My Friend Ganesha: Let Gods Rest In Peace!
It’s the story of a psychologically disturbed child, whose parents instead of seeking psychiatric help leave him at the mercy of their maid Gangutai. Gangutai is just another filmi bai, who talks in an irritating manner interspersing deva re deva between her every second word.
This mentally ill child’s parents seem to be well off. His father worked with perhaps ICICI bank and his cabin also flaunted HDFC bank posters. His mother worked with a fatherly, foul-mouthed boss. She only could find all the files in the office, other than finding everyone’s belongings at home. An ideal house-cum-office-wife, who worked wonders at the office as well as home.
Our cute looking child got plenty of love from her parents, only they didn’t have time for dropping him at school or attending parents-teacher meeting, so Gangutai had to take care of this hence his classmates teased him “Gangutai ka Beta” (son of Gangutai).
Other than a mother and a father, our cute little child is also blessed with an aunt, his father’s sister. I don’t know what else she does in life but she definitely had an affair (deva re deva!!) with a biker.
However the guiding light of the household is Gangutai, the Maharashtrian maid, a staunch devotee of Lord Ganesha. Her recipe for happiness in life- worship the lord and bring him home in Ganapati festival. But the question is why should a happy family get into such stupid things?
So what happens, the father is accused of a fraud, mother is fired by her boss and the aunt is blackmailed by her boyfriend! Boyfriend wants a loan sectioned from aunt’s brother. ( how can a suspended bank manager pass a loan??)
So what happens to them? What a stupid question??? Lord Ganesha fixes them all.
I haven’t read any but guess, any five rupee book titled Ganpati Vrat Katha would tell a better story. Ganesha My Friend is one of the most disgusting, pathetic, intellectually bankrupt and sickening films, I’ve seen recently. Forget storytelling or filmmaking, the film is even worse than a Ganapati Festival video.
Frankly, the animation bit is not bad. However, giving it a sermonizing tone is the worst treatment anyone can ever think of.
Film has three “villains”, the first one of them is a Muslim called Anwar who wrongly implicates our child’s father in a fraud. Apart from his other villainous acts he also speaks like an Angrez.
The other villain is a stereotypical Bollywood villain that anyone could guess by his dressing. Third one is a poor boyfriend. His folly is falling in love. This is the second film after Gautam Ghosh’s Yatra that’s spreading this public service announcement on how boyfriends could make obscene MMSs and blackmail their girlfriends.
The lord Ganesha’s entry is quite like a hero, he skates in the Himalayas to reach Kailash where his father lord Shiva’s waiting. He also attempts to learn English from his devotee child. A god completely out of touch with not only contemporary India but also the world history. He doesn’t understand what promise (derived from promissum, a Latin verb* ) means but surprisingly understands Wada for it, an Arabic word. Only god know what languages he knows.
Ganesha is the joke of the year on Gods and Indian mythology that vilifies Muslims and alternative (to mainstream Hindu) Indian religious values and propagates conservatism and anti-rationalism in the name of cultural virtues. Exposing your kids to it could be dangerous!
*Latin belongs to Indo-European family of languages that Sanskrit, presumably the language of (Indian) gods is also a part of.
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
What’s new. Majority of ‘em have been ridiculing Indian mythologies/religions/gods in Indian films, for decades.
Although, they have refrained from showing an actor banging his/her head into a wall and surprisingly the God shows up rather than Yamraj and his buffalos.
:o
idea of bal ganesha getting friendly with a lonely kid is superb.technically its good film,problem lies with director and writan.they show their limitations of imagination.and please dont preach or suggest that if you will bring ganesha’s moorti at home…your all problems will be fixed.
you rightly said
EXPOSING YOUR KIDS TO IT WOULD BE DANGEROUS.
uuuugh! It’s distasteful! Ganesha is a cute god, but pitting him against anyone the moral police doesn’t like is so yuck — bofriends, Muslims… yuck. It’s a travesty of mythology, of the gods, of the country… yuck yuck yuck
Friend film banai to koi matlab hoga, see the movie again or think hard, even 3rd rate porn films have a theme.
Don’t mind my language try and think.
Hi Bikash,
As you can see, I never forget a blogger. Nice to see the new look on your site.
I just thought you might be interested in a post that I wrote on Monday, about the day `The Telegraph’ was launched in Calcutta – and how I was there!
Just a bit of West Bengal trivia.
Keep smiling
David (McMahon)