Gandhigiri

Last Sunday I saw the movie Lage Raho Munnabhai. It is second in the series of Munnabai movies, the first one being Munnabhai MBBS.

First thing first --- I just loved the movie. It had given a new word to Hindi filmworld Gandhigiri which is just opposite of bhaigiri. Bhaigiri bole toh daddagiri and Gandhigiri bole toh vinarmata (humility). In one funny scene of the movie a character asks who is vinarmata. It is indeed very brave of director of the movie, Rajkumar Hirani, to make effective use of the Gandhian tools of truth, non-violence, satyagraha and make an entertaining movie out of it. After a long long time, I saw people clapping in the cinema hall. The movie was earlier named asMunnabhai Meets Mahamta, but eventually was named Lage Raho Munnabhai.

The story of movie is : Munnabhai (Sanjay Dutt) is in love with the voice of Radio Jockey Jhanvi (Vidya Balan), and takes part in a quizz contest on Mahatma Gandhi, so that he can win the contest and meet her personally. This contest he does win posing as ProfessorMurli Mohan Sharma with the help of real professors of history. Jhanvi is quite impressed with Munnabhai and asks her to lecture the inmates of old-age home, appropriately named Second Innings, on principles of Gandhiji. To keep his fake identify, Munnabahi, as suggested by his sidekick Circuit (Arshad Warsi) has no option but to study the writing of Gandhiji. From that point onwards, the movie picks up. Gandhiji (which is played by Dilip Prabhavalkar) appears only to Munnabhi, as he himself puts in later, due to to some `chemical locha' in his brain. The scenes involving Munnabhai and Gandhiji are the highlight of the movie. Munnbhai at first is skeptical by what Gandhiji tells him to follow, but those things starts showing surprising results.

I had not seen the first movie in this series Munnabhai MMBS in cinemas, but had got glimpses of it on telly. That movie seems to me to have some rough edges and the humour looked crude. This movie seems to have corrected this problem. The humour in this movie is quite good and often one wonders whether to cry or to laugh at the situation. In one scene, a old person callsMunnabhai, who along with Jhanvi had a show on satellite radio where people are advised to follow Gandhian methods to solve their problems, that he has not received his pension since he retired five years ago and is asked a bribe of five thousand rupees for getting his pension.Munnabhai advises him to follow Gandhian method and give in to the demands with vinarmata , of course. The old person goes to the person who has demanded bribe and gives him all he has got --- his wallet, spectacles, shirt, vests, belt, even trousers, telling him how much each item is valued. This shames the person who has asked bribe and he promptly signs the old person's pension papers.

It is good that younger generation will get to know about Gandhian idealism through this movie. I think Gandhiji would have approved of this movie and given it its nod of approval.

The name of my city Ulhasnagar gets mentioned in a dialogue of the movie. When due to their new method of satyagraha and non-violence, Munnabhai and Circuit are put to jail often and Circuit wonders if this frequent trips to jails will affect their reputations, Munnabhai tells him that on the contrary their reputation will increases and that roads and city will be named after him, like Gandhiji's, and Circuit says that like Ahmednagar, Ulhasnagar there will be Munnanagar.

There are speculation in the media that in the next sequence Munnabhai will get to go to USA and may meet Bush.

Link to official website of the movie.

Reviews of the movie are here, here and here.