It's All About the Looks, Silly

What do ZNMD and our obsession about Hina Khar have in common?

Apart from the bag worth lakhs of rupees that is - ?

Both celebrate the pinnacle position of our consumption economy. What Santosh Desai calls the importance of the trivial overriding the significant, in our lives. Our readiness to embrace the culture of consumption. Where glamour has translated into presumed effectiveness.

India-Pakistan - koi problems hi nahi hai bhai. All simulated by those Delhi-Isloo types.

The movie celebrates how cool it is to be rich and inward gazing and the media frenzy on Khar represents that everything can be - and is - and should be, a spectacle.

The world is no longer about delayed gratification. The new prevailing mood is 'relayed gratification' - in the name of adventure sports or attires or shoes.

Once upon a time, the youth of the seventies had the Angry Young Man created in part by Javed Akhtar: A Rebel With a Cause. Amitabh Bachchan

By the turn of the century and along the line came Rakesh Mehra's Rang De Basanti - Rebels without a Cause. Yet youth in search of goals in life.

By the time the next decade has come around, the Akhtar nextgen has put their finger as unerringly as their dad did, on the shooting pulse of the youth: Rebels Without a Pause.

Unending self-centred live-in-own-bubble gratification. Of simulating dangers - for the world inhabited has no real dangers in any case, to then face them squarely.

Aa Bail Mujhe Maar is legit motto of the Indian demographic dividend.

Human relationships or any other global causes - eh, whatcha talking about??

There were two tantalizing angles left dangling. Hrithik and Farhan start out in an uneasy awkwardness over a woman in the past, who is no longer in the picture. Is in fact irrelevant to their lives. A delicious irony in the fractures left behind - but in keeping with the true spirit of the times, the intriguing depths of such a relationship between the guys is not dwelled on at all.

As in the times, we skim thru life. It's as if the media is telling me: Don't be so hyper, learn to enjoy life. Problem kaheko khada kar rahe ho? Enjoy the movie na... Splurge on the multiplex, chill with a soda, sit back in your designer wear.

Firangis (Spaniards bichare whoa re thrilled we will now line up as tourists in their land) are now grist to the games of our over-confident and brash Indian selves, and the jokes played on unsuspecting bystanders is the new benchmark of being funny.

A son in search of a biological father, has no compunctions of starting off a potent and short-lived relationship with the dad, riding on the back of a failed joke that brings them to the police station. It's just one more non-place to pass through, in life, which parents will take care of, kind of like Manu Sharma - the chap who shot Jessica.

When Farhan wants to call 'Salman', his friends ask him 'But why would he help us'?

Well-asked, well noted by screenplay writer Farhan. Talk of the singularity of rich brats' lives: the thought of strangers helping out is unthinkable - in lives spent chasing the next rainbow. The rest of the planet's inhabitants are mere props on the stage, when they are not the thoughtless butt of jokes that is.

Live life in this moment alone is the credo that has chased the makers of the film to their later publicity tour. While in the NDTV studio in the weekend the movie released, even before the director or the lead stars got any comment in edgeways, the channel cut them off rudely and dramatically. Because tabloid king 'Murdoch had just been attacked'. As it turned out, by a clown with shaving foam.

Motto of the second decade of the twenty first century: pleasure seeking is legit. Enjoying money is my own prerogative - am no Gandhi to think of anything else and come on, give me a break, this is my life.

All those Motorcycle Diaries road trip and all - first of all, dunno what you are talking about. This face on my T shirt? Oh that's Che, some chap who became an icon not quite sure why. But he sure makes a cool icon - bought it for 100 dollars.

There is a phrase academics have for this: it's called Late Capitalism. In which we puppets dance to the tune of the market. The ultimate aim, for all of us is to be covered in the intellectual People magazine and live life in 3D on P3.