Dedicated to me and myself only “Mamu! tyo manchhe ko ho?”—I ask innocently, pointing my index finger at the “gentleman” being displayed in our 21” screen- home television set.
“kun babu, tyo chasma laayeko thulo thulo aankha bha manchhe?”—my mom reciprocates.
“ho, tyo taalu chinde, haatma banduk bha”—I try to give more distinct details of the person to help my mom find whom I am talking about.
“eh…tyo daaku (villain) ho babu filmko, tesko naam Prem Chopra ho “—my mom answers to the best of her knowledge.
I love those days of late eighties—wow, my golden childhood days! Cable TV and internet were far off cry still—the only medium to entertain oneself at home was local Nepal television channel and our own “big bro’s” Durdarshan. Oh yes, and there was the VCR-- undoubtedly the most entertaining and the exciting one.
I was barely 5 years or around at that time. There was this movie parlor—“movies galore” at about 5 minutes walk from our house. As the name speaks out, the parlor was supposed to have movies from a wide gamut of genres. Unfortunately, there were very few selections to be made from a mediocre range of varieties they actually possessed.
Saturdays used to be very special to me those days, not only because it’s a holiday but it also happened to be a “movie day” for us. My father would write a long list of Deniro’s and Pacino’s movies of his choice that he would like to see. My cousin sister would think of all the Tom Cruise’s and Aamir Khan’s flicks that she could think of. I was too a kid to have a choice of my own and my innocent mom would watch anything we get from the parlor. Ironically, none of us would get a movie of our choice and all we got to see were, Mithun Chakrabortis, Amrish Puris and "Prem Chopras" of that time with their own “ghisapita” dialogues and plots.
“Mamu! villain bhanya ke ho?”—my innocent mind, oblivious to the treachery of mankind asks my mom.
“villain bhaneko heroko dushman ho babu, tesle hero ani heroine lai sataauchha, maarna pani sakcha”—my mom answers passionately.
“ho ra!, herda ra bolda ta comedian jasto chha ta hai?” my miniscule observation speaks to mom.
The image of negative characters in most of those late eighties and early nineties bollywood movies were weakly depicted in my view. No matter how lethal and deadly they try to act in the beginning, they end up being a rather foolish and comedy characters—thanks to their own short-sightedness and hi-tech plans that never materialize.
“agar tumne police ko khabar karne ki koshish ki to main tumhari mashuka ki tukde tukde karke kisi kutte ko khila dunga”—says Prem Chopra with bulging eyes trying to display fury (supposedly).
Hat’s off to the dialogue writer who came up with those lines. I mean we have listened to them more than thousand times but not a single time they have come true, albeit I cannot stand without saluting their wild imaginations. Hat's off again!
The reason why movies of those genres didn’t need high budget and comic performers is because of the versatile “Prem Chopras” who would play both villain and comedian at the same time. Talking about villains and comedians, I have not understood which one is which as far as those movies are concerned.
I love human characters. If there is anything that excites me apart from my coursework (?), it has to be human psychology. One of the major reasons that encourages me to surf sajha time and again is because of this very reason. There are characters aplenty of course including “me” and “myself”.
But I am not too excited about my own character because I know very few words to play with in the first place. “Spammers” and “terrorists” are the only two words I have learnt from my “royal oxford dictionary”. Oh yes, there is a third one too—“nationalist”. It has been wrongly defined though. I won’t be surprised if it turns out to be “anti-nationalist” in your dictionary.
Do you know the pain of having very few words in your dictionary? Well, I will tell you. Say if there are two mathematicians talking about cubic spline method of interpolation, I would intrude right in between and say “SPAmmers are terrorists so they should be punished. I am a nationalist myself so forget about the interpolation!!”
Prem Chopra is still one of my favorite characters to be very honest. He gives me reason to smile—one of the hardest things to be bestowed with in one of these hectic days—to laugh. I think of Prem Chopra and I still think of his greatest line of all time:
“ Prem….Prem Chopra hai naam mera. Saara seher jaanta hai ki mai kitna sarif hun”
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