As you know, if you’ve been following along, I just got a new kitchen cart! And then reorganized my kitchen to take advantage of it. And then cooked chicken, soup, and a pie. So I am very kitchen focused right now.
I don’t want cooking stories, not like food and chef type stuff. I want warm cozy kitchen stories about people eating and making food in their homes and everything around it.
Unemployed Engineer Hired as Cook
Great role for one of the younger crowd, Varun or Ranveer or even someone like Rajkummar or Ayushmann. We start with a happy graduation scene, followed by song. Our hero is thrilled to have finished his degree, and goes out with his friends all happy about conquering the world. Followed by reality, a montage of a series of interviews and rejections, there aren’t any jobs. Finally, the same day he comes home to find his possessions thrown out on the street by his landlord for unpayment of rent, and a letter from his parents about the expenses of his sister’s education (I know marriage is more realistic, but I like putting messages in my fake films, so sue me!). He has one more chance, his favorite professor has arranged for him to meet with another former student who might need an engineer, but he is leaving town today, so he has to go to his house and catch him there. Our hero rushes over, can’t get in through the front gate so goes around the back. He is in his casual clothes because he didn’t have time to change, he falls in the dirt and gets dusty, and then he runs into an eccentric older man (Nawazzudin Shah? Anupam Kher?), he greets him happily and declares he has been desperate to get the positioned filled, glad to have him onboard! And, of course, it turns out he has been hired as a cook because he went to the wrong address.
(Yes yes, Bawarchi, but wait! It’s different!)
Of course he is desperate to keep the job, at least long enough to get some money for his parents and get back on his feet. Especially since it is a live in job. The family is humorously difficult, eccentric father, adorable naughty small child, complaining grandfather (Rishi Kapoor), even more eccentric artistic mother (Ratna Pathak), and wild teenage boys who keep coming in and eating everything in the kitchen and demanding more.
Now, the most obvious solution would be for him to fall in love with the daughter of the house, learn about her through his position as servant, meet her outside the house in a different persona, and so on and so on. But we’ve all seen that movie before! I want a different movie.
What I want to happen is that the female cook at the house next door starts helping him out and they have a little romance. At first she has a crush on him and he kind of know sit, but keeps his distance, and just uses her for cooking tips. But slowly he starts to see the true beauty of her personality, her generosity of spirit, her intelligence, and begins to fall in love, spinning an ever more elaborate backstory for his fake cook character when he is with her. At the same time, a casual remark she made starts him thinking about a new kitchen device he could build. He shows her what he is working on, and she gives suggestions for little additions and improvements. He builds a model and takes it to his old professor and finally gets to meet the man who was going to hire him in the first place, the eccentric engineer entrepreneur type, who thinks it is a brilliant idea but insists that he go into the lab immediately and start working around the clock to get a workable prototype made and ready. Which means he has to leave his cook job with no warning, and only a pretty picture left behind for the maid next door (she is illiterate) to indicate his feelings. Until weeks later a messenger hand delivers to her a flyer, advertising their invention, with a big headline describing it as “Created by [Hero’s Name] and [Heroine’s Name]”. And just as she is enjoying this, she hears his familiar signal from next door, and runs over to see him waiting for her, they embrace as his employer and his kooky family all watch and applaud.
Hero: Dhanush? Ranveer? Ranbir? Varun? I want someone who can do comic tricks on the family, and a sweet romance.
Heroine: Alia? Kalki? I want someone who is a skinny little person with bright eyes that you only slowly see is pretty and smart and everything else. You know, Kareena 10 years ago might have been perfect!
Falling in Love Over Kitchen Renovations
Brace yourself, I’m doing it, a woman who ACTUALLY LEAVES HER HUSBAND FOR HER LOVER AND IS HAPPY!!!!! A wife and mother whose live revolves around the kitchen. She gets up, makes chai and breakfast for everyone, then spends all day working on elaborate dinners tailored to everyone’s specific demands. Her husband is not unkind, he just doesn’t seem to much care for her. He was an older widower who needed someone to run his household, help take care of his parents and his children from his first wife. He is very respectful of what she has accomplished and gives her free reign in her own domain. And so when the kitchen ceiling suddenly falls in, he tells her to hire whoever she likes to fix it up however she likes. Oh, and all of this has to happen in America, where this kind of work would involve a contractor and possibly an architect, so an educated person.
(Happy without the punishment of two miserable years of sad carrots and impractically precise pillow placement first)
Our heroine is not an educated person, doesn’t speak fluent English even after years in America. Oh, and our heroine is Tabu. So, Tabu is looking for a contractor and is confused by all the fast talking American guys who show up. And immediately responds when Shahrukh appears and offers to talk in Hindi if she prefers. Shahrukh is quiet and slow and serious, like she is. She enjoys the way he explains his plans, and shows her blueprints, and takes her requests seriously. Over long days together while her husband is at work, her stepchildren are at school, and her inlaws are staying with another one of their children because they didn’t like all the noise and confusion, Tabu and Shahrukh get closer and closer. He learns about her life, a good student through 12th grade but never good in English, missed her chance for marriage as she had to stay home and take care of her much younger brothers, and then offered this marriage with a wealthy older man who lived in America, her family rushed her into it, only for her to discover that her husband wanted a housekeeper and babysitter, not a real wife. He tells his story, he came to America to study architecture but was always more interested in the hands on part of it and ended up being a contractor. He also fell in love with and married a white woman, who died suddenly a few years back and he’s just been drifting since then.
Finally, he shows her something he built just for her, a cleverly constructed vent that lets him put a window over the stove so she can look out through the window while she is cooking. And she is so overcome that, as he is looking at it and pointing out how he built it and the features he added for her and so on, she suddenly grabs him and kisses him.
(We know she’s willing to do a hot scene with Prakash Raj in a similar emotionally deep way, why not again with a more attractive actor?)
Their long afternoons together become kissing and sex and love. Until she is suddenly brought to reality one day when they are laying in bed together postcoital and Shahrukh calmly asks her “when will you leave him and come to me?” Tabu hesitates, asks for time, Shahrukh gives her time, but finally tells her that he loves her and he wants to live with the woman he loves, not this halflife. And one day Tabu comes down to her kitchen to find it is finished, and there is a note from him saying he will be waiting.
Tabu starts to see her life in a new light. Her stepchildren barely seem to notice her and treat her as a servant. Her husband is kind but not loving, he’s never actually touched her in a romantic way, or even seemed to enjoy talking to her. Her inlaws treat her as worse than a servant. She had always thought this was a good life, her husband wasn’t cruel to her, no one was actually cruel, she had freedom and could live in America, plenty of people would have been jealous of what she had. But now she is beginning to realize that no one in her life truly sees her for who she is, let alone cares about her.
Until finally one day she looks out the window in her kitchen and gets a vision of sunlight and freedom, and we cut to Shahrukh working at another construction site, giving instructions to various people. And then turning to see Tabu standing there with a suitcase and he smiles and walks over to her and she smiles back and they kiss. Happy Ending!
Cast:
Hero-Heroine: Tabu-Shahrukh? Parvathy-Prithviraj? Anushka-Shahrukh? Rani-Aamir? Someone Else-Someone Else?
Female Intergenerational Bonding in the Kitchen
Have to do a women focused plot, that’s the best part about kitchens, crowding in to them with all the women in your family. So, I know it’s obvious, but I want to do a career woman-homemaker-young girl plot. But maybe shake up the generations a bit. Oo oo! I have it! Former movie star! She left her husband and raised her daughters alone, in between running off to movie sets. Her oldest daughter married and moved to America and ran her household. And now her granddaughter is a college student. Oh heck, let’s just cast Tanuja and Kajol. And Nyssa for the daughter if she’s old enough.
(Don’t you want to see them onscreen together? I want to see them onscreen together!)
The 3 generations come together when the daughter’s husband suddenly dies. Let’s say, just to feel it, we get a good 15-20 minutes intro of seeing them all in their normal interactions. Oh! A meta thing! We start with Tanuja being the perfect loving mother in a kitchen, and then the director calls “cut!” And she returns to her real self, elegant and glamorous and sitting there flipping through gossip websites on her tablet and talking to her secretary about scheduling her public appearances. And then we cut to a real household, not the perfect one in a film, where frazzled Kajol is trying to deal with a broken refrigerator while her husband (Ajay, obviously) is distracting her and her daughter is calling in on Skype from college. We keep going back and forth, Tanuja preparing for a charity award, Kajol picking her daughter up at the airport and bringing her home, Tanuja giving a speech at the children’s charity about how it is so important to her as a mother herself, at the same time Kajol is laughing over dinner with her daughter and Ajay about “Grandma” who wasn’t a usual mother, coming to kiss them in bed wearing so much make-up they couldn’t even recognize her, showing up at their boarding school and whisking them off to fabulous vacations with no notice. Kajol’s daughter sighs about how she wishes she could have skipped weeks of school to go on a film shoot in Switzerland, and Kajol turns serious and sad looking and says “I think I would have rather had a mother to come home to every night.” Kajol’s daughter (because she is sweet), says “me too.” That night, Ajay talks with Kajol, reminds her that her mother had no choice and did the best she could, and suggests they invite her for a visit again, Kajol doesn’t realize how lucky she is to have a mother, Ajay has a dream sometimes of coming down to the kitchen and seeing all three of them working together. Kajol agrees to consider inviting her mother, maybe over the summer when their daughter is home from school. And then Ajay gives her flirty eyes, and there is a love song. That fades into Ajay smiling and walking down the street and suddenly clutching his chest, and then Kajol in the hospital holding her daughter’s hand, and finally Tanuja getting a call on yet another film set and walking off without even looking back at the director.
Tanuja arrives and Kajol tries sort of helplessly to host her, apologizing for not having her room ready, or any of her special foods, and Tanuja keeps saying its all fine. That night, Tanuja gets up and hears crying down the hall, sees Kajol alone crying in her bed, and her granddaughter crying in hers, and goes in to comfort the granddaughter.
(Or maybe Hema Malini for the mother? Anyway, I want Kajol to be broken like Rani is in this scene)
Tanuja and granddaughter bond, Tanuja teaches her how to have fun, tells her stories of her glamorous youth, even gives her a make-over to 60s style make-up and they have a cute remix song together, which makes Kajol half-smile, but then she wanders out again. So Tanuja and granddaughter start scheming together, trying to think of something that will make Kajol talk to them, and they decide to ask her to teach them to cook.
Kajol doesn’t believe at first, but they are both so sincere about it, and make their own attempts and failures in the kitchen, that eventually she agrees and starts cooking lessons. The 3 women cook and finally Tanuja, remembering a casual comment Kajol made early on about how “every mother knows how to make her child’s favorite food”, makes her her favorite and feeds it to her and finally Kajol is able to break down and be comforted in her grief.
Oh, and then I guess it has to get happy again. Hmmm. Oh heck, catering business for Kajol’s daughter’s college! That seems simple enough. The daughter brings food to school, all her friends grab it and ask for more, she starts selling boxes, Tanuja helps with the organizing and business of it all, and also drives a hard bargain with the school and the buy-in-bulk suppliers, Kajol resists the idea but they drag her in on it and she starts to get excited when she realizes they can make real money, that her work has value, that people love her food. And finally the happy ending is Tanuja, after a fake-out, choosing to turn down a wonderful part in a movie in order to stay in New Jersey with her daughter and granddaughter, and then the next day as they work together in the kitchen, Kajol looking up and suddenly remembering Ajay’s dream and smiling because they are all together, all 3 generations, just like he wanted.
Cast:
Grandmother/Mother/granddaughter: Tanuja/Kajol/Nyssa, Sharmila/Soha/Sara, Dimple/Twinkle/???, ???/Sridevi/Jhanvi, Jaya/Rani/Alia?
Dead Husband: Ajay? Shahrukh? Akshay? Abhishek?
Is the first one about the cook/engineer more of a Hindi movie, or more kind of Tamil/Malayalam?
Is the second movie realistic or do we need to wait another 20 years for a wife to say “Why should I stay with a man I don’t love just because of a promise I was forced into? Why can’t I just go off with the hot guy who loves me?”
Is the third movie too sad?
And, as always, which of these would you make (if you could only make one)?
dontcallitbollywood 
I just saw the title of this post and I this popped up in my head:
Click to access tauliye-or-towels-a-translation-1.pdf
I first read this as a child going through my aunts’ college books! Technically not a kitchen story but it can be adapted to be a kitchen and cooking story!
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So Ratna Pathak in something like her Nil Batey Sannata role?
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Maybe? I still haven’t seen it because I am a bad person.
On Sun, Nov 26, 2017 at 11:03 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Omg!!!
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Dhanush Or Rajkummar because it would be easy to mistake them for cooks if they wore really casual dirty clothes.
Actress: shweta tripathi, richa chadha or swara bhaskar
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I love Swara, but I think Shweta is closest to the look I am picturing. I want a young person with a lot of dreams who finds joy where she can, not someone a little older who has settled in to her life. Someone who our hero initially dismisses as too young to take seriously.
On Sun, Nov 26, 2017 at 11:07 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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The Kajol Tanuja story feels like Georgia Rules to me. I even imagined Tanuja yelling Georgia Rules!! 😁
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Haven’t seen that either! But I know there are plenty of films already about 3 generations of women. But this one would be better becuase it would hav eKajol!
On Sun, Nov 26, 2017 at 11:10 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Already waited for your stories 🙂
Well, obviously, with the background of you somehow re-organizing your kitchen (and with ShahRukh as the male lead), I would vouch for the second story 😉
Actually, I would like to make it the other way round…that she had come from America with a good education there although she knows little Hindi (her mother fall in love with an American student while in college and had eloped with him to America and has deliberately cut all ties to India because of the constant fights and narrow-mindness in her family). Our heroine is a single child and has to return to her relatives in Mumbai when her parents die in an accident. Her relatives (from her mother’s side – his father was an orphan) have neither the interest nor the money to care for a further education ans use her as a servant trying to get as quickly as possible to get rid of her. The rather wealthy widower looking for a wife who would cary for his mother and his three children when he is travelling for his profession (but who is still mourning his late wife is a welcome capture especially because he is looking for an educated woman knowing English very well.
I think Tabu would be nice…or Vidya! And we get to know the background story through daydreaming songs or through the incessant nagging of her relatives.
When after many years (the kids are now in various stages of teen age) the kitchen needs the renovation, it is because of all the Hindi speaking contractors that she feels very uneasy, so when ShahRukh starts to speak in English when she doesn’t understand and keeps his calm and makes a very reliant impression, it’s a working deal.
I would like the falling in love and living their love is a playfully erotic thing, that it is the fun, sex should be. Although ShahRukh, the workman, seems to have a lot of experience with women he remarks that she almost knows nothing about physical love. And I would like that he makes it very clear that he wants her to leave this loveless house and to divorce her husband…he would even look for a woman who could work as a housekeeper, now, that the children aren’t small anymore and the mother-in-law has died.
When I read the first story, I pictured it happening in South India (don’t know, why)…and the third one could also happen in India, I think…
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Maybe you pictured it in the south because northern people dress too flashy to be mistaken for a working class person? 😉
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I don’t know, I have a hard time with an American heroine and Indian hero in India. I don’t know if contractor work is quite the same as it is here, it would be very odd for an English speaking person to work with his hands like that.
On Sun, Nov 26, 2017 at 11:52 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Not if they’re South Indian!! And maybe there’s a backstory involving a missionary orphanage with English speaking malayali nuns!
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So, like, a south Indian woman who is fluent in English and Tamil or something, but not in Hindi? Who was married off to a north Indian Hindi speaking family that complained about her cooking and dismissed her because of her slightly darker skin and so on?
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married into North Indian hindi speaking Tamil family who have been settled in Delhi for a hundred years and haven’t had any tamil speaking brides or people using tamil in diary routine anymore
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So, in this totally new version, Madhavan as the hero? Older widower who married a Delhi girl and eloped with her, and now has stayed in Delhi because of her memories? And he has slightly gray hair and maybe sometimes wears glasses when he looks at building plans? And a dhoti and a sleeveless undershirt when he’s doing building things?
On Sun, Nov 26, 2017 at 9:04 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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How about a never married bachelor in his 40s who devoted his youth to the conservation efforts around Delhi-NCR? No hangups from a past relationship but just never found the right girl?
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I don’t know, i never trust that. I’d be worried that there was something wrong with him. At the very least, some casual thing about a broken engagement because he realized he couldn’t expect to drag a woman with him on his crazy campaigns? So at least he considered and rejected a marriage. But it’s not a big heartbreak, it’s just a realization that it wasn’t for him back then. Of course now he has gotten over his youthful passions and would cherise a woman who could share his life, but he never thought he would find her.
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Maybe HE gets rejected by prospective brides’ family all the time because his job isn’t a traditional and sturdy one?
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That would work. Maybe his parents tried for years, but he gave up and stopped thinking it would happen? And there’s a little acknowledgement that he wants someone to share his life but no young woman wants a two room apartment with a bachelors lifestyle, and of course the heroine realizes that is exactly what she wants, a small place where there are no rules or expectations and it is all her own.
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he hasnt stopped thinking it would happen. every now and then his mother gets all excited about a new match recommended by someone and she makes a huge fuss and he tells her not to get her hopes up. This could be a complication in his lovestory. the heroine falls for him and is all ready to marry him. he’s too shy to make the first move or say it openly so she goes through his facebook and identifies where his house must be. she makes a gorgeous halwa and brings it to his house only to find a prospective bride’s family having tea with them. he runs after her and declares his love for her and this is how everyone finds out what he has been doing all this time. everyone is angry about him sneaking around but hismother is all “thank god I was worried I’d have to start looking for grooms for you instead of brides!”
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That could help making it more of a two lead role, so we see comparisons between their lives. Shahrukh all sadly lonely making his little toast breakfasts. Compared with Tabu (or whoever) desperately wishing she could just have a few moments to herself while she is running around making breakfast for everyone else. and then at the same time Tabu is beginning to realize that she doesn’t want marriage at all, at least not the kind of marriage she has, Shahrukh is beginning to realise he DOES want marriage. So after they break up, Shahrukh sadly agrees to meet a bride the next time his mother is in town, and just as he is realizing that he doesn’t want this after all, he doesn’t want to marry just anyone, but rather a particular person, that’s when Tabu shows up and is all hurt.
On Sun, Nov 26, 2017 at 9:58 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I thought this story had Madhavan
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I keep changing my mind! there are too many hot mature men who are believable as sensitive female empowering men who work with their hands.
On Sun, Nov 26, 2017 at 10:18 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I think we need to give SRK a break though. Maddy is so the guy for a kitchen/cooking film!!!!
Personally, i think Prabhas should remake Bawarchi, a trilingual, updated for 2018!
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Prabhas does have that nice sweet “I just want to make everyone else happy” kind of feel to him.
On Sun, Nov 26, 2017 at 10:23 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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He looks like a natural fit for the role too!
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actually can we mashup the first two stories?
Madhavan is a conservationist who comes in to meet millionaire Paresh Rawal for a donation to his charity. Tabu, his daughter, is expecting a placement agency to send over a home cook and she mistakes Madhavan for the cook and yells at him for being late on his first day and orders him to make breakfast, that she was getting late etc. He’s shy and Tabu is overbearing.
He’s close to being broke and his landlord has just evicted him that morning. He needs a job and a place to stay so he keeps up the ruse. This job pays enough to help him get back on his feet.
Shweta is the live-in maid next door. She’s from Punjab and she works for by Nithya, who’s a Tamil engineer based in Delhi. She was brought to Delhi by her employer from her previous posting in Chandigarh. Shweta is an orphan who was raised by nuns and thus she is fluent in English.
Maddy and shweta hit it off. He thinks of her as the sweet kid maid from next door. Nithya develops an interest in him too because of the Tamil angle but she resists the feeling because he’s their neighbour’s cook.
Tabu also heads an NGO and his knowledge of environmental technologies and issues impress her. He lies that he worked as a cook at a Belgian Greenpeace activist’s house briefly. she begins taking him to work.
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Is this heading in the direction of Madhavan having 3 wives? Because I don’t know if I am down for that.
However, Madhavan as the cook who takes some of the responsibility off her shoulders while Tabu, overworked forgotten spinster daughter, is romancing with the new contractor Shahrukh, and meanwhile Madhavan is romancing Shweta next door, and Nithya (Shweta’s boss) has her own romance with a potential business partner who mistook her for her own cook. Nagarjuna! he arrived to find her stirring in the kitchen because she is a nice boss and offered to help while Shweta ran out for a forgotten ingredient. So Nithya has to pretend to be Shweta some of the time while Shweta is hidig over at Tabu’s house hanging out with Madhavan in his kitchen, and meanwhile Tabu is off with Shahrukh at his place teaching him how to cook.
On Sun, Nov 26, 2017 at 10:17 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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why would he have three wives? He’d have Nithya and Tabu interested in him but not really considering him seriously because he’s a cook and thus working class. And Shweta who’s actually the real working class person ending up with him.
He can end up being Tabu’s NGO partner. Nithya’s little crush and the jolt of the discovery of Madhavan’s real identity helps her reevaluate her classism and she finally accepts Nagarjun, the farmer from her village who she got engaged to in an arranged match but never married or accepted.
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So Tabu watches the other women go off with Maddy and Naga and she gets nothing? Isn’t there another hot southerner we can throw her way? Like, the last shot of the film is some super hot guy arriving to apply to be her new cook and them smiling at each other? Ajith might be good.
On Sun, Nov 26, 2017 at 10:28 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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She’s a strong independent woman who is single by choice. She doesn’t need a man to complete her.
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real brain-storming 😀 what a pleasure to read on a lazy morning 🙂
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Ok so your theme for this week made me think. Kept me awake till 2am. This is what I came up with.
Kitchen story that never leaves the kitchen
Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bhaduri are a couple and have just landed in Delhi and stuck in traffic. It’s peak winter and visibility is near zero even at mid-day. He’s grumbling about having to suffer through the weekend with “those people”. The slower their cab goes in traffic, the more he grumbles. Jaya asks him to just behave himself through the weekend as she doesn’t want a repeat of last time.
Dharmendra is standing by the front window of a large open concept kitchen/living and trying to get a look at the street in front of their large gate but the fog is too thick. He leans closer and closer till his breath starts to fog the windowpane from the inside and prompts his wife Hema to notice and make a sarcastic remark on it.
She’s sitting on a barstool by their large bright orange kitchen island shelling green peas. He grumbles about how “those people” have no respect for other people’s time.
Hema informs him that she heard on the news that morning about inbound flights being delayed. Must have been because of the fog, she says. He continues to grumble. Hema tells him to act like a proper host and that it was just for the weekend.
A small boy runs into the room wearing a cape with a party whistle and annoys the fuck out of Dharmendra. The boy is AbRam. Dharmendra begins to snap and Hema gives him a very stern look so he modifies his annoyance and tells the kid firmly to go find his parents.
Just as he’s saying this, Juhi rushes in and tells the boy she needs him to change out of the cape as she doesn’t want the cape to get dirty or torn before his big birthday party that evening. The kid gets excited and mother and boy leave.
A very sleepy SRK walks in yawning and stretching his arms all over the place. Dharmendra looks at him and grumbles some more. SRK ignores him and grabs a seat behind Hema and hugs her from behind saying “I missed you, mommy” like a kid and she indulges him lovingly.
Dharmendra looks at the scene and grumbles and returns to the window.
Just then the bell rings and we hear Sridevi yell for her ma and pa. Dharmendra is totally surprised and he rushes to hug her. Her husband Jackie and daughter Janhvi follow her into the room tepidly.
SRK springs up to meet his didi and the siblings hug like little kids. He greets Jackie more formally with a handshake and calls him Colonel Saab.
Juhi pops in and greets Sri warmly and AbRam jumps all over Janhvi.
Just as this party is settling down, Amitabh and Jaya’s cab pulls in front of the house and the cabbie dumps their luggage in the driveway and drives off.
Amitabh is infuriated but Jaya says she’d expected him to dump them halfway through the journey because he’d been grumbling at the poor driver since they got in his cab. She tells him to get the luggage and walks in swaying her pallu.
When Jaya walks in, Abram spots her first and yells out “Nani” and jumps over to her. Juhi greets her mother who is greeted warmly by all the women and a smiling SRK touches her feet and asks if “uncle hadn’t made the trip”
Jaya informs him that he was getting the luggage and he runs out to go get him.
SRK makes it to the driveway bare feet, walking on curled toes since the driveway is cold. Awkward feet touching/trying to get the luggage thing happens between him and Amitabh and just then Saif and Kareena arrive with Taimur.
Kareena is in jeans and a hoodie and she covers her head with her hoodie before touching Amitabh’s feet. The men have a facepalm look on their faces. Saif tells kareena to go inside with the baby and they’d get the luggage. Saif tells Amitabh to go in and that they’d get the stuff.
Amitabh walks in stiffly.
Saif asks SRK how things were in there and SRK says “however things were so far, they won’t remain the same anymore.” and they stifle a giggle.
Amitabh stands in the hallway door with his hands behind his back and nobody notices him. He clears his throat to announce his presence but noone notices him. So he clears his throat once again but ends up with a coughing fit.
Everyone rushes to him and they have him sit down on the couch and as Juhi, Sri and Kareena fuss over him, Hema brings him a glass of water and a spoonful of honey and insists he must have it and that the combo was a ‘ram-ban ilaj’ and she’d seen it on her guru’s ayurveda show.
Dharmendra is even more incensed with the scene. As Hema fusses, she looks over at Jaya who looks at her and looks at her husband, sighs and rolls her eyes. Hema sees that and backs off. She looks at her husband who now has a grouchier expression on his face and she looks at Jaya and sighs and brings the glass back to the kitchen area.
Amitabh has recovered and as the young women back off a bit, he notices Dharmendra sitting opposite him, arms crossed and in a rotten mood. Amitabh asks how he was. And Dharmendra replies that he’s dealing with old age more gracefully than other people. He and Amitabh exchange a dirty look. Jaya and Hema exchange a disapproving look. Sri and Juhi look at each other and stifle a giggle. Kareena leans close to Janhvi and asks in a whisper what all the looks were about and Janhvi tells her she’ll explain later without looking up from her phone.
She then looks agitatedly at her phone, paws a text furiously, waits for a reply and calmly gets up and leaves just as the ladies begin a discussion of the lunch plan and tea is getting made.
SRK and Saif are seen taking the luggage upstairs from the hallway staircase. Once upstairs, they talk in whispers and giggle about how the show has already begun. They sneak into the bathroom of SRK’s bedroom and light a spliff.
As they’re talking, a knock is heard and SRK asks who that was while they both try to avoid exhaling the smoke. It’s Sanju and he asks to be let in. Sanju and Saif have a hug and greet inside the bathroom.
Sanju is Dharmendra’s kid cousin and SRK, Sri and Saif’s cool bachelor cousin uncle. He asks Saif when his parents were showing up and just then a car horn is heard. The men quickly air out the bathroom, spray an enormous amount of bodyspray all over and flush the evidence.
They go downstairs to greet the new arrivals. It’s Rishi and Neetu in the car and Sara Ali Khan and Alia in an auto.
Sara tells her dad Saif that Alia was her new flatmate and her flight to Mumbai got cancelled and she didn’t want her to be alone so she brought her along.
Before Saif could answer Rishi and Neetu hijack the conversation saying they approve and that’s all that matters and they were so proud of their granddaughter making such mature decisions. Neetu smothers her with kisses and the women head indoors.
Rishi looks at SRK and Saif and with a nudge and wink asks them if they got the party started already. They blurt out an uncomfortable no when Rishi shows them the flask in his blazer pocket. He laughs, takes a sip and offers the flask to the guys. They take polite sips and hand the flask back to Rishi. He wheezes a chuckle, takes a large sip and heads in.
SRK looks back at Saif who’s in the process of pouring eye drops into his eyes. SRK borrows it. They head inside.
The open kitchen/living has Sanju in an apron on the kitchen island in the middle of working flour into activated yeast and when Saif and SRK walk in, he yells rather loudly that he’d have his signature garlic bread done in half an hour. The ladies have already begun prepping lunch and Rishi announces that it would be a great time to use the propane fired grill he gifted them for their 40th wedding anniversary last year.
Jaya says it would be past lunch even if they started thawing meat right now. Neetu tells them they brought meats in marinade from Chandigarh with them and it’s ready to hit the grill. She says she’s used to travelling prepared because her bahu is so modern and pretty. Kareena is delighted and gives her a half hug since Taimur is still in her arms. Neetu rolls her eyes.
Rishi and Dharmendra are putting the grill together in the middle of the living room as Amitabh hovers over them giving advice; Sanju, Saif and SRK are stuffing their faces with fresh garlic bread; Kareena is playing with Taimur and Abram; and the rest of the ladies, including Sara and Alia, are frying, peeling, chopping all around the kitchen exchanging gossip.
Just then, Aryan, Suhana and Janhvi come charging through the front door. They hastily shut the door and secure it with the heavy wooden cupboard in the hallway.
The adults tell the kids to quit it but they just mumble about needing to secure and seal windows and doors as they frantically tape the edges of windows and lock doors. SRK asks Aryan to stop messing up house. When he doesn’t, he grabs the kid by his arm.
Aryan yanks his arm free and watching her brother bear the brunt of their father’s ire, Suhana yells “Why don’t you understand dad?! We’re under attack!! DELHI is under attack!! INDIA is under attack!! We HAVE to seal the windows and doors NOW!!”
Everyone drops what they’re doing. Saif rushes to get the TV on. There’s a big red ‘breaking news’ panel flash on the screen with the newscaster delivering the home minister’s appeal to remain calm when the signal is lost. They flip channels but it says ‘no signal’ on every channel. SRK says he’ll go check the dish. As he says that Janhvi says she has video of what they saw on the streets.
She projects a shaky video on the wall which shows chaos in the fog and people jumping from a metro stuck on an above ground track. A man lands close to them and bounces off the asphalt and the kids’ screams can be heard.
Just then Janhvi’s phone dies and Alia and Sara say they received such videos too but they thought they were fake.
Alia takes out her phone to show the video to Hema but she cannot get her phone to switch on. Sara takes out her phone and hers is dead too. Everyone checks their phone and none of them are functional anymore. iPads, laptops, all of them are dead.
Jackie rushes to the landline saying he needs to report for duty immediately and picks up the landline. He’s able to speak to someone but the phone dies before he could finish. As he tells everyone that the landline is dead too, the lights go off! Abram screams and Juhi calms him down. Sanju says gas line is also dead. There are anxious gasps across the room.
Just then, Rishi says “Well, the good news is this grill is tank-fired so we can still cook the marinated meat we brought with us.'”
End of Part 1
In the next part, there’d be cooking on the grill and unravelling of secrets. The story never leaves the kitchen/living!
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this is such a complicated story! So, family drama crossed with mysterious thriller type story trapping them all in a kitchen?
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yup. like annoying relatives stuck in a room during a weekend get together.
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This reminds me of This is the End, which is also a film in which a whole bunch of famous people are trapped together confronting a big disaster (literally, in this case, the end of the world). Looking forward to part 2.
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This is the End is one of my all time fav disaster comedies!
I actually want this story to develop more like It’s a Disaster.
Perhaps I should develop this one like a miniseries than a film?
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Excited for knowing more 🙂 (and I hope it is a huuuge living/kitchen area!) : seven older people, six middle aged ones, five young ones, a small kid and a baby…20 if I am right…wow!!!!
Yes, I could imagine a series but woud prefer a 3 hour movie…
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One of my favorite sub-genres of movie is the food movie, best exemplified by Big Night, Babette’s Feast, Eat Drink Man Woman, and my very favorite, Tampopo. This is the sort of movie where the food is one of the characters and you come out of the theater wanting to rush straight to a restaurant. It seems odd that India, being one of the ultimate food places on earth, hasn’t had such a movie. I wonder if Saif’s Chef take will be something like that? (As a New Orleanian, I appreciated the original’s look at my native food culture). Today’s Special is sort of that kind of look at Indian food. It is an American movie but you get to see Naseerji and, if memory serves, Lillette Dubey, and you get to hear Ina Mina Dika and Kabhi Kabhi.
Anyway, the last one seems like one where we could insert a bit of food porn–sheen forming on heating oil, spices in the grinder; and food comedy–Tanuja making a lumpy roti, or Tanuja finally making a smooth roti and all three women jumping around the kitchen. As for the casting, I love Sharmila and I’d love to see her with Soha, but doesn’t it seem like Soha would be the glamorous career woman who needs basic cooking lessons from Sharmila and not the other way around? And I like your way better. Or, they are both great actresses so it might be fun to see them play against type.
As for the one with Tabu: I love this idea, but yes I think India is not ready. The US is not ready. This is due to something I call the Braganza Theory of Movie Infidelity ((c) me, 2017): If the hero is unfaithful to his wife, he can just be in a run-of-the-mill unsatisfying marriage. But if the heroine is unfaithful, she has to be married to an absolute monster, or she can’t be a sympathetic character. This is particularly blatant in movies where the lead couple are both married to other people and it’s pretty obvious how the hero’s marriage is treated differently from the heroine’s. I’ve found it in Hollywood movies (Little Children), Indian movies (Mr. Singh and Mrs. Mehta) and Japanese movies (Shitsurakuen “Lost Paradise”). So, Tabu being married to someone nice but distant would probably never get made. But I support this idea!
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I feel like we’ve talked about your theory before (which I think is brilliant), but if I haven’t mentioned it, Karan’s memoir confirms it. He wrote KANK with Shahrukh and Rani in equally bad marriages. No one bought the movie, and the criticism he kept getting was “why would Rani cheat on Abhishek? He wasn’t cruel to her”.
On Mon, Nov 27, 2017 at 12:17 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Yeah! Like when Unfaithful came out and all the critics fell over themselves wondering why Diane Lane would cheat on Richard Gere with Olivier Martinez and I was just like “Um, because that’s Olivier Martinez?” I mean, it doesn’t condone it, but wanting to have sex with Olivier Martinez is well within the bounds of normal heterosexual female behavior.
That’s one thing I really loved about Aiyyaa, though, she turns down a perfectly nice guy because she’s not attracted to him. Which is important! I was worried until the last minute that she wouldn’t.
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Yes! Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania too, and Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, and i am sure others I am missing. It’s still less common to have a “nothing that wrong with him I just like someone else better” plot than the “fiance revealed to be terrible” plot, but at least it’s there. Of course, only with a fiance. If the plot involves marriage, he always turns out to be “not that bad after all and marriage makes her forget her other love”.
On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 8:57 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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The absolute worst of the “not that bad after all,” although it doesn’t involve another love, must be Lajja, in which Manisha Koirala forgives Jackie Shroff for PLOTTING TO HAVE HER MURDERED because he’s really super sorry.
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I still can’t believe that movie didn’t end with Ajay killing Jackie and then passionately embracing Manisha as they decided to live in sin together in the jungle for the rest of their lives.
On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 12:12 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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