Kurbaan

THE-LENS

**Film: KURBAAN** **Director:** Rensil D'Silva **Producers:** Hiroo Johar, Karan Johar **Music composed by:** Salim Merchant, Sulaiman Merchant, Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy, Salim-Sulaiman **Release date:** 20 November 2009 (India) **Review by Dr Usman Latif Khawaja** This is an error-terror epic which starts with a Hindu girl, Avantika, falling for a Muslim boy, Ehsaan, who is cuddling and kissing her right in front of Jamia Masjid in Delhi, as we now live in a secular world. He then goes into the mosque, ties a kerchief on his oblique scalp as he cannot afford a cap, though he is wearing jeans worth 200 dollars, and after praying Asr or Qasr comes down to the kissing session, where a song starts playing to remind us this is a Muslim movie. The lyrics are “Alhamdulillah”, “Allah-Allah” and “Fi Sabilillah”, while Saif and Kareena cuddle and kiss all over Delhi. Next, we find Avantika is a Yankee and is going to Columbia University for some great educational nirvana, and Ehsaan charitably agrees to sacrifice his Indian job to keep her company in Manhattan, while the rich Hindu daddy, after a short sermon against interracial marriages, says yes to the union. Next, they are singing another song in Brooklyn and buying a mansion which happens to be in an Indo-Pak communal paradise in New York itself. The neighbours invite them for a dinner where they get introduced to some conservative Muslims, where all women behave like demented scarf-wearing luvvies and all the men wear salwar kameez. The family is headed by Bhaijaan, who is Om Puri, and Appa — Kiron Kher in her glorious Muslim cloak-and-dagger act. The three sons and daughters-in-law are all from Zombie Land, except one called Salma, who next day tells Avantika to ring another Muslim woman called some silly name, as she claims her life is in danger and that woman can save her. The woman is Dia Mirza, who is romancing another Muslim boy — Vivek Oberoi — who are all very patriotic Americans who think that only America can bring eternal peace to Iraq and is going on a peace mission to save Iraqis. Unfortunately for Iraq, Avantika gets adventurous and ventures into the cellar of her Muslim neighbours, where she finds the dead body of Salma lying with the door wide open, and she hears the family planning to blow up the plane carrying the peace maker, Dia Mirza. Now she is caught in the act, and the twist is turned inside out, where Ehsaan turns out to be the head of this terror cell. He is a Paki Pashtun who is the victim of drone attacks which killed his family, and Appa tells all this to Avantika in the typical Kiron Kher overacted, weepy, woebegone misery. As Avantika is pregnant, Ehsaan will not let them kill her, but Bhaijaan insists, while one of the sons blows up the plane carrying Dia Mirza, and the Iraq-American peace plan dies with the mission and Miss Mirza. Meanwhile, Avantika has a cell phone and she makes a call to warn Dia Mirza that her plane is going to be blown up, but she leaves it on her message box. It seems that there are no 911 calls on cell phones where you can ring the NYPD in the USA. Now, of course, Oberoi, the good Muslim American boy, finds the call message and, being a great journalist, decides to investigate it on his own. Ehsaan has by now been given a job as a Muslim professor at Columbia to teach Islam to the anti-Muslim Yankees, as Avantika knows the dean of the university and the jobs for Muslim studies are obviously going in abundance in a recession. So Oberoi rolls into the class and, once he gains the trust of Ehsaan by mouthing some really silly rhetoric, he becomes part of the vast terror plan to blow up half the New York subways by Appa and Bhaijaan. But by now the body of Salma is stinking in the cellar, and the husband insists on burying her. So instead of burying her in the cellar or the backyard of the huge mansion, they put it in an SUV to take it to Central Park and get stopped by cops, where the husband shoots the cop and Ehsaan gets shot in the chest while shooting four NYPD cops. But do not be alarmed, as Avantika is a surgeon too, and she takes the bullet out of his left lung, after which they make torrid love in the most explicit sex scene in a Bollywood movie, while Ehsaan must be on Viagra, and you can tell that there is a double in Kareena's place in the nude scenes. After this, the plan is accelerated as Salma's body is identified by the FBI, though it is burnt along with the SUV. So we have a Bhaijaan who tells them to blow up the whole of New York, and Appa is the ringleader of the women. Imagine a song at this stage where everyone from Hazrat Muhammad (SAW) and Hazrat Ali (RA) and Imam Hussain are involved, as these upper-middle-class Pakistanis start their pilgrimage on New York subways as if it is a Ziarat to Mecca or Medina. The rest is a mess where the FBI, NYPD and the Metro authorities make total fools of themselves by liaising with this terrible mess about terrorism. The days when *Maachis*, *Dil Se* and *Terrorist* were made as art and human strife for struggle are clearly gone, and this absurd and totally trashy tale is the rule, where there is a loophole in every scene which even a child can scan except the makers of this dull folly. I felt sorry for Saif-Kareena, as this is their third turd after *Tashan* and *Kurbaan*, and they are finished as a pair and couple, and do you know what? They deserve it right and proper. As for Kiron Kher, she is a caricature of a pious Muslim woman who talks like we are only killing a few white people so they know our pain, and these are educated, literate Muslims who have green cards and clearance to come to live in New York. Whatever happened to the Mexican border? As if Muslims really wanted to blow up the USA, half of the Muslim world would easily cross into the USA without any papers, with bombs and guns that even the FBI lacks. Is Bollywood in its senses, or has it lost all traits of any credibility, like Hollywood itself? God bless India and America, where a Paki has to be smuggled from Waziristan to Delhi and then gets a visa from the consul in India by marrying a Hindu girl to enter the USA, where one-tenth of the population is illegal immigrant labour from Latin America.