Bizarre things happen in Prakash Electronics —the first Hindi film release of 2017. A little boy gets robbed of his inheritance by his elder sister and brother in law with a bribe of two (precisely two, mind you) lollipops. These two lollipops keep getting mentioned throughout the film leaving not just the kid but also the audience scarred enough to never buy and savour the sweet again. The boy, Prakash, grows up to run a shop in Malad called what else but Prakash Electronics whose motto is “aadhi raat ko sewa mein haazir” (ready to help at midnight) and this any time assistance usually is all about removing some porn DVDs stuck in a player lest a neighbourhood husband gets thrashed by his satsang-loving wife for such grave trespasses.
Things get even more surreal. There is one elderly neighbour/patron who seems to sport a couple of new wives each time Prakash goes to run errands at his place. Polygamy could not have been more easily normalised. But wait poor Prakash himself is unmarried at 35 which the film calls “borderline marriage age”. On the one hand the 35-year-old has the hots for the glamorous new neighbour Barkha but, like a kid with lollipop, that he once was, he dreams of being superhero Krrish, complete with black boots, trench coat and mask. Clearly irredeemable! You feel like telling him: be a man, dream bigger and better.
The film is peopled with TV actors right from the lead Hemant Pandey. Then there are other lords of small films—Om Puri doing the voiceover, Rajpal Yadav in a walk-on role and Sanjay Mishra in yet another part which does nothing for his incredible talent. Manoj Pahwa, Himani Shivpuri and Vrajesh Hirjee bring up the rear with their over the top characters and Hrishitaa Bhatt, in an LBD and kiss curls, gamely provides the much needed glamour in a film, that, with its static camera, resembles a long drawn Sab TV comedy projected on the big screen.
Things happen rather randomly on screen—the twists, turns, misunderstandings and reconciliations—and somehow something like a film gets cobbled together. A wealthy jeweller’s daughter makes rotis in the kitchen while dancing to DDLJ songs. Some dream sequences and love songs—like ‘Ishq da current lag gaya’—get shot in malls in Agra, and, of course, in and around Taj Mahal. But then it’s a small budget film and so honest to its frugality that even the leading lady in the film within the film stays in a two- star Hotel Residency while on a shoot in Agra and has a bungalow in Malad that is more a PWD guesthouse than a set from Dil Chahta Hai . Have I left out anything? Well yes. Remember Chandrachur Singh? He returns yet again. And instead of welcoming him with a ‘why not’ you feel like asking him ‘why’.
