The Misspelling of Toxic by Priyanka Chopra

It only takes paying a little attention to notice that Farhan Akhtar does not believe in competing with industry moguls like the Khans to march forward in his Bollywood career. With his little experience in acting and a well chiseled body, he secretly managed to lay his hands on Priyanka Chopra’s success plan and there has been no looking back. Growing his hair luxuriously long was one step, but then no one seemed to notice how while the lady was still in talks with international music producers and the makers of Mary Kom’s biopic, Junior Akhtar had already begun to woo the audience with his singing, and played an Indian athlete on the big screen even before PC could finish saying “Oh, Shahrukh”. As we see the Ms. World churning out exotic singles and milkshakes, Farhan sits cozy, enjoying the first mover advantage while continuously streaming the video of Exotic for the lulz.

For a nation which has now liberalized its foreign policy and allowed Foreign Dhamaal Items (FDI) like Sunny Leone into the country, a little bit of teasing with shots of a lady wearing a nude colored swimsuit and constantly trying to remove the kachra from her hair on Juhu Beach does not work. I agree that the video has been made for international audiences, but dressing the singer up as a pokemon with snazzy glares and two neon colored pokemon balls for a bikini top does not really please the Ash Ketcham generation of the country which is now in its twenties. Also, you can do all in the name of fashion, but who walks into a swimming pool wearing a pair of pink heels!

The most profound lines of the song are “pardesi babu ne iss desi dil ko maan liya hai”, which qualify the track to be put on the cover of a Baby Doll Volume VI along with other songs that define originality like “mera babu chhail chhabeela main toh naachungi” and “ik pardesi mera dil le gaya”, thus equating Pitbull with Harry Anand and DJ Suketu. The video is honestly no different, with not just all the rickshaw-walas finally getting something to move on to after the album Aap Ka Suroor, but also shows how the creative team behind the project is competent enough to look at a picture of Professor Snape and comment, “Iske baal toh Tere Naam wale Salman Khan jaise hain”, and then laugh for an hour, trying to picture him shake his head vigorously to the tune of Lagan Lagan Lag Gayi Hai in front of the Pragati Maidan building.

Ms. Chopra did try to capitalize on the latest news around her song and applied to Guinness for being acknowledged with a world record for the video watched most number of times on mute on YouTube, but they bargained and settled for giving her the chance to perform the song at the Guinness International Champions Cup. The muted-video record had to undoubtedly go to the Indian Prime Minister’s speech addressing the Indian masses, which are now just as over-used and abused as the Manmohan Singh joke. Also, it makes sense to choose a Pitbull song for the tournament since he signifies nothing more than a bouncing football in the video. Win-win!

The banality of the above description can be either credited to the insignificant presence of the song which does not offer much to even make fun of, or it just points to how there are miles to go before I can begin to term any of my writing as an outcome of creative prowess. I will be humble and accept the latter, while you can cut me some slack for this uninteresting review on grounds of sympathy as I had to undergo the ordeal of watching the video five times to come up with anything around five hundred words to write about it. As a side-effect, "la-love me all the way to Rio" refuses to get out of my head now. But I’m happy to believe that somewhere, someone must have really enjoyed the video, jerked off to it and given birth to a surrogate baby. Congratulations on the little boy at the age of forty-seven.

Image Source: walltrue.com

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To cheer yourself up, you can read Gursimran Khamba's article: The musical journey of the exotic Priyanka Chopra.