Lok Pal - The Film

It is May 2012. King Khan is back with another super duper block buster movie. The movie is titled, Kahani Lok Pal Ki. (Please note name starts with K) Once again Shahrukh Khan is doing something that has never been done in Bollywood before – he is doing 13 different roles, breaking Priyanka Chopra’s record of 12 roles in ‘What’s your Rashee’. The story is about a 13 member panel that is going to decide on the final Lok Pal Bill. Let us go over the members one by one.

The first member is the middle class Sharukh Khan from Rabne Banadi Jodi complete with a moustache. Let us call him MCK. Then we have the Khan in the other avatar from the same movie. Let us call him 6 pack Khan (6PK). The third member is the autistic Khan from My Name is Khan. Let us call him MNK. The fourth one is the one from Don complete with long hair and all that. Let us call him DonK (The K to be pronounced as Kay and not Key). The remaining two looks we take from the movie Ra-One, one super hero Khan (SHK) and South India Khan (SIK, Please note there is no C, silent or otherwise). That makes it six. What about the rest? Here is the twist. We are going to take the age old Judwah Bhai concept to a new height. The other six are the twin brothers of the first six. It would have been tempting to make the six evil twins, maybe six twins as government representative and other six as civil society representatives. But that would be politicizing the movie and it would have never got past the censor board. So to distinguish let us add suffix -1 and -2 without any reference whatsoever to government, opposition or civil society. So we would have MCK-1 and MCK-2 for instance. And there still remains the matter of the thirteenth Khan. Given the popularity of romantic vampire movies in the west , let us bring it to India as well and have a Romantic Vampire Khan (RVK-13).

Next let us have a look at backdrop. No one will come and watch a movie set in a boring room. There was one movie like that called 'Ek Rukha Huva Faisla'. No wonder the film never made it to the theaters. Cinematography is often the gamechanger. So this is the deal.We have a standing committee, standing on top of an open bus touring through Europe and carrying out their discussions. In addition to having shots covering scenic Europe, this will give an opportunity to introduce Katrina Kaif (spoiler alert!) on a bike falling in love with one of the members (which member is suspense) and an item number by Yana Gupta as well along the way. After all people who buy the movie ticket pay to see all this. Who wants to watch just a simple story? For that they can sit at home and watch Malayalam movies.

Without any more ado, let us get to the movie. The story (or whatever its equivalent is called in Bollywood) starts in Switzerland, right in front of the snow covered Alps. The discussion begins.

SIK-1: We are drafting bill. Soup Bill. Flop Bill. Why this Kolaveri Kolaveri Kolaveri Dee? (Are the protestors listening?)

Everyone joins in and the sing in chorus. Angels come and join the dance. The place gets filled with smoke and mist.That the first song in the movie and we move on to more serious matters.

MCK-2: Ok. So we want to make a really strong bill. A bill so strong that not a single corrupt person can escape!

DonK-1: That’s impossible. However strong bill you make, you cannot catch Don. Not only is it difficult, in fact it is impossible.

The whole theater breaks into applause. That's King Khan style. By now they are outside Eiffel Tower in Paris.

MCK-1: So the bill have to cover all class A, B,C, D government employees both at center and the state.

MNK-1: I don’t know all these classes. My mother has told me there are only two classes – good and evil.

A senti song plays in the background with flash back scenes.The audience is in the verge of tears. Now we move on to London for the next part of the discussion.

MCK-2: All members of parliament including prime minister would be under the bill. And the Lok Pal will be independent of government control.

SHK-1: Let us also include all software engineers under the bill. They keep breaking their initial company bonds all the time. Isn’t that also an act of corruption?

RVK-13: That’s a good idea. Let us include all MBAs as well. They travel on economy and charge their companies business fare. We definitely can not let these bloody blood suckers get away.

SHK-2: Cool. Some superheroes wear a mask, this one wears a heart. We need only ones with hearts, not ones with masks. All these bloggers hide their true identity behind masks. That is also a form of corruption. Let us bring them also under the bill.

Katrina Kaif passing by on a bike hears the talk about super hero’s hearts and falls in love with SHK-2. There is a duet song and then we move on to Greece for the next shot.

6PK-1: In order to hunt down all these people, even a 6 pack Lok Pal team won’t be enough. We would need a large wolf pack team. So I guess we better drop some folks from the bill’s ambit. The level C and D employees are the most in number and seem mostly harmless. So let us leave them out.

6PK-2: And I propose we leave the prime minister and the cabinet ministers out. You know they handle matters of national security. If Lok Pal gets into all that the terrorists can take advantage.

MNK-1: Terrorist! Terrorist? Terrorist! My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist.

MNK-2: What a coincidence! My name is also Khan and guess what! I too am not a terrorist!

MNK-1: Wow! We both are Khans and both of us are not terrorists. Then we must be brothers separated at birth.

A senti song about brotherly love starts in the background. Audience is again overwhelmed with emotion. We move on to Spain for the last scene.

SIK-2: Let us make the bill a constitutional amendment. For that we need the support of lot of MPs and MLAs. No way will they support the bill if we have them under its ambit. So let us drop them from the bill in order to ensure the bill passes.

DonK-2: The bill is looking excellent now. But we still need to make one more little change to make it really tight. Our constitution seeks to abolish all class, caste and creed. So it would go against the tenets of our constitutions to discriminate against officers on basis of class. So it can be challenged in the court and the bill will become unviable. So let us leave out the Class A and Class B officers as well.

So we are almost near the end. We still have the 'patriotic' item number followed by the bull festival. All the panel members run with the bulls and give speeches on what each one has learnt from the journey. The movie ends with the passage of the strong bill that is going to bring all corrupt software engineers, MBAs and bloggers to book. A spirit rising song plays in the background. "Honge kaamyaab, honge kaamyaab hum honge kaamyaab ek din ho ho mann main hai vishwas poora hai vishwas........."