Subhash K Jha revisits Priyadarshan-Akshay Kumar’s Khatta Meetha, which released in 2010, and we year from actress Trisha Krishnan in a throwback interview about her debut in Hindi films.
First things first. This is not, repeat not, a comedy. Not by any yardstick. For those expecting a typical Priyadarshan-Akshay Kumar comedy Khatta Meetha is not your cup of tee-hee. For those who know there’s a more reflective and ruminative side to both the prolific director and the leading man, here’s the thing.
Khatta Meetha takes stinging satirical swipes at the epidemic disease of corruption that has taken over the Indian ethos. Tragically, the treatment is quite often heavy-handed. But the statement never drowns in the diatribe. Priyadarshan tends to fill up the outer edges with a profusion of incidental characters and over-elaborate gags and jokes that hold themselves in place in a world of unmitigated chaos like ‘De Dana Dan’.
Here the clutter and the clamour just make you feel the director needed to respect his own tone of sobriety in this longish, tickling treatise on malpractices in the middleclass. The plot is a bit of a tangle. Akshay Kumar’s family of discontented mal-paani-practitioners is a universe of brutish brothers and screechy sisters-in-law, and silently-suffering parents (played by those wonderful actors Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Aruna Irani).
It’s a family of corrupt road contractors, and initially, Akshay seems the most wickedly immoral of them all. But hang on! As the narrative – at time plodding – moves forward we begin to understand the wacked – out sinister yet satirical, chaotic yet orderly, corrupt yet weirdly – ethical world of Sachin Tichkule.
Here’s a character that seems to have been written only for Akshay Kumar. And he gets hold of the ‘muddle’ – class morality of Tichkule’s world with delightful earnestness. Frequently, Akshay is exasperating in his efforts to explain why the middle-class is in a state of self-destructive decline. But it isn’t the actor to blame. It is the nature of the material offered to the actor.
The domestic and professional world of Scahin Tichkule is not easy to penetrate. Akshay, demonstrating a primetime ripeness in his body language and repertoire of Chaplinesque expressions, enters this wacky wounded world of the exploited and the damned with extraordinary empathy.
Akshay’s is a performance that is far more accomplished than it may seem to the popcorn province. He’s exasperating in his directness. He’s partly a cartoon character, partly an emblem of our times, and wholly entertaining in his chaotic comprehension of the inadequacies of the world we’ve inherited from the freedom fighters and brutally disfigured.
Akshay’s character is much, much too wordy in his tongue type. The hallmark of Charlie Chaplin’s social comment was his silent expressions of protest. Akshay’s character and the film on the whole are much too verbose. The characters are constantly talking, as though not speaking would take away the audiences’ attention. A film making a social comment didn’t have to overstate its case so blatantly.
But the words do not cut into the narrative’s basic flow of tongue-in-cheek satire. Some sequences, such as the one involving the steamroller and the elephant, consume too much footage. The art of understatement eludes this political statement.
Khatta Meetha stands tall in its message of restoring a semblance of moral order in the middle class. The last half-hour after Sachin Tickule’s sister is murdered, is thoroughly gripping. And the fight between Akshay and the corrupt goons in the crowded lanes is chilling in its realism.
Realism is a remotely but decidedly obtainable component in this parodic parable on the rotten fruits of excessively materialistic aspirations in post-Independence India. Technically polished and many notches superior to Akshay Kumar’s other recent entertainers, “Khatta Meetha” conveys that sweet-sour taste of a universe that has rapidly degenerated into absolute self-gratification. See it for what the film leaves unsaid, though that’s hard to do when everyone is ceaselessly talking.
Trisha Krishnan in wearing chunky ear-rings makes an unusual debut. She is different from the short-skirted hotties. But whether that difference makes a difference in Hindi cinema, time will tell.
Priyadarshan remembers what a responsibility it was to be tasked with Southern star Trisha’s Hindi career. “Trisha was being launched in Bollywood with a lot more footage and hoopla than most heroines in my films. She played two characters in Khatta Meetha Meetha. I launched her in Tamil cinema in Leysa Leysa. I launched her in Hindi in Khatta Meetha, and that too with my sure bet, Akshay Kumar. It was a responsibility. Trisha portrayed two different avatars in the script. But it was not a double role. Trisha had to go into two different time zones. A pity Khatta didn’t do well. Audiences expected another comedy from Akshay and me.”
Trisha, in a throwback interview with this writer, conducted on the eve of her Hindi debut, commented, “The truth is I was a bit nervous about doing my own lines in Hindi. I’ve done so many Telugu films. But I don’t know the language at all. I know the grammar in Hindi, but I can barely manage to speak it. In Chennai, no one talks in Hindi. I was a little worried about my Hindi since my character in Khatta Meetha is from a fluent Hindi-speaking belt. So both Priyan and I decided I wouldn’t dub my own lines. But it was not a problem. I know I’ll soon master it. It’s simpler than the South Indian languages.”
Trisha had got Hindi film offers earlier but didn’t jump on to the Bollywood bandwagon until Priyadarshan’s offer came along. “I was so busy doing Tamil and Telugu films that I didn’t get time to consider Hindi films, although offers did come. Also, I wanted to do something that would give me a wide audience. I chose Priyadarshan and Akshay Kumar… Their combination always works.”
Trisha was candid enough to admit she didn’t have that much to do in Khatta Meetha. “It isn’t a heroine-centric role. But I felt it would give me visibility. Look, I may be known in the South. But in Bollywood, no one knows me… not yet. When I started in the south, I did smaller parts with big heroes. That always worked for me. One needs to be a part of hit films specially at the start. He launched me in the South seven years prior to Khatta Meetha. He had promised he’d launch me in the right vehicle. In five minutes, I knew I wanted to do Khatta Meetha. I want to first make sure I establish myself in Hindi before I do more experimental roles. This is the trend I followed in the South as well.”
On working with Akshay, she said: “In the Khatta Meetha unit, Akshay was the only person I didn’t know. And he wasn’t just my co-star, he was also my producer. He was really sweet. Priyan and Akshay are by now like family to one another. They made sure I was comfortable. This was one of the most professional units I’ve worked with.”
At that point in time, Trisha was open to shifting base to Mumbai. “It would depend on the offers. I’ve always had relatives in Mumbai. I’ve also done a lot of ads in Mumbai.”
