Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola-Vishal Tussi Gr8 Ho!

Vishal Bharadwaj is an acknowledged ‘Master of Adaptations’ - ‘Omkara ‘from ‘Othello’, ‘Maqbool’ from ‘Macbeth’ … brilliantly customized to India!

‘Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola’ (took me while to get that title right!), owes its inspiration, not to our favorite bard, Shakespeare, but the dark & murky story of ‘Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde’! But then, it also has to be the most whacky, but crazily creative interpretation of RL Stevenson’s masterpiece!

Meet Mandola, the cold, cruel, tyrant, who is head of a village named after him (so we get the ‘Mandola’ part of the title!) – he rules the villagers with an iron hand, exploits the villagers & tries to get them to write their only means of livelihood, their land, to the Government, for peanuts, to fulfill Mandola’s cocky dreams of replacing the fields with machinery, factories & malls! This is Mean Mandola by day!

By night, with a few or more drinks inside him, he becomes benign, friendly & Robin Hood style,gate-crashes the panchayat meeting, which is held to discuss how to handle his tyranny & encourages the bewildered villagers to protest against himself!
Pankaj Kapur once again proves that he is one of the finest actors on the Indian horizon, with his masterful portrayal of Mandola & Mandola!

Enter Matru, Mandola’s Man Friday, again a split personality – He is his master’s drinking partner by night & the mysterious savior of the farmers, who calls himself ‘Mao’ & tries to protect their interests! Valiantly & sincerely played by city-bred lover boy, Imran Khan, who almost, just almost, gets it right!

Ah yes, the final piece of the puzzle of the title – Bijlee, played spunkily, by Anushka Sharma, as Mandola’s daughter, who tries to come to terms with her upcoming marriage to a corrupt politician’s (Shabana Azmi) son (the absurdly goofy Arya Babbar!) because of his riches, but actually loves Matru!
Shabana Azmi is delightfully good at playing bad – I guess there are plenty of corrupt women politicians in India, who could have been her role models!

Whew, kya cast hai & what a tangled web of a plot, which the Master of Ceremonies, the very talented Vishal Bharadwaj, skillfully turns into a brilliant entertainer!
A first for Vishal, are the messages of social relevance, which he weaves into the movie with such finesse. MKBKM is a commentary on the sad plight of the farmers, who are exploited by greedy middlemen & the ambitions of a corrupt political system.

The same politicians, who hold yagnas to pray that it won’t rain, so that the lands will remain barren & the fields can be turned into malls, rejoice, when it finally rains, so that the harvested crops gets destroyed – they celebrate, while a village goes into mourning! Gut wrenching, but this is what happens in Mera Bharath Mahaan! Those farmers don’t commit suicides without reason!

The relationship between the wily politician & her moronic son, played with such comic exaggeration by Arya Babbar, you wonder if it is a reference to the our famous, “Mummy-ji & Rahul Baba Jodi”?!

Vishal Bharadwaj manages the almost impossible: creating an enjoyable, sometimes absurd, but mainly comical entertainer, which at the same time, delivers punches, which reveal a social conscience – way to go, Mr. Bharadwaj!

Another first: The ‘item’ of MKBKM – a big, bright pink buffalo called Gulaabbo! Vishal, Tussi Great Ho!!!