Farah has also meticulously layered the film in a way that even when Om discovers that his Shanti actually loves the evil Mukesh Mehra there is no attempt to make the audience cry. In fact as Shah Rukh walks down the street, broken-hearted and desolate, in the wind and the rain, the camera pulls back to show that actually the atmospheric wind and rain are being created artificially through large fans, collections of leaves and giant hosepipes. Similarly, in the wonderful South Indian film spoof, while Shah Rukh flies through the air, again the camera zooms out to reveal the trolley he is precariously balanced on. All this helps to keep the audience in its ‘happy’ imbalance. Even the death of the hero and the heroine (unlike in the original Karz, or in Madhumati where the deaths were spine-chilling) appears to be doused in tomato ketchup and special effects — so that while you ‘buy’ into their deaths, you know that through the easy and simple trans-migration of souls you will see them both again after the interval.

The highlight for me remains the completely insane Dard-e-Disco song. The rationale for the song apparently was a conversation that Farah had with Gulshan Kumar in which he told her that only two types of songs sell — dard bhare gaane and disco. And Farah immediately wanted a combination of both — a dard bhara disco number. Javed Akhtar’s brilliantly audacious lyrics in which he rhymes all sorts of meaningless words (including ‘pichchle maheene ki chabbis ko’ with disco) captures the manic essence of the film, as does the ‘item boy’ performance by the six-ab Shah Rukh and the careful unbuttoning of his shirt.

... contd.