A Man and His Ghaghra - MSG 2 Review (Guest Post)

Let's begin this movie review by the climax, and breaking the unbreakable rule of telling you what happens in a movie, I will. 

MSG 2's villain, a (what else!) corrupt politician approaches the hero (Pitaji) flanked by an army (a real army) battalion, a clutch of SUVs, and a phalanx of REAL ARMY TANKS. At this time, it seems sure that he will kill the man, once and for all. He also has an 'international drug mafia' man with him. 

This is what he proceeds to do- he has a mega phone in his hand, with which he literally speaks out everything that's happened in the past two hours, plus a couple of other things that happened in a parallel universe, where Pitaji managed to break his 'sex racket', his 'drug racket' and a few other things. Nice recap you'd think, because you went numb after the first 20 minutes. But no. He then proceeds to attack with the army, and the entire batallion is decimated, and basically disappears from the scene. Then he asks the tanks to nestonabood Ram Rahim Singh Insaan. On hearing his name, all the soldiers driving the tanks (are they called tank drivers in the army?) come out of their shells tortoise like. 

Soldier 1: I can't kill Ram Rahim Singh Insaan, meri thalassemia peedit maan ko inki wajah se khoon mila.

Soldier 2: I can't kill Ram Rahim Singh Insaan, meri pita ko inki wajah se aankhen mili.

​Soldier 3: I can't kill Ram Rahim Singh Insaan, mujhe border par injury ke time khoon mila.

​Soldier 3: I can't kill Ram Rahim Singh Insaan, Inhone meri behen ki shaadi karayi.

Soldier 4: I can't kill Ram Rahim Singh Insaan, inhone Saturn ko moon ke saamne lakar meri dasha theek ki. 

Okay, the last one was made up, but you get the gist now, don't you. 

If you've read part 1's review, you know MSG is a special kind of film franchise. The Hero, Director, Singer, Writer and many other things is Baba Ram Rahim Singh ji Insaan, the hairiest baby on the planet. And as with most sequels, this one takes it up a notch. 

The main trouble is with some adivasis, who are jaanwars, rendered through black body paint, shell jewellery (for a tribe in landlocked north India, how this happened is very interesting to me from an anthropology pov) and speaking random accents of Hindi, need to be reformed. Our baba is up to the mark. He does it through various shenanigans which make sense only if you have ingested crystal meth through shooting it up your arse. That much must already be pretty clear to you. 

Here's random snippets which should excite you:

- An adivasi man and woman fall in lust. To 'select' him, she says, 'Ho Jaye'?, to which he replies, 'Kya ho jaye?', to which she says 'Daaru peene ka mukabla'. Both of them get drunk on toddy, and then of course there is a love song, where they transform themselves into city bred folk in their fantasy, and sing this song.

This is perfect, because it shows all adivasis hold a secret wish to transform themselves into city folk, and because it is the best use of Green screens since Godzilla (the original version released in 1931).

- The man himself has a final showdown with Ajgar, the bete noire, which he attends in a pink ghagra, while Ajgar keeps imagining him in a golden bra and keeps calling him Maharana Pratap. By the end of the fight, you don't know who's won, who's lost and who's fighting. You don't care.

-In one absolutely inconsequential scene, Pitaji is walking around, talking to random government servant. The scene must have called for showing some of his lackeys cleaning and taking care of the place (A govt. district headquarters) they're all staying in. So they called in a few of them in their Babaji ki army dress to clean. And then some more, and then a few more. As a result, a frame which shows about a 100 sq.yards of space behind Babaji has three hundred people cleaning earnestly, mostly turning left and right around their feet, earnestly. 

Seriously, Kanan and Biswa have the title ready for this one- most extras ever.

I realise this review is more of a show and tell, and I haven't been able to put down on paper my exact feelings as I went through this. There's a reason for that- MSG is now getting to the place where it is exercising the very options it was to be banned for the first part- Ram Rahim is getting comfortable playing a god figure, doing miracles to make 13-year old girls give birth to babies, getting adivasis to become human beings, and mixing it up with the usual Bollywood buffoonery to show he's one harmless man. By extension, he calls himself Adiguru, Maharana Pratap, mixes his idioms with Muhammad, Isa Masih and all other prophets to show himself as one. As megaphone wielding villains, cowering tank drivers spell out his message to the illiterate man on the street, I can just shudder to think of the money, time and energy he will draw out of these crowds in the real world. And that there are many more like him, out and about. 

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That said, MSG 3, in Baahubali style, has been announced within MSG2. So I'll see you soon. Tab tak Babaji ka Aashirwaad.

- Karan Rajpal

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