RK film’s AA AB LAUT CHALEN (meaning Come, let’s go back) released in 1999 had a few noticeable firsts with the foremost being the directorial debut of Rishi Kapoor (and the only film directed by him till date). Apart from the younger performers making their debut in an RK banner film (including the music by Nadeem-Shravan), it had Rajesh Khanna and Moushumi Chatterjee too along with being one of the very few RK Productions projects that didn’t have any song sung by the nightingale of India, Lata Mangeshkar.
However, here the film is being quoted with reference of an India-Pakistan cricket match in particular as it had a clear reference of the same which was funny as well as truthful depicting many real life instances.
Written by Rumi Jaffery (Story-Dialogue) and Sachin Bhowmick (Screenplay), AA AB LAUT CHALEN had two comic as well as emotional characters given contrasting names of Sardar Khan and Iqbal Singh. Kadar Khan played Sardar Khan as a Muslim Pakistani resident and Jaspal Bhatti played Iqbal Singh as an Indian Sikh with Satish Kaushik posing as an unbiased Indian empire sorting their mutual fights.
In their introductory sequence we get to see 6-7 broken television sets lying in a corner of the central room of their house and as Akshay Khanna points out towards them all, the answer comes, “These are the sets that got broken by us, when either Pakistan or India won in their crucial matches of the past.”
The scene might appear to be an exaggeration to many youngsters watching the present form of ‘entertaining shows’ called cricket, but it actually used to be all real and much more sensitive, tense and serious in the decades before 2000 to be exact.
It was the time long before the internet, mobile and android revolution came into existence, when large numbers of cricket lovers could be seen watching a live telecast on a TV set kept in the show window of a TV/Electrical appliances shop, big and small radio/transistors being carried on roads, buses and trains playing the uninterrupted loud commentary and people eagerly asking strangers passing by ‘What’s the score brother?”.
Having spent a substantial amount of time of my teenage years in the Lajpat Rai Market of Delhi-6 (the most tensed region during the Indo-Pak matches), have personally seen TV sets being broken, radios thrown away on the road and worrying fights among friends after the last ball bowled resulting in an unexpected win or loss (especially during the matches played in India, Pakistan or UAE/ Sharjah regions). At times we even used to get unconfirmed news of an old person getting heart attack in the same evening. Still remember the pumped up veins watching the sand-storm hit match in Sharjah with Sachin on the crease, making my way through all angry men standing in front of a TV showroom severely cursing the two umpires.
The passion still might be there in many serious lovers of the cricket all over the world. But the game isn’t the same anymore with loads of money, promoters, betting and corporates coming into the scene turning it into another ‘long profitable, entertaining TV series’ putting it in exact words.
Besides, the term ‘Fixing’ time and time again comes to haunt us after every important match shaking our trust level in the game and its iconic names.
Quite Sad and unfortunate but TRUE!
(The article also got featured in UC-News mobile app in June 2017)
