Who the hell is Dinesh Pandit?

A still from Phir Aayi Haseen Dilruba

Is there a favourite, cheesy Bollywood joke that you've heard? Okay, lemme go first.

‘Question: How was Nisaar born?'
‘Ans: Jawaani jaaneman. Haseen dilruba. Milein do dil jawaan. Nisaar ho gaya… (Hot, young couple meet; Nisaar gets delivered)!'

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Of course, I'm referring to Anjaan's lyric, from Namak Halaal's Bappi Da number, from 1982. The first four words of which are already titles of two films.

The latter being Haseen Dillruba (HD, 2021). You can watch that film's plot play out in its sequel, Phir Aayi Haseen Dillruba (PAHD, 2024) - as a full flashback, montage sequence, over the other classic track, Ek hasina thi, from Subhash Ghai's Karz (1980).

That's a pretty peppy, clever device to get audiences up to speed with the original story. The only thing vaguely disappointing about it is to learn from YouTube that the Laxmikant-Pyarelal ditty, Ek hasina thi, loved by so many Indians (like me), over decades, is actually a straight-off copy of George Benson's 1978 number, We as love.

Both HD and PAHD, on Netflix, starring Taapsee Pannu, Vikrant Massey, is by all accounts, an original screenplay, written by Kanika Dhillon (Manmarziyaan, Judgementall Hai Kya).

Writer Kanika Dhillon. Pic/Instagram

An imaginary tribute that appears throughout the two films, instead, is to AH Wheeler/railway-station pulp-fiction, namely a crime writer, Dinesh Pandit. As per the film, Dinesh Pandit probably died years ago, though he continues to get published. Who the hell is Dinesh Pandit? I just had to text Kanika, and ask.

She says, "It's a hat-tip to legendary Hindi pulp authors - Surendra Mohan Pathak ji, Ved Prakash ji, to name a few. [Moreover] as a screenwriter, he is the alter-ego inside me - heady, wild, juicy, wicked, yin; to my controlled, structured, manicured, subtle, logical, yang!"

Surely, logic alone isn't what drives the two Haseena pix - about supposedly copycat crimes, inspired from fictional Dinesh Pandit's novels, titled Kasauli Ka Keher, Cobra Ka Inteqaam, Magarmachh Ka Shikanja, and the like.

The magarmachh (crocodile) is presumably homage to Rakesh Roshan's Khoon Bhari Maang (1988), similarly about love, sex and dhokha - itself an uncredited adaptation of the Australian TV series, Return to Eden (1983).

If you sit around simply to dissect, you can find enough craters the size of Bombay's potholes in the PAHD plot. But that's not the point. The overall ambience/tone/feel is; especially with some of the new characters/actors introduced.

Such as Jimmy Shergill, in the sequel, with persistent policing powers of a kathphodwa (woodpecker), who's sure his nephew (Harshvardhan Rane) did actually get murdered by the lead couple in the film's first part. That the presumably dead hero (Vikrant) is, indeed, alive. How's he certain? We don't know!

Or, for that matter, the fresh love-struck Romeo, Abhimanyu, in PAHD. We find him catching the Ayushmann Khurrana-starrer An Action Hero (2022) in a single-screen cinema.

In that second, I confused the actor with Ayushmann's brother Aparshakti, assuming a nod of sorts. He is, of course, the supremely sorted, subtle Sunny, brother of Vicky Kaushal, instead. My bad. Just the curse of the younger sibling in the same profession!

At the centre of this drama is obviously the queen, Haseena, or Taapsee as Rani, sworn to a murderously mad idea of love. She says, "Jo paagalpan ki hadh se na guzre woh pyar hi kya? Hosh mein toh rishte nibhaye jaate hain! (What good is love, if it doesn't surpass bounds of sanity. Reality-checks are for relationships)."

To be honest (and what else to be, but honest), Taapsee is not the filmic figure I'd immediately associate with the femme fatale, given feminine wiles, and overt looks to kill. But then again, the gaze of the film is also decidedly female.

The same way I felt with the movie I did a double-bill with HD (in a theatre) - Justin Baldoni's It Ends with Us (2024); while directed by a man, written by women (screenwriter Christy Hall, novelist Colleen Hoover).

That gaze showed up suitably unsubtly, with the bodybuilder, arm-candy Harshvardhan's character and Rani in HD. It takes a more bizarre form with PAHD - in the sequences between the male lead (Vikrant), and his one-legged landlady, who pretty much molests him, with her frisky moves.

Same scenes would seem strikingly strident, if you simply switched the sexes. The town is Agra. This is where the married hero-heroine have momentarily escaped to, before they fly abroad, getting away with murder - from the fictional Jwalapur, in HD, that appeared more Rishikesh/Haridwar.

Only, the characters were drinking themselves silly in that Uttarakhand holy town. I suppose, some obscure attention-seeker or the other in the audience would've been religiously offended, if the place was strictly shown to be Rishikesh/Haridwar.

HD itself wasn't so much Gone Girl (2014), or even There's Something About Mary (1998), being the two opposite ends. More a mash-up of genres, starting with pure romance (or lack thereof), slipping into a thriller. PAHD is proper thriller/caper.

I didn't click on it for days after it dropped - who would, for Part II, when Part I itself hasn't worked for you?

As with people and pictures, though, the beauty of keeping low expectations is the rewards are surprisingly higher - under-promised, over-delivered; best.

Jayprad Desai's PAHD > Vinil Mathew's HD. Wow, I don't recall thinking, let alone writing so, for a sequel.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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