shake it away.
I remember the times when I was a kid and the Television got switched off when 'Choli ke peeche' or 'Lotan kabutar' used to get aired (and I'm not even sure what was wrong with the second one). Compare that with today when people are openly discussing and debating on who has more oomph - S vs M. 'Beedi' from Omkara is a song that gets played in 'decent' marriages and small girls love to dance on it.
We, as a Nation, have the reputation of being excessively hypocrite! We talk about 'greenpeace' and always insist on taking a carry bag from the shopkeeper, we talk about the pride that we should take in our own language and culture and happen to get overtly impressed by the girl who manages to roll her tongue around her "R" like the British do (or is it the Americans - nah, we don't quite like the Americans actually!), we can talk endlessly about how corruption is choking India and in the end carry some 'change' with us to give to the traffic police because our insurance has expired last month!
India and sex has a massive connected history. There was a time when 'outsourcing' was not a word known to the west and they identified India with 'Kamsutra' and the 'culture' at Indian homes made sure that the newly married couple mated only when they wanted to have kids and that it was done miles away from home! For such a Nation I think Munni and Sheila are a boon. They are changing how we react to explicit content and are making sure that the average Indian male is more comfortable around women in general. Over the years many more 'item girls' will hit the screen and take the taboo topics into the dining areas of Indian middle classes. What is fantastic about these songs is not just the way explicit content is handled but who does them. It is easy to ignore a regular item girl doing a peppy number but when the woman who's poster dons your teenager's walls does a shake of the hip you cannot just keep things in the closet anymore. You have to acknowledge the fact that the society is moving forward and perhaps it is time for you to do the same.
If the naysayers happen to read this post they would attack it and they would bleed at the idea that I am endorsing 'cheap' content and heralding an era of cultural destruction. If I were a popular man and this blog was famous they would even go to the extent of burning my posters in public and burn the posters of the movies I mentioned for good measures. But, thankfully, I'm not all that famous and the fact is that most of them must have already danced on either of these songs themselves by now in some party.