Rabba Rabba

The missus and her accomplices are planning to watch a movie "Rab ne bana di jodi" which I'm trying to weasel out of. There are several reasons.

First, the Gold Medal Winner of the World Histrionic Championship (Men), Shahrukh Khan will be on screen, laying it on as thickly as he can. Luckily, the Gold Medal Winner of the World Histrionic Championship (Women), namely Kajol, won't be there in the movie but I'm sure Shahrukh will more than make up for it.

Second, it's one of those Rab or Rabba movies which means it has dangerously high doses of Punjabi. This is standard for Yash Chopra's Yash Raj Films which have, as part of the standard package, Punjab ke khet, Karva Chauth and several tonnes of Rabba, spread more or less evenly through the 3.2 hours excluding songs. I personally don't have anything against Punjabi, a language like any other, but Yash Raj Films lays it on too thick for me. Indeed, it wouldn't be going too far to call it the Yashraj Rabba Factory (YRF), which has enough Rabba to be a world supplier of automobile tyres.

And finally, after watching a few non rabba films back to back over the last week or two, I've become a wimp. No stomach for the serious rabba stuff now, especially the chorus numbers where thirty people dance in a line while the hero and the heroine profess their
1. Love for each other
2. Hatred for each other
3. Sympathy for each other
4. Devotion to God
5. Solidarity with the oppressed proletariat.
6. Support for Barack Obama

Really. A big chorus and a 9x9 matrix of dancers in a field of "Sarson" is, to YashRaj's mind, not the best way of expressing any of the above, it is the ONLY way.

Of course, this is an incoherent rant. The disgruntled murmurs of one who has been robbed of a leisurely Sunday lunch with the customary beer ("because the show is at 1.00, you silly, we don't have time. Why don't you have yesterday's rice and Amul Dahi")

I asked her if "Rabba Rabba Rabba" could be pluralized as "Rabbi" (for instance, 'fungus fungus fungus' is 'fungi'). This potentially major contribution to linguistics got a big cold stare.

I ask you!

Update! In the end, I did not go. A concatenation of several circumstances, including the need to babysit an infant, offered me an escape route which I seized with an agility surprising in someone my age. Well, missus LOVED it! And she told me the plot, which was a bit hazy because of her laughing at all the FUN Shahrukh acting as she recounted it, but the summary is as follows.

Sharukh acts like Mr. Bean
He gets married to the heroine out of a sense of duty because her entire baraat died in an accident and her father was Sharukh's masterji. The fact that the heroine has great chest measurements might have entered into the equation, apart from chivalry of course, because somehow this stuff never seems to happen if the woman in question should look like Jabba the Hut.

The keystone of the plot is the ability of the heroine to completely fail to recognize her husband by the deletion of a mustache. I am not joking. This is the carefully crafted storyline of an entire corporation full of masterly film makers. I would have wept but I'm saving my tears for the day after tomorrow, because the missus has firmly decided that I HAVE to see it, along with her. Just the two of us. No ear plugs. And definitely no blindfold.