Keeping House: Bollywood Movie Om Jai Jagadish and "Pyar Ka Matlab"

Bollywood movies are often hard to write about in this blog because there's so much to them. There are the stars of the movie, who appear to be singing in the videos, and yet they aren't. Instead, there are playback singers. So what do I focus on? In most cases, I should focus on the playback singers because they are providing the music but I cannot completely ignore the stars and I have to put the video in the context of the wider movie.

So first I will give you an idea of the plot of the movie. Om Jai Jagadish is the story of three brothers named Om, Jai and Jagadish. They live with their mother, a widow, in a house. Each of the brothers have very different personalities. Om stays at home and provides the family with its income. Jai is ambitious and plans to create the world's fastest car, and his engineering education is paid for by Om who takes out a loan to do so. Jagadish is in college and great with computers.

The brothers have a clash of values. All of them marry women with very different values and goals as well. Om marries an Indian MTV VJ and Jai marries a wealthy woman. Jai is in love with a woman from another city, Bangalore. Jai and Om clash, and soon Jai moves to America. Jagadish gets in trouble for hacking and Om throws him out of the house. Om has trouble paying the house loan, and he and his wife and mother have to leave the house. This leads to a reunion of the brothers as they end up pooling their money to buy the house back. They are too short of money, but Jagadish had sold an anti-hacking program to a CEO of a company who turned in the winning bid for the house. Jagadish had made a deal with the CEO, selling the program for the price of the house. The brothers are now free to move back into the house together.

How do I relate to this?  There are elements to this plot that I can identify with.  My mother is widowed, and instead of two brothers I have two sisters.  There is some dysfunction in my family.  My youngest sister is staying home with my mom, balancing her life and relationship with the needs of my elderly mother.  My other sister is pursuing her own life and she and I are currently estranged for a variety of reasons.  I live far away and also try to pursue my own life even as I try to be responsible to my mom.  There is no danger that she will lose her house, as it is paid for.  But I just bought a house, my first, and so there is always that concern in the back of the mind of keeping a job to pay for the house, and any little change, such as my wife deciding to go half-time at work and make up some of the lost income through freelance work causes some stress and involves a lot of talking.

The three brothers are played by Anil Kapoor, Fardeen Khan and Abhishek Bachchan.  The playback singers on Pyar Ka Matlab are Alka Yagnik, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Udit Narayan, and Sonu Niigaam.  I discussed playback singing on an earlier post - essentially the stars in a Bollywood movie usually do not sing - their singing parts are voiced by professional playback singers who are often stars in their own right.  I didn't get much information on how well Om Jai Jagadish did at the box office or any critical reviews, so I'll just leave this post at that and let you enjoy the music and the video.