‘Pardesi pardesi jaana nahi, mujhe chhod ke’ is a Bollywood meme, an oft-repeated annoying theme where the village girl is impregnated by the city lad who leaves her and gets involved with another life until confronted with a son who grows up to be Amitabh Bachchan and his cold baritone gives back the money he has earned in his mother’s name (Shanti Constructions) announcing, ‘Maine aap jaisa gareeb aaj tak nahi dekha.’
Raj Kapoor’s Ram Teri Ganga Maili tells the tale of what happens to a pregnant village girl who goes to Kolkata to demand her right as a wife and is turned away…
If women fall in love with men who turn out to be cheats, then shouldn’t families at least take them in instead of abandoning them? Why should she be forced to seek shelter among strangers and be persecuted by society?
Not only does Shaakuntalam fail the Bechdel test (at least two women with a prominent role in the film, talking about something other than a man), this sort of ‘abla nari having to prove her innocence’ trope is a tedious patriarchal tale even though it is Sandokan’s impressive voice telling us that the hero is not to be blamed, it's your all-enveloping love for this man earned you the curse from Durvasa that is to be blamed for the state you are in today.
Such unadulterated nonsense can only be appreciated or celebrated if covered in history and gilded in gold. Kalidasa would not earn any laurels today from women, that is certain.
Blame it on Indra, the king of Gods, who needed to break the incessant meditation of sage Vishwamitra. He sent his prettiest apsara Menaka to seduce the sage, and she does. Yesteryear’s star Madhoo plays Menaka. Menaka’s daughter grows up fostered by sage Kanva (Sachin Khedekar). Shakuntala is the daughter. She is so gorgeous, fake animals and birds in the fake forest love her. Computer generated butterflies think she’s made of sugar water and are attracted to her.
The king Dushyant in the forest probably thinks he’s time travelled to the Singapore Airport Terminal 3 and into the butterfly garden. That garden is real, this story is as poorly written as the VFX guy’s paycheck. In fact, the slow telling of a predictable tale makes you notice how poor the special effects are, whether it is the battle scene or the chariot driving in a snow covered forest. Their wiki page insists that talent from Hong Kong Canada and China have been roped in to make the film perfect. But perhaps wiki pages should not be counted as truth since Instagram warriors and photoshop 101 students have better work to show than this film.
Dushyant and Shakuntala fall in love, and he promises that he will return to solemnise their relationship. The film has been shot in Telugu and has been released simultaneously in Hindi and Tamil. Alas, the dubbing in Hindi is as annoying as the plastic flowers used as Shakuntala’s ornaments…
They also managed to rope in some really wonderful actors to just show up in costume. And do impossible things. They created a boat with the rudder in front (whose bright idea was that?) and then they persuaded an actor like Prakash Raj to show up to handle that boat (which is mad physics!) and just sing a song. An actor like Jisshu Sengupta gets to wear all white on the throne and watch Menaka dance. He is Indra. King Dushyanta is played by a Malayalam film actor Dev Mohan and the poor sod is made to pine in love whilst painting an awful portrait of his beloved Shakuntala.
If you are distracted by awful jokes your friends send you while you are in the theatre, then you would not be the only one. Samantha fans will find it difficult to justify her presence in the film. This film version of Kalidas’s Abhjnanashakuntalam has opulent sets and costumes, but has the heart of a hostage video. Samantha should consider roles like The Family Man and even shaking up a storm dancing to an eminently hummable seduction song, rather than take pride in the miserable life of a mother of a son who will create Bharat…
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