The Spy who didn't love me

NO-SHOW: The Saif Ali khan starrer will not come to a cinema near you

AGENT Vinod, the recently released Bollywood flick, has shot itself somewhere in the nether regions before taking off for Pakistan. Predictably, its screening has been summarily banned. Most attempts to get the better of the ISI even on reel are doomed to meet such fate.
A previous attempt to draw inspiration from the life and crimes of Osama bin Laden ? albeit with pun intended ? was an also-no ran.
The irony, then, was that our metrosexual poster boy, Ali Zafar, was enacting the comic version and we couldn?t get to gloat about it since it never hit the silver screens. Those silver strands around the barbed-wired Aabpara complex and/or the Censor Board obviously fail to find the funny bone.
Nawab Saif Ali Khan ? Agent Vinod in the flick ? is tearing his hair out because he knows what a draw it would have been. It comes on the heels of real life punch(es) he landed at an unassuming Non-Resident Indian at a dinner brawl, who later turned out to be more clout-y than Khan may have bargained in his Agent Vinod avatar!
Our censor board people are usually more tight-lipped than the Foreign Office spokesperson when it comes to contentious issues. Last week, Muhammad Ashraf Gondal, vice chairman of the Film Censor Board, for instance, restricted himself to saying that since Agent Vinod fell under the ?negative codes, it was our judgment that it should not be allowed to be screened.?
What this will ensure without a shadow of RAW (Research & Analysis Wing) doubt is that the corn will pop and sugary colas flow at home. It will be a smash hit at the home box office (not to be mistaken for HBO, where tame offerings are not exactly extinct).
The very purpose of banning the film will be enormously defeated. Pirated material will find plenty of takers and DVDs will soon start to proliferate like the dengue mosquito. May be worse.
One suspects Agent Vinod will sneak in well and truly in what is an open season on our sleuths since Osama bin Laden failed to watch his spoof at a cinema near Abbottabad ? or Abbot-a-BAD, according to Wolf Blitzer.
The excuse trotted out then was that silver screening may lead to terrorist attacks. That was a decidedly, predetermined stroke ? a la Shahid Afridi (not to be mistaken for Shakeel Afridi) ? since who knows people might have just lost their heads laughing at the spectacle.
Chances are even Osama in his now-demolished haven would have enjoyed seeing the clever depiction of his modest video-making skills beating the daylights out of the Yankees. He was probably, good at using torrents anyways. A ghostly chuckle in a dingy corner hasn?t yet been confirmed though.
Looking at the swelling ranks of missing persons, it is advisable to put in a disclaimer here. This piece is not a frenzied push towards rethinking the ban imposed on Agent Vinod or the likes of Tere Bin Laden ? to be sure, it was good to see happy neighbourhood children on TV recently extol the virtues of vast empty spaces for slogging sixes as a result of obliterating OBL?s haven.
Rather it is, in part, inspired by the often-ignored pedestrian story-telling in Bollywood when it comes to bashing the Invisible-Soldiers Incorporated. Films next-door often require suspension of belief but the ambition of Bollywood filmmakers to run down the ISI is so filmy you wonder what is worse ? the flick itself or the flick of the wrist involved in banning the ?mess?terpiece.
Think of flicks that find Pakistan at the receiving end of Bollywood?s patriotic current and Sunny Deol springs to mind ? he of the dhai kilo ka haath (a much indulged heavy hand ? weighing approximately, 2.5kg) frame.
Movie buffers attuned to frothier dialogues would recall him suggesting in one famous frame: Jab ye haath kissi pe parta hai naa, tau admi uthta nahi, uth jaata hai (when this blow is rained on a person, he is a goner ? admittedly, this one cannot be translated accurately, for reasons of native machismo). To drive home the point, let?s just go over one glaring example of why our Caesars of scissors need to relax and perhaps, let the sheer absurdity of the plot come to the fore. Sunny Deol-starrer Hero in 2003 was one such terrain of mindless train to contrived glory. Fasten your seatbelts, here goes the Wikipedia rundown:
Arun Sharma (Sunny Deol) is a spy working for RAW. He sets up a spy network under the identity of Major Batra, with the objective of getting information regarding terrorist activities across the border. Reshma (Preity Zinta), who is from the same village, becomes a part of this network. He trains her for spying and during this training process they fall in love. Reluctantly, he sends her across the border as a maidservant in Colonel Hidayatullah?s house. He is associated with Ishaq Khan (mercifully, not your most important Mehrangate connection) and Maulana Azhar (names don?t get any more real, do they?) who are enemies of India (revelation, revelation!).
In the meantime, Reshma is identified in front of Ishaq Khan, Maulana Azhar and Colonel Hidayatullah. She manages to escape (?Jolie? good, I?d say) and comes across the border with important information.
Arun expresses his love to Reshma and proposes to marry her. The ceremony is cut short when terrorists attack the ship they are on. Reshma goes missing and Arun is presumed dead. Arun finds out that Ishaq Khan and Maulana Azhar were responsible for the attack. He fakes his own death and plans to infiltrate their terrorist network. He follows them to Canada, where it is revealed they are planning to create a nuclear bomb (I guess nothing less will do).
Reshma is revealed to be alive in Pakistan and in the care of one Dr. Salman (no resemblance living or dead to the former finance half-a-czar). They take her to Canada to operate on her legs. Her doctor is Shaheen (Priyanka Chopra), who is the daughter of Mr. Zakaria (Kabir Bedi), who is an associate of Ishaq Khan. Reshma comes to know that Arun is alive and is in Canada.
Arun changes his identity to nuclear scientist Wahid, working at a well-known Canadian nuclear research organisation (poor man?s AQK). Wahid pretends to be in love with Shaheen, as he wants to become a part of Zakaria?s group. He even marries Shaheen to win their trust. Reshma meets Wahid at the time of his marriage to Shaheen. Arun is very happy on seeing Reshma alive but knows that now they cannot be together, so she leaves.
Arun exposes Maulana Azhar, Zakaria and Ishaq Khan?s plan of getting the nuclear bomb. The Canadian government, the Indian government and the world comes to know that their plan has been destroyed by Arun. They hijack a train in order to escape.
Arun comes to the rescue. Shaheen dies whilst helping Arun. Arun finally kills Ishaq Khan and others. He returns to Kashmir and narrates the whole story to his colleague and meets Reshma in Kashmir. Arun and Reshma finally get together in the end.
?ISI AGENT?: Kareena Kapoor stars as a Pakistani ? and ISI agent to boot ? in Agent Vinod. So there! Does anyone really have to fear such drivel? On the flip side, Agent Vinod does have its pro-ISI vistas with Kareena Kapoor, in fact, starring as ? believe it or faint ? a ?positive? ISI agent. But surely, mujras are not done ? upended by Saif Ali Khan, who vents his spleen at the Pakistan ban by saying, ?I understand if they get upset because we are beating them up quite often in the film.?
Khan, however, was not without his Rummy moment when he philosophized that Agent Vinod was ?for Indians, but it is not against Pakistanis.? Donald Rumsfeld, the former U.S. secretary of defense, had alluded thus: ?(T)here are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns ? there are things we do not know we don?t know.?
The remarks were decidedly, not for President Bush to elaborate. As for Saif Ali Khan and Agent Vinod, let?s just say the contents of the plot are a ?known known?.
Away from Agent Vinod and his likes is an agent provocateur that even the ISI has struggled to contain. Veena Malik wore the tattooed emblem on her (transparent) sleeve ? and some say ? wisely chose not to return home while Brand Pasha was still in business.
Self-righteous Pakistanis, of course, have still not forgotten or forgiven her for playing to the Indian gallery ? the front cover of For Him Magazine, which covered so much and yet so little had this to say with an arrow pointed in the direction of the tattoo: hand in the end of the world too?
In both Vinod and Veena?s cases, what appears to hold is best described by a line from Ali Zafar?s hit single Voh Dekhney Mein in the recently released rom-com London Paris New York:
Philosophy ka craze hai.

The writer is a senior journalist

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