Kuch log mar mar ke jeete hain to kuch log maarke.
—Inspector Narasimha in Ram Gopal Varma ki Aag.
Ram Gopal Varma definitely belongs to the second category. He takes his directorial sword and scythes off, in Gabbarian style, the two arms of “Sholay” (its script and its characterization) leaving behind a stump of a movie that is a bastardization of everything the original classic epitomizes, adds some shots of Nisha Kothari’s butt and Ajay Devgun’s chest as his own creative input, and finally with much fanfare excretes out the resultant monstrosity calling it “Ram Gopal Varma ki Aag” where you would think, that in the interests of fair labeling, a “gaand mein” should have been added before “Aag”.
Readers at RTDM would be aware of my ceaseless quest to understand the Hindi heartland, its society, its politics and its people through the study of subaltern visual/audio art as found in the caves of Youtube. History is written by the conquerers, editorials are written by those who can pay for them—it is only in the non corporate embodiments of popular culture that the truth of its times lie. And may I also say a lot of its beauty.
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