Do you know how many times does the word ‘Aayega’ come in the iconic Lata Mangeshkar song 'Aayega Aanewala?'
Perhaps you do not. But most importantly, you do not care. How is that even important and ever useful, you would dismissively tell anyone who counter-argues.
Bharat Bhushan, the protagonist of Bheja Fry, would sincerely disagree though. And as the iconic comedy completes 15 years today on 13 April, one realises Bharat Bhushan (essayed by Vinay Pathak in a career-best performance), remains one of the few proud, albeit mocked, geek characters of Hindi Cinema.
Heavily inspired by a 1998 French film titled Le Diner De Cons, Bheja Fry tells the story of Ranjit Thadani (Rajat Kapoor), a rich and arrogant music baron who loves to partake in dinner parties where they hire diligent artists and performers for ridicule, and how the tables turn on him when his paths cross with his latest hire Bharat Bhushan.
Ranjit, despite being a rich and affluent person, is clearly an unredeemable addict of his own kind. The only difference between his choice of substance is not hallucinatory drugs, but weekly dinner parties where performers become pawns, and he gets his little power trips. He justifies them as being harmless, claiming that the people ridiculed are not aware of it. However, when his wife Sheetal (Sarika) confronts him saying, “But you know it’s mockery," Ranjit has no answer.
Bheja Fry, directed by Sagar Ballary, was the closest we got to having our own Revenge of the Nerds, except that the nerd did not intend to avenge at first place. Bharat’s mere god-fearing, values-upholding existence in the same realm as Ranjit without any powerplay is a threat to Ranjit's existence. Bharat is the kind of man who would not think twice before singing a lullaby to a grown-up man. Others might laugh at his laughably upright values and his bumpkin-like social ineptness, but Bharat remains proud of his neatly-stacked scrapbook and his geeky passion for Hindi film music. And yet we feel sad for a turd like Ranjit for being stuck with him. Bheja Fry works because of its classic table-turn situation with a nightmarish evening gone out of control merely because of your inability of getting rid of one particularly unwelcome presence.
Bheja Fry can also be accessed as a companion piece to Dibakar Banarjee’s Khosla Ka Ghosla, another sleeper hit of those times that too was as much about the fall of the exploitative might as it was about the underdog triumph. We liked the idea of Cherry (Parvin Dabbas) fighting for his father’s property, but we relished the sight of a shrewd man like Khurana (Boman Irani) being tricked and delivered just desserts even more. Here, we chuckle at Bharat’s sheer inability to read the room, but we are equally laughing at how Ranjit probably invited this trouble for himself. He deserves it, and we continue to laugh.
With razor-sharp dialogues (by Sharat Kataria, who made films like Dum Laga Ke Haisha and Sui Dhaaga: Made in India) and a runtime of 94 minutes, Bheja Fry operates at a breakneck speed and delivers relentless laughs. Ballary does not show particular sympathy to any character, and each of their tragic plight is amped up for laughs, leaving very little sacrosanct. There is a brilliantly built-up joke about the meaning of nymphomaniac that explodes hilariously in the latter second half. Though the climax does get a little mawkish, that is one minor bone of contention in a narrative that is otherwise consistently rewarding. Just when we feel that the film will end on a sentimental note, Bheja Fry again pulls the rug under us, and we realise that these two people, these two classes shall probably never reach a point of conciliation.
The irony is that a film about power dynamics and the exploitative rich who love to disrespect artists and manipulate their passion for art came from a bunch of filmmakers who barely had enough money to shoot a film, let alone promote and release it.
Though budgets were getting smaller, they still ranged in crores. So Bheja Fry naturally earned the reputation of being that rare Rs 60 lakh film that delivered big at the box office.
It would be surprising to learn now, but Bheja Fry had opened to a very lukewarm response from the critics. The contributions of Bheja Fry to mainstream cinema, however, far outweigh its creative merits or ethically dubious choices (The film does not give due credit to the French original).
2007 was the year of great disappointments and startling successes. It was the year when a mammoth like Yash Raj Films delivered massive underperformers all through the year, despite some formulaic and presumably safe bets. Jhoom Barabar Jhoom and Laaga Chunari Mein Daag tanked altogether, while Ta Ra Rum Pum did not live up to expectations. The biggies were not so sure about what worked with the audience anymore. The success of Bheja Fry only further cemented the notion. It was also a year when films like Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd, Life in a Metro, Cheeni Kum, and Taare Zameen Par won the audience’s hearts against all odds, and waved the flag of ‘good content’ films that year.
With over 90 percent of the film set inside one single house, Bheja Fry broke one of the many myths about box-office domains of Hindi cinema, mystifying an industry that never hid its obsession with picturesque locales and extravagant production values as a must for big returns. Add to that the fact that film had no musical interruptions and boasted of no big face in the cast, and that makes the success of Bheja Fry a thing of greater wonder.
There are barely seven speaking parts in the film, which makes Bheja Fry extremely reliant on its cast members, all of who deliver the goods. While Rajat Kapoor is great at bringing out the shrewdness of Ranjit, making it easier for us to enjoy his misery, Milind Soman is surprisingly efficient at reacting to the mayhem around. Ranvir Shorey owns the last segment of the film with his caricaturish portrayal of Asif Merchant, an uppity, no-nonsense income tax officer, who might know everything about a person he is meeting for the first time but does not know the whereabouts of his own wife.
But needless to say, Bheja Fry is an out-and-out Vinay Pathak showreel. He owns the film, often salvaging moments that would have felt dry on paper but come shining out owing to him. Be it the way he holds the string in his mouth every time while he unwraps his scrapbook, the excitement with which he declares “it’s ringing” every time he makes a call, or the way he chuckles in this forced baritone at his own practical jokes, Pathak really elevates above the script here, and sculpts a character that remains memorable.
The best parts of the film are undoubtedly in the final act where Pathak and Shorey riff off each other as Merchant arrives at Bharat’s behest at Ranjit’s house to help him out. As they bicker about the India-Pakistan cricket match, and mutually appreciate the omelet made by a hapless Ranjit, it becomes crystal clear why these two actors came together in film after film back then.
Bheja Fry was the biggest success of the mini-wave brought in by the likes of Rajat Kapoor and Shashant Shah among others, with films like Bheja Fry, Khosla Ka Ghosla, Ek Chalis ki Last Local, Mithya, Mixed Doubles, Dasvidaniya, Fatso, Manorama Six Feet Under, and Chalo Dilli, that often featured Shorey or Pathak, or both of them. The Pathak-Shorey team, for a brief period there, looked as permeable and potent as the Naseeruddin Shah-Om Puri team in the '80s; their presence assured of quality.
Long before their collaborations in films, we first noticed the collective charm of Pathak and Shorey in The Great Indian Comedy Show, a little part of Star TV Network’s big attempt to revolutionise TV comedy, where these two actors, amongst many other comic greats, performed outrageous spoofs and skits, pushing the boundaries of the comic possibilities on the small screen.
That period was possibly the most underrated, golden period for comedy in India, and the right time for a new kind of urban cinema. Anything seemed possible. Maybe it still is – all it will take is a film like Bheja Fry to redefine the paradigms all over again.
BH Harsh is a film critic who spends most of his time watching movies and making notes, hoping to create, as Peggy Olsen put it, something of lasting value.
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