This Column Has Been Sent For Extensive Testing

(Note: This is my HT column dated 7th May 2015.)

Here’s a newsflash: it turns out that everything you like is bad for you. From your favourite cigarette to your favourite heroin dealer, it turns out that everything and everyone is actively trying to kill you, while also charging you money for it.

Of course, we’ve known this fact all along, but it gets ignored harder than a PETA activist handing out flyers. It only really sunk in when it was learnt that several batches of Maggi tested positive for massive amounts of nostalgia, which makes you completely ignore the fact that those noodles may as well be branded ‘Maa Ke Haath Ki Lead Poisoning’.

So much has happened since the first set of allegations cropped up last week. Here are some of the highlights, in no particular order. I guarantee that you’ll be able to read through all of them in two minutes. And your time starts now:

1. In March 2014, thanks to the efforts of an official from the UP Food Safety and Drug Administration, a Feb 2014 batch of Maggi was tested and found to be pumped with enough lead to classify as an extra in a Michael Bay film. This came as a shock to everyone, especially the part where a U.P government official was found to be doing his job.

2. In July 2014, Nestle challenged the test results, presumably on the grounds of “Aye it doesn’t count – first ball is always trial ball.” The second test results came in April 2015, and basically said that yep, it was Maggi that drove the Romans insane.

3. So naturally, the next logical step was to file FIRs against Madhuri Dixit and Amitabh Bachchan for endorsing Maggi. Because everyone knows that brand ambassadors are in charge of manufacturing and quality testing. In fact, their contracts stipulated that Bachchan would stir a large vat of noodles while Madhuri Dixit personally ground up lead pipes and dropped them into the mix, along with the souls of little children.

4. Another devastating fallout of the testing was that Priety Zinta became relevant again, after she was also named in the FIR for having endorsed Maggi – wait for it – twelve years ago. If you’d forgotten about this, then it’s okay, it’s probably just the lead in your brain. Meanwhile, Madhuri Dixit was probably sitting there thinking, “See, this is why I left India.” This is reportedly the most ridiculous thing to happen to Madhuri’s career, and that’s saying a lot, given that she was once wingmanned by a sanskari pomeranian. Meanwhile, Amitabh Bachchan said that he’d cooperate with the authorities, because he’s too polite to say, “BRO ARE YOU F******* KIDDING ME?”

5. Then things got worse, with everyone scrambling to make terrible puns involving the word ‘lead’. This is obviously a symptom of lead poisoning so if you see your loved ones doing this, please call a doctor and have them put down.

6. Faced with a bunch of state bans, Nestle finally pulled Maggi from shelves across India. This is when everyone’s nostalgia kicked in, because Maggi is pretty much a part of our bloodstream, along with things like TB and corruption. Everyone has a favourite recipe for Maggi – even those who are otherwise capable of burning down the kitchen while boiling water. Some people like it soupy. Other people like it dry, and to those people I say, what the hell is wrong with you, you monsters?

It’s not just Maggi. If you told me that half the stuff I consumed as a kid was toxic, I would have no reason to doubt you. For example, there’s no way Goldspot could legally taste that good. But nobody cared because that orange Goldspot tongue was our version of the post-coital cigarette. Simply put, our lack of standards is a reminder of simpler times, before stoopid facts came in and ruined our toxic eating habits.

And with that, we come to the end of two minutes. If it took you longer to read it, then it’s probably all the lead slowing you down. Go take it up with Madhuri.

My Big Fat Indian Wedding Video

This week marks the 20^th anniversary of the release of Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, aka shaadi on steroids. It’s been twenty years since the film premiered at Mumbai’s Liberty cinema and for all I know, is still going on.

So much has changed since 1994: Madhuri Dixit skated off all the way to the States, Salman married a bottle of vodka, and Alok Nath turned into a meme and even made a Twitter account (after he figured out how to un-glue his hands from their permanent namaste position). But HAHK firmly occupies a place in our hearts, like cholesterol, so even now, it has the power to make us look back and wonder, “What the hell was everyone huffing back then?”

Sooraj Barjatya has gone on record to say that his goal with HAHK was to make the audience feel like they’d come to visit a large joint family that was preparing for a wedding. Of course, by ‘family’, he meant ‘people who act so sweet that they appear deranged’. Seriously, they were like the sanskari version of the Addams family. In keeping with the theme of annoyance, even the dog they got was a Pomeranian. That breed is like the KRK of the canine world. (Fun fact: They say that Tuffy was so soft and white that Bhai once tried to snort him.)

But jokes aside, I still watch a bit of the movie whenever it’s on TV. I especially like the song that goes ‘Yeh mausam ka jadoo hai mitwa’, because that’s the only time you’ll see people singing and dancing happily, not caring about the fact that Salman is driving a motor vehicle in their immediate vicinity. It’s so weird to watch the scene where he goes to pick up Madhuri in his Gypsy and says, “Aaj pehli baar ek ladki meri gaadi ki front seat pe baithi hai.” You can almost hear Madhuri thinking, “Take the hint, bro. Take the goddamn hint.”

Hum Aapke Hain Kaun is said to have revolutionised ‘90s Bollywood, mostly because it did not feature Shakti Kapoor drooling over things. This was a time when action films were the norm, so it was refreshing to see a film where the villain was a staircase. (The only other remotely negative character was played by Bindu, who you might remember as The Vamp That Is Not Aroona Irani.)

One of my favourite parts from the film is the bit where MF Husain watched it and became besotted with Madhuri Dixit. This was front page news back in the day, with the artist claiming that he’d watched the movie some 85 times, just for Madhuri. Or maybe that’s how many times you need to watch it for all the characters to register.

After this, he made Madhuri his muse and gifted her a bunch of her portraits, which just proves that it’s okay to be creepy as long as you’re a famous intellectual. It would never work otherwise. I mean I’d love to land up at Deepika Padukone’s door and go, “Hey, I’ve watched your film 384 times – here’s a stick figure drawing I made of you. Wanna frendz?” I’d get kicked out quicker than Sajid Khan at his next pitch meeting.

For all its legendary success, HAHK seems pretty irrelevant to today’s generation. Unlike Mohnish Behl and Renuka Shahane in the film, nobody just magically falls in love and agrees to marry someone their parents picked out like half an hour ago. Nope, not unless they’re lonely and past a certain age and all their friends have gotten married, so they convince themselves to settle because at least they’ll get a kickass FB album out of it.

But here’s the thing. If you’re in your late teens, HAHK is still relevant to you, because it apparently influenced the Indian wedding scene in a huge way. So it’s possible that you were created because the movie inspired your then single parents to hook up and do some dhiktana. It could’ve been worse. They could’ve named you Tuffy.

(Note: This is my HT column dated 10th Aug 2014.)