Gaand mein Ghusedh doonga

As I stare at Amazon Prime and Netflix and various other sites like Viu, Voot, Zoot, Loot…etc…I make some calculations, and take my bet for the night. My fingers randomly click on yet another new series. I patiently and nervously wait for it to buffer, till it goes ‘oops something went wrong’.

I ignore the warning and go for it bravely again.

12 minutes after the titles fade, I am taken into the same world, in the same grade, in the same dimly lit gullies of Haryana, UP, Bihar or somewhere in that belt, where someone is belting someone, and belting out a dialogue like ‘Gaand mein Ghusedh doonga’. He has the customary ‘Ghoda’ tucked away close to his crotch. I know he’s going to pull it out right now, and ‘ah so nonchalantly pull off the trigger, like so unexpectedly…without batting an eyelid…so that I can go…’oh fucking shit! What the fuck happened types!!!!’ and jump on to the edge of my seat with 4 exclamation marks, spilling my popcorn.

Like I didn’t see it coming.

I wish I reacted like that. I want to continue to have the ability to react like that. But fucking crap, all I did was I got up and went to pee. I didn’t even pause it.

Not because I was shit scared…I just wanted to pee.

I had become numb.

As I was peeing, I kept hearing the dialogues of some pent up writer going ballistic…venting out every single gaali he had carefully nurtured and crafted over the years, thrilled that his time has come, where he can now shit out dialogues from his pichwada, proving that he’s the true ‘mai ka laal‘, from a hinterland that’s yet to be featured on the Indian map.

Now I start to get scared. Shit scared. Because I knew that if I continued watching this shit, I knew I have to set aside a huge portion of my brain. to accommodate close to 1027 characters who are going to be launched in the next 8 episodes, each with their own strange quirks and nanosecond backstories.

This is over and above the 1732 characters I am dealing with in real life.

I went back and pressed pause as the protagonist was removing his Ghoda or Tamancha or Katta or whatever else the fuck you call it in those belts.

It was decision making time. I already have too many things in my head that can send me to dizzying spaces.

Is this one more thing that I need?

Because I knew pressing the un-pause button means a hell lot..I will now have to follow some random guy who is pretty incoherent and random in most things he does. He’ll not emote regularly (like most of us). Like I know he won’t cry when something bad happens and certainly won’t laugh when something happy happens. He’ll mostly walk around emoting strange emotions which takes an effort to understand because, remember, he has a nanosecond backstory.

Also yes he is going to speak modern day muhawaras in strange dialects with peculiar metaphors, in poorly lit gullies.

And from the shadows of these sunsaan gullies and flickering bulbs, characters will emerge one by one, carrying Ghodas. And at any point in time they could fire. Drug peddlars, cops in mufti, prostitutes, transvestites, politicians, goons and a million other mind-fucks who are both good and bad, supported by author-backed roles and method acting, all set to inhabit your densely populated brain. So I have to watch out carefully who fired whom, and for what?..or else, I will lose the plot. So I know I’ll have to pay close attention. Because the gun is going to fire for sure, with no rhyme or reason. Or more accurately, the rhyme is going to be in episode 2 and the reason will be revealed in the sequel.

I’m scared.

Do I have the space in my head for this?

That’s the only shit I’m thinking, as a rerun of my favourite movie is freely hanging around on Youtube, with no takers, feeling so outdated. With 4-5 basic characters in a regular ‘run-of-the-mill’ plot. But yes, it seems so tempting because I know my brain only has space for these cliches. Giving me all the liberty to doze off/ tune out/ blur away/ watch with one eye…do whatever I feel like..but I know I’ll still make it to the end.

Should I do that

OR

Should I go for this Mensa challenging mega-series?

A chilling algebra algorithm. Where every 13 minutes a new character is introduced. Where every action and line of ‘his’ or ‘her’ or ‘it’ can connect 16 dots in the plot that’s in progress. Where even the background action is important because a random character lighting up a beedi in the background will soon be in the centre of things adding a unique twist to the tale. Fuck that..even the beedi’s ash is going to play a role sooner or later…demanding complete ‘front bench attention’.

My brain warns me giving me an actual picture of how under-equipped it is to handle all this madness. As it is, all these characters right from Satya to Sacred Games have now merged and become one big gang residing in one giant locality in my head. They are now walking in the same gullies, spitting the same Vimal pan masala and spewing the same garbage, and now this locality has spread and extends all the way from Mirzapur to Mexico. Except that, the chap in Mexico spits the end he’s bitten off a Cigar…and here locally, the guy thookhofies some Gutka wrapper.

With these minor nuances, I am supposed to give them unique distinction in my brain.

My brain is crying, saying…..

“dude..don’t ask me to remember who is from where and saying what, specially when you are in those drunken conversations. I don’t know what I am processing anymore…so I’ll just pull out anyone from anywhere. And at that point, because they are all right now criss-crossing freely in here, it could be Bhiku Matre in Badlapur or Gaitonde in Ghana. Don’t blame me..because it’s a mess out here…there are now close to 9438 people walking around doing the same things. Walking, shooting people and speaking cool cool lines after that…ya…all so nonchalantly. So anyone could be with anyone, anywhere, at any point in time. Just warning you. So if you’re going to binge watch this shit…be prepared. Because when you sleep, I’m going to take all these characters who are till now separated in shades of grey and merge them into tones of sepia.”

I ponder for a moment. And then open youtube, and watch Aamir selling black tickets in Rangeela. One guy asks him ‘corner ka hai na?’ and he replies ‘ekdum corner ka..ek yeh corner ka..ek woh corner ka’.

I laugh out loud. Like I didn’t see it coming.

PS: This crap above doesn’t deserve a copy check. Fuck that..it doesn’t even deserve a read.

 

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