{"id":1473,"date":"2016-03-22T00:53:30","date_gmt":"2016-03-22T00:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=1473"},"modified":"2016-03-22T00:53:30","modified_gmt":"2016-03-22T00:53:30","slug":"thank-mira-nair-for-pk-dubey-monsoon-wedding-birthday-bollywood-vijay-raaz-pop-culture-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=1473","title":{"rendered":"Why We Must Thank Mira Nair for PK Dubey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">O<\/span>ctober is slowly turning into November, and in Delhi, the air is taking on a chill. In this city that is half new, half old, half colonial, half medieval, half native, half migrant, the seasons are changing, and so are the colours. Yet, this city with its walled streets and kebabi gallis remains, in many ways, still in a perfect Nolan-esque moment in time and space.\n\nExcept that the director who breathed life into this half-and-half city on celluloid almost two decades ago, was less Nolan, more Nair. Nobody has captured Delhi\u2019s ferocious velocity juxtaposed by an almost meditative stasis better than Mira Nair in Monsoon Wedding, and nobody symbolises its inhabitants, crafted in equal parts of ambition and eccentricity, like Dubeyji.\n\nThe Dubeyjis of the world exist on the fringes of our everyday existence as the atypical Dilliwallahs whom we\u2019ve more or less forgotten about. The ones that while away precious years lazing around the house, waiting for a business miracle to happen (Ranvir Shorey from Khosla ka Ghosla), the ones who talk in hyperbole and have a proverbial outlook toward everything banal and commonplace (Bangali from Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!), and the ones who may be tangential to the solar system you inhabit, but are the epicentre of a universe of their own. PK Dubey of Monsoon Wedding effortlessly merges all the shades of this quintessential Dilliwalla within him, even as he chews meditatively on marigolds.\n\nDubeyji is not the star of Monsoon Wedding. The movie, at its heart, is a coarse web of ever-changing relationships spun around an upper-middle class Punjabi family, whose cobwebs lie exposed at the end of a raucous three-day wedding celebration. Everyone has secrets and the narrative flows through them like an abrasive river in rage, amassing everything in its way, but settles slowly in a delta where many plots that are tangential to the central plot roam free. There, down below, like a subtle bass rhythm under blaring guitars, lies the love ballad of PK Dubey.\n\nDubey, portrayed by Vijay Raaz, is a character that perfectly embodied lower-middle class India at the dawn of the millennium. Dubeyji\u2019s fascination and idolisation of everything \u201cphoren\u201d like \u201cpukka bills\u201d, white tents, and electronic mail is juxtaposed with a very desi stubbornness of not having the venue waterproofed and predicting confidently, \u201cMor nahin nach rahe hain, toh barish nahin hogi\u201d, prompting his flummoxed employer to ask, \u201cDubey, ganja peeke aaya hai?\u201d\n\nThis eccentricity is what defines Dubeyji. He\u2019s a \u201ckaamchor\u201d, as he\u2019s often referred to, but does not let go of his mobile phone (his trials with it are well-articulated throughout the film), neither does he pick it up (the opening scene in the film is of a harrowed Naseeruddin Shah frantically calling him). Dubeyji\u2019s classic quirk is evident in a scene when he enters the Verma bungalow with his entourage. Naseer is waiting for him, hurling the choicest of abuses. In typical Dubey fashion, he puts on a pair of sunglasses and immediately starts heckling his men, keeping a shrewd eye on his employer so that he understands, most clearly, who the boss is. And yet this hardcore hustler melts into a pile of marigolds at the sight of the gorgeous Alice, and Dubeyji\u2019s beauty comes to light.\n<\/p><blockquote class=\"quote--center\">Dubey, the twisted everyman, to us, is the soul of a migrant\u2019s view of Delhi with a mixed sense of belonging and alienation<\/blockquote>\nDubeyji\u2019s earthy, old school romance with Alice \u2013 their eyes meet in slow motion with \u201cAaj Mausam Bada Beimaan Hai\u201d playing in the background \u2013 is the love story you want to root for. It is unbelievably fragile and impossibly distanced from the rapidly changing equations of those higher up in the social ladder.\n\nTime slows down as marigolds begin to rain on this tender love story that changes Dubeyji irrevocably. This love brings calm and stability to the eccentric energy of Dubey\u2019s character. While he shows off mobile phones, newly printed cards, and an abridged version of his name, his heart is not in it. In one of his epic marigold-chewing moments of clarity, he is struck by how he has managed at least 200 weddings but has never thought about getting married. The meditative chewing of marigolds became the metaphor for Dubeyji\u2019s changing outlook toward life, and Dubeyji himself became the heart of the movie in which he should have been nothing more than a footnote.\n\nWhy do we continue to love Dubey? In Dubey, we see a relic of the past trying to grapple with the future. He fashions himself to keep up with the changing times, but it\u2019s not difficult to see why the Dubeys of a couple of decades ago have now been replaced by an army of wedding planners, caterers, and photographers. The men, who once played \u201chalf thekedaar-half manager\u201d but would always tell you, \u201cSir, your daughter\u2019s wedding is like my daughter\u2019s wedding\u201d, and used words like \u201cexactly and approximately\u201d with utmost sincerity, have been extinct for a while now. Dubey, the twisted everyman, to us, is the soul of a migrant\u2019s view of Delhi with a mixed sense of belonging and alienation. The voice of the suburban social climber, who is eccentric and arrogant, slimy and lackadaisical, but is simple \u2013 a man with simple desires and simple accomplishments. He\u2019s not Vicky Donor or Piku; he\u2019s just a man on the sides constantly telling you to \u201ctake it easy na, sirjee\u201d.\n\nDubeyji and Alice, in spite of our trepidations, do end up coming together. The calm of the impending and profuse rainfall in the last scene signals a change. Dubejyi\u2019s eccentricity gives way to emotional stability as \u201cRabba Rabba Mee Barsa, Saddi Koti Taade Pa\u201d resonates from the Verma bungalow, and everybody dances in rapture.\n\nParbatlal Kanhaiyalal Dubey dances too, in that terribly goofy, awkward way that we expect him to dance, as the fountain of life showers abundance on everybody and promises fresh beginnings that we hope will not be the end of the kaamchor, kameena Dubey who we can\u2019t seem to forget.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With Monsoon Wedding, Mira Nair breathed life into Delhi on celluloid almost two decades ago. And even today, Nair\u2019s eccentric, marigold-chewing PK Dubey remains unforgettable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":1474,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[2431,141,546,2551,2552,2553,313,2554],"class_list":["post-1473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-birthday","tag-bollywood","tag-films","tag-mira-nair","tag-monsoon-wedding","tag-pk-dubey","tag-pop-culture","tag-vijay-raaz"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why We Must Thank Mira Nair for PK Dubey<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"With Monsoon Wedding, Mira Nair breathed life into Delhi on celluloid almost two decades ago. And even today, Nair\u2019s eccentric, marigold-chewing PK Dubey remains unforgettable.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=1473\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why We Must Thank Mira Nair for PK Dubey\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With Monsoon Wedding, Mira Nair breathed life into Delhi on celluloid almost two decades ago. And even today, Nair\u2019s eccentric, marigold-chewing PK Dubey remains unforgettable.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=1473\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Arr\u00e9\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-03-22T00:53:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1508062252-1024x573.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"573\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Anahad Madhav\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Why We Must Thank Mira Nair for PK Dubey\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"With Monsoon Wedding, Mira Nair breathed life into Delhi on celluloid almost two decades ago. 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