On 'Atithi, Tum kab jaoge?'

Atithi, Tum Kab Jaoge is nice to watch movie and takes you to that genre of Hrishikesh Mukherjee when movies were made around the common man. There were no can-do-it-all heroes and no can-bare-it-all heroines. Movies were based on simple things happening in day to day life and a story was woven around them. Golmaal (1979) is the first movie that comes to my memory and Amol Palekar is the first face that comes to mind although Chupke Chupke (1975), Chhoti Si Baat (1975) belong to same category.

Well, 'Atithi, ...' is a satire on 'Atithi', a hindi word meaning 'guest'. In India guests are (meant to be) considered God - the roots are mythological but it has become part of culture. I have been brought up in a middle class family in a small city where life is considerably slow when you compare it with life in metros. In such environment it is highly likely to observe such demeanour for guests. It was possible then. It is not possible much now. The reason is there is quite a shift in living. While earlier there were joint families so 'Atithi' who can arrive any time (Atithi breaks into 'A' + 'Tithi' that means 'No Date') were able to get someone to take care of them. How is that possible in a nuclear setup where both husband and wife are working and come back only at eight in the evening? Tough!

Movie is a good laugh with wonderful performance as "Chacha ji" by Paresh Rawal (Love him for most of his performances!) and Konkana Sen (very natural as a housewife). Ajay Devgan did well but overplays the character towards the end.

Positive about 'Atithi, ...': Towards the end of the movie it starts showing , in a subtle manner, the problems which have grown only because of the cultural shift taking place. As a friend of mine commented on a social networking site: "You can make contacts on a social networking site, not relations.". In the race towards 'self centered life' we have stopped saying 'hello' to our neighbours, sometimes we know people in our societies by their flat numbers (a funny incident happened at my reception when I guy in my apartments introduced himself and his wife as 'we are from 8C'.. hmm), we hardly know the bank officer of any of our banks since we don't think we need to (this is a scene in the movie itself).. ! I strongly believe that we do need to know. Fact of the life that cannot be changed is that humans are social animals. I have observed that people are happier if they have a relationship with colleagues beyond office. Apart from all the gyan, movie is a fun watch and gyan too is subtle so if you want to ignore you will not even be able to catch it.

Music is nice. I loved the famouse "Suhani Raat..." and its videography. Amazing. I loved "Dohe by Kabir" too and the score "Deva kab aaoge..".

I give it three stars (out of five)!