me? at crossroads. blame it on all those 'crossover films'

Crossover. A word that leaves me in a daze, maze and haze, courtesy so many Indian crossover films going through and across in reviews/stories of late.

Okay, that’s stretching it a bit too far, but guess who’s crossing my path these days? Since you have rightly guessed it’s the Cyrus that’s not the Broacha, but the Khan that’s Saif and sound, you get no prizes for all that gas-work.

Anyway, back to the art of the matter: Being Cyrus. Crossover. Cult. Nouveau-whatever that dares to take on ‘taboo subjects’, as the wise ones told me in review after review. Don’t ask me why I read them, though all I do as an active follow-up action is wait for the cable-wallah to screen it.

It’s about this guy (incidentally Parsi, but could well have been Darcy, Mercy, or Charsi) who comes to stay with this family (incidentally, Parsi again, though last heard none exactly knows why; including the director, who is, yes, a Parsi). What this guy does is reportedly fall in love with this wife of this Parsi man. Now, I spent a good three minutes trying to figure out exactly what is it that I haven’t heard or seen before racing across the taboo-subject reviews. The affair with an older woman, perhaps?

But then another crossover film had crossed that path, did it not? Dil Chahta Hai (often misspelt as Chata, making me think of rain, muck and yuck), with Kapadia and Khanna. So, on we come to DCH (which again makes me think of pain, work and muck: Double Column Headline, get the drift?). That, by the way, was this film where this guy falls in love with this girl who is engaged to that other guy. They sing songs, as the guys fight with their backs to girl before all hell turns swell. Now, I don’t recall the exact time, but I did spend some trying to figure out exactly what was it that I hadn’t heard or seen before. The anxiety of being sandwiched in love, perhaps?

But then there was, not so long ago, another film called Lagaan (which somehow makes me think of yawn, perhaps because I had slept through the better part of the film after catching it between a double-shift and a night shift. No jokes, for that’s 24-hour straight with colleagues who spent half the time discussing food and the other half trying not to discuss food). Anyway, this was a good crossover film — it was about this guy that wears spotless whites in this drought-hit village (perhaps because he plays cricket with the goras before Kerry Packer introduced white balls and coloured clothes), who falls in love with this gori but is in turn loved by this village chhori. They sing songs before, and in between, playing a tax-evading Test match with the goras, and wins. Now, I did not even wonder about things unheard or unseen, for those days I spelt crossover as cross over.

What the crossover critics forget while making their brains play those cross and naught games on print is takes more, much more, than a few disjointed characters fighting disjointed battles within the comfy confines of their disjointed worlds. Exactly what? Wish I knew, for I am yet to come across one filmed about our part of the world, and in our language — both spoken and unspoken.