Lafangey Parindey

There are some things that, when spoken, make you turn around in slo-mo and give the person who said them an "are you for real?" look. The Boy saying that he wanted to watch 'Lafangey Parindey' b/c he thinks Neil Nitin Mukesh & Deepika Padukone are good actors was one such thing.

I wasn't too interested. For one, the movie has been wrongly publicized as being based on Mumbai's bike/street gangs. It is neither. It is a love story between two people who speak the street language of Mumbai, what's come to be called Bambaiya Hindi. Secondly, I find both Neil Nitin Mukesh & Deepika Padukone to be pathetic actors. Third, their pairing did not excite me...at all. And finally, I think Pradeep Sarkar + Yash Raj = DISASTER. Case in point, 'Laga Chunari Mein Daag'. Still, we trudged off to watch the movie.

One Shot Nandu (Neil Nitin Mukesh) is a boxer who works for a local gangster. Pinki Palkar (Deepika Padukone) is a lower middle class girl with big aspirations living in a chawl in Mumbai. She's skates, and sees that as her passport out of the chawl life. In an accident, One Shot Nandu rams his car into her. She loses her eye-sight but not her dreams.

Feeling guilty, One Shot Nandu decides to train her to "see" with her other sense organs. In the process, the inevitable happens - they fall in love.

They get selected to participate in India's Got Talent but on the eve of their final performance, a bomb is dropped on Pinki - the cops, having finished their investigation in to her accident, tell her that it was her boyfriend who blinded her.

Surprisingly, I liked the movie. The story is unique and barring a few filmy twists, it touches your heart. The movie is short & crisp - just under 2 hours. Deepika Padukone has acted better than in her earlier movies. 'Man Lafanga' & 'Nain Parindey' are beautiful soundtracks. But the best part of the movie is its execution - Pradeep Sarkar has handled the crucial scenes with a lot of sensitivity and tenderness (that's his USP, after all) so that the pain of watching a normal girl with dreams & aspirations suddenly lose her eye-sight for no fault of hers, comes through very effectively. The unfairness of it all hits you right in the gut.

The downside of the movie is the language. Not everyone can speak Bambaiya Hindi as convincingly as Aamir Khan did in 'Rangeela'. 'Tere ko', 'mere ko', 'dimaag mein keeda mangta hai' and 'main teri vaat laga dalegi' don't sit easy on the lips of the protagonists of this movie.

I would recommend watching 'Lafangey Parindey' once, but then I'd be part of a very small minority.