50 things I’ve learnt from Ghajini
iView Author: Uddhav Parab (Mumbai, India)
Email: ud.adams [at]gmail[dot]com
Content : 50 things I’ve learnt from Ghajini
Well, here I go hammering Ghajini, the so- called blockbuster and cine wonder of Bollywood. I hate hypocrites and plagiarists. For those of you don’t know (you should have figured out this, by now) Ghajini was “heavily inspired” by a movie called Memento by Christopher Nolan (Director of The Dark Night, The Prestige, The Following and Batman Begins… if you haven’t seen any of these movies and you don’t even plan to see any of these movies, I politely request you to go kill yourself by buying watching the director’s cut of Love Story 2050.)
The best part is that almost all these box office wonders in Bollywood (Life in a Metro, Hum Tum) seek “inspiration” from some Hollywood movies but even fail to acknowledge that. It doesn’t make sense when you already have the script, the story board and everything ready made for you and you even fail to acknowledge the person who went through all the pain and hard work. By the way, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (ardent Shah Rukh Khan fan, always will be) was unfairly compared to Ghajini. Yes, both were well acted but Ghajini was a copied concept and one should give credit to RBNDJ for being original.
I am a frequent visitor on IMDb.com and there one can usually find posts like 50 things you learn from Taken, or Fight Club etc. I found those posts hilarious and here are the “50 things I Learnt from Ghajini”
1) After watching Ghajini, go blog about it.
2) Hell yeah, Revenge is Sweet!!
3) Even Aamir Khan can screw up sometimes.
4) “Vishwas”(Confidence) aur “Ghamand” (Vanity)mein farak hota hai!” (These magical words can change your life.
5) World has achieved “Utopia”; people no more take advantage of people having problems and short comings. (All his employees remain faithful to him even after his injuries.)
6) If you remake a Hollywood movie, you have to make use of all the possible bollywood clichés.
7) If you see the love of your life for the first time, animated and exotic leaves will start falling on her.
8) If you are the C.E.O of a big MNC, you should always drive in a BMW 7 series car followed by 3 black Mercedes, if you don’t do that, then you are not a real big player in the corporate world.
9) The co-workers of a big CEO if see him outside office, they greet him by the ye olde “Salaam Saab”.
10) CEOs personally make sure that the company’s hoardings are placed at the “Right” spots; marketing guys just have a blast in their offices.
11) Models can fantasize themselves as a heroine in the middle of a traffic jam on a busy street.
12) Models travel in empty railway coaches going to Goa.
13) Models are dumb, if their boy friend shows up at a party with a BMW 7 series car followed by 3 black Mercedes and donates 5 lakh Rupees to charity, she still won’t suspect anything.
14) You can pretend to be anyone’s fiancée and not get caught. (This one requires practice.)
15) If the love of your life dies and you lose your memory, you don’t grieve about it, instead you work out heavily.
16) Pre-requisites to being a good Police Inspectors are good reading skills and ability to read any thing.
17) Police Inspectors are basically hopeless romantics, instead of calling for backup they’d rather prefer to read a suspect’s love story.
18) Tattooing can be painful, use Camlin permanent markers instead.
19) If there’s a name tattooed on you, you would NEVER consider googling it or looking up that person on orkut or facebook.
20) Always carry change with you, conductors were born with the right to say “Chutta nahi hai,chutta do nahi toh peeche waale bus mein se jaao”. (This one is very practical.)
21) If your hair cut is unique, people especially bus conductors remember you.
22) If you can tolerate a girl blabbering 24×7 and can actually find her talking pleasant, then you are in “love”.
23) The most romantic place to propose to a girl has to be BEST bus.
24) A girl, who agrees to marry you, would NEVER ask about your family, your mother or other stuff, cos that would be too “trivial”.
25) Each love story needs to have two songs, one is sung by the guy when the guy tries to woo his woman and the other one, when he realizes he’s glad and lucky to be with her. (Songs can also be sung to make your woman jealous, to show you are sad and at some points, even to dance before the villains before the ultimate climax fight scene and to add more USP to the movie by throwing in an item number).
26) All the possible rich guys falling for middle class women will have to try Pani Puri. (Presence of a song or background music is compulsory).
27) Aamir Khan extensively researched wild animals to understand their wrath and use it in his antics.
28) If thugs go after you in a train, “DON’T EVER PULL THE CHAIN, TO STOP THE TRAIN” (Use of common sense is a cardinal sin), instead offer them a gold chain.
29) Jiah Khan is extremely awesome. Even if she barely has any role or dialogues, she is great eye candy.
30) If you suffer from a short term memory loss, you would still remember your fiancée but forget your manager, co-workers and friends.
31) If you plan to murder someone, make sure you don’t leave the bus tickets behind, finger prints, weapons used are secondary, bus tickets can screw you up big time.
32) The henchmen of the biggest criminal in town don’t believe in fire power or ammunition, sticks and construction instruments are replacing guns.
33) If you are a good Don/Thug/Small time crook, you have the potential to become a successful industrialist.
34) A good don always believes in diversifying, our beloved Ghajini was into trafficking, selling kidneys and pharmaceuticals.
35) Rajnikanth should deserve special thanks in the credits, since half the stunts were inspired by him.
36) If the movie is almost 3 hour long, then you should make it a point to cram in a song, so that it becomes 3 hour long. (Lattoo Lattoo!!)
37) A.R Rehman’s music can make any horrible movie pleasant and a bit watchable.( Also applicable for Yuvvraaj.)
38) No matter how many kicks and punches you get, nothing happens to the Polaroid camera you are carrying with you.
39) Never trust female students who are planning to do a case study on you.
40) Jiah Khan is awesome eye candy. (Did I already mention it?)
41) If you can mimic Aamir Khan’s reaction when he wakes up every morning, you can prevent your younger siblings from entering your room.
42) Gyms and fitness centers should teach Aamir Khan’s Ghajini antics to help people lose weight.
43) If there are thugs looking for you, make sure your cell phone is on silent mode.
44) Aamir Khan’s favorite meal would be maggi, cos it gets prepared in two minutes, he’d remember he cooked it and hence even manage to finish it.
45) Tattoo important phone numbers on your body; you cannot depend on your cell phones these days.
46) If you wanna look cool, fold into half, the sleeves of your half sleeves shirt. (Wonder why Aamir Khan didn’t do the same for his trousers.)
47) Though “inspired” from Memento, you would still remember every movie made by Rajini when you are watching Ghajini.
48) You are allowed to kill as many people as possible if you have short term memory loss.
49) Bullets, grenades, knife, safety pins, rods, hydrogen bomb et al, try everything on a guy suffering from memory loss, he will still survive and seek retribution.
50) Tell people to watch “Memento” and to appreciate originality and creativity.
Tags: aamir khan, Ghajini, Humor
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
yawn….:O
one should give credit to RBNDJ for being original.
The line i found most funny in this Article. otherwise just a waste of time.
Yawn ^ 2. Yawn > 1.
Rab ne was not that original. Was inspired by old Randhir kapoor movie called Ponga Pandit.
also in Ghajini that leading-the-blind-man (by Asin) scene was copied from Amilie.
Ardent Shah Rukh Khan fan will always be!
“Well, here I go hammering Ghajini, the so- called blockbuster and cine wonder of Bollywood” – Blockbuster – fine…..but, apart from you, show me one person who called this movie ‘cine wonder of Bollywood’..you assume that people consider this a ‘cine wonder’..and then ramble on about how this is not a cine wonder. Its like saying “you people say Glenn McGrath is a good batsmen..now, let me give you 50 reasons as to why he is not a good batsman”..come on man..and you say RNBDJ was unfairly compared to ghajini..RNBDJ is as dumb as ghajini – if not dumber.
51) How was this allowed on Projekt iview?
Sorry to say but please don’t bore us.
@siddharth Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (2003)was much better than both. haha
@dear author: so you say just because SRK banade shit shit (read RNBDJ) was better than chagni cos it was a original.
There is no logic to what you talk.
I say get your head checked up with a nice mental doc. sorry to be rude but you asked for it.
IMO: chagni was not bearable at all but SRK banade shit shit was the epitome of all SRK movies. need i say more.
5 things about you
1. watch movies according to IMDB
2. Believe in the ratings provided by them
3. Think your are funny
4. May be you look funny
5. May be you need a better dictionary that IMDB (:P) to know the meaning of Sarcasm.
The movie was so much better than all the crap written here. How did this end up here. Tried very hard to be funny but was miles away from being funny.
I could sit through Ghajini but not through RNBDJ.
Another SRK fan..BTW it is not a so called blockbuster..It is a All time blockbuster
@Nick: He Didn’t say RNBDJ was better than Ghajini. He gave credit to RNBDJ for being ‘Original’ and not a copy. Both movies suck by the way.
@Uddhav Parab: Ghajini was made by the same director who made the Tamil Ghajini – Mr. Ramadoss. Hence the stunts. I still wonder how Aamir accepted the movie.
@Agnostic Indian: I can give you some good Tamil movies. If you liked the disaster Ghajini, you will love the Tamil ones.
just when i was thinking the iViews r better, BINGO! ghajini does a comeback on PFC. Alas!
it is The Dark Knight not The Dark Night
Here we GO…….AGAIN.
this wasn’t even “so bad that it was funny” kinda funny!
Please do write an excellent review of 99 to make up for this..
The article,the movie ghajini and rbndj all gave headache and boreache
Ghajini was crap but so was RBNJD.
Best thing we all can do is to forget Ghajini completely and start believing that we never had a movie like that. Articles like this after so much time since the movie has released will continue to keep such things in public memory.
Bro – my 2 cents – forget the movie as a bad dream and go watch sensible movies like Frozen and provide your constructive feedback here instead of still lamenting over a money spinning trash. Encourage new small movies in everyway you can please. you have as much responsibility to promote ‘good movies’ as the film makers trying to make them.
You wud have learned only one thing from Ghajini i.e. Movie Marketing. Its always easy to pick some weak or funny points out of any movie. Writing something meaningful requires passion and dedication.
Just have a look on the markeing activities done for the promotion of Ghajini
1. weird hair do for the Big Cinema employess (first ever).
2. A life size statue of Aamir across the multiplexes n cinema halls across the country
3. Van Heusan range of Aamir khan corporate look. (Earlier it was done by Louis Phillip (Another aditya birla group company) for SRK starer DON. Now its done by every other movie – Tashan n Bachna e hasino by pantaloons
4. Ghajini Toys – Hollywood is a baap of movie toys. But Ghajini was able to get into this as well.
5. Samsung Ghajini phones (WTF) L700 and M200 – A brand which aamir endorses. SRK has used i10 in RNBDJ
6. Tata indicom has sent 10 million subscribers, an exclusive mobile content on its wap portal. Also a Ghajini hairstyle contest (Was it a hairstyle anyways??
7. Tata Sky (Another brand which aamir endorses) interactive quiz, welcome screen n filler ada about the movie
8. PC console game based on Ghajini (Lara Craft – Tomb Raider is one of a very popular PC COnsole game.
9. Indiagames has developed 3 ghajini games for mobile. And also a interactive mobile application that allow users to follow Khans training sessions for getting 8 pack abs.
10. Probably a first ever in bollywood http://www.wallofsuspect.com, a contest wherein users can upload their photos on the wall.
11. Online treasure hunt – http://www.findghajini.com.
12. Khan’s blogs and his presence in the reality shows (He has done it for the first time, though everybody do this. Its quite a normal thing now.
Lastly dont forget, despite of you 50 yawning points, its the biggest blockbuster of bollywood.
So rather thn making everyone (me included) YAWN…writing something meaningful.
~ Ashu Bhai MAPRM Wale
@ Ashu Bhai MAPRM Wale: whoever you are, i didn’t understand what are you trying to say here. Yawn to you too!
I do agree largely with Jai’s comment #16.enough & more has been written about Ghajini.Can we now focus on the movies coming up & for movies more deserving over here?
Lets stop it guys !! Ghajini is not worth discussing and certainly not worth despising …I suppose the author also suffered from memory loss and couldn’t get over the psychological effect ghajini had on him …
I mean lets look at it this way ..films like ghajini hav worked in past n continue to do so no matter what rubbish they serve … It happens in hollywood too .. a good example is of Transformers , a cliche american sci-fi having the same old story – “Weird things coming from space and an American Nerd saving the day” … “The nerd also gets a hot n sexy girlfriend in the process” ….. apart from Visual Effects the film had nothing ..but it worked.. didn’t it ???
Man, are still comparing Ghajini with memento??
This is soooo 2008!
Saying ghajini was copied from Memento is like saying “Get Shorty” is the same as “Jackie Brown” coz their both based on Elmore Leonard novels.
Or saying Bloodsport is copied from Enter the Dragon. :-)
To quote Jonnie Cochran in southpark- “If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit”.
The argument just does not make any sense,in the parlance of our days.
Memento was a psychological study on guilt and revenge, Ghajini was a kick ass action flick with a meandering middle and amazing songs with not as much lasting appeal as we initially thought.
Both were based on the same premise though which is true.
ok they copied the tatoo’s but serisouly… if you had retrograde anmesia.. where would you write down your shopping lists? ( i dont even have anmesia but i still have 2 kg of tomatoes and a garlic puree written on my hand at this moment)
And another point, what s up with this sharukh/ amir/akshay fanbase bashing each other?
What are we 12 year old girls?
Would love to hear more about this fandom since I dont get it.
Do you so-called fans have poster of your favorite stars you give kisses to when it s dark in your rooms?
Or do you copy the hair and clothes and look for advice from your loved stars for style and attitude? how to seduce a guy or girl?
Do you want to carry sharukhs/amir/akshay’s or whoevers babies?
Do I smell a whiff of latent homosexuality?
It’s 2009 guys- and as Seinfeld said: ” not that there’s anything wrong with that”
Yunus Perveez- written whilst flicking through the latest copy of hustler
you may edit to your convenience :-)
The Dark Night …. lol ….
i couldn’t believe he actually typed it and then made it BOLD
I thought Ghajini was awful film. Thank God for Asin.
I think your article is crap for the same reason you say Ghajini is crap. Just because you mentioned imdb, did you feel you acknowledged the writer?
If you found the easy way out to write or share something that you think is funny without taking the name of the author? Maybe the writers or the producers tried to do the same.
So mister, please look within before you look out side.
I don’t mean to justify plagarism, but I don’t want someone screwing up the point by doing just that.
Ghajini was meant for Masses..A totally masala movie not meant for PFC intellectuals..BTW RNBDJ is not original..its copied from Bhojpuri movie Baklol Dulha n the producer of Baklol Dulha sued YRF for it
I cannot wait until the time comes when some of these thieving, cheating, stealing plaigarists from Bollywood are sued, have their assets frozen, and are cleaned out for their dirty cheating plaigarists deeds. They want to get access to the US and UK markets….lets see what happens when they feel the full force of the law in those countries. It may just have the effect of forcing these pathetic Bollywood parasites to do something original for once.
And it’s not just Hollywood they steal from so shamelessly. It’s from east Asian cinema too. We all know of the obscenity of ‘Zinda’, in which a parasite stole and plaigarised ‘Oldboy’. I just learned that Said Ali Khan’s new movie ‘Love Aaj Kaal’ is a stolen, plaigarised theft from the Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s small masterpiece “Three Times”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Times
How long are these scumbag thieves going to make Indian cinema a plaigaristic, parasitical laughing stock around the world? They keep wanting to show their movies off abroad holding stupid IIFA awards to get ‘international respect’.
Here’s the news. Nobody respects thieves.
The time has come for the world to teach them a lesson about plaigarism and theft. It cannot happen soon enough, I am sick and tired of these plaigarising thieves.
Uddhav Saheb, update urself plz! Ghajini is ancient history now. And not exactly a classic to to keep figuring on PFC so late in the day!
@Alas: You will never understand as u r too busy yawning….
~Ashu
@ Ashu Bhai MAPRM Wale: whoever you are, you are a big bore. :P
pfc rocks……
@Alas: Intellegent things sounds bore to dumb and dumbers
~ashu
Very Funny Article.
I ROFLed at the portion the way Memento & Christopher Nolan was introduced to PFC.
Btw,the movie Dark Night is by Daniel Grant and not by Christopher Nolan
I can’t wait to read 500 things I learnt from Tashan next.
Okay before you fcuks go on and on about plagiarism. Memento itself is inspired!!
Christopher Nolan didn’t dream about the concept, its actually inspired from the life of a famous patient, the case was instumental in deciphering the difference between declarative and procedural memory. Henry G Molaison passed away in 2008 ages 82! And Christopher Nolan does not give credit to the true story either! He just added his own bits and pieces and made it his own. Just like Ramadoss did!
Art is Inspired, there is no true art…everything we do is inspired, so get off ur high pedestals guys. This article absolutely reeks of disdain. Nobody deserves it…not Ghajini, not Aamir nor Ramadoss…they made a movie they believed in, the audience lapped it up…you cant digest it…too bad!!
@Yunus Perveez
Nice post…although the diagnosis for the condition would be anterograde amnesia not retrograde amnesia as u mentioned. Hate to be nitpicking here…but well its PFC aadat se majboor :P
@Jay
Lets see you make an original film…lemme know when its ready…I’ll watch the movie for a week..every late night show!!
This whole idea of thievery is such a moot point.
The thing is i love movies. and I have a calibrated complex theory on how to watch movies. I will however explain as we seem to have quite a few little kids on the board.
The way it works, if i think one will be good I’ll watch it. When the movie is not interesting to me, I won’t…
I may still get dissapointed but at least it was better then helping old people or feeding the poor for 3 hours.
I would have not seen a Bittersweet life if it wasn’t for Awaraapan, there was no Item song in Old Boy and how can you say you don’t prefer Lara Dutta shaking her ass then a korean bearded dude fainting on an octopus.
And would zinda have been better if Sanjay Dutta had slept with his daugther and then hypnotized himself to forget?
So there is some art to remaking as there is art in thievery ( I refer you to the musuem scene in Hudson Hawk) I love remakes. and I do not think credit HAS to be given to the original artist.
Who cares except filmgeeks like us?
Dali had his paintings made by his students and then signed it with his name. What does that say about originality of an artist?
I would still pay good money to watch a desi remake of eg Amelie Poulain. But Preity Zinta in it and use the techniques they used in Delhi 6 to make make NY look like Delhi and the movie could be super interesting. (Preity if you are stealing this idea, I want to have the role of the guy that fixes the photo cabinets)
@ Cliff, nitpick away my friend, I was on a roll and got carried away.
@ uh – maybe we should have a list of what we learnt with Tashan.
I’ll start:
1. People with big noses are attracted to each other.
2. You jump higher and for longer if you stretch out your fingers like Akshay
3. Anil Kapoor kicks ass in whatever he does and that includes having a bunch of homeless kids in your house or having your sister in law do a sexy dance
Uddhav, from the moment you admitted that you are a SRK fan (personally I have nothing against him) it became impossible to not to read this article in the light of a “Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi” appologist.
Accepting the fact that this is a copy of “Momento”, Ghajini is a well made BOLLYWOOD movie. So it contains all the regular bollywood stuff. This is not an Oscar material, nobody expected it to be. My point is Ghajini is not a pain to watch even after I watched Momento but I got asleep in the halfway through your “Original” RNBDJ. If you can point a good analysis in PFC it would not be a disservice lik it is now.
I don’t like plagiarism. So, I didn’t watch Ghajini. but I won’t give credits to RNBDJ. I paid 230 bucks to watch it. After that I wanted to become like Amir Khan in Ghajini to forget about this loss.
Ghajini was boring and bakwas but one thing can beat it, and that’s your blog.
first of all…yawn!
Ghajini is a remake of a south indian film, isn’t it? and that film is a copy of ‘Memento’..both are stated positions of both film ‘camps’…why berate a film when you clearly don’t have enough knowledge…
and to one of the replies…The Dark Knight is by Christopher Nolan