<img style="float: left;" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2024/aug/Mayank-Shekhar-op_e.jpg" alt="Mayank Shekhar" width="150" height="83" />Is there a favourite, cheesy <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/news/opinion/article/sex-lies-the-desi-woman-client-23369945" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Bollywood joke</a> that you&rsquo;ve heard? Okay, lemme go first.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Question: How was Nisaar born?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Ans: Jawaani jaaneman. Haseen dilruba. Milein do dil jawaan. Nisaar ho gaya&hellip; (Hot, young couple meet; Nisaar gets delivered)!&rsquo;&nbsp;
Of course, I&rsquo;m referring to Anjaan&rsquo;s lyric, from Namak Halaal&rsquo;s Bappi Da number, from 1982. The first four words of which are already titles of <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/news/opinion/article/series-of-reveals-that-never-end-23367224" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">two films</a>.&nbsp;
The latter being Haseen Dillruba (HD, 2021). You can watch that film&rsquo;s plot play out in its sequel, Phir Aayi Haseen Dillruba (PAHD, 2024)&mdash;as a full flashback, montage sequence, over the other classic track, Ek hasina thi, from Subhash Ghai&rsquo;s Karz (1980).&nbsp;
That&rsquo;s a pretty peppy, clever device to get audiences up to speed with the <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/news/opinion/article/ought-to-go-to-aravind-garu-no-23362309" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">original story</a>. The only thing vaguely disappointing about it is to learn from YouTube that the Laxmikant-Pyarelal ditty, Ek hasina thi, loved by so many Indians (like me), over decades, is actually a straight-off copy of George Benson&rsquo;s 1978 number, We as love.&nbsp;
Both HD and PAHD, on Netflix, starring Taapsee Pannu, Vikrant Massey, is by all accounts, an original screenplay, written by Kanika Dhillon (Manmarziyaan, Judgementall Hai Kya).&nbsp;
<img src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2024/aug/Kanika-Dhillon-a_e.jpg" alt="Writer Kanika Dhillon. Pic/Instagram" width="1280" height="720" /> Writer Kanika Dhillon. Pic/Instagram
An imaginary tribute that appears throughout the two films, instead, is to AH Wheeler/railway-station pulp-fiction, namely a crime writer, Dinesh Pandit. As per the film, Dinesh Pandit probably died years ago, though he continues to get published. Who the hell is Dinesh Pandit? I just had to text Kanika, and ask.&nbsp;
She says, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a hat-tip to legendary Hindi pulp authors&mdash;Surendra Mohan Pathak ji, Ved Prakash ji, to name a few. [Moreover] as a screenwriter, he is the alter-ego inside me&mdash;heady, wild, juicy, wicked, yin; to my controlled, structured, manicured, subtle, logical, yang!&rdquo;
Surely, logic alone isn&rsquo;t what drives the two Haseena pix&mdash;about supposedly copycat crimes, inspired from fictional Dinesh Pandit&rsquo;s novels, titled Kasauli Ka Keher, Cobra Ka Inteqaam, Magarmachh Ka Shikanja, and the like.&nbsp;
The magarmachh (crocodile) is presumably homage to Rakesh Roshan&rsquo;s Khoon Bhari Maang (1988), similarly about love, sex and dhokha&mdash;itself an uncredited adaptation of the Australian TV series, Return to Eden (1983).&nbsp;
If you sit around simply to dissect, you can find enough craters the size of <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/news/opinion/article/what-to-make-of-ambani-wedding-23364564" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Bombay&rsquo;s potholes</a> in the PAHD plot. But that&rsquo;s not the point. The overall ambience/tone/feel is; especially with some of the new characters/actors introduced.
Such as Jimmy Shergill, in the sequel, with persistent policing powers of a kathphodwa (woodpecker), who&rsquo;s sure his nephew (Harshvardhan Rane) did actually get murdered by the lead couple in the film&rsquo;s first part. That the presumably dead hero (Vikrant) is, indeed, alive. How&rsquo;s he certain? We don&rsquo;t know! &nbsp;
Or, for that matter, the fresh love-struck Romeo, Abhimanyu, in PAHD. We find him catching the Ayushmann Khurrana-starrer An Action Hero (2022) in a single-screen cinema.&nbsp;
In that second, I confused the actor with Ayushmann&rsquo;s brother Aparshakti, assuming a nod of sorts. He is, of course, the supremely sorted, subtle Sunny, brother of Vicky Kaushal, instead. My bad. Just the curse of the younger sibling in the same profession!&nbsp;
At the centre of this drama is obviously the queen, Haseena, or Taapsee as Rani, sworn to a murderously mad idea of love. She says, &ldquo;Jo paagalpan ki hadh se na guzre woh pyar hi kya? Hosh mein toh rishte nibhaye jaate hain! (What good is love, if it doesn&rsquo;t surpass bounds of sanity. Reality-checks are for relationships).&rdquo;
To be honest (and what else to be, but honest), Taapsee is not the filmic figure I&rsquo;d immediately associate with the femme fatale, given feminine wiles, and overt looks to kill. But then again, the gaze of the film is also decidedly female.&nbsp;
The same way I felt with the movie I did a double-bill with HD (in a theatre)&mdash;Justin Baldoni&rsquo;s It Ends with Us (2024); while directed by a man, written by women (screenwriter Christy Hall, novelist Colleen Hoover).&nbsp;
That gaze showed up suitably unsubtly, with the bodybuilder, arm-candy Harshvardhan&rsquo;s character and Rani in HD. It takes a more bizarre form with PAHD&mdash;in the sequences between the male lead (Vikrant), and his one-legged landlady, who pretty much molests him, with her frisky moves.&nbsp;
Same scenes would seem strikingly strident, if you simply switched the sexes. The town is Agra. This is where the married hero-heroine have momentarily escaped to, before they fly abroad, getting away with murder&mdash;from the fictional Jwalapur, in HD, that appeared more Rishikesh/Haridwar.&nbsp;
Only, the characters were drinking themselves silly in that Uttarakhand holy town. I suppose, some obscure attention-seeker or the other in the audience would&rsquo;ve been religiously offended, if the place was strictly shown to be Rishikesh/Haridwar.&nbsp;
HD itself wasn&rsquo;t so much Gone Girl (2014), or even There&rsquo;s Something About Mary (1998), being the two opposite ends. More a mash-up of genres, starting with pure romance (or lack thereof), slipping into a thriller. PAHD is proper thriller/caper.&nbsp;
I didn&rsquo;t click on it for days after it dropped&mdash;who would, for Part II, when Part I itself hasn&rsquo;t worked for you?
As with people and pictures, though, the beauty of keeping low expectations is the rewards are surprisingly higher&mdash;under-promised, over-delivered; best.&nbsp;
Jayprad Desai&rsquo;s PAHD &gt; Vinil Mathew&rsquo;s HD. Wow, I don&rsquo;t recall thinking, let alone writing so, for a sequel.
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com The views expressed in this column are the individual&rsquo;s and don&rsquo;t represent those of the paper.

The beauty of sequel being better than original is with expectations low, the rewards seem surprisingly high!

Who the hell is Dinesh Pandit?

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Who the hell is Dinesh Pandit?

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